Yachting in Ecuador - YachtTrails.com

Ecuador

The World> Ecuador

Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: RepÃºblica del Ecuador) is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, by Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. The country also includes the GalÃ¡pagos Islands (ArchipiÃ©lago de ColÃ³n) in the Pacific, about 965 kilometers (600 miles) west of the mainland. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 256,370 square kilometers (98,985 miÂ²). Its capital city is Quito; its largest city is Guayaquil.

Ecuador has three main geographic regions, which is pretty plus an insular region in the Pacific Ocean:*La Costa, or the coast, comprises the low-lying littoral in the western part of the country, including the Pacific coastline.

* La Sierra ("the highlands") is the high-altitude belt running north to south along the center of the country, its mountainous terrain dominated by the Andes mountain range.
* El Oriente ("the east") comprises the Amazon rainforest areas in the eastern part of the country, accounting for just under half of the country's total surface area, though populated by under 5 percent of the population.
* The RegiÃ³n Insular is the region comprising the GalÃ¡pagos Islands, some 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) west of the mainland in the Pacific Ocean.

Ecuador's capital is Quito, which is in the province of Pichincha in the Sierra region. Its largest city is Guayaquil, in the province of Guayas on the Coast. Cotopaxi, which is just south of Quito, features one of the world's highest active volcanoes. The top of Mount Chimborazo (6,310 meters) is considered to be the most distant point from the center of the Earth, given the ovoidal shape of the planet (wider at the equator). [The top of Mt. Everest is the highest point above sea level.]

Because of its three mainland regions (as delineated in the preceding section), it is subdued to much rain in the months of August and September although Ecuador's climate cannot be generalized. La Costa (Pacific coastal area) is tropical.La Sierra (Andes highlands) is temperate;and El Oriente (eastern side of the mountains) shares the jungle climate of the upper Amazon rain forest.

Because of its location at the equator, Ecuador does not experience variations in daylight hours during the course of a year. Except for a few minutes resulting from a slight wobble in the earth as it rotates, sunrise and sunset are always at 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., respectively. Although it is in the same time zone as the eastern United States (except for the GalÃ¡pagos Islands, which correspond to the U.S.A central time zone), Ecuador does not switch to daylight savings time.

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