These are 10 annotated favorites. It's a real pleasure to share my trip with you. It cost about $1400 including airfare for 16 days in Ecuador, and if I had been more careful that could have been perhaps $1300 with the same activities. Minus losing my wallet, for example.

Carrying our rafts towards the river outside of El Chaco, Ecuador. It was a grueling 15 minutes, at the limit of my strength.

This is me jumping off of a small ledge above the river on the first day of rafting. It was a sharp and striking experience to be rafting in what felt like jungle (although it was too high to be in the jungle: perhaps 6000 or 7000' up).

Here's me in my hiking shirt and sun hat: the rays were scorching at this height (10,500').

I like this picture of the hog and the indigenous family in the background. It was a common sight. I hardly took any pictures of the people of Ecuador. Despite my strong interest, it felt distasteful most of the time to pull out my camera and point it at people without their permission, and I never really felt like asking.

I am building something of a collection of water droplet shots. This was the best from this trip.

I wish I could remember what all the fruits were called. This is Denis in a big open-air fruit market in Latacunga. We had a blast. (Editor’s note: that is a zocalo)

This is the trail up to El Altar, the lake ringed by mountains which I wrote about before. We were so happy that a friend of his recommended the rubber boots (botas de caucho)! So very happy, since we spent much of the trip knee-deep. Anyway, I dubbed us Los Gauchos de Caucho.

After four hours of that we reached the refuge, with the glacial peaks looming behind it... we hadn't seen anyone all day (and didn't see anyone until we left the Sangay national park).

We went to a zoo in Baños, below the (very active) Tungurahua volcano, and my favorite shot was of this monkey's grasping hand.

When we climbed the not-just-active-but-erupting volcano of Reventador, one of the hostal dogs tagged along with us. I think his name was Job. He was terrific fun and I was glad for his company.