Ecuador: Amazon Huaorani Excursion Book now!

Day 1: Quito
Overnight Quito Hotel

Arrive in Quito and transfer to your hotel.

Day 2: Quito – Amazon region
Overnight Huaorani Lodge

Transfer from your hotel in Quito to Shell in the Amazon Region.  From Shell, take a small plane to Huaorani Lodge.

Ecuador: Amazon Huaorani Excursion Book now!

Logistics

Cost includes:

• Private transfers in Quito with local English/Spanish speaking guide according to itinerary (private basis)
• Lodging, transfers, excursions with entrance tickets
• All meals from lunch on arrival day to breakfast on departure day
• Luggage porterage at airport only (2 pieces of luggage per person).
• Hotel Municipal tax for overnight in Quito only
• daily guided excursions with English/Spanish speaking guide
• Local Huaorani guide; use of camping gear; use of rain poncho at the lodge

Cost does not include:

• Domestic and international air tickets, subject to change without prior notice
• Early check-in, late check-out, services, and non-mentioned meals in the itinerary, drinks during meals, hotel extras, and personal expenses
• Porterage of luggage at hotel
• Tips
• Entrances not mentioned in the itinerary
• National park entrance fees
• Airport taxes are subject to change and are to be paid in cash at the airport used for international departure flight.

Ecuador: Amazon Huaorani Excursion Book now!

Day 6: Amazonia  – Quito
Quito Hotel

Take a small plane from the lodge to Shell, and transfer back to Quito.

Spend the night in a Quito hotel, in a double standard room with daily breakfast.

Day 7: Quito

At the proper time, transfer from your hotel to the airport in Quito for your international flight.

Ecuador: Amazon Huaorani Excursion Book now!

Days 3 - 5:  Amazon Region
Overnight Huaorani Lodge

The Huaorani have long inhabited the headwaters of the Amazon, living as nomadic hunters and gatherers with no outside contact until the end of the 1950s.  At least one clan continues to shun all contact with the outside world. According to their traditions, they migrated to this area a long time ago to escape from cannibals. The Huaorani speak a language unrelated to any other; their name means "the people," while everyone else is “cowore,” or "non-human."

In 1956, when the Huaorani were first contacted by missionaries, their territory extended from the Napo River in the north to the Curaray River in the south. After the missionaries made contact, the oil companies came looking for new reserves as the global demand for fossil fuels increased. The Huaorani live on top of one of Ecuador's largest oil deposits, and since its discovery, they have been forced to deal with the presence of oil companies and other outsiders on the land they have called home for at least a thousand years.

Numbering approximately 2,400 individuals, the Huaorani maintain a largely traditional lifestyle, living directly in and from the rainforest. Nowadays, their territory -- some 680,000 ha/1.7 million acres -- is only about one third the size of their traditional land, and they have no oil or mineral rights. The first Huaorani protectorate was created in 1983, followed in 1990 by the current, much larger, Huaorani Ethnic Reserve. The Huaorani then formed the Organización de Nacionalidad Huaorani de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana (ONHAE) to defend their interests, which in 2007 became Nacionalidad Waorani del Ecuador (NAWE).

As many of Ecuador's (and the world's) most valuable and beautiful regions are falling victim to insensitive 'development' at the hands of the oil, timber, and monoculture industries, causing a tragic loss of biodiversity, it is now more important than ever to create viable economic alternatives that give value to this ecological and cultural richness.  One of the best ways of conserving an area – whether a tropical rainforest in the Amazon, paramo grasslands or Andean cloud forest, or the Galápagos islands – is to take people to these areas to experience their magic firsthand.