Things to Do in Ecuador in June

June's dry highland skies make this the month to tackle Ecuador's avenue of volcanoes. Cotopaxi, at 5,897 m (19,347 ft), is visible most mornings from as far away as Quito's Parque La Carolina. Its snowcap cuts sharp against blue sky in a way that rarely happens during the rainy months. You don't need to summit to appreciate it. The paramo grasslands below the snowline, around 4,000 m (13,123 ft), are windswept and golden in June. Wild horses graze there. Andean foxes appear. The air smells of damp earth and ichu grass. The silence at that altitude is so total it becomes a sound of its own. Chimborazo, technically the farthest point from the center of the earth, has a similar experience with even fewer people on the trail. June's lower rainfall means trails are firmer underfoot. The risk of being socked in by cloud is significantly reduced compared to March or April.

Banos de Agua Santa sits in a valley at 1,820 m (5,971 ft) where the Andes drop toward the Amazon. June is when the town earns its reputation as Ecuador's adventure capital. The Pastaza River runs strong but manageable, fed by snowmelt and the tail end of the highland rains. The canyoning routes through Cashaurco's basalt gorges have enough water flow to make the rappels dramatic without being dangerous. Descending a waterfall on a rope, cold spray hammering your helmet, the roar echoing off black volcanic rock, is not something you forget. The town itself smells perpetually of taffy being pulled at the melcocha stalls along the main street. The thermal baths that give Banos its name steam in the cool morning air. June afternoons can bring cloud cover rolling up from the Amazon side. Mornings are typically clear enough to see the Tungurahua volcano from the swing at Casa del Arbol. Get there early.

The Galapagos in June is a different archipelago than the one you see in postcards from January. The garua mist settles over the highlands of Santa Cruz and Isabela, lending the islands an almost Scottish atmosphere, mossy and cool, while underwater the cooler Cromwell Current turns the snorkeling into something extraordinary. Marine iguanas are feeding actively along the rocky shoreline of Fernandina. Sea lion pups are learning to swim in the shallows of Gardner Bay. Schools of hammerhead sharks patrol the deeper channels around Gordon Rocks. The water temperature drops to around 22 degrees C (72 degrees F), which means a 5mm wetsuit is no longer optional. But the trade-off is visibility that can exceed 20 m (65 ft) on good days. On land, the waved albatross colony on Espanola is in full courtship display, their clacking bills audible from fifty meters away.

Quito's centro historico is the largest and best-preserved colonial district in the Americas, and June's dry weather means you can spend a full day wandering it without ducking into doorways every hour. The churches alone would justify the trip. The Compania de Jesus, its interior so heavily gilded that the first glimpse through the doorway stops you in your tracks. San Francisco, whose cloister smells of old wood and candle wax and has been standing since the 1530s. But the real revelation is the food. A bowl of locro de papa, the thick potato and cheese soup that Quitenos eat on cool mornings, served from a market stall in Mercado Central with a spoonful of aji criollo that burns clean and bright, is worth more than any restaurant meal you will eat on this trip. June evenings in the old town drop to around 9 degrees C (49 degrees F), and the streets empty early, leaving the plazas lit by colonial lanterns with almost nobody in them. The cold is sharp enough that you will want canelazo, the hot sugarcane and cinnamon drink spiked with aguardiente, from the vendors near Plaza Grande.

Mindo sits at around 1,250 m (4,100 ft) on the western slope of the Andes, where the highland dry season translates into fewer afternoon downpours without drying out the cloud forest canopy. The result in June is trails that are damp but passable, morning mist that burns off by ten, and bird activity that borders on absurd. Ecuador has more bird species per square kilometer than any country on earth, and Mindo is where that fact becomes tangible. The sound at dawn is a layered wall of calls. Toucans. Tanagers. The metallic tink of the Andean cock-of-the-rock displaying at its lek site. Hummingbird feeders at the lodges along the Mindo road attract fifteen or more species before breakfast, and the wet green smell of the forest floor, decomposing leaves and orchid roots and moss, is thick enough to taste. Chocolate farms in the valley offer cacao tastings where you eat the raw fruit straight from the pod, the pulp tart and almost citrusy, nothing like processed chocolate.

Tena, at 500 m (1,640 ft) in the Napo Province, is the way into Ecuador's accessible Amazon, and June sits at the transition between the wet and drier seasons. River levels on the Napo and Jatunyacu are still high enough for whitewater rafting through Class III and IV rapids, the kind of rapids where you can hear the roar around the bend before you see the drop, and the warm spray hits your face like a wall. The jungle around Tena is dense, humid, and loud. At dusk the frogs start, a chorus so layered it sounds electronic, and the air fills with the sweet rot of tropical vegetation and the sharper note of wild ginger. Guided jungle walks reveal details invisible to solo hikers. The blue poison dart frog sitting motionless on a fallen log. The line of leaf-cutter ants hauling fragments ten times their size along a trail they have carved into the forest floor. June's residual rains keep the forest at peak lushness, and the rivers run a milky brown that the locals say means good fishing.