Travel Guide Macas

The capital of the Morona-Santiago province, with a population of 24,000, is not as well developed for tourism as other towns such as Puyo or Tena. Indeed, the journey to Macas is reserved for the adventurous... In the distance, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of the smoke from the Sangay volcano, which dominates this province at a height of 5,250 m. After 6 hours on the track from Puyo, often interrupted by landslides, you arrive in this town whose only tourist attraction is as a little-visited gateway to the Amazon rainforest. Accommodation and restaurants are few and far between, but the resourceful can make do with what they have. Macas has the advantage of enjoying a tranquillity rare in Amazonian towns, and of rising up in the midst of a superb natural panorama. The peace treaty signed in 1998 between Ecuador and Peru, 3 years after the Cenepa war, has completely secured the region, which was once the site of recurrent fighting between the two countries. La Purísima Cathedral, completed in 1992, contains a famous painting of the Virgin of Macas, La Purísima de Macas. Behind the cathedral, a beautiful panorama of the Río Upano valley.