We may lament the days of cheap flights and easily accessible travel, but how are locals coping with the loss of mass tourist crowds? Here’s my Ecuador ride report focusing on what life in Ecuador looks like right now – from the locals’ perspective.
Life in the Amazon Basin
In the tiny indigenous Campococha community near River Napo, eco-lodges, boat tours, and jungle hikes were a major source of jobs and income just last year. According to Olmer, our native Quichwa guide at the Grand Selva Lodge where we’ve based ourselves for a couple of weeks to explore the Amazon basin, he used to guide rainforest hikes every single day, sometimes twice a day, in the fall and winter of 2019. Now, there are no more groups to guide and no more tourists to show around. “It’s really quiet here at the moment, and there’s not a lot of jobs at the lodges and ranches. Some maintenance work, painting fences, mending roofs, but that’s about it”, Olmer told us as we waded upstream follow