Montecristi, Ecuador – Panama Hats

This village is internationally renowned for the high quality of the “Panama Hats” they produce (yes, you read correctly, Panama Hats are and always have been from Ecuador and not from Panama). Lying at the foot of a large hill called Montecristi, the small town of the same name has many attractions such as Eloy Alfaro’s (an ex-Ecuadorian President) house, the Hermanas Largacha Museum, and the Monserrate Sanctuary, where thousands of Ecuadorian and foreign pilgrims traditionally flock, especially on the weekends. Another place of interest is La Pila, whose artisans make a variety of sculptures and replicas of Pre-Colombian ceramics. In addition to hats, these artisan centers display other handmade crafts made of different types of straw and iron.

Avenue of the Volcanoes

Chimborazo and Cotopaxi volcanoes 

Ecuador’s “Avenue of the Volcanoes” is a 325 km. long valley between the major Cordillera ranges. Massive and standing alone, the volcanoes provide brooding, snow-covered contrast to the green equatorial lushness. They also provide mountaineers a rare opportunity to achieve very high altitudes without technical difficulty. Volcano climbing offers an exciting, unforgettable challenge. In the Indian language, Chimborazo means “mountain of snow”. It is an enormous mass of overwhelming scale. Alexander Von Humboldt made an unsuccessful attempt to climb the Chimborazo in 1802, and believed it to be the highest mountain in the world (6,526 feet). This distinction lasted until the discovery of Mt. Everest fifty years later. Chimborazo was finally climbed by Edward Whimper in 1880. Today it is climbed fairly frequently, but less than Cotopaxi, which is the highest active volcano of the world (6,005 meters).

Living with oil and water

By The Ecuador Reporter

The oil pipelines are inescapable companians as one drives through Ecuador's northwest jungle towns. Many of the roads were constructed by Texaco in the 70s and 80s as the oil industry developed. Each pipe represents a different well. In the USA, law requieres this waste water to be pumped back into the ground once the oil has been extracted.

When companies drill for oil in Ecuador, they also pump up natural gas. Natural gas in this raw state has essentially no uses, except for the refinement of cocaine. Any natural gas Ecuador uses for energy does not come from their own supply, but is imported from countries that have large enough reserves to make the processing economically feasible, such as Bolivia.

Shortly after Texaco left Ecuador in 1990 it was recomended by an independent enviromental audit to invest 13.2 million USD in remediaton efforts. These pits collect waste water, drilling muds (a carconegetic cocktail of chemical lubricants that ease the drilling process) and crude oil (when oil is hit it sprays into the enviroment for hours or days as tests are run to determine the wealth of the well).