Fodor's Ecuador

Challuabamba (chī-wa-bamba)–now a developing suburb of Cuenca, the principal city in the southern highlands of Ecuador–has been known for a century as an ancient site that produced exceptionally fine pottery in great quantities.

Researched by a veteran travel writer who lives in Latin America, Frommer's Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands takes you through this fast-changing country, to visit rugged wilderness preserves, sleepy beach towns, the bustling, colonial captital, and, of course, the spectacular Galapagos Islands…

This book uses five decades of map data, air photos, and medium to high-resolution satellite imagery to track the expansions of aquaculture and the loss of both estuarine and mangrove land covers in Ecuador. The results are staggering. In some regions, Ecuador has lost almost 50% of its estuarine space and approximately 80% of its mangrove forest. The current estuarine land cover bears no resemblance to the historic estuarine land cover.