Camino de Orellana

Together with Avenida de los Conquistadores, this stone descent forms a route from high Quito to the eastern valleys. Underfoot, the road runs down the slope first toward Guápulo, then farther away from the urban plateau. The sign preserves the name of Francisco de Orellana, but it does not say why his name was kept on this particular road.

This stone descent bears the name of a man who missed the departure of his own expedition. In February fifteen forty-one, Gonzalo Pizarro—the governor of Quito—set out east from here, intending to find the Land of Cinnamon and El Dorado beyond the Andes. Cinnamon was worth enormous sums in Europe, and tales of a land of gold promised even more.

Gonzalo Pizarro risked his fortune. Later, he wrote to the king that he had spent more than fifty thousand castellanos—gold units of account—on the expedition and had gone into debt for it. He led out of Quito about two hundred Spaniards, horses, herds of pigs, and several thousand Indigenous porters.

Francisco de Orellana, his assistant and the expedition’s second organizer, was then in Guayaquil. He governed a Spanish settlement there, had already grown wealthy, and invested almost all his fortune in the venture. When Francisco de Orellana reached Quito, the column had already gone down this eastern descent. He set out after it with twenty-three men and caught up with Gonzalo Pizarro only near Sumaco Volcano.

They did not find the Land of Cinnamon. The column descended the valleys of the Coca and Napo rivers; supplies ran out, and porters died or left. In December, Gonzalo Pizarro ordered a small brigantine, the San Pedro, built and sent Francisco de Orellana down the Napo with fifty-seven men: they were to find food and return.

They could not return. In eight days, the current carried the vessel so far that the exhausted men could no longer take it back upstream. According to the account of an expedition participant, the monk Gaspar de Carvajal, they boiled belts and shoe soles with grass. Francisco de Orellana decided to go on. His companions signed a document confirming their collective decision: the paper was meant to protect the captain from accusations of desertion.

Gonzalo Pizarro declared Francisco de Orellana a traitor anyway. Gonzalo Pizarro himself turned toward Quito and returned in June fifteen forty-two without finding the riches, having lost most of his men. A contemporary saw his companions barefoot, half-dressed, and covered in wounds.

Francisco de Orellana reached the Atlantic after eight and a half months of sailing and about six thousand kilometers of travel. In Spain, Gonzalo Pizarro’s accusation did not prevent Francisco de Orellana from obtaining from the Crown the right to return and found a colony on the lands he had discovered. He outfitted the second expedition poorly; disease and shipwrecks nearly destroyed the party, and Francisco de Orellana himself died on the Amazon River in fifteen forty-six.

Today’s road marks the beginning of that journey. It descends from high Quito to the eastern valleys and then joins Avenida de los Conquistadores. The sign retains the name of Francisco de Orellana—the man who passed here after the main column and was the first to reach the Atlantic.