Travel Guide Coca

Officially named Puerto Francisco de Orellana, after the discoverer of the Amazon, the city is known as Coca (or El Coca). It owes this name to the ancient custom of the natives who chewed the leaves of the coca plant (a plant that is no longer widespread in Ecuador). The city of Coca was founded in 1949. After the discovery of an important oil deposit in the 1970's, Coca, which was then only a village, developed anarchically, leading to a series of curses caused by the oil exploitation: botched infrastructure, deforestation, acculturation, prostitution and trafficking of all kinds... Capital of the last Ecuadorian province to be born (Orellana), Coca is a lively city of about 70,000 inhabitants, which is now experiencing a surge in tourism. Its airport, served daily from Quito in 25 minutes, unloads the groups of tourists who leave from here to discover the Amazonian forest, in lodges or on boat-hotels. In the city, the atmosphere is cosmopolitan and the commercial effervescence incessant. However, the muggy heat and the lack of aestheticism of Coca slow down the tourists.