Originally called Lago Agrio, Nueva Loja, the capital of Sucumbios province, is another of the gateways into the rainforest. It is a lively trading post with plenty of hotels to choose from. Several travel agencies offer tourist packages so that the visitor can discover the varied surrounding vegetation and the animal species living in the natural reserves of his part of the Amazon.

Lago Agrio – Black gold and black curse:
In the whole region around Lago Agrio there was nothing else than exuberant and virginal jungle about 20 years ago. After the detection of big oil sources, the construction and the initiation of the trans Ecuadorian pipeline, the boom started. Workers of the Texaco concern, road builders, hunters, lumberjacks, soldiers, smugglers, prostitutes and many uprooted indigenous people were the first inhabitants and founders of the city. At the beginning of the 70ies, a drought period around Loja caused an enormous immigration from the south of Ecuador. Even the then president, Velasco Ibarra, provided a military engine for the long journey to “Nueva Loja”. Texaco already made boreholes between 1963 and 1964, near the Santa Cecilia camp. Then, they had to walk from Limoncocha to the region of difficult access. A little later, they already built a runaway. Two geologists (one European and one north American) who had to examine the mineral formations, gave the place the name “Sour Lake” (Lago Agrio) to remind of the first borehole in Texas. In 1972, they started with the extraction of the first borehole Lago Agrio. Today, there are pumped about 400'000 tons of crude oil daily from Lago Agrio across the Andes to Esmeraldas- These are almost the entire oil resources of Ecuador with exception of La Libertad on the Santa Elena peninsula.

Tourists who already come with an organized group to the Amazon region (for example to Cuyabeno) will not see a lot of the city during their journey to the jungle lodges. Individual travelers often have to spend a night in Lago Agrio after a long travel by bus or canoe. It's worth mentioning, that the city has the highest crime rate in the country, that's why it's not recommended to walk off the main road, la Avenida Quito, by night.