Our Family Time Out: The Oriente

We spent only three nights in the jungle (the kids wrote about the long journey in and out), but as in a time warp, it felt like we'd been there for a week. That seems only fitting. Being in the Amazon jungle was intense, sublime, overwhelming, and soothing, all at once. Never have I felt so insignificant. Never has nature seemed so vast and unknowable.

Our experience at the Napo Wildlife Center was enriched by the fact that the eco-lodge is owned and operated by the Añangu, a Kichwa community. Only fifteen years ago, the Añangu entered into eco-tourism, giving up hunting and drinking. As a consequence, wildlife has returned to this part of the jungle, and the community is earning $3 million per year through the Napo Wildlife Center and other projects. We visited the pueblo, and were impressed by the well-planned buildings, an organic power system, and plans for bringing in solar power.

Oscar and others on the path to the pueblo from the Napo

The sign for the pueblo on the Napo

The sign at the entrance to the pueblo. Anangu means leaf cutter ant.

The Kichwa are the largest indigenous group in the Ecuadorian Amazon. They had earliest contact with missionaries, and historically were in conflict with the Huarani, living on opposite sides of the Napo River. (The Napo brings water from Ecuador's Cotopaxi volcano to the Pacific Ocean, feeding the Amazon River in Brazil, and flowing through the largest watershed in the world.) Today, tensions have dissipated between the two indigenous groups, with a fair amount of intermarriage. The Añangu stand out as a model for what a community can do to preserve its culture and the environment, and survive as oil companies continue operate all around them. Certain Huarani groups run eco-lodges too. Other Huarani have chosen to go deeper into the jungle to live without contact with the outside world.

Ruby standing in front of a huge compost tank that turns organic waste into cooking gas.

The pueblo's medical clinic

Ruby relaxing with a drink in pueblo's lodge

The cabins where tourists stay in the pueblo

Ruby outside a 6th grade classroom

Us walking across the center of the pueblo

Just to give you a sense of the interests at stake, Yasuni National Park, where the Napo Wildlife Center is located, is 3,800 square miles in area. It contains a greater variety of birds, bats and frogs than anywhere in South America. Almost as many insect species live in a single hectare there than in all of the U.S. and Canada combined. The extreme level of biodiversity is due to the fact that the park is at the intersection of the Andes, the Equator, and the Amazon. One section of the park, called the ITT block, is sitting on 850 million barrels of oil – about 20 percent of Ecuador’s petroleum reserves. Petroleum comprises 50 percent of Ecuador's revenue.

President Correa has tried to walk a fine line between protecting the environment and reaping the benefits of the vast amounts of oil in the jungle. Recently, he announced that Ecuador would leave the oil in the ITT block alone if governments around the world donate money. I won't get into the details here, but I recommend this article in the Guardian. We visited the Presidential Palace today in Quito, and found these signs outside.

I wanted to get a word in with Correa but he was busy working down the hall!

Needless to say, no one we met at Napo was a fan of Correa or the oil companies. Part of the problem is that, even if the oil companies are operating more sensitively than their counterparts did in the 1970's, the damage has been done. Once they build roads and airstrips, the indigenous people settle there and the ecological devastation continues. Plus, it seems inevitable that the Ecuadorian jungle will be opened up even further to oil production. Most Ecuadorians take a cynical view and feel that Correa is just paying lip service to preserving the environment.

Our journey from Coca to the Napo Wildlife Center was telling. From a 1993 New Yorker article (which I highly recommend), we learned that, twenty years ago, Coca was just a small outpost of dirt roads filled with oil. The Coca we saw is a booming town full of concrete, traffic, and people. According to our Napo wildlife guide, Coca is the fastest growing city in Ecuador today. During the two hour motorized canoe ride from Coca to the tributary leading to the Napo Wildlife Center, the vast majority of traffic on the river was oil company-related. We saw barges loaded with trucks and construction equipment, and many small speedboats ferrying oil company employees to and fro. The riverbank was also dotted with construction zones, an oil refinery, and open gas flames that are very dangerous to the jungle, as insects and moths get attracted to the light and fly into the flames.