Ecuador has very diverse environments, roughly divided into four zones: the Amazon Basin, the highlands/Andes, the dry Pacific coast, and of course the Galapagos Islands offshore.
We visited two national parks in the central highlands. Ecuador's national parks are all free thanks to a recent Government decree, which includes camping.
Parque Nacional Cotopaxi is based around the Cotopaxi volcanic cone at 5897m. The park has hiking trails, climbing and some pre-Columbian archaeological sites. It also has lots of horses and cows, which doesn't really make sense for a national park. It is stunningly beautiful though, with lots of unique flowers.
Parque Nacional Chimborazo is based around the Chimborazo volcanic cone. This is Ecuador's highest point at 6268 m. It is actually the furthest point from the centre of the earth, beating Everest on some technicality, something about the equator or the curvature of the earth or something. The visitor's centre where we camped for the night is at 4400m, and the top carpark is at 4800m. There is a walk to the snow line which starts over 5000m. This is pretty high altitude stuff, easily high enough to bring on altitude sickness if you aren't careful. In fact it's about the same altitude as Everest base camp. We had a good night camping here and hanging out with the park rangers, who taught us some Quichua (the indigenous language spoken by lots of people throughout the Andes).
Chimborazo also has a huge population of Vicunas, wild relatives of llamas and alpacas, which are native to the Andes. We had heard about these guys and were really hoping to see some, and then it turned out that they're everywhere.
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