My time in the Amazon is difficult to put into words, one of the shallow physical parts is that everything there – the animals, plants, insects, and more – want to or have the means to kill you. The deeper part is that I felt a deeper connection and a spiritual awareness and significance to the place. As I sat resting in a swaying hammock, a light breeze touching my face, listening to the fast movement of the rapid Napo river, I felt the most connected to the present as I ever had been.
Without a doubt in my mind, I felt aware of the forest judging us, the forest felt alive and thriving under our feet, living on through the spirits from the past and present. The people there believe it learns your intentions and judges your soul. That if we just learned to be open we could hear the guidance it provided and the more I learned from the Kichwa people, the more open and spiritual I became.
This post is highlighting my favorite trips into the jungles and communities of the Kichwa people, who welcomed me into their homes and shared some of their sacred knowledge. To them, I am incredibly grateful.
My first trip into the jungle, I had traveled to Mushullakta for a seed collecting trip. We stayed with a small kichwa family in their small home and I learned a lot about the Kichwa culture. The man of the house even played a forest protection song for us and we all subconsciously swayed to the melody that flowed through our very beings.
The children were especially fun and were excited we were there. We built card castles with them and played a ton of cats cradle with a thin string they had found from somewhere. I learned the Kichwa language is a completely separate language to Spanish and it only seems related because Kichwa had been only a spoken language before the Spanish colonizers came. Those colonizers made Kichwa a written language after, but used the Spanish alphabet.
I will say sitting around the fire at night just outside the housing, listening to the tones of the Kichwa music, I felt there was nothing more beautiful than that moment of being so immersed in a culture. I finally felt like I was living and not just gliding by life. We stayed in their extra hut for the night and woke up the next morning to the sun rising and a steaming cup of guayusa tea to wake us up. It felt amazing. Everything is so spiritual there, every plant has its use and its own spirit. The forest will speak to you if you are willing to listen. We all often joked about the Jungle Gods and that when they were angry at us, the forest would spit out tons of rain and bad weather, but individually I felt there was a little truth to that.
This first time in the jungle felt very memorable to me as it was the first time I got immersed in a culture. I also enjoyed practicing my Spanish as the Kichwa people spoke Spanish as a second language, therefore they spoke slower and kindly helped me along. We walked through the forest for hours collecting healthy seeds of specific plants with the aim of future forest restoration. The goal was to bring these back and plant them in the vivero (or nursery) so when they got to a certain size, they could be replanted in deforested zones of the rainforest.
The next time I was in the jungle, we went to Carlos’s community, near Archidona, to cut down a Chonta tree for the construction of a new family home. It seemed like a lot of work cutting through it with machetes, but it was done after several Kichawa men took rotating turns. After the tree was down, it was our turn to work. We were given machetes to scrape off the thousands of spikes protruding off the bark of the Chonta tree. This tree had these black spines coming out of it the entire length to provide protection from animals and parasitic plants. That made it too dangerous to carry back until the spikes were all gone. So, we spent hours chopping at every part of the bark until it was smooth enough to carry back. My arms and back ached from standing over the tree hacking again and again with the machete, but it felt good to be apart of something to help the community. One of the Kichwa women explained to me that it was a very important job as the men can get very hurt if we do not remove every spike, making it hard for them to work with injured hands.
We also helped to prepare bamboo siding. One of the Kichwa men, once again, would cut the bamboo tree down. It was cool to see it cut, as water would rush out from the hollow center. After he would slice it down in half and hand it to us. We wielded our machetes and started again. Though the man had cut it down the middle, we had to cut off these studs sticking out of the inside to make them smooth on both sides.
All of this work was being done in order for a new home to be built for a family. Once the studs were cleared and we had enough bamboo poles, we began to carry them from the forest back to the community. The walk back was incredibly muddy as it continued to rain on and off during our work so our knee high rubber boots sloshed and stuck deeply on the trail as we attempted to stay upright while balancing both bamboos and large palm leaves, that were bigger than me, on our shoulders. Each trip I got back I was more and more covered in mud but it was thrilling to be doing this physical work that was commonly done by these people.
