Description
| - Ecuador (pronounced /ˈɛkwədɔr/), officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: República del Ecuador, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðel ekwaˈðor]), literally, "Republic of the equator") 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. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) west of the mainland.
Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 283.561 km2, 109,415 sq ml. 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 center in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic center 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....
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