The Oriente

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Introducing The Oriente

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You can’t help but feel the rub of the first world chafing against the ancient in the Oriente, Ecuador’s Amazon Basin. Consider the Tagaeri and Taromenani, who refuse all contact with the modern world but inhabit the same forest where oil exploitation grows day by day. These worlds will one day meet. The Oriente is an intense place with clenching stakes for everyone involved. Its earliest inhabitants lobbed heads for it, and politicians, colonists, environmentalists, indigenous groups and big industry continue the battle today.

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For visitors the pull is mega-biodiversity. Beyond the cloud forests of the eastern Andean foothills, it’s all rain forest, home to 50% of Ecuador’s mammals, 5% of the earth’s plant species and prolific bird life. Slip on your rubber boots to tread its forested hills, wetland marshes, big rivers and black-water lagoons. You’ll be sharing real estate with tapirs, manatees, freshwater dolphins, anacondas, caimans, monkeys, sloths, peccaries and seldom-seen jaguars.

Equally fascinating is the human geography of the Oriente. The Achuar, Cofan, Huaorani, Quichua, Secoya, Shuar, Siona and Zaparo all call it home. These ancient cultures joined the 20th century at rocket speed, when, in the 1960s, oil exploration threw roads and colonists into areas few explorers reached. Ecuador’s native population is a panorama as diverse and discordant as any modern population. Adaptation has not made their history or cultures any less interesting.

Last updated: Feb 17, 2009

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Recent posts

  1. jgcp avatar
    RE: Ecuador with a toddler

    by jgcp 13 September 2011

    Lots of people form overseas take young children to the Sierra regions but as has been said I would think twice before taking young children…
  2. kanzja avatar
    RE: Mindo vs Oriente?

    by kanzja 23 April 2010

    You could fly into Coca and then stay at a lodge in the area, or go farther into the jungle via motorized canoe, I think plane tickets…
  3. abeerandaschmear avatar
    short jungle trip near Tena or Puyo, La Casa del Suizo

    by abeerandaschmear 27 February 2008

    Will will be going to Ecuador in a few weeks, renting a car, going mostly to the highlands (Ibarra, Quito, Otavalo, Riobamba, Banos, possibl…

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