Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve

About this place

The Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve is the second largest reserve in Ecuador's protected areas system, in the Amazon rainforest. It covers 590,112 hectares in Putumayo and Aguarico cantons. It is known for trees standing in flooded lakes, and as a fairly easy place to see the Amazon from lodges in the forest. The reserve was decreed on 26 July 1979, at first covering only the Cuyabeno River basin of about 155,000 hectares. It was then expanded and its limits corrected to the present area in 1994, reaching the border with Peru. It now forms part of a three-nation protected area with Colombia and Peru of about two million hectares. Its headquarters are in Tarapoa, and the entrance at the Cuyabeno Bridge has a small visitor centre. You travel by long canoe on blackwater rivers among huge trees and hanging plants, gathering at sunset on the great Cuyabeno Lake, where macrolobium trees stand in the water. Birds, monkeys and sometimes river dolphins appear, though sightings are not guaranteed. There are 14 lodges here, wooden houses with thatched roofs and raised walkways. Some tours visit indigenous villages. The mapped reserve point is 131.7 km in a straight line east of Lago Agrio, and the trip is by bus and then canoe with a lodge. Book through an approved lodge and register at the reserve office with your passport. British advice is against all but essential travel to areas close to the Colombian border, so check your government's advice. Get a yellow fever vaccine ten days before travel, and bring repellent.