Back at the house, our last lesson of the day was how to weave the palm fronds. The leaves were weaved in a specific way in order to create a rain tight seal for the roof. It took some time but soon we were all weaving away and it was my favorite part of the day.
I didn’t spend all of my time toiling away in the jungle. The town of Tena and Archidona each had a club, one was popping on Thursdays and one was popping on Fridays. One Thursday night we decided to go to the hopping club in Archidona and I fully understood why we were taught basic salsa as part of our orientation week in Tena. All of the people in the club knew how to salsa and that was how we danced instead of the rocking or grinding found in American clubs. I loved the sensual dancing of the music and felt close to all those I danced with.
We left the club around 1:30am in which I went with some of my coworkers and some Bolivian dude named Christian for a twenty minute walk to a river spot I’ve never gone to. We jumped in, in various stages of undress to go swimming under the jungle and stars. The Bolivian dude then began to play his flute and we just enjoyed being in the Amazon rainforest. We got back to our casa at around 3:00am.
Before this trip I had never touched alcohol or really let loose and had fun. Thanks to my coworkers I was learning such a new way of relaxing and enjoying everything that came our way.
Another memorable trip into the jungle was that we were woken up at 3:00am by our bosses to go to the Archidona area, where we went towards the Hakuna Matata (swimming hole) to the end of the drive.
We then hiked about twenty minutes in the dark to a small chosa on the mountainside. I didn’t turn on a flashlight, instead I stumbled along the entire trip under the shining full moon and listening and seeing the turbulent river to our side, as well as all the noises of the jungle. From chirps to buzzing to silence felt strange as we ventured further in. It was truly amazing to walk along a rapid river and in the rainforest in the dark. The sounds of the forest were alive and buzzing.
When we arrived at the Chosa, there were two men and three women traditionally dressed and a shaman there playing a violin that he made himself. We talked a bunch about guayusa and the traditions of the Kichwa people. He [the shaman] interpreted our dreams and a common theme with their dream interpretation, is that the worse the dream is, dying or getting bit by a snake, often has good connotations in life, only if the action does happen, for example not getting fully bit is bad news.
This is all happening while the sun is rising in the sky and we are drinking 2 bowls full of guayusa tea, made from fresh green leaves instead of dried. That had been the first time I finished a bowl of guayusa as I’m not a huge fan of the taste of herbal teas. But instead of a cup I had to finish two small bowls full. Then we had breakfast: a hard-boiled egg, dried mix of yucca, maize, and plantains, and these fuzzy green ferns.
Towards the end, I got a shaman cleansing, where the shaman spit a mix of tobacco and ginger liquid directly in my face and kept whacking me with leaves. He then tried to blow his good spirits in my head, by blowing the liquid on top of my head. Apparently I have a fever in my body from a sickness that is long-term so it was difficult for him. My eyes and lips burned for several hours after getting spit in the face. I wasn’t able to write down too much in my journal that night as I got very sick. The entire week I was sick and rarely left my bed. I had such severe stomach pain and bloating that I was biting my arm to stop from crying out.
Around Sunday I felt better and went for a hike called El gran canyon. I went with several coworkers. The hike was about forty-five minutes with a guide. It lead to a beautiful cavern opening with two waterfalls coming out of it. It really was an absolutely stunning place. The guide then helped us cross the pool of water and rapids to walk past one waterfall and into a cave for a bit to see another waterfall that drops into the cave. The entire hike was funny as Dakotah wore sneakers so he kept falling in the mud and making loud distressed noises.
On another seed collecting trip, I learned the tough way why the rainforest has the name it does. We traveled back to Mushullacta with Leonitus to go seed collecting. We hiked for five hours around the rainforest as he chopped trails with his machete. We collected three types of seeds/seedlings and headed back to the house. The entire five hours it absolutely downpoured on us. I was drenched, freezing, and even though my jacket was completely waterproof, it was no match for that much rain. I was soaked down to my bones. It was quite the experience though, to see primary rainforest in its element, with rain cascading down around us and just the reality of being there sinking in with the droplets that sunk into my now soaked rain coat.
