Huaorani Ecolodge featured on Tourism Concern News

News from Tourism Concern
Huaorani Ecolodge - maintaining traditions and culture
Posted: May 2, 2012



Faced with the destruction of their surroundings and the possible disappearance of their way of life, the Huaorani chose to resist. They opted for sustainable tourism as a way to maintain their culture and improve their standard of living. Jascivan Carvalho of Tropic Journeys in Nature www.tropiceco.com explains more.

Visit the Huaorani website www.huaorani.com

The Huaorani are an age old Amazon people that traditionally lived a semi nomadic hunting and gathering life in the area's forests. Legend says that hundreds of years ago they migrated to North Western Ecuador, in the area of the world famous Yasuní National Park, recognised as one of the most bio diverse areas on the planet, in order to escape from a tribe of headhunters.

These days they lead a more settled and open existence in the humid tropical forests where the threat to their existence comes not from other Amazon peoples - although some closely related groups still shun outside influences and can be dangerous to approach - but from the pressure to integrate, as well as from the loggers and oil companies that have had negative impacts on this culturally significant people and the health and diversity of its tropical environment.

The Huaorani maintain their traditional lifestyle and at one point the future appeared bleak for this warrior people. But faced with the destruction of their surroundings and the possible disappearance of their way of life, the Huaorani chose to resist. They opted for sustainable tourism as a way to maintain their culture and improve their standard of living.

Eco tourism was in its infancy when the Huaorani began to provide visitors to their territory with unique experiences in the Amazon Rainforest. The possibility of sharing time with the Huaorani, of understanding their reality and getting to know their culture, while helping to conserve a unique environment, gave lucky visitors something few had been able to experience before. The program, named Amazon Headwaters with the Huaorani was recognised internationally by the 1997 TO DO! award by a coalition of German tourism and social organisations.

From there other plans began to take shape and after some years of planning and discussion five Huaorani communities and their partners were able to build a small lodge close to the community of Quehueri'ono, located on the upper reaches of the Shiripuno River. The final product was Huaorani Ecolodge, owned and co-managed by the communities themselves, which opened its doors in 2008. The project met with almost immediate success and was well received by travellers as well as international tourism operators and media; right from the beginning the lodge has been featured by newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian (UK), The Times (UK), The Globe and Mail (CAN), amongst others and along with Tropic Journeys in Nature its partner have won multiple awards. But the Lodge has always had a wider agenda and was designed to be more than straightforward tourism. This community based project forms an essential part of a plan to protect a globally important environment and enable a people to defend their unique forest culture.

The Lodge provides travellers with unique experiences in a comfortable intimate setting, chosen by the Huaorani themselves, together with the chance to see the rainforest through the eyes of the people who live there, and to understand what it means to have the Amazon forest as your home and to have to defend it in order to survive.

Visitors come to understand that the principle objective of the Huaorani and their Lodge is the conservation of nature and respect for tribal peoples and cultures, while providing the communities themselves with a motive for protection and a means of raising their income – in financial terms the Amazon indigenous communities are amongst the poorest in the country. To this end the Lodge directly employs local staff, who are provided with a continuous, high level of training, while all other programmes involve local guides and operators. The Lodge also uses local produce as a matter of principle and makes every effort to find local suppliers wherever possible.

The most recent element of the project is the creation of the 55,000 Ha Yame Forest Reserve, named after the recently deceased father of Moi Enomenga, one of the most respected Huaorani leaders. The project, supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Conservation Society (WCS), is in the mid stages – a management plan for the area is now being designed – and is scheduled to begin operating in 2012.The Reserve will form a fundamental part of the tourism project, making the Lodge more profitable by providing visitors with added experiences of the Amazon rainforest and the satisfaction of contributing to the area's conservation, and at the same time providing the Huaorani communities, who will patrol and maintain the Reserve, with further stimulus to protect their territory from the depredations of illegal logging.

On a fundamental level the program is all about raising awareness amongst visitors about the intrinsic value of cultural or natural attractions, and the necessity to preserve and support endangered peoples and their efforts to survive and protect their environments. So given the cultural sensitivity of the communities, before any visit can take place all clients are provided with information, both written and aural on the history of the local culture as well as the plants and animals. Just by being there, visitors help community-based ecotourism maintain a way of life for the Huaorani independent of gifts and handouts from oil companies. This venture links the Huaorani to tourism as an alternative means of income in their irreversibly-changed world, enabling them to preserve their culture, heritage, and traditions and at the same time conserve the land.

Huaoroni Lodge is featured in our Ethical Travel Guide

Tourism Concern is developing a Code of Practice for tour operators working with or in areas inhabited by indigenous peoples. Look out for further information soon.

I am Yasuni campaign

Yasuní National Park is home to the Waorani and some of the last indigenous tribes that still live in isolation in the Amazon, whose ancestral lands currently sit atop Ecuador’s largest undeveloped oil reserves, the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil block. Yasuní National Park is also an area that contains the world’s largest biodiversity, and include species that can not be found in other parts of the world.

