Welcome to the Jungle: Part Two

UPDATE: Now in glorious technicolour!

Right at this very moment I am looking out of the window of a small hut watching the misty clouds descend, as they do most days around midday here in the cloud forest of northwest Ecuador. Getting reacquainted with dial-up internet access means this post comes to you devoid of pictures, but rest assured they will be added once I get back to Quito in a couple of weeks. Anyways, I digress…

So following my week in Tena where I first encountered Ayahuasca with Don Lucho, I took a short bus north to the next town along, Archidona. It’s a nondescript, kinda run-down place with little of interest for the casual visitor. However, my week living in the Amazon was not exactly casual. I went to live in the small Kichwa community of Mariposa (which means ‘Butterfly’ in Spanish), which is on the outskirts of the town. Again, it was far enough away from electricity and hot water to feel quite isolated; the houses of the Mamallacta family (with whom I was staying) are positioned right on the edge of hundreds of acres of sprawling primary forest, much of which they have used and maintained for generations. Welcome to the jungle indeed. This was my little house:



I was to spend the week working with Nelson, whose wife Flora and their two young children switch between a tiny house in the town and their house in the jungle. They need a base in town so their oldest daughter can go to school there, but they also maintain the residence out by the forest as that is where many of their immediate family live and given Nelson’s title as ‘Guardian of the Seeds’, he needs to be close to the forest. It provides them with many natural medicines for all sorts of ailments, a large variety of herbs, nuts, fruits and other foodstuffs, many other they have planted as they aim for self sufficiency. Of course, the Ayahuasca vine is abundant around this area, although only Nelson’s father Casimiro is actually a practising shaman. The views were quite nice:


It was my job as volunteer to go out with Nelson and do whatever needed doing in the forest and in their garden, which again is a long way from the typical English interpretation, including as it does many hectares of largely untouched primary and secondary forest. I was staying by myself in a small house a short ten-minute walk away from Nelson and Flora’s place. Walking back down there at night from the main house where we ate and generally hung out would have been much scarier were it not for my little helpers, Casimiro’s two friendly dogs, who accompanied me on my slippery walk back each night, scouting the way and putting me at ease. Still, it was rather creepy down there and I definitely had some strange experiences in the night: hearing footsteps in the empty room above me, murmuring voices outside, sticks breaking and chickens clucking (there were no chickens around there). My thoughts were reinforced by another of the visitors, a philosophical German named Leon who knew of similar experiences and told me he had met the spirit of a Brujo (shaman working with dark energies) nearby whilst drinking the brew one night. I felt protected though and didn’t feel in any danger, but there was definitely a certain strange vibe around the place!


My first day was truly special. Nelson took me out on a hike to a sacred cave of their ancestors which could only be reached by trekking through untouched Primary forest. Machete at the ready, Nelson literally had to hack us a path through the vines, trees and luscious vegetation that surrounded you at every turn. With years of knowledge at his disposal, he’d stop every ten minutes to pull out a fruit from a random tree and hand it to me, indicating it was good to eat. I tried some sort of jungle rhubarb, thick shoots from a palm tree which were surprisingly nice, miniature watermelons the size of pool balls.. I even sampled a few live ants that tasted just like lemon! Nelson also knew exactly which seeds, leaves and vines you could use for certain ailments and he’d indicate ‘esta es una medicina’ as often as he found us wild snacks. We saw what I would regard as giant spiders (although I was later informed that these were nothing!) sat in the middle of webs that could trap a human, the tiny tracks of a young jaguar and I came face to face with a large millipede type creature who, when you flipped him from hand to hand, put out his little feet and tickled your palm, making a bristling sound, a sort of living percussion! I´m particularly proud of my catalogue man pose between those slabs of rock there:







During the walk to the cave we waded through ancient streams with sources of natural quartz, past powerful underground rivers that disappeared into the earth and scrambled through a maze of massive stone blocks with natural passageways that made me feel a little like Indiana Jones exploring some temple ruins. There was even a massive, perfectly smooth and round rock which Nelson told me was a meteorite. Apparently it had ‘always been there’. We eventually made it to the cave where Nelson’s distant ancestors used to gather to drink Ayahuasca and I think some even lived there for a while. I sat in a reverent silence and tried to take it all in. Yet another incredible experience, another one-on-one adventure with pure knowledge in such a fantastic place. I had to keep pinching myself to believe I was really there and wished I could stay for longer.



Much of the rest of the week was spent sheltering from torrential Amazonian rain which is on a whole other level to the stuff that England can throw at you. It rained for almost three days without a single break, torrential hardcore rain that soaked you instantly and rendered all paths to slop. Luckily at this time I was back at Don Lucho’s for my second ceremony, with some other people this time which was rather different to my first experience, yet it was still a deeply healing and intriguing voyage. Aside from some hard graft with Nelson where, amongst other things, we picked fruits, planted year-old saplings, chopped up tree trunks to make new plant beds and cleared a large area for a water pool, I also had some great conversations with Leon and Henrik, another new friend, ate some fantastic food made by Nelson and Flora, and drank great quantities of Canila (Cinnamon) and Huayusa (a delicious natural Amazonian stimulant) tea made with leaves from the garden. Me and Nelson:



The family drew my utmost respect and I was inspired and humbled. They struggle with the nearby deforestation committed by Oil companies (often illegally), they strive to protect the land that has been occupied by their ancestors for generations, try to uphold and pass down the incredible knowledge of the forest that is so ingrained in indigenous culture against the encroaching passivity of modern westernisation of the country, and they do it all with an easy smile and the kindest of hearts. How could I not be affected?