“The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to”.

Alain de Botton.

Considering its size of 283,560 km², Ecuador is the most biodiverse country on the planet. However, it is not only its gigantic volcanoes, the thick jungle, the richness of its coastline or the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific that are important to highlight. This country has a colonial charm that has always been accompanied by the multiculturalism of its people. A population that moderates heritage, that forms and transforms, that creates and recreates, that founds and re-founds the memory of the environment in which it lives. A richness evident in its population that reaffirms its Inca, Mestizo, Montubio and American Indian origins, a diverse cultural identity that never goes unnoticed by visitors arriving in these lands profoundly privileged by human and geographical diversity.

Many societies strive to bridge the contrast between modernity and tradition. In Ecuador, however, this contrast is embraced. Twelve thousand years ago, the lands that today make up the country were inhabited by indigenous peoples who developed under a profound agricultural culture. Later, the Spaniards arrived in America, who, with their European culture, influenced the native American culture. Thus, with them came Spanish, Christianity, ways of life and customs, values and prejudices that gave rise to miscegenation.

However, cultural integration is more than just an awareness of the country’s origins. Cultural heritage constitutes a part of the tangible and intangible charm that provides an authentic testimony of the history that identifies Ecuador. And we can still find it present throughout the country in its various manifestations, from the coastal lowlands, through the heart of the Andean Cordillera, to the Amazon where the ancestral roots are still present.