Best Places to Elope in the Ecuadorian Andes

The Ecuadorian Andes give you more photographic variety per square kilometre than almost anywhere in South America. The challenge is choosing which environments to prioritise and how to structure the time between them.

Quito Historic Centre at Dawn

The best time to photograph in Quito's historic centre is the forty-five minutes before and after sunrise, when the cobblestone plazas are empty and the baroque facades catch the first directional light. The Plaza Grande (Plaza de la Independencia) offers the Palacio del Carondelet, the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the Archbishop's Palace around a single colonial square. The Compañía de Jesús, three blocks away, has a gold-leaf interior that, from the open door at dawn, produces a theatrical quality of light that is almost unmatched in South American architectural photography.

Cotopaxi National Park

Cotopaxi National Park is about ninety minutes south of Quito and offers two distinct elopement environments. The páramo around the park entrance, at thirty-six hundred metres, is open grassland with the volcano rising behind it and the light quality of high altitude. The access road up to the Refugio José Ribas at forty-seven hundred metres brings you into the volcanic scree zone with the glacier directly above. Both environments produce extraordinary photographs for different reasons: the páramo is gentle and vast, the high refuge approach is austere and dramatic.

Quilotoa Crater Lake

Quilotoa is a volcanic crater lake about three hours south of Quito. The crater rim sits at thirty-nine hundred metres and the lake below it is a vivid turquoise green. Walking the rim trail, couples have the crater and the lake below them on one side and the Andean landscape extending in all directions on the other. The colour of the lake is one of the most unusual available in South American elopement photography and the physical situation of the rim, standing at the edge of an active volcanic crater, produces a portrait with genuine weight.

Cuenca and the Rio Tomebamba

Cuenca's best elopement locations are the cathedral viewpoint at the Plaza Mayor at dawn, the Pumapungo archaeological site overlooking the Tomebamba valley, and the Barranco promenade along the river's edge. The Barranco is particularly good in the late afternoon when the warm light catches the colonial facades and the river below reflects the sky. Cuenca has a calm, human-scale quality that Quito does not, and for couples who want something more intimate than the grandeur of the capital, it is the better city.