New Eco-Tourism Option For Visitors To Ecuador - The Toxics Tour - Mongabay

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A runoff ditch connected to the oil pump on Jose Aveiga's land. The water is rich in oil globules, the legacy of years of drilling. Photo credit: Bill Hinchberger.

First, we drop in on José Aveiga. We drive past his house to a flat, grassy plain perfect for a soccer game. In one corner, a deactivated oil pump. Surrounding it, what seems to be a circle of asphalt. Upon closer inspection, we see that it's a solidified blobby mass of crude.

This marks the high point on Aveiga's land. From there, we scramble down an incline and double back, slogging through a few hundred meters of forest. Up another grade, we come to a spring. Aveiga and Zambrano are lost in conversation about the former's legal options. What I gather from the discussion, they think his land is woefully contaminated. I look down at the trickle of muddy water surrounding my boots. It contains small black globules.


ose Aveiga and Zambrano probe the oil soaked and contaminated ground. Aveiga had wanted to use the water running from here to fill fish tanks. Photo credit: Bill Hinchberger.

Aveiga tells me that he'd hoped to build fish tanks downhill to take advantage of the natural spring water. Good luck with that, given the contamination, he shrugs. Back on the road. Once I stop paying attention to the motorcycles, the next thing that catches my eye is the labyrinth of pipes lining either side. Straight out of Jorge Luis Borges. At one point we stop to take a picture of an official billboard: "Towards a New Kind of Energy Production." Glancing from all those pipes and back at the billboard, it's hard to not crack a cynical smile. I recall a recent conversation with Alberto Acosta, once president of Ecuador's constituent assembly, a former minister, and former opposition presidential candidate. "We continue to believe that petroleum is going to solve our problems," he told me.

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That and maybe tourism. During the 2015 Super Bowl, the Ecuadorian government spent four million dollars on a spot to attract visitors. With the Beatles' All You Need is Love as soundtrack, it featured the inevitable Galapagos tortoises along with river shots presumably from the Amazon. "All in one place, so close," intones the narrator. "All you need is Ecuador." The gringos who landed with me the other day at the Coca airport might have seen the ad. I wonder if they know how close many of Ecuador's world-class ecolodges stand to the oily blotches along Auca Road. I imagine an alternative version of the Super Bowl anthem to promote the Toxic Tour, maybe It's the End of the World As We Know It by REM.

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Toxic Tour guide Zambano offers a close look at some of an oil company's forest restoration work. Photo credit: Bill Hinchberger.

http://news.mongabay.com/2015/0612-sri-hinchberger-toxic-tour-ecuador.html