Yasuni National Park

Yasuni covers roughly ten thousand square kilometres of Amazon lowland where the Andes, the equator and the rainforest meet, and the biological surveys done here have produced numbers that are hard to take in: more tree species in a single hectare than in all of the United States and Canada, over six hundred bird species, a hundred and fifty amphibians, and insect diversity that is essentially uncounted. It is also home to the Waorani and to Indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation, whose territory is legally off limits. Visitors reach it by lodge, several hours by canoe from Coca down the Napo, and see the forest from towers, blackwater lakes, parrot clay licks and trails walked with Indigenous guides.

What you actually see

• Tree diversity beyond counting - more species per hectare than in all of North America.
• Parrot clay licks - macaws and parakeets gathering at riverbank clay.
• Canopy towers - platforms above the forest for birds at dawn.
• Blackwater lakes - caiman, giant otter and hoatzin on quiet water.

When to go

Year round; it rains in every month, and the wettest stretch is roughly April to July. Four to six days including travel. Lodges must be booked well ahead and include transport.

Honest expectations

Getting here is expensive and slow: a flight, then hours in a canoe. It is humid, buggy and wet. Wildlife is heard more than seen and sightings are never guaranteed. Territory of peoples in isolation is closed and must not be approached.

Nearby

Coca is upriver; Cuyabeno lies north.