Ecuador

Ecuador packs two different jungles into a country the size of Colorado, and both are reachable from the same airport. Quito sits at over 2,800 meters, so most trips start with a day of acclimatising in the capital. From there, a two-hour drive north-west drops you into the Mindo cloud forest, where the trees drip with moss and hummingbirds outnumber the people. A thirty-minute flight east to Coca, followed by two hours by motor canoe down the Napo River, puts you in the lowland Amazon on the edge of Yasuní National Park, one of the most species-rich places on Earth.

Mindo is the easy half and where most of these stays are. It is a small birding town on a river, and the cabins around it sit on their own patches of forest with waterfalls, private trails and canopy towers. Several are run by long-time hosts with a decade or more of reviews. The Amazon half is lodge territory: cabins reached only by canoe, with canopy towers, parrot clay licks and guides from the Kichwa communities that own the land.

The two jungles do not share a calendar. Mindo is drier from June through September and wettest from January into May, though cloud forest is never dry. The Amazon rains year round, with higher water from roughly March to July that lets canoes float deeper into flooded forest. Pack for both: warm layers for the highlands, and the lightest long sleeves you own for the lowlands.