Ecuador Trivia
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48 free Ecuador trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free Ecuador trivia questions with answers. Ecuador is small enough to cross in a day and packed with superlatives: the point on Earth farthest from its centre, one of the highest capital cities in the world, the islands that gave Charles Darwin his big idea, and the world's biggest banana exports. This quiz covers the geography, history, wildlife, food and sport of the country named after the equator. You will meet Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, Quito's colonial centre and Guayaquil's riverfront, the Galápagos tortoises, penguins and sea-going iguanas, the last Inca emperor, the real story of the Panama hat, guinea pig on the menu, and La Tri's World Cup debut. Questions run from easy geography to expert-level history, so it works for a classroom, a travel night or a pub quiz round. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly the relevant Wikipedia article, and the citation is attached to each question.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which bird spreads its wings on top of Ecuador's national coat of arms?
An Andean condor
An Andean condor crowns the arms with wings outspread, and the whole crest sits at the centre of the official flag, which is how Ecuador's banner is told apart from Colombia's.
Q 02Which two countries share a land border with Ecuador?
Colombia and Peru
Colombia and Peru are Ecuador's only land neighbours, which makes Ecuador and Chile the only two South American countries that do not touch Brazil.
Q 03What currency has Ecuador used since 2000?
The US dollar
The US dollar replaced Ecuador's collapsing currency in 2000, a move so unpopular that Jamil Mahuad, the president who announced it, was toppled in a coup shortly afterwards.
Q 04Ecuador's former currency, in use from 1884 to 2000, was named after which independence hero?
Antonio José de Sucre
Antonio José de Sucre led the patriot army that won the 1822 battle freeing the Ecuadorian highlands from Spain; the currency named after him lasted from 1884 until it was replaced in 2000.
Q 05Which Galápagos seabird is the only member of its family that cannot fly?
The cormorant
The cormorant of the Galápagos evolved with no predators to flee and food close inshore, so its wings shrank to about a third of the size it would need to fly, and it hunts by diving instead.
Q 06The Galápagos Islands take their name from the Spanish word for which animal?
Giant tortoise
Giant tortoise: galápago is an old Spanish word for tortoise, and the first Spaniard to land there, a bishop whose ship drifted off course in 1535, marvelled at the thousands of huge ones he found.
Q 07Which naturalist visited the Galápagos in 1835 and noticed mockingbirds differed by island?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin labelled his mockingbirds by island; back in London, the bird expert John Gould told him that specimens he had taken for blackbirds and grosbeaks were all finches of one new group.
Q 08Ecuador's Antonio Valencia spent ten years, the last as captain, with which English football club?
Manchester United
Manchester United signed Valencia from Wigan in 2009; he won two Premier League titles there, moved from the wing to right-back and wore the captain's armband in his final season.
Q 09Which unusual bird lives in the Galápagos, the only one of its kind found in the Northern Hemisphere?
A penguin
The northern tip of Isabela Island crosses zero latitude, so a few Galápagos penguins technically live north of the line. Cold currents make it possible.
Q 10Which Ecuadorian mountain's summit is the farthest point on Earth's surface from the planet's centre?
Chimborazo
Chimborazo's summit is Ecuador's highest point, and because Earth bulges around its middle the peak stands about 2 km farther from the planet's centre than the top of Everest.
Q 11Which climber, the first man up the Matterhorn, made the first ascent of Ecuador's highest peak in 1880?
Edward Whymper
Edward Whymper reached the top on 4 January 1880 and, to silence doubters, climbed it again by another route later that year; Humboldt had turned back short of the summit in 1802.
Q 12Cotopaxi, about 50 km south of Quito, is notable as one of the world's highest what?
Active volcanoes
Cotopaxi is one of the world's highest active volcanoes, and its ice cap makes it deadly: an eruption in 1877 melted it and sent mudflows more than 100 km, as far as the Pacific.
Q 13Quito, at about 2,850 m, ranks second among the world's highest capital cities behind which one?
La Paz
Q 21Which US president's 1906 visit to the Panama Canal works popularised the Panama hat?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was photographed wearing a Panama hat while inspecting the canal works in November 1906; the hats were woven in Ecuador from toquilla straw and shipped through Panama.
Q 22The finest Panama hats are named after which Ecuadorian town where they are woven?
