2 Best Hotels in Latacunga, The Central Highlands

It's not easy to get here, but you'll find this place—an ecohostel—is one of the nicest in Ecuador. Prices include vegetarian dinners, farm-fresh breakfasts, tea and coffee all day, purified drinking water, hiking maps, and hot showers. Most rooms have a woodstove fireplace. Dinner is family style. Also available are lunches, home-baked desserts, Chilean wines, cold beer, a full bar, and European-style cheeses. Perched on a hillside outside the village of Chugchilan in Cotopaxi Province, this hostel is five hours southwest of Quito. You can get here by bus, jeep, or taxi. The American owners, Andres Hammerman and Michelle Kirby, will help you make arrangements.

This place has been inhabited for more than five centuries—it began as an Inca fortress and was transformed into an Augustinian monastery after the Spanish conquest. It now belongs to an Ecuadoran family. Two original Inca structures are used as a chapel and a dining room. The hotel is a few miles from Parque Nacional Cotopaxi, where you have access to horseback riding, trout fishing, mountain biking, and trekking.