Amazonian Ayawaska

I recently finished Elizabeth Gilbert's infamous travel novel Eat Pray Love. During a short run I asked Amanda, how come we don't just walk into a quaint restaurant and immediately become best friends with the cook? Her response was: "I think our trip has been defined more by the places that we serendipitously end up." I think she couldn't be more right.

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I arrived in Quito a little bit poorer, just a little bit tired, and completely ecstatic to meet up with Amanda again and finally meet our third travel companion Josh. We squealed, talked at lighting speed about the past couple weeks and then looked at each other and asked, Now What? Josh said, let's go to the jungle. And so we did. We spontaneously boarded a bus to Tena - what Lonely Planet describes as a touristy, quaint jungle town in the middle of Ecuador's Amazon. We had no plan, no place to stay, and few expectations.

After a six-hour nauseatingly curvy bus ride, we arrived in Tena, needless to say - hungry. After each eating 1/2 a chicken and an entire season's harvest of rice for $3, we embarked into the town. Which we quickly found consisted of a less-than-attractive main drag, a gas station, and a small, uninteresting market. As we were brainstorming how we could find something a bit more jungley and a lot less touristy and dirty, we popped our heads into a small wooden shack with a tacky sign that read Jungle Tours Info Here. We got suckered into their spiel and were soon signed up for a 4-day jungle expedition. I was apprehensive of what tourist trap we had foolishly locked ourselves into, but told myself that it was only four days and it had to at least promise something good . . . right?

4 days later that "something good" translates to:

- intense and exhaustive hiking through the jungle (all in rain boots);

- sleeping in a cave;

- swimming in the Amazon river;

- scaling towering, gorgeous waterfalls (that, in the States, would have required 9 liability forms signing our life away);

- eating mysterious fruits off of mysterious vines;

- sleeping in hammocks in a commandeered shack;

- learning how to trap a puma;

- and making friends with a revered Quichua Shaman.

From the outside, the jungle was an impenetrable wall of fluorescent green; an unconquerable, daunting mass of vegetation. But when in the hands of a native who has a detailed map of the forest painted in his mind - knowing every tree's location like you know where the nearby pharmacy is in relation to the gas station - the jungle became an inviting and warming habitat. Vines hung down from trees taller than we could see and tiny orchids clung to glistening moss on fallen, disintegrating bark. (P.S. way more orchids than Panama!) Our guides hacked at the jungle with their machetes, carving a fresh path for us to crawl through. The Quichua men would stop and point out a tree that is used for curing a tummy ache, and then at one that could be mashed into a natural shampoo. Then one that is good for infertility or one that is used for arthritis. (They all looked green and leafy to me.) Our guide Nixon told me that every person of the jungle owns a piece of land - men and women; everyone has a piece they can call their own. (Nice in a land often caught up in the machismo mentality.)

On our third day in the jungle, one of the most respected Shamans of the region joined us. He took us deeper into the green. When he asked us if we wanted to drink ayawaska - a strong hallucinogenic plant that is used as a spiritual cleansing ritual - we all said why not. I realize anyone reading this is thinking: Aeriel, the girl that has never smoked pot and never touches drugs, did what? Yet, in the presence of a revered Shaman and when faced with the possibility of cleansing out any negative energy, it somehow felt right. We all participated in the making of the ayawaska - first the plant is cleaned, then mashed, and then boiled for several hours until it is a thick, incredibly bitter and vile liquid. And just a dab will do ya. While we were tripping on this plant, the Shaman cleansed each one of us, dedicating his full attention to chanting and summoning out the evil, negative spirits from our bodies and replacing them with light energy. Any more on this will require a deeper conversation over a copa de vino (glass of wine), but I will say this is as close to a spiritually enlightening experience as I've ever had. And in the morning I awoke feeling more alert and more aware of both my body and the environment. Bees landed on me and I thought, hello bee how are you today. This is not normal.

What I expected to be a tourist trap jungle tour in fact became a full immersion into Amazon life. We were accepted into the lives and trust of our guides and were shown places that I had previously only thought existed in children's books. And if anything, I can rest easy knowing that I have been cleansed by the Quichua Shaman that lives along the Rio Napo.