Eco, thrills & spills in Tena, Ecuador's adventure capital

[Iberia Airlines]

Ecuador, a country embedded between tourism powerhouses Colombia and Peru, is sometimes overlooked by the average traveller. But even apart from the inimitable Galápagos and colonial gems like Quito and Cuenca, it's also got some quite cool adventure offerings around the city of Tena, 3 1/2 hours south of Quito. The capital of Napo province is located in the valley of the Misahuallí River, which starts on the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains and is surrounded by lush Amazon rainforest.

If you founded a city in the 16th century in an area where several rivers flow together amid the largest forest in the world and the slopes of South America’s greatest mountain range, even if you didn’t know it at the time, you’d be giving birth to a perfect destination for outdoor adventure travellers in the 21st century. And indeed, this sleepy city - whose population barely exceeds 20,000 inhabitants - only woke up to adventure and ecological tourism in the first decade of the 21st century. I recently spent several days there enjoying some of the activities.

read post