Columbus - Dublin

Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres west of the mainland.

Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 272,046 km2. Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic centre in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic centre of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas.

Evidence of human cultures in Ecuador exists from circa 8800 BCE Many civilizations rose throughout Ecuador, such as the Valdivia Culture and Machalilla Culture on the coast, the Quitus and the Cañari. Each civilization developed its own distinctive architecture, pottery, and religious interests, although consolidated under a confederation called the Shyris which exercised organized trading and bartering between the different regions and whose political and military power was under the rule of the Duchicela blood line before the Inca invasion. After years of fiery resistance by the Cañaris and other tribes, as demonstrated by the battle of Yahuarcocha where thousands of resistance fighters were killed and thrown in the lake, the region fell to the Incan expansion and was assimilated loosely into the Incan empire.

Ecuador is governed by a democratically elected President, for a four year term. The current president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, exercises his power from the presidential Palacio de Carondelet in Quito. The current constitution was written by the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly elected in 2007, and was approved by referendum in 2008. The executive branch includes 25 ministries. Provincial governors and councilors (mayors, aldermen, and parish boards) are directly elected. The National Assembly of Ecuador meets throughout the year except for recesses in July and December. There are thirteen permanent committees. Justices of the National Court are appointed by the Council of Social Participation, for nine year terms.

Early literature in colonial Ecuador, as in the rest of Spanish America, was influenced by the still existing tendencies of the Spanish Golden Age. One of the earliest examples is Jacinto Collahuazo, an indigenous chief of a northern village in today's Ibarra born in the late 1600s. Despite of the early repression and discrimination of the native people by the Spanish, Jacinto learned to read and write in Castilian but his work was written in Quechua. Collahuazo was imprisoned, and all of his work burned. The existence of his literary work came to light many centuries later, while a crew of masons were restoring the walls of a colonial church in Quito and found a hidden manuscript. The salvaged fragment is a Spanish translation from Quechua of the "Elegy to the Dead of Atahualpa", a poem written by Collahuazo, which describes the sadness and impotence of the Inca people of having lost their king Atahualpa.

Ecuadorian cuisine is diverse, varying with altitude and associated agricultural conditions. Most regions in Ecuador follow the traditional three course meal of soup, a second course which includes rice and a protein such as meat or fish, and then dessert and coffee to finish. Supper is usually lighter and sometimes consists only of coffee or herbal tea with bread. In the highland region, pork, chicken, beef, and cuy are popular and are served with a variety of grains or potatoes. In the coastal region seafood is very popular, with shrimp and lobster being key parts of the diet. Plantain- and peanut-based dishes are the basis of most coastal meals. Churrasco is a staple food of the Coast Region specially Guayaquil. Arroz con menestra y carne asada is one of the traditional dishes of Guayaquil, as is fried plantain which is often served with it.