THE HUAORANI
Join us in the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador
and experience our culture.
OTOBO'S AMAZON SAFARI
Otobo’s Amazon Safari offers what has to be one of the most amazing adventures to be found not just in Ecuador, but anywhere in the world. Otobo, a Huaorani native, and the protagonist in the documentary, Yasuni Man invites you to his territory in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon to experience the Rainforest and all its magic.
This has all the elements to be the trip of a lifetime… you’ll trek through the forest behind your local Huaorani guide and a bilingual naturalist inside the Yasuni National Park, searching for wildlife, examining medicinal plants, walking the footsteps of some of the last hunter-gatherers on the planet. You can paddle or drift silently along the Rio Cononaco scanning the trees for troops of one of the 13 species of monkeys found here… hide and wait at one of the many salt licks hoping that peccaries (pig-like animals) or other mammals to show up.
Otobo’s Amazon Safari is a family run operation. Otobo, along with his family and two volunteers, built the first campsite, and a various collection of cousins, nephews, sons, daughters, wives, aunts and uncles help in the daily operation.
THE HUAORANI
The Huaorani are an Amazonian people living in the lowland forests of Ecuador for as many as 6,000 years and were first contacted by the outside world in the 1950’s.
There is a mystery surrounding the origins of the Huaorani and how they avoided contact for so long. To this day there are at least 2 groups of Huaorani, the Taromenane and Tagaiere that are still living completely without contact from modern society. They hunt monkeys and birds with poison darts shot from blowguns and hunt peccaries and other ground mammals with spears. The way they avoid contact today is probably a vital clue on how the Huaorani avoided contact until about 50 years ago.
The Huaorani are traditionally deep forest people, avoiding larger rivers and it is rumored that they were unable to swim. Other indigenous groups, namely the Zaparo, lived along the river banks. After being devastated by outside diseases and constant warring with the Huaorani, the Zaparo were greatly reduced and the remaining members of the Zaparo migrated to other areas of the Amazon Basin. This left an uninhabited area that is filled by many of the Huaorani today. This is the area that you will visit.
YASUNI
NATIONAL PARK
The Rainforest in the Yasuni National Park is by most accounts the most diverse terrestrial place on Earth.
There are other areas that make this claim but the Yasuni has proven to be the home of more species of trees, lianas, frogs and insects than any other place ever studied. It is the largest National Park in Ecuador at almost 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres). Inside this area, and a bit outside of it, is Huaorani Territory and has been deemed the Intangible Zone by the Ecuadorian Government. It consists of 750,000 hectares that was set up to be exempt from mining and logging.
science
RAPID BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY
Otobo, like all Huaorani, have an innate curiosity for the world in which they live, whether through the observation of feeding monkeys, the breeding season of Jaguars or the seasonal variation of fruiting trees, this awareness of their surrounding environment is essential to the survival of the Huaorani and is evidence of how science was used before the advent of modern society.
So, when Otobo´s friend Ryan Killackey, who is a herpetologist and film-maker proposed the idea to bring in leading scientists to explore the richness of this section of the Yasuni National Park, Otobo was all in.
YASUNI FACTS
Otobo's community
With only about 3000 Huaorani left in the world.
Approximately
Located in Huaorani territory.
Approximately
One of the highest primate species diversity in the world.
Approximately
This is a world record for frogs species richness.