Ecuador or República Ecuatoriana, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a sovereign and plurinational country, located in the northwestern region of South America. The country’s capital and most populated city is Quito.1314 It is a member of the Andean Community and is organized into twenty-four provinces. It is bordered to the north by Colombia, to the south and east by Peru, and to the west by the Pacific Ocean, which separates it from the Colon Archipelago or Galapagos Islands by approximately 1,000 kilometers from the mainland coast, between the Santa Elena Peninsula and San Cristobal Island. It also borders Costa Rica along the maritime border of the insular region.15 The equatorial line or 0° parallel crosses the country and divides the continental and insular territories in two, leaving most of the Ecuadorian territory in the southern hemisphere.

The Andes mountain range divides the continental part of the country from north to south, leaving on its western flank the Gulf of Guayaquil and areas of plains and foothills, and to the east, the Amazon. Ecuador occupies an area of 256 370 km². It is the tenth most populated country in the Americas, with over eighteen million inhabitants, the most densely populated country in South America and the fifth most densely populated in all of the Americas.