|  Caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.
—David Abram Like some of the people whose stories I recount below, I went to the western Amazon and fell in love. I have come to love the jungle for both its beauty and its dangers, and its people for the same two reasons. I have spent some time in this region, hiking and camping, doing a two-week solo jungle survival trip up the Rio Blanco, studying the shamanic traditions and survival skills of the last of the Shapra and Candoshi Indians, helping to provide basic medical services, working with both urban and jungle ayahuasqueros. Now there are lots of tour companies, from Mountain Travel Sobek to Manu Expeditions, that will take you on ecotours of the Amazon. But what I have tried to do here is to give you a taste of the wide variety of options there are – including Wilderness Drum – outside of what I guess we can call the mainstream of ecotourism. Bear in mind that companies and trips and personnel change, sometimes quickly, and that I am not making any personal recommendations here; rather I am making suggestions for your own further investigation. Check Web sites, talk on the telephone, meet people in person, and make up your own mind whether any these trips is for you.
The vegetalistas or plant healers of the Peruvian Amazon combine an encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants with an ability to communicate with the plant spirits in order to heal the sick. This Wilderness Drum adventure is the first to combine traditional vision fast practices with the ayahuasca ceremonies of a traditional jungle shaman – a unique opportunity to combine the visionary and healing power of ayahuasca and other plants of power with your personal vision quest alone in the jungle. Participants take part in traditional healing ceremonies with native Amazonian healers and shamans; undertake la dieta, the sparse diet of the shaman trainee; work to integrate their ceremonial visions into a quest for their life’s purpose; have the opportunity, if they wish, to spend time in solitude in the virgin Amazonian jungle; and combine council, dreamwork, self-created ceremonies, poetry, storytelling, mythmaking, shadow work, and dialogues with the plant spirits into a unique wilderness experience. Click here for more Wilderness Drum adventures.
ACEER – the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research – Foundation was founded in 1991 by International Expeditions, a travel company specializing in ecotourism. ACEER maintains a lodge in the Peruvian Amazon where they sponsor a variety of international workshops designed to meet the needs of teachers, students, and healthcare professionals from around the world. The purpose of these workshops is to offer the opportunity to experience the beauty and diversity of the Amazon rainforest ecosystem and develop an appreciation for its global importance. The Foundation's operations are funded by donations from individuals and organizations, and by revenue received for the use of its field station, garden, trails, and canopy walkway. Among the programs available at the ACEER jungle facility is the Teacher Training Workshop, designed for science teachers and taught by experts in tropical science and conservation; and the Pharmacy from the Rainforest Workshop, which offers an opportunity to learn about the medicinal plants of the Amazon and explore the traditional healing practices of Amazonian culture.
The alternative name of this organization is The Wild Mushroom Traveling Road Show, which should pretty much let you know right away whether this is for you or not. The Amazon excursions are on board the vaguely hippy ambiance of a well-appointed river boat, featuring all-natural gourmet meals, an excellent selection of Peruvian beers and wines, bottled water and herbal teas, and Gerry Miller’s own medicinal bar of over fifty jungle cures for everything, he claims, from cancer to impotence, arthritis, leukemia, diabetes, tumors, gangrene, burns, bites, menstrual problems, immune system deficiencies, and back problems. Vegetarian diets are easily accommodated. Most important to the travelers are the ayahuasca ceremonies, conducted three times a week in different jungle areas by the on-board shamans. During the voyage, extensive discussions are held where dreams and visions are interpreted by the shamans, who are available twenty-four hours a day for personal healing, massage, and spiritual work.
