Travelling in Ecuador...Puyango Petrified Forest

Puyango Petrified Forest

In this trip we had the opportunity to visit the Puyango Petrified Forest, between two provinces: El Oro and Loja, right next to the Puyango River. Here you can find the biggest collection of petrified wood in the world, with 100-million-year-fossilized trees, coexisting with an alive forest. It's like the Petrified Forest in Arizona. You can even see a 2-meter-diameter and 15-meter-long fossilized tree.  There are petrified terrestrial and marine life, such as trees, animals (mollusks) and ferns. There's also a collection of ammonites and fossilized leaves. The entrance ticket is just $1 and you get a guided tour to the forest and the little museum! It's about a 1 hour tour, and it's quite hot during the dry season (from May to December), due to the fact that is a dry forest.

There are two ways to get to the forest. The first one is departing from Machala: Machala - Arenillas - Petrified Forest (111 km); and the other one is departing from Loja: Loja - Catamayo - Catacocha - Celica - Alamor - Petrified Forest (255 km).

It just takes you back in time, to the Mesozoic Era. Where now is the forest, it used to be sea, but the sea just dried and the forest and some animals inhabited the zone, got buried underground, under silts, due to some earthquakes. Finally they surfaced. The organisms fossilized due to the lack of oxygen.

Some petrified logs

Giant petrified tree

Giant petrified tree

The animals that live in this ecosystem are armadillos, deers, squirrels, sparrow hawks, hawks, partridge, and many others.

You can't go by yourself, you need a guide. Please, listen to the guide and do as he/she tells you to do. Not so long ago, people used to go by themselves and they didn't respect the forest; they littered, destroyed the trees and did a lot of damage to that delicate ecosystem. Fortunately, now the forest is an organized place that you can visit and enjoy completely.

I almost forgot, you can camp right next to the river in a beautiful esplanade!

Araucarias

Want more information about the forest? Click here.