The real Ecuador

Words Stephanie Gloutney

Photos: Jeremy Snyder

The first time I ever left my country, Canada, I travelled to a place I thought I’d never go. A place that is home to some of earth’s most important and fragile ecosystems. It sets the scene for biodiversity with over 5,490 species of mammals alone and countless birds, reptiles and plants (Ecuador Environmental Issues & Resource Extraction).

The real Ecuador… but it’s under threat

This region, packed full of rich and diverse culture; found directly on the Equator in the south west corner of South America, is known as Ecuador and the Amazon rainforest. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit this unique country twice and surprisingly have had two very different experiences. Upon my first visit, I was in the country for a ten-day guided tour. Our tour guide, Ivan, was a local who was extremely passionate about his country and eager to show us all the gems it possesses. I had a wonderful time and was given one view of Ecuador: an exotic place full of wildlife and culture.

I was brought to colourful markets filled with people who were proud of their culture. I experienced the hospitality of an entire village that took my group in and made us part of their community for three days. They were selfless and offered us everything they had as our own. They arranged a festival while we were there, and we played a four-hour long soccer game and attempted to learn each other’s language. Then we ventured into the rainforest to experience the place I’d thought I’d only ever see on Green Planet or through National Geographic. A wild and exotic place that possessed leaves as tall as the average person and ant nests the size of two basketballs. Although I had a personalized experience, I was given the typical tourist treatment in some ways.

By this I mean, that when we drove over landscapes we were told about the mountains and their history, but never would our tour guide mention the leaking oil pipeline running across this scenic view, or the fact that the mountains used to be covered in trees and now had been clearcut for farming. THAT would have ruined the view.

the second time

The second time I travelled to Ecuador, I was there for six weeks with the World Class Kayak Academy, a travelling whitewater kayaking high school. This was a completely different visit from my first, as I was there with a different purpose. I was not there to be a typical tourist – I was there to be a kayak tourist and explore the country’s rivers. I was about to be immersed in its culture and see Ecuador in a raw, more exposed state.

I kayaked down a river during a flash flood and went to places that only a very small portion of the world will ever go. Although I could go on for hours about all of my experiences from this trip, I think that perhaps just recounting one memory may be more meaningful: the day I spent on the Piatua River. Now as far as Ecuador whitewater goes, the Piatua has been a hot topic lately, but I’ll get to that later.
On the weekends, my school would venture farther away from our camp and explore new rivers. During one of our weekends my school decided to drive up a gravel road in our big bus towards the Piatua River put-in.

The Piatua River is situated in the Napo Province of the Amazon rainforest and the river itself is in the jungle away from towns and cities. On our drive up there were a lot of places where I thought for sure we were going to have to get out and push the bus up the steep hills, but our bus driver got us there. Once we arrived, we began to put on our gear as we ate fresh pineapples and wafer cookies.

Once we were all set and no longer hungry, we got briefed. I could see that our teachers wanted us all on our A game as we were more isolated from society, roads, and hospitals than usual. While walking down to the river itself, I realized the Piatua was a river that is truly in the rainforest. When standing on its bank you can easily get lost in its beauty and completely forget about society and all the comforts we’ve created for ourselves.

Upon putting on the river I was told by a local that it had rained the night before so today would be a snake day and that everything I’d ever heard about the rainforest (giant spiders and ants, venomous snakes, etc) was true and to watch out on the shores if I got out of my boat. Our teachers had machetes in their kayaks so in case of a flash flood we could bushwhack our way away from the river and through the dense jungle.

With all of that in mind, we pushed off the shore and started downstream. It was a continuous river full of boulder gardens and boofs, a paddler’s paradise, our paradise for the day. Part way down the river, one of my friends was pulling on a vine that was hanging off an overhanging tree over the river. The local we were paddling with yelled from across the river, “Don’t pull on that! You’ll either drop a snake on yourself or pull the whole tree over.” All day I felt as though we were in some sort of illusion, it was hard to believe when you looked around that it was even real. I’d never been to such an incredible place before, it truly did look like something out of a movie.

a common love

The day turned out to be much longer and hotter than we’d expected. I had not brought enough water and we were all exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry. That however, did not change a thing, this river was too epic to be mad or bothered by any of that. As we got to the take out, there were tons of people on the shores swimming, jumping off the bridge and swinging off a rope swing. Music was blaring and I felt a connection with all these people, as we all shared a common love for the river and the country itself. This was by far one of the best days of my life.

As I took off the river that day I was handed a Piatua Libre sticker and was reminded as to why I was there in the first place. I was not there just to go paddling, I was there protesting. Yes, that day my school was paddling to help save this beautiful place. The Piatua is threatened by a hydro-electric project. This hydro project would have been built right at the beginning of the Piatua paddling section and would have deprived this portion of the river of 90% of its flow. This in turn would have had grave impacts for the paddling tourism in this part of the country and left the river as an ancestral heritage site rather than a valuable resource.

Alongside this, the communities that depend on the river would have suffered from minimal water flow. It is important to remember that Ecuador is a growing country with expanding energy demands and thus must find ways to support these demands. However, the dam proposed would not have produced near as much power as promised, and would have been a costly investment (“Ecuador ‘must promote hydroelectric projects,’ minister says,” 2019).

a battleground

Alongside this, Ecuador has a grand potential for hydro electric power and does not need to dam rivers that are already well defined paddling destinations (M.Terry, 2019). This issue is not one that is unique. All over the world, free flowing rivers are being dammed without proper means of research to determine whether or not the dams will actually produce the energy promised. The fight to save the Piatua became a battleground to fight for not only this one essential sanctuary, but all the other free flowing rivers in Ecuador as well.

Thankfully the hydro project proposed on the Piatua has been suspended for the time being, however, the fight to preserve this and other thousands of precious habits, tributaries, ecosystems, and water systems in Ecuador and the rest of the world still continues. The Piatua case is still under evaluation and a final verdict as to whether it will be preserved as a free-flowing watershed still is yet to be determined by the courts. It will most likely be one to two years before the final decision is made on this subject (M.Terry, 2019).

Whenever, I look at my Piatua Libre sticker, I am reminded that day could very well have been the first and last time I ever paddled this river. I think of all the beauty and value that would have been flooded and deprived of resources for hydro. This was Ecuador in a raw state. This was different from the first Ecuador I visited, it was an Ecuador that was equally as beautiful, an Ecuador that at that moment was free and a place for all to be free at the Piatua Libre.