Ecuador
Ecuador's capital is Quito, which is in the province of Pichincha in the Sierra region. Its largest city is Guayaquil, in the Guayas Province. Cotopaxi, just south of Quito, is one of the world's highest active volcanoes. The top of Mount Chimborazo (6,268 m, or 20,560 ft, above sea level), Ecuador's tallest mountain, is the most distant point from the center of the Earth on the Earth's surface because of the ellipsoid shape of the planet.
Cordillera Huayhuash
The Huayhuash range is 30 km long north to south and includes seven peaks over 6000 m including Yerupajá which, at , is the second highest peak in Peru. Another notable peak, Siula (6,344 m) was made famous by mountaineer Joe Simpson in his book "Touching the Void". Unlike neighboring Cordillera Blanca, Huayhuash doesn't possess broad valleys and mountain passes are higher. There are many lesser peaks surrounding those covered by ice, and several passes exceeding 5,000 m. It is necessary to travel a considerable distance from the central range to find ground lower than 3,000 m, even on valley floors, and the range is often taken to include this much larger area. The vegetated areas of the range are part of the Central Andean wet puna ecoregion
The area is barely populated at all, with what hamlets there are being very small and generally only found below 4000 m (the snowline is found at approximately 4,800 m). The nearest villages are Chiquián (3,400 m) and Cajatambo (3,375 m). Some mining takes place in the area, so to the north of the mountains there is an unsurfaced road leading up to as high as 4750 m. In 2002 the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture declared the Huayhuash mountain range a "reserved zone" and prohibited certain economic activities, including any future mining.