Anyone from Ecuador?

I read a couple well-written articles about Ecuador, by people who migrated there, and it sounds like exactly the type of atmosphere I need. Not the big city areas, but the small rural, "backwards" towns. I would love to hear about anyone else's experiences there (or anywhere else that may be similar). I want to get a well rounded view of life from someone who really knows and is objective.

I have been investigating different places to move, outside of the USA, because I have reached the conclusion that no matter where I go here, I will never escape the selfish, corporately-dominated, and materialistic people that now make up our majority. As much as I would love to believe that Americans still have enough of their will to be free left to return this country to what it was supposed to be, I just see too many people CHOOSING to live in denial so as not to upset their comfortability level. I just want to find someplace green, and untainted by modern "advances". I want to experience how life really is, without all of the high-tech complexities we have come to accept as a part of life. Life has become to easy for us. We would be so lost if all of the gadgets and fast-food joints were taken away. I know most people would rather live in the high-stressed but convenient world but I was born about 50 years after my time and I need, desperately, to find something slower and kinder than I've found here. It saddens me too much to see so much potential for happiness destroyed by the constant need to be the one with the most toys. I am not un-American. I just want to find a place that still holds the values,that we were supposed to be based upon.

1. Well spoken.

2. I think a lot of people didn't visit this Topic because they thought you were from Ecuador, calling out to countrymen.

3. Most western countries have a dose of the head-in-the-sand consume-be silent-die commodity fetishistic culture you dread.

4. If you are prepared to be a hermit and not face that thing at all, I know probably the best 10 spots in the world to think about. I haven't been to Ecuador (or the Galapagos Islands), but I have been around most of Latin America over a long period.

One can sympathise with the aspiration, jez-b: but I fancy I'd refine the search: Quito's bearable -rural Ecuador is hot, poor, unhealthy: it's a military tyranny (whatever the constitution says) and the population would move to Peoria to-morrow if you'd pay the bill.
'twas ever thus: the whites look for undeveloped shangri-la's -the people there want a job in Detroit.