Things to Do in Ecuador in November

November's rains swell the waterfalls around Banos into their most dramatic form. The canyoning routes through Cashaurco and the gorges south of town run with enough volume to make the rappels thrilling without becoming dangerous. The town itself sits at about 1,820 m (5,970 ft) in a valley below the active Tungurahua volcano. The microclimate stays warmer and more humid than Quito. Morning mist burns off by 9 AM to reveal walls of green jungle rising on every side. The spray from the cascades hits your face cold and sharp. The basalt rock under your gloves is slick enough to demand your full attention. November's lower visitor numbers mean smaller group sizes on the rappelling routes. This translates to more time at each drop and less waiting on ledges. Most operators run morning departures that get you back to town by early afternoon, ahead of the heavier rain.

November is when the Dia de los Difuntos preparations turn Quito's markets into an edible calendar of the season. The Mercado Central and the smaller Mercado de San Francisco fill with vendors selling colada morada, the spiced purple-corn drink that tastes like someone crossed mulled wine with berry compote and thickened it with cornstarch. They sell it alongside guaguas de pan, sweet bread shaped into infant figures and painted with colored icing. Beyond the holiday foods, November is good for walking the colonial center because the mornings are reliably cool and dry. La Ronda, the narrow restored street in the old town, smells of roasting cacao from the artisan chocolate shops. It smells of frying empanadas de viento, those inflated cheese pastries that shatter when you bite through the shell to the warm, stretchy queso inside. The city sits at 2,850 m (9,350 ft). The air is thin. The flavors hit differently at altitude. Local guides on food-focused walking tours tend to have smaller groups in November. They cover ground that you would walk past without context: the ceviche stalls in the market where the shrimp arrives daily from the coast, the locro de papa vendors who have been ladling potato-and-cheese soup from the same stall for decades.

November's rainfall feeds the Jatunyacu, Misahualli, and Anzu rivers in the upper Amazon basin around Tena to solid Class III and IV levels, making this the better end of the wet season for rafting before the heavier December-through-April rains push some sections beyond safe recreational limits. Tena sits at about 500 m (1,640 ft) where the Andes drop into the Amazon lowlands, and the temperature is noticeably warmer than Quito, hovering around 28 degrees C (82 degrees F) with humidity you can feel on your skin the moment you step out of the van at the put-in point. The water is tea-colored from tannins, warm enough that you do not need a wetsuit, and the jungle canopy closes overhead on the calmer stretches so tightly that the light turns green. Howler monkeys are audible from the river on early-morning runs. Full-day trips typically cover 25 to 30 km (15 to 19 miles) and include lunch on the riverbank, and November's moderate water levels keep the rapids exciting without the pushy volume that makes late-rainy-season runs feel out of control.

November marks the start of the warm season in the Galapagos, with ocean temperatures beginning to climb from the cooler garua-season lows toward the 24 to 25 degrees C (75 to 77 degrees F) range that makes snorkeling comfortable without a full wetsuit. The islands sit about 1,000 km (620 miles) off the coast, and November's transitional conditions mean you get both the endemic species that thrive in cooler water, like Galapagos penguins on Isabela and Fernandina, and the warmer-water activity of green sea turtles beginning to nest on the beaches. Sea lion colonies on San Cristobal are active with young pups, and the underwater visibility, while not as gin-clear as August, is still strong enough to spot reef sharks and marine iguanas grazing on submerged rocks. The light in November has a different quality than the overcast garua months, with more sun breaking through, which makes the lava landscapes look less stark and the water that electric Galapagos blue. Day tours from Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz reach sites like Bartolome, North Seymour, and Pinzon without the booking pressure of peak season.

Mindo sits at about 1,250 m (4,100 ft) on the western slope of the Andes, roughly two hours northwest of Quito by road, in a cloud forest so dense with epiphytes and bromeliads that the trees look like they are wearing fur coats. November's humidity and rainfall keep the forest dripping and alive, and the birding peaks with migratory species passing through alongside residents like the cock-of-the-rock, whose males gather at dawn leks to display their absurd orange plumage in a ritual that involves bouncing, wing-snapping, and a sound somewhere between a croak and a car alarm. The forest trails are muddy in November, properly muddy, the kind where your boot sinks to the ankle and the extraction makes a sucking sound. But that is part of the deal and the payoff is a forest at its most productive: hummingbirds at every flowering bush, tanagers in the canopy, and the chance of spotting toucans from the hanging bridges that cross the ravines. The air smells of wet earth and decomposing leaves and something faintly sweet from the orchids. Morning birding walks starting at 5:30 AM, before the cloud cover descends fully, give you the best light and activity.

The Avenue of Volcanoes, the corridor of peaks running south from Quito between the Eastern and Western Cordilleras, is one of the most concentrated collections of high volcanoes on earth, and November has a window where the trails are less tracked than dry season but the conditions are still manageable for day hikes up to the refugio level on Cotopaxi at 4,864 m (15,955 ft). The catch is the clouds: Cotopaxi's perfect cone is likely to be visible only in the early morning hours, and some days not at all. But the paramo grasslands below the snow line, that high-altitude ecosystem of golden tussock grass and hardy wildflowers, are green and alive after the rains in a way that the dry-season brown cannot match. The wind at altitude cuts through layers and the temperature drops sharply above 4,000 m (13,120 ft), so you will feel cold in your hands and face even if your core is warm from the climb. Acclimatize properly if you are coming from sea level. Spending at least two full days in Quito before attempting anything above 4,000 m (13,120 ft) is the minimum, and three is better.