As the campaing mentions the Huaorani people are an important part of this amazing region. Did you know you can visit, meet and share with them at the Huaorani Ecolodge? Check more details at www.huaorani.com

Articulo Huaorani ecolodge en Iberia

Iberia features the Huaorani Ecolodge

Gracias a José Luis y Miguel, clientes que nos acompañaron al www.huaorani.com SELVA ECUATORIANA La esencia viajera que establece los criterios de ocupación de mis días vacacionales disponibles me ha orientado en esta ocasión hacia la Selva Amazónica Ecuatoriana. Junto a mi padre, iniciador y cómplice en estas lides, certificamos a lo largo de sólo cuatro jornadas, la increíble experiencia tenida en este medio natural tan espléndido y total. Un par de días en Quito nos sirven para irnos adaptando a nuestras posteriores andanzas en la selva. La intensidad va a caracterizar todos y cada uno de los tiempos tal como se irán sucediendo. El descenso de altitud desde la capital hasta la ciudad de Shell, a pie de selva, será un fascinante desfile por la avenida de los volcanes que nos permite admirar la presencia de un serial de volcanes que imponen su ley en el desdoblamiento de la cordillera andina, al tiempo que descendemos por la ruta panamericana. Se estrenan nuestras codiciosas cámaras fotográficas siempre a la búsqueda del cóndor, colibríes, halcones, ciervos, llamas, pumas o zorros de la sierra que por allí imaginamos. Una avioneta, bajo control indígena, nos introduce en el corazón de la jungla. Aterrizaje en un afeitado del bosque selvático que nos deja sin conexión ni referencia alguna con exterior. Allí quedamos a expensas de otra civilización. Tras la contención de aliento durante el vuelo recibimos y sentimos la íntima bienvenida que un grupo de huaoranis nos prodigan nada más abandonar el pájaro volador. Y desde ya nos encontramos inmersos en unos poblados que viven de manera muy intensa y real su propio idioma, sus costumbres y hasta su propia cosmovisión. Comienzan los descensos por las aguas del rio Siripuno en largas canoas dirigidas por dos indígenas y que nos aislarán todavía más en los perdidos rincones de los parajes selváticos. Tantas cuantas veces lo repetiremos, serpenteando por los meandros del caudaloso cauce, escudriñaremos con nuestros sentidos cuantos secretos imaginamos se encierran en aquellas tierras. Y en profundo y espontáneo silencio pretendemos interiorizar todos los barridos visuales que nuestra ansiosa mirada procuraba. Días de contacto y convivencia con esta tribu. Hablando con ellos y siendo testigos de su forma de vivir, de sus habilidades e incluso participando con ellos de una pequeña fiesta ritual, hemos calado en otra realidad humana que nos ha impresionado y producido el mayor de los respetos. Omene, indígena huaorani que siempre estuvo a nuestro lado, junto a José, guía naturista ecuatoriano, nos iniciaron, desde su saber y convicción, todo lo relacionado con el medio natural en contacto directo con la exuberancia vegetal y con la diversidad de la fauna circundante. Y así sucedió, por ejemplo, cuando en unas marchas, nos hicieron sus demostraciones prácticas, y por nosotros practicadas, del arte de la caza con lanza y cerbatana, según ellos lo hacen, para velar por su supervivencia. Y también cuando describen las propiedades curativas de muchas plantas así como aplicaciones diversas que ellos hacen de diversos elementos naturales. O cuando nos muestran su especial habilidad para gatear a lo más alto de los árboles En una de las expediciones nocturnas nos llegamos hasta una gran cascada cuyo emplazamiento era particularmente especial así como el significado que para ellos tiene. Igualmente hemos conocido el programa educativo resultado de la conexión de la agencia ecuatoriana Tropic Ecuador con los indígenas huaoranis, planteamiento que nos pareció muy acertado según concluímos del contacto que tuvimos con Moi Emonenga, líder huaorani empeñado en preservar la identidad de estos indígenas con fidelidad al legado heredado de sus ancestros en consonancia con los tiempos modernos. Y tampoco faltaron las anécdotas para el recuerdo como lo fueran la considerable tormenta en una de las noches que hiciera elevar significativamente el nivel del río, o el naufragio de nuestra canoa, felizmente resuelto, o el lanzamiento al río, y baño subsiguiente, desde lo alto de una gran liana que se balanceaba desde la orilla por encima del cauce. Y, por decir, nuestra aportación culinaria en la cena de la última noche a base de una hermosa tortilla española que confeccionamos bajo la atenta mirada de nuestros amigos indígenas y que luego todos compartimos. Gesto intercultural. Estas gentes indígenas, milenarios pobladores de estas tierras, se encuentran en la actualidad asediados por las compañías buscadoras de petróleo. Nuestros anfitriones no hacen el juego a estos intereses que en aras del dorado líquido se están cargando el riquísimo medio natural de la selva. Así lo hemos podido constatar, si bien, en la región de la ciudad de Coca la realidad es bien distinta. El viaje tuvo su complemento necesario en la perfecta conexión con los otros tres miembros del grupo: Patrick y Diana, de Canterbury, y Kevin, de Alaska. Y, desde luego, la actitud sencilla y dedicada del equipo de huaoranis que velaron por nuestra seguridad y supervivencia: Chino, Beatriz, Verónica, Eloy y Boya Ha sido un viaje de los que permanecen en el recuerdo y que te permiten mirar atrás, en el tiempo y en la distancia, con mucho agrado.-

Tropic gave away a few book samples about The Huaorani People and the Yasuni National Park to Mani Restaurant in Sao Paulo. Good to see it on the main entrance! Thanks a lot to Helena and Daniel.

Save the Yasuni! Visit the Yasuni!

you can also support conservation by visiting the Amazon Rainforest!

Yasuni Program and the Huaorani territory

We were glad to support Conservation in Action Foundation's work with the Huaorani people and the Yasuni Program. A short presentation at their channel. for more details check our site: www.tropiceco