Ecuador's
capital is Quito, and is located in the province of Pichincha in the Sierra
region. Its largest city is Guayaquil, located in the province of Guayas in the
Costa. Cotopaxi, which is located just south of Quito, in the neighbouring
province of that same name, is often wrongly claimed to be the world's highest
active volcano, but several peaks in northern Chile and southern Peru are higher
and (at least currently) more active.
The
country also includes the Galápagos Islands (Archipiélago de Colón) in the
Pacific, about 965 kilometers (600 miles) west of the mainland. Ecuador
is the Spanish word for equator.