Montecristi
Montecristi gives its name to the finest grade, the superfino: one hat can take months to weave, and by popular lore the best will hold water and roll up small enough to pass through a wedding ring.
Q 23Which Ecuadorian city was founded in 1557 on the ruins of the Inca city of Tomebamba?
Cuenca
La Paz, Bolivia's seat of government, sits well above 3,000 m; Bolivia's constitutional capital is a different, lower city, so on that count Quito is the highest official capital on Earth.
Q 14Quito's old town joined UNESCO's very first World Heritage list in 1978 alongside which Polish city's historic centre?
Kraków
Kraków came through the Second World War with far less damage than other cities in the region, so its medieval centre was still intact when UNESCO drew up its first list of twelve sites in 1978.
Q 15Which farmed seafood, raised in ponds along the coast near Guayaquil, is now one of Ecuador's biggest exports?
Shrimp
Shrimp farming has become a mainstay of the economy around Guayaquil, and in 2020 Ecuador overtook its Asian rivals to become the world's largest exporter.
Q 16Which two liberators met behind closed doors in Guayaquil in July 1822?
Bolívar and San Martín
Bolívar and San Martín met in private and kept no record of the talks; Bolívar favoured republics and San Martín constitutional monarchies, and soon afterwards San Martín resigned his command and in time left for Europe.
Q 17The battle that secured Quito's independence on 24 May 1822 was fought on the slopes of which volcano?
Pichincha
Pichincha towers directly over Quito, and the patriot victory high on its slopes let the rebels march into the city the very next day, ending Spanish rule there.
Q 18Ecuador became a separate republic in 1830 when which short-lived union of liberated states broke apart?
Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia, Simón Bolívar's union of today's Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, fell apart in 1830; the new southern state took its name from the equator that crosses it.
Q 19On Ecuador's flag, which colour takes up half the height?
Yellow
Yellow fills the top half, twice the height of the blue and red bands, a layout taken from the liberation tricolour of Francisco de Miranda that Colombia's flag also keeps.
Q 20Ecuador is the world's largest exporter of which fruit?
Bananas
Bananas have been Ecuador's signature crop since the early 1950s, and in the late 2010s the country shipped about a third of all the bananas traded across the world's borders.
Cuenca rose in 1557 over the ruins of Tomebamba, the northern seat of the emperor Huayna Capac; the Inca city had been largely destroyed in the empire's own civil war before the Spanish arrived.
Q 24Ecuador's mainland is divided into three regions: the Costa, the Sierra and which rainforest region?
Oriente
Oriente means 'east': the region is the forested lowland on the far side of the Andes, while the Costa is the Pacific plain and the Sierra the highlands between the two.
Q 25Ecuador's Orellana province is named for the conquistador who in 1542 completed the first European descent of which river?
The Amazon
The Amazon is said to owe its name to that voyage: Orellana told of fighting tribes led by women, who brought to mind the Amazons of Greek myth.
Q 26A single hectare of Ecuador's Yasuní National Park holds more than how many insect species?
100,000
A hectare of Yasuní is projected to hold at least 100,000 insect species, about as many as live in the whole of North America, the highest estimate for any patch of land on Earth.
Q 27In an August 2023 referendum, Ecuadorians voted to stop what activity inside Yasuní National Park?
Oil drilling
Voters chose to halt oil drilling in Yasuní's Block 43, obliging Petroecuador to dismantle its wells; a plan to leave the oil underground in return for foreign payments had been abandoned in 2013 when little money arrived.
Q 28Ecuador's 2008 constitution was the first in the world to do what?
Grant legal rights to nature
Ecuador's 2008 constitution was the first to grant legal rights to nature, so rivers, forests and ecosystems can be defended in court in their own name; Ecuador is one of 17 megadiverse countries.
Q 29Which animal, roasted whole and known as cuy, is a traditional delicacy in Ecuador's highlands?
Guinea pig
Guinea pig, or cuy, was domesticated in the Andes for its meat thousands of years before Europeans began keeping the animals as pets, and it is still roasted for festivals.
Q 30Encebollado, a common hangover cure in Ecuador, is what kind of dish?
A tuna soup
A tuna soup: encebollado means 'cooked with onions', after the pickled red onion heaped on the fish and cassava broth, and restaurants that specialise in it start serving early in the morning.