PUYO: THE DESIGNS OF THE FOG
It is about three hundred kilometers between Quito, the capital of the Republic of Ecuador, and the city of Puyo, in the heart of the Amazon, a natural paradise lost among nature, a casual discovery of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century, while they were going after the legend of the El Dorado of the Inca Empire, or in the pursuit of finding, at least, the country of cinnamon.
With the initial and official name of Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Pompeya del Puyo, it is the head town of the Pastaza canton and the capital of the namesake province, in the center-west of the Amazonian region of Ecuador, at an altitude of nine hundred and thirty meters above sea level and with a tropical rainy climate of twenty degrees Celsius on average.
Its original name comes from the Quechua language, from the word puyu, which means mist. It was officially founded on May 12, 1899 by the Dominican missionary Fray Álvaro Valladares and nine native Canelos, among other distinguished personalities of the time.
The Spaniards, as a result of their search for both gold and cinnamon, discovered the Amazon River in February 1542.
There are many tourist options that Puyo has, from exotic animal breeding sites, conservation centers for medicinal plants, to visits to indigenous communities, where time seems to have stopped before the arrival of Europeans. To get there, you have to take routes aided by native guides, overflying on small planes, or cycling through the intricate roads through rivers and mountains.
On the other hand, there are the attractions of the city, such as museums, theme parks, suspension bridges, viewpoints, artificial wave pools, the development of the so-called adventure tourism, and even sports fishing in the rivers of the Amazon region.
I am here still a little amazed and also with the hope to help, with communication and journalism, for the development of tourism, good reading habits and caring for nature. That is why I declare that I am neither a conqueror nor a missionary.