I arrived in Quito, Ecuador towards the end of November for a 5 week trip, I had based myself in Quito at The Amazon Inn and would recommend it as good place to stay, staff are friendly, helpful and English spoken. During the 5 weeks I only spent a few days here in betwen different legs of the trip, but it was a good place for a base and to store luggage in.
I did a couple of days climbing out of Quito, summiting Pasochoa (4200m/ft) and Guagua 
Pichincha (4800 m/ 15500ft). Guagua Pichinicha is an active volcano and when clear from the mist you can see smoke rising from its centre and the recently formed lava domes from the summit.
Pasochoa was an easy climb except it was extremely slippery due to heavy rain. Pichincha was fairly steep but for the most of it good going underfoot, approaching the summit it was quite a scramble climbing over some icy rocks, some of it quite tricky. We descended a different route, most of which was scree. We had cloud, mist and hail on the two summits I did so no real good summit views from those either but I did get the following from the plane when flying out of Quito into the Amazon region.
I did a couple of the typical tourist sights in Quito including visiting the Latitude 00’ 00’ 00’ Museum which is bang on the Equator. Seems strange being on the Equator but being a little chilly! At night here it can go rather cold.
To the left is Old Town Quito, below is a view out over the city. The airport is currently bang in the middle of Quito and there is a new airport due for completion in 2010 as there have been one or two near misses, and a couple of crashes which were lucky not to be serious.
After travelling around in Ecuador I would say it is fairly easy to get where you need to go, mostly friendly people on the whole, but there is also a great deal of crime. The main purpose of my trip though was the Galapagos and the Amazon Jungle, both of which have their own pages.