A small South American nation of extraordinary natural diversity and world-changing scientific significance — where the Galápagos Islands’ extraordinary endemic wildlife inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection in what remains the world’s most extraordinary living laboratory of evolutionary biology, the UNESCO-listed colonial centre of Quito presides above the Andean highlands as one of the best-preserved and most beautifully situated Spanish colonial capitals in all of Latin America, and the active Cotopaxi volcano’s perfect snow-capped cone rises above the Avenue of the Volcanoes in one of the Andes’ most dramatically magnificent high-altitude landscapes.