Ecuador Multisport (8-Day)

What follows is a loop out of Quito, and altitude is the thing it plays with. The first night sits on Plaza de San Francisco in the colonial center. Then the road runs south down the Avenue of Volcanoes and stops at twelve thousand feet in Cotopaxi National Park, where the walking starts and the air gives you its terms. From there the trip falls. Down to Baños at the mouth of the basin, then onto a mountain bike through Llanganates cloud forest toward the Pastaza River Canyon, waterfalls the whole way. The next morning is the waterfall road proper: the Bride's Veil, a cable car across the Pastaza gorge, the descent to Pailón del Diablo, and canyoning for anyone who would rather be in the water than looking at it. By that night you are sleeping in the jungle.

Then it climbs back. Class III water on the Jatunyacu carries you out of the lowlands, and the road west rises to Papallacta, where the hot springs sit near eleven thousand feet and the whole point of the evening is to stop moving. The last two days go north into a quieter register. Otavalo's market, the Sacha WarmiKuna community project, and a walk around the rim of Cuicocha, whose water is dark and whose volcano is not finished. Quito takes you back for the final night, the same square, the same room. There is something scheduled every day, which is the bargain a multisport week makes. What it buys is four countries' worth of terrain inside one of the smallest countries in South America.