Things to Do in Ecuador in December

December marks the Galapagos warm season transition. The shift hits the moment you slip below the surface. Water temperatures climb toward 25°C (77°F). Visibility opens up. Marine life responds. Sea lion colonies on San Cristobal and Isabela nurse pups curious enough to swim straight at your mask. You hear their underwater barks through the snorkel. Green sea turtles haul onto Gardner Bay's white-sand beaches to nest. Marine iguanas begin breeding displays. Males flush from charcoal gray to rust-red and emerald depending on the island. The air above water stays warm and calm. Less garua mist chills you than in dry-season months. You will share the islands with more visitors than in September or October. The real crush waits until the Christmas-to-New-Year window after December 20. The Galapagos reward patience. They demand advance planning. Logistics move at island pace. The best itineraries need forethought.

December rains feed Banos cascades into force the dry months cannot match. Cashaurco canyon, the marquee canyoning descent, runs heavier and louder. Mist off the falls soaks you before the rappel begins. Banos sits at roughly 1,820 m (5,970 ft) in a valley flanked by Tungurahua volcano. The air carries faint sulfur-tinged warmth from the thermal springs that named the town. Canyoning means rappelling through waterfalls that pound your helmet. You slide down natural rock chutes into pools cold enough to steal your breath. You emerge at the bottom into subtropical vegetation smelling of wet earth and orchids after rain. Afternoon showers intensify the experience rather than ruin it. You are already soaked by the second waterfall. Mornings stay typically clear. Most operators run departures before noon. After the canyon, thermal baths at the volcano's base steam against cool highland air. The contrast between ice-cold river water and mineral-hot pools delivers the full-body reset that justifies the trip on its own.

Quito's centro historico runs on a different clock in December. The Fiestas de Quito end December 6. Food vendors along La Ronda and Plaza Grande linger well into the holiday season. The narrow colonial streets carry the warm, sweet scent of pristinos frying in oil. These thin, crisp dough spirals come drizzled with miel de panela. This unrefined cane syrup is to Ecuadorian sweets what maple syrup is to Quebec. Walking tours pass stone church facades standing since the 1500s. They lead into markets like Mercado Central. The locro de papa, a thick potato and cheese soup topped with avocado, tastes richer at this altitude. The cool morning air outside makes the first hot spoonful land with real warmth. December evenings bring canelazo carts to the plazas. The naranjilla-and-cinnamon-spiced drink gets spiked with aguardiente. Locals sip from foam cups while standing in groups under streetlights. Food in Quito in December is inseparable from the social calendar. You eat because the city celebrates. The celebrating is organized around the eating.

Mindo sits about 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Quito, dropping from the highland paramo into a valley thick with cloud forest at around 1,250 m (4,100 ft), and in December the canopy is dense, wet, and alive with hummingbirds. The rain here is not the problem visitors fear. It falls in bursts. The forest absorbs it. The mist that follows is exactly the condition under which the birds become most active. Feeders at the forest lodges attract species that exist nowhere else on the planet, including the violet-tailed sylph and the booted racket-tail, whose iridescent green bodies catch the filtered light in a way that looks engineered. The cacao farms around Mindo grow Nacional fino de aroma, Ecuador's native variety, and the chocolate tours that walk you from fermented bean to finished bar let you taste the raw nib, bitter and fruity, nothing like the processed product, straight from the drying rack. The air in the cloud forest smells like moss, wet bark, and the faint sweetness of decomposing fruit on the forest floor. December mornings tend to be clearer than afternoons, so birding walks start early, often before 6 AM, with a thermos of strong local coffee that earns the wakeup call.

Cotopaxi's snow-capped cone rises to 5,897 m (19,347 ft) above the highland paramo, and on a clear December morning, which happens more often than the rainfall statistics suggest, since the precipitation clusters in the afternoon, the volcano fills the windshield for the entire drive south from Quito. The national park sits between 3,400 and 4,500 m (11,150 to 14,760 ft), and at that altitude the air is thin enough to feel in your lungs on the first uphill scramble. December's rains have turned the paramo grasslands from straw-gold to deep green, and the wild horses that graze below the refuge move through a landscape that looks like Scottish highlands transplanted to the equator. The hike to the Jose Rivas refuge at about 4,864 m (15,955 ft) is the standard day-trip goal, a steep two-hour climb on volcanic scree where the wind cuts through fleece and the temperature drops with every hundred meters of elevation gained. The park's lower trails, including the loop around Laguna Limpiopungo at 3,800 m (12,470 ft), offer a flatter alternative with views of the volcano reflected in still water on calm mornings, the snow line sharp against the equatorial sky.

Tena sits about four hours east of Quito where the Andes spill into the Amazon basin, and December's rains push the Jatunyacu and Misahualli rivers into Class III and IV rapids that the dry-season flow cannot sustain. The descent starts in a raft surrounded by walls of green, cecropia trees leaning over the bank, bromeliads clinging to every trunk, and the occasional kingfisher flashing turquoise above the brown water. The water itself is warm compared to highland rivers, and the humidity at roughly 500 m (1,640 ft) elevation wraps around you the moment you step off the bus from the Sierra. The rapids hit in bursts separated by calm stretches where the guide points out howler monkeys in the canopy or a caiman sunning on a sandbar. December is one of the better months for water levels, high enough for exciting runs, not so high that operators cancel for safety. Full-day rafting trips typically include lunch on the riverbank, grilled tilapia wrapped in bijao leaves with a side of green plantain, the woodsmoke mixing with the wet-jungle air while the river rumbles past.