Back at the house we dried off and played with the three children, the two younger ones taught us how to play a version of duck duck goose and Julia fell on the ground so hard because it was slippery with mud from all the rain. We went to bed at 2:00am but Suzy and I had to combine our beds because it was so cold and I was shivering the night away. I ended up only getting glimpses of sleep due to the cold temperatures. The next day was spent planting the seedlings in the vivero back in Tena.
The last major trip I took into the jungle was towards the end of my internship and was just after our trip to Baños. I began to prepare for a couple of days heading into the Kichwa communities. David and I were being sent out to gps map deforested areas in the communities of tsatayaku. These communities are participating in a plan to reforest those areas with the seedlings from the vivero. So we had to plan and pack food and the technology we needed to make it a week with several different communities.
We had to map the parcel (area designated for the project) so that Ian could know how many seedlings each person should get. First, we were dropped off at Modesto’s house in Flor del Bosque. We mapped four parcels that afternoon and spent the rest of the night playing around with the four young boys that lived there. They cooked us some amazing food and gave us fruit smoothies from their garden. We had fried eggs, plantains, hot chocolate, and a watermelon smoothie for breakfast.
The only bad part of that trip was the fact that I barely got any sleep that night. I tried to sleep in this rope hammock they had, but it was so arched that I was sleeping in a complete v position so it hurt my back and I didn’t have a lot of room to move around in it. David slept on a rug on the wooden floor. Besides that, there was this kitten that had gotten in, as everything was pretty open in the home, including cut out squares acting as windows. At first it just laid on my lap so I figured that would be fine but it ended up keeping me up all night. It wouldn’t stop purring loudly so after fifteen minutes I moved it onto the floor in hopes it would go sleep with David instead. It seemed like it was going to but I think he kept shooing it away as well so just as I was about to fall asleep, the damn kitten would full on jump up on me and scare the crap out of me. Therefore, I got literally no sleep that night.
The next morning we mapped two more parcels, had lunch, and then headed over to Misi Urko community where we mapped two more parcels with Leonitus and then were brought to Janeth’s house where we stayed for the night.
Janeth and her sister brought us to the river to bathe as we were covered in mud from the forest and sweat from the humidity, or maybe we just smelt too bad and they were too polite to tell us that. There were two rivers that met at this point so we actually had to cross the first river that was brown and muddy to the second river that was clear and faster moving. It was weird to see these two rivers meet but not necessarily mix until later down as they were vastly different from each other.
They gave us shampoo and soap where we then awkwardly bathed near each other but facing different ways and would toss the soap bottles over our shoulders to each other when we needed it. There were a bunch of kids giggling on the shore watching us. I found that many of the girls who hadn’t had a lot of contact with outsiders were fascinated by my brown hair. One time I woke up to two of the girls playing with it while I slept and I genuinely was ready to wake up to having some of it cut off, but that didn’t happen.
The next morning we mapped Fabiola’s parcel and chilled in the house for a bit. We were finally at the end of our trip and began hiking out of the community. The trip was entertaining because I was traveling with a guy so they assumed we must be together, trying to explain to them we were not married was very difficult. In fact at one point I got an awful parasite so that my stomach was enlarged and hard to the touch and I was in severe pain. I think they thought I was pregnant at first and I had to explain that wasn’t possible but we were so far from a hospital all I could do was drink what they gave me and hope it went away. Luckily for me, I was better pretty quickly and able to travel back to Tena.
To get back to the paved roads that lead to Tena, we had to hike to the end of the community where we found an eight year old boy to bring us across the river in a canoe. This canoe was quite shallow and we had to kneel and balance as we made our way across the river as too much leaning would lead to us flipping over. As we all attempted to balance our weight, we were halfway across when the boy kept saying “No puedo”. The boy would be pushing us across with a long stick that pushed against the bottom of the riverbed. Unfortunately, there was a ton of rain the last few days and the current was so strong it was starting to push us downstream towards the rocky rapids. We helped by paddling with our hands as the kid pushed and were able to turn around and make it back to the shore.
The kid said he was going to get his older brother to do it. His older brother came back and looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old. With his strength we were able to make it across this time. A little bit more hiking through the jungle and we got to a tar road where we sat on the side waiting for several hours for a bus to pass going to Tena where we jumped in and went back to la casa Runa.
