On the north bank of the Napo about forty-five minutes by canoe downstream from Misahuallí, AHUANO cowers in the shadow of the gargantuan Casa del Suizo , looking like a medieval village beneath the towering walls of a castle. Despite appearances, the huge hotel has brought money, jobs and a telephone office to Ahuano and kickstarted a fledgling tourist economy in the village itself. At Cerámica Indígena, at the eastern end of town, you can watch a demonstratiuon of Quichua pottery skills ($2), and then adjourn to the shop in the room next door, where you can buy other local products, including natural medicinal lotions and potions such as sangre de drago , good for gastric disorders, and aceite de hungurahua , used for shampoo, plus cane and gourd flutes, stuck together with beeswax.

 

There are two ways to get to Ahuano . A daily canoe runs from Misahuallí to Coca passing the village. Otherwise you can take a bus from Tena or Puerto Napo along the southern bank of the Napo as far as La Punta , where canoes wait to ferry you across ($0.2). There may be a camioneta on the other side to take you the 2km to Ahuano ($0.3). La Punta has a couple of restaurants and a basic hotel if you should get stuck here.

Aside from the La Casa del Suizo , with so few independent travellers stopping here, hotels and tourist facilities are thin on the ground. La Casa de Estefano (tel 09/806603; $16-25 including breakfast), on the main street at the east end of town, is one of the first serious attempts to lure the less well-off traveller here, offering tours of the area and hiking and camping expeditions into the forests ($15 per day). The basic Hostal Samantha ($5-9), a family home above the general store by the river, has clothes lines running from wall to wall and children running beneath them, cheap rooms, a shared bathroom and one electric shower. You can get breakfast, lunch or dinner at the simple restaurant , which also has a couple of basic rooms upstairs ($5-9), on the waterfront under the walls of La Casa del Suizo . Next door to the pottery, the village disco (Thurs-Sun from 9pm; free) could keep you on your feet in the evenings, where the local youth huddles in bamboo baths under a strobe light and bops to a selection of Latin and pop hits. A number of locals work as guides at La Casa del Suizo , and you may be able to hire their servies for yourselrf if you aask around for tours into forested areas downstream ($10-15 per day).