Camisea

In principle, it would be quite easy going down the river all the way to the Amazon via Iquitos, the world's largest city without road access, about 10 days downstream (as I had left some of my luggage in Cusco, that wasn't an option for me this time, however). The neighbouring villages of our destination, Kirigueti, had names like Nuevo Mundo (New World), Nueva Vida (New Life) and Nueva Luz (New Light) and I imagined us travelling deeper and deeper into a forgotten world of dense jungle with few and far-between villages inhabited by Indígenas.

The first surprise was that the villages weren't at all as far-between as I had expected.

Another surprise (even though I had heard about a gas project) were the huge and modern port facilities that we passed.

Wet and cold, we decided to get off at the next larger village rather than spending another two cold hours on the boat. This village happened to be Camisea.

It was the biggest surprise for me so far.

Rather than into an Indígena village with palmleaf-thatched huts hidden between trees, we walked on lawn through lines of wooden houses that had obviously been built very recently.

Beside the houses, infrastructure features included a big school, various administrative buildings, a hospital and a football ground. All of these seemed strangely unused.

To me, it looked like the Peruvian jungle version of a US-American suburb.

 

It took some time until we could make sense of it: as it happened, we had stumbled into the village on whose ground the gas field had been discovered. Some of the money (undoubtedly a pittance compared to the overall profits but still a lot of cash) had obviously been spent on turning Camisea into a model village. Complete with separate waste baskets for organic and inorganic waste and public toilets.

Contrary to what the guys on the boat had told us, there was no hostel in Camisea. After consulting the village chief, we were allowed to spend the night in one of the community buildings.

Walking through the illuminated village in the evening (to warm up before going to sleep), we discussed. Was this really as negative as it felt to us? Maybe was is what the people living in the region had chosen. But certainly not all of them. So who has the right to change peoples' lives in such a drastic way? And who, for that matter, has the right to deny them this change?

The only thing that seemed sure was that there's no going back!

Oil represents the sprits of a long dead world, is what the Shuar, a people from an oil-rich region of Amazonian Ecuador, say. Gas isn't much different.