Dureno, Ecuador

We left on June 29th, 2008 to go to Dureno, which is the 1st Cofan community that we visited almost exactly 2 1/2 weeks ago. The community in Dureno is isolated by a very large river disconnecting it from the main road into town. We crossed the river in a small canoe with a motor on the back.




The Dureno community was pretty neat to see, although it is much more modern than most of the others. They actually have electricity there and a canoe with a motor on it. They also have a small store that is run by one of the locals that sells beer and other supplies. They have many fiestas, parties where they play local music and do some Latino style dancing. They also make a fermented yucca drink (alcoholic) called chicha and we got to try some of that. It was okay, but definitely kind of sour and a little weird. As far as the alcohol content, it was not very strong and you have to drink a whole bowl of it when it is offered to you, or else you will be rude.

It was a lot of fun there, but kind of reminds me of what the Native American towns must have been like several years after the white colonists came to America. They still have a local shaman and live very simply, but some have modern amenities. Most still do not have running water in their houses and no toilets (the woods). They still make beautiful jewelry and handcrafts and most of them do not work, they sell their artisania and do other small odds and ends to make a little bit of money. We also were amazed at how much oil drilling and pipelines there are everywhere in the area. It is really sad, because the large companies are very careless with their operations and there has been a lot of spills and contamination near the tribal lands in the last 20 years. Many of the local indigenous Cofan in Dureno are now starting to get cancer from the contamination of the crude oil in their water supplies. We got to go by and see one of the most recent spills and it was disgusting. Oil everywhere and they were not doing much to clean it up. There was workers down there filling up their helmets with the oil that was sitting in large puddles of water and dumping it into large dump which they were carrying out by hand! It was really sad to see and apparently is a normal occurrence.

We were there for 2 days and 2 nights. We then returned to Lago Agrio by an hour and a half bus ride and started to make preparations for our next trip into the jungle. We were there for one day and one night. We stayed the night at the local office on bunks with only boards no mattresses. That made the third night in a row of sleeping on a very hard surface (we slept on the floor in Dureno) with only the cushion of my very lightweight sleeping bag.