There are 498 blog posts for you to enjoy.
Villagarzón, Colombia
October 7, 2025
Villagarzón is a small town in south-central Colombia. According the 2018 census had around 23,700 people overall, with about 13,742 in the urban area. The town is often called the “Heart of Putumayo,” reflecting its centrality in culture, ecology, and movement between regions. Putumayo is the departamento, or province, that it is located in.
Reference: Wikipedia
Read More
La Hormiga, Colombia
October 5, 2025
La Hormiga is the municipal seat of Valle del Guamuez, in southern Putumayo, Colombia. It’s modest, unshowy, and very much a working town. You won’t leave here feeling like you’ve seen a “destination”—but that’s okay. It’s a place that lives more than it dazzles.
Read More
Escaping the Humidity: A Journey from Ecuador's Amazon to Colombia's Andes
October 4, 2025
I arrived in La Hormiga, Colombia, on Oct. 3. La Hormiga is a small and noisy town on the Colombian edge of the Amazon. After weeks of scratchy throat and sleepless nights from the humid air of the northern Ecuador Amazon region, I decided to leave the it behind and head for higher, drier ground. For almost three months I had lived in the forests and mountains of Peru and Ecuador, places I loved, but northern Amazonia simply wasn’t for me.
Read More
Shushufindi, Ecuador
October 3, 2025
Shushufindi is the cantonal seat of the Shushufindi Canton (county), in Ecuador’s Sucumbíos Province. It sits in the Amazon region on a broad plain along the right bank of the Shushufindi River, at about 260 meters above sea level. The climate is typically tropical, with heavy rainfall and an average temperature around 27 °C. Its name comes from the Cofán language: shushu meaning “puerco sahino” (a type of wild pig) and findi meaning “hummingbird,” reflecting the abundance of both in the region when the area was named. The canton itself was officially created on August 7, 1984, and the date is still celebrated each year as the anniversary of its “cantonization.”
Reference: Wikipedia – Shushufindi
Reference: Shushufindi Alcaldía
Read More
Joya de los Sachas, Ecuador
September 30, 2025
Joya de los Sachas, Ecuador - a town in northern Ecuador in the Amazon basin, has a population of, well, don't know. The canton (county) has about 52,000. Sachas is the biggest town in the canton. But there is no data for the town itself separate from the county. The town, my guess, has at least 20,000, based on my experiences throughout South America and visiting around 300 towns/cities. Being in the Amazon it rains frequenty. During my 4 days here, there was one day with no rain. The others had some rain, but what's nice is it never lasts very long - 10, 20 minutes. And from what I saw, it doesn't pour buckets, it's just a steady or light rain. “Sacha” is a word in Kichwa meaning “forest, jungle, wilderness.” So “Joya de los Sachas” loosely means “Jewel of the Forests” (or “of the jungles”).
Reference: Ecuador Lives
Read More