MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Ecuador

Riding the Avenue of the Volcanoes by motorcycle means following the same corridor that German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt named in 1802, amazed at having more than 70 volcanoes in view along just 300 km between Quito and the southern sierra.

The Panamericana (E35) runs boxed in between the Western and Eastern cordilleras, with Cotopaxi — at 5,897 masl, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world — dominating the landscape for much of the ride, while Illiniza, Carihuairazo and Chimborazo appear and vanish among the clouds as you head south.

It's the backbone of any motorcycle trip through Ecuador: nearly every other route on this list — Quilotoa, Chimborazo, Cajas — starts as a detour off this same stretch.

Riding the Quilotoa Loop by motorcycle means circling, over two days, the crater of a volcano that erupted about 800 years ago (around 1280 AD) with Plinian force of VEI 6 — one of the most violent eruptions recorded in the Andes — leaving a 3km-wide caldera now filled by a turquoise lake 250 meters deep, at 3,914 masl.

The road winds through the Kichwa communities of Zumbahua, Chugchilán and Isinliví, weekend markets and crop terraces climbing the hillsides — riders share the road as much with loaded donkeys and sheep as with tight curves of fresh pavement.

Along with Peru's Cordillera Blanca, it's one of the most photographed mountain routes in the Andes, and the most popular entry point for any motorcycle traveler arriving in Ecuador for the first time.

Riding Chimborazo by motorcycle up to the Refugio Whymper parking area means getting as close as you can on two wheels to the highest point in all of Ecuador: 6,263 masl at the summit, and — a real geological fact, not traveler legend — also the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's center, thanks to Earth's equatorial bulge. That effectively makes it the place on Earth closest to the Sun, even more so than Everest.

The Chimborazo Fauna Production Reserve protects one of the best-conserved vicuña populations on the planet — reintroduced in the 1980s after disappearing from Ecuador — and it's common to ride past herds grazing beside the road with the glacier as a backdrop.

The road climbs 8 km from the reserve checkpoint (4,370 masl) to the parking area at 4,800 masl: at that altitude the engine visibly loses power from lack of oxygen, and riders themselves feel "soroche" (altitude sickness) just from walking the last stretch up to the refuge.

Riding down the Ruta de las Cascadas by motorcycle, from Baños toward Puyo, means following the canyon the Pastaza river carves between the sierra and the Amazon jungle, with seven waterfalls appearing alongside the road in just the first 18 km.

The most famous is Pailón del Diablo, an approximately 80-meter drop crossed by a suspension bridge set deep in cloud forest — riders share the pavement with cyclists and open-sided "chiva" trucks doing the same run, so it's worth taking it slow.

It's, in practice, most travelers' first contact with the Ecuadorian Amazon: in just 60 km the landscape shifts from Andean volcanoes to the dense, humid green of the lowland jungle.

Crossing Cajas National Park by motorcycle, from Cuenca toward Naranjal, means following the same route the Inca once used to descend from Tomebamba (today's Cuenca) to the Paredones tambo, in Molleturo, connecting the sierra with the coast — stretches of the original Inca road are still visible alongside today's highway.

The park protects over 1,000 bodies of water, with 235 well-defined lakes spread between 3,150 and 4,450 masl, in an almost lunar páramo landscape, with rock polished by glaciers that no longer exist and grassland vegetation that shifts color with the light.

After crossing the high point, the road descends without pause into tropical rainforest and, finally, the coast's banana plantations — in just 115 km, the bike drops from nearly 4,000 meters of altitude to sea level.

Riding down to Vilcabamba by motorcycle from Loja means entering the so-called "Valley of Longevity", famous since the 1970s after a Harvard University team led by Dr. Alexander Leaf investigated why a town of just 819 residents had seven men and two women over 100 years old — a proportion of centenarians far above the world average at the time.

At 1,753 masl and with a mild subtropical climate year-round, the valley also marks the end of the Ecuadorian sierra: from here the Panamericana continues south, already descending, toward the Zumba-La Balsa border crossing, one of the calmest and least-used crossings into Peru.

It's the last logical stop by motorcycle before leaving Ecuador to the south, and for many overlanders riding down from Colombia, the country's symbolic closing chapter.

Riding the Ruta del Spondylus by motorcycle end to end covers 748 km of Pacific coastline, crossing the provinces of Santa Elena, Manabí and Esmeraldas along route E15 — a name that honors the spondylus, a reddish spiny shell that pre-Columbian peoples of the Ecuadorian coast considered sacred and used as ritual currency in trade with the Inca empire.

The road links beaches of very different character: Montañita, a surf mecca since the mid-20th century; Puerto López, gateway to Machalilla National Park; and further north, Bahía de Caráquez and Atacames, home to Ecuador's longest natural beach.

Unlike the sierra or Amazon routes on this list, the challenge here isn't altitude or mud, but coastal wind and fishing-truck traffic through the larger towns along the way.