Here we were taking a 30 minute flight to Coca for our boat ride to Sacha Lodge. Quito, the capital of Ecuador is a city of about 2 million nestled in the Andes at an elevation of 9300 feet (2850 meters). Here you can go down the western slope to the Pacific coastal city of Guayaquil (which is the largest city in Ecuador at 3 million) and the Galapagos Islands or down the eastern slope to the Amazon basin which includes Sacha Lodge. We met several groups who had visited the Galapagos and then decided to take a short trip inland to the rainforest