thumb The Oriente () is a region of eastern

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

, comprising the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

and the lowland areas of

rainforest Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...

in the

Amazon basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributary, tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries ...

Location

It is bordered on the north by San Miguel and Putumayo rivers and on the east and south by

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. Oriente has an area of about 50,000 square miles (130,000 square km) and consists of little-explored and virtually unexploited

tropical forest Tropical forests are forested ecoregions with tropical climates – that is, land areas approximately bounded by the Tropic of Cancer, tropics of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Capricorn, but possibly affected by other factors such as prevailing ...

inhabited by a tiny fraction of the country's population, living mostly in small villages along the river courses.Oriente – Britannica Online Encyclopedia
/ref> The Oriente comprises everything east of the Ecuadorian Andes, which by most definitions approaches half the country, but only 5 percent of the country’s people live there. Although the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

defines the coast and the mountains comprise the Sierra, the Oriente finds its heart in the rivers that tie it to the Amazon basin and, eventually, the Atlantic Ocean. The inexorable waters can undercut a huge clay bank or snip a bend overnight, stranding an oxbow kilometers long. The muddy Río Napo, more than one kilometer wide in spots, drains the Ríos Coca and Aguarico and heads off into

. Colombia’s Amazon lies across the Río Putumayo to the north. Farther south, the Río Pastaza and Rio Paute flow from Sangay National Park.

Conditions

A sizable fraction of the population are indigenous peoples. Illiteracy is widespread, although the

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

Salesian missions have established a few boarding schools.

Economy

Timber and petroleum are the major exploited economic resources.

History

The Quijos region east of Coca was well known to the Incas, who ventured downhill to meet lowland tribes in peace and battle. It was also the first area east of the Andes to be penetrated by the Spanish. The anniversary of the European discovery of the Amazon River (February 12) is still celebrated in jungle cities with markets and fairs. Within a few centuries after European contact most of the region’s tens of thousands of inhabitants had fallen victim to smallpox and cholera. The discovery of oil in the 1960s brought this once-stagnant backwater into the national consciousness. In the north, an oil pipeline helps transport the vast reserves that make Ecuador the third-largest oil exporter in Latin America. Throughout the region, Quechua words on maps show the influence of the Lowland Quechua, who inhabit the foothills and forests in western Napo and northern Pastaza provinces. Also in the north are pockets of Siona/Secoya and Cofán. The Huaorani have a huge reserve in central Napo province and spill over into Yasuní National Park. To the south, the Shuar and Achuar saw their ancestral lands divided by the decades-old border dispute with Peru, which ended in 1998.

Locations of interest

*Papallacta Hot Springs: hot springs on the road from Quito—Piñan Lakes are nearby. *Napo Wildlife Center: One of the newest lodges in the Ecuadorian Amazon; run by an indigenous community down the Río Napo. *Tena: A white-water and jungle-tour hotspot, Tena is easier to reach than most other cities in the Oriente. *Zamora: One and a half hour by bus from Loja, this town is located in the southeastern part of the Oriente and is one of the entrances to the Podocarpus National Park.

External links

* http://yachana.org.ec La Selva Jungle Lodge located down the Napo river from the town of Coca, has been operating since 1984 and is widely regarded as the pioneer in Ecotourism in the area.

References

{{coord, -0.8, -76.9, type:adm1st_region:EC, display=title Subdivisions of Ecuador Back-arc basins