The town where life has no value

Flew this morning to Coca on the edge of the Amazon. It was the shortest flight ever (about 40 minutes) past the Antisana volcano, but as soon as you step off the plane the humidity and temperature hit you. We were then going to bus it to Lago Agrio for our overnight stop, but it wasn’t that much more expensive to grab a cab for the 80km (1.5hr) trip. The country side is taken up by foreign companies oil fields. One major player Chevron has been fighting the locals in a court case since 1993 for pollution (which they say is worse than the spill from the Exon Valdez.) Apart from the oil industry the almost non existent remnant rainforest is very pretty. Can’t wait to see more of it tomorrow.

The town we are staying in tonight is close to the Colombian border (20km) and is considered extremely dangerous due to the influence of organised crime in the region, mainly gang related violence due to drug trafficking. The gates of our hotel are industrial in size, there was a “bullet hole” in the hotel window and a curfew is in place at night. Not wanting to get shot before we set off on our Amazon expedition we decided to spend the afternoon by the pool.