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Ecuador Amazon Rainforest Travel
Ecuador's share of the Amazon (known to locals as the Oriente) provides unparalleled easy-access opportunities for experiencing the magic of the rainforest.
Not only does it have one of the world's best developed infrastructures for rainforest tourism, but most destinations are accessible within a day's journey from Quito, including the Cuyabeno Reserve, the Upper Napo region around the jungle towns of Tena and Misahualli, and Yasuni National Park. The Ecuadorian Amazon has a number of high quality and affordable jungle lodges that excel at unlocking the mysteries of the rainforest.
Travelers can look forward to an exotic paradise teeming with life where almost half of the planet's 8,500 bird species, more than 1,200 butterflies, and thousands of reptiles and mammals thrive amidst a primordial setting of black-water lagoons, winding creeks, and towering trees. Moreover, Ecuador's rainforest is home to thousands of indigenous inhabitants from dozens of distinct nations, including the Siona, Secoya, Cofan, Shuar, Zaparo, and the infamous Huaorani.
More life hums, buzzes, chatters and bubbles in the Amazon Rainforest than anywhere else on the planet. One Amazonian tree can host more ant species than all of the British Isles put together, one hectare of forest boasts about as many frog species as all of North America, and the great expanse of the jungle contains more than twenty percent of the earth's vascular plant species. Here you can find a monkey small enough to sit on your fingertip, an eight-pound toad, a spider that eats birds, and the world's largest snake, the 30-foot anaconda.
Oil companies are a serious threat to the rainforest today. Even at lodges deep in the jungle, plumes of smoke coming from oil refineries smudge the otherwise untouched horizon day and night. You can learn more about indigenous forest peoples and the rainforest itself by joining one of the many community-based ecotourism programs offered in the Ecuadorian Amazon or by becoming a volunteer with one of the many non-profits working in the region.
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