Looking at a contour map you would think that it is flat between
Puyo and Palora. The road follows a ridge that is above 1000
meters, but never gets above 1100 meters. The road drops down to
900 meters to cross the Rio Pastaza and never gets back above 950
meters going to
Palora, which is a hair above 900 meters. But the road is not
flat. It undulates through forests and past farms and
villages. By and large the area is sparsely populated. At
one point the road nears the edge of the ridge and you can look down
in to the Amazon basin. There is literally forest for as far as
the eye can see.
Remind me again what was significant about Palora!
OK, there is nothing magnificently significant about Palora, but
that doesn't mean that there are things of interest. Palora is a
very quiet, rainforest town. Actually there has been so much
clearing in the area, spurred on by national policies that people
could lay claim to forest that they cleared, that Palora is now an
edge-of-the-rainforest town. On one side of town is a large tea
plantation, which from a distance looks like a fuzzy green table about
40 inches high. The commercial district in town is about four
blocks long. Though none of the shops are very large they offer an
amazingly wide range of goods and services. If you were going into
relatively urban Palora, from the bush for a day, you could buy a can
opener, fix your plow, get a hair cut and rent some computer time,
before heading back to the more tranquil farming life in the forest.
The hotel was bigger and better than one might expect for the
location. The rooms were self-contained with showers and toilets
and large enough to completely empty the panniers and hang the damp
contents.
If it is gum boots you are looking for, for all I know there is no
better selection of brands and sizes anywhere else on earth than Palora.
Everyone in our group got a pair. We were advised that the
recent rains would make the trails very muddy. Anyway no one in
the group had owned a pair of good gum boots at any other time in our lives, they only
cost about $6, and they were made in Ecuador. What a better and more
unique souvenir of the rainforest could there be?
