What to pack

What to pack really depends on where you are going and your style of travel: budget backpacking, luxury island-cruising, a two-week guided historical tour, or a combination of all three. Every type of travel has its own list of bare essentials from corkscrews to hairdryers and crampons to tampons, so we list some of the obvious and not-so-obvious items for the various regions and activities you may encounter in Ecuador. These lists are meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive...

General Packing List
Passport; travelers checks; first-aid kit (see our medical kit packing list for a list of suggested health supplies); Swiss army knife or leatherman; cloths for warm and cool weather as one can encounter both in an afternoon in the Andes or if traveling between regions; raincoat; backpack; money belt or neck pouch; watch with alarm clock; toilet paper and tampons (both can be hard to find outside of Quito and Guayaquil); flashlight or headlamp; plastic bags for separating dirty and clean clothes and shoes; needle and thread; biodegradable soap (if in backcountry areas); notebooks and pens/pencils; hat; and sunglasses.
Leave copies your important documents, such as your passport, as well as travelers check and credit card numbers, with someone who can fax them to you if they are stolen and/or give a copy to a trusted traveling companion. E-mailing numbers to an on-line e-mail account on Hotmail or Yahoo is also a good idea since you can access the Internet from almost anywhere.
Ecuador's electrical current is 110 volts 60 cycles, the same as North America, so adapters for North American equipment are not needed. However, plug converters are necessary in older buildings.