There is a story here. Paul Beaver – the name comes from his Micmac heritage – has a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Chicago, with a specialization in the evolutionary behavior patterns of animals. His academic career foundering, he took a temporary job with the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, traveling the western Amazon to seek out plants and animals for a new display. While there, he fell in love with the land and the people, and took a dramatic turn in his life, starting to conduct primitive tours in which clients built their own huts in the jungle. He prospered, built more comfortable accommodations for his clients, and created Amazonia Expeditions. What is unique about the Amazonia Expeditions lodge on the Tahuayo River is its ability to accommodate individual interests. There are enough native guides, both male and female, so that you can go at your own pace and according to your interests. You can concentrate more on birdwatching, canoeing, canopy exploration, fishing, or native culture. You can be active before breakfast or well into the evening. This is ideal for people who do not want to be stuck with a large group on a preset itinerary. Families can have a private guide who specializes in working with preteens or young teens. Here are a few selections from the lodge’s à la carte menu of activities, depending on the season: you can take an evening lake boat trip to view the southern constellations and nocturnal wildlife, such as boat-billed herons, potoos, and owl monkeys; explore the canopy on a zip-line system; fish with traditional native bow and arrow or spear; search for boa constrictors and other snakes; take a medicinal plant hike; see feeding or nesting macaws, parrots, and toucans; canoe into the flooded varzea forest; fish for piranha or peacock bass; visit a native elementary school; hike and camp in the terra firme forest.
Here is another story. Howard Lawler, who runs El Tigre journeys, is a Ph.D. herpetologist who came to the Amazon to study its reptiles. As have others before him, he fell in love with the land and the people, but his interest centered on jungle curanderismo, the healing practices of the mestizo shamans and their use of medicinal and sacred plants. El Tigre Journeys, the private educational tourism organization Howard founded in 1997, embraces ethical principles for development of ecological and cultural tourism in the Peruvian Amazon. Its primary mission is to help promote, enhance, conserve, and restore the natural and cultural resources of western Amazonia through various cooperative and independent initiatives supported, in part, by tourism enterprise. It offers two programs – Amazon SpiritQuest and Exploring Rain Forest Knowledge. The first is an educational personal growth experience which introduces the participant to the unique natural environment, cultures, and people of the Peruvian Amazon through work with traditional ayahuasqueros within a safe, sensitive, intellectual, and spiritual framework. Enrollment is usually limited to eight participants per workshop to insure optimal attention to individual needs and interests. The second is a one-week educational workshop tour exploring nature, ethnobiology, indigenous rain forest lifestyles, and culture of the Peruvian Amazon, instructed by professional interpretive biologists, staff of the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (IIAP), indigenous Bora, Yahua, Cocama, and Witoto people, and native shamans and curanderos. Howard has extensive and intimate knowledge of the religion of the Upper Amazon, and he is a deeply committed guide.
The UK-based El Mundo Magico works closely with the Sachamama Ethnobotanical Garden, founded by don Francisco Montes Shuna, an ayahuasquero, artist working in traditional native materials, and sponsor of a school of traditional Amazonian medicine. In addition to ayahuasca ceremonies and retreats held by don Francisco and other traditional shamans in Sachamama, the company offers shamanic ayahuasca retreats in Onanyan Shobo – “Shaman's House” – near Iquitos, and expeditions to beautiful Manu National Park, considered one of the most biodiverse areas on Earth, both under the care of traditional Shipibo shamans. Extended stays can also be arranged, lasting four months or more, to observe the traditional dieta and intensively experience ayahuasca and other plants under the tutelage of don Francisco. All this can be pretty intense, so make sure that you have established a good comfort level with everyone involved. The company has also produced and markets two excellent CDs of icaros, the songs of the mestizo and indigenous shamans of Peru.
Directed by Jaya Bear, widow of Native American teacher Sun Bear, Puma Shamanic Journeys offers trips to the Peruvian Amazon jungle with ayahuasquero don Agustin Rivas Vasquez to study the healing and spiritual traditions of the region through ceremony, traditional Amazon medicines, intense physical cleansings, exploration of the jungle environment, and discourses and teachings with don Agustin. The retreat site consists of open-air, thatched-roof huts on stilts, in the Amazonian style, about a three-hour boat ride up the Amazon River from Iquitos. “Working on personal cleansing and transformation in this intense environment,” they write, “brings about a deep connection to Nature, and the opportunity for release on inner levels we may not have touched into before. In the pristine setting of his jungle encampment, Don Agustin has created a safe place, where people can come for ceremony and healing, and where there are none of the intrusions of modern technology. Part of the deep healing we can find in this jungle retreat, is the freedom from modern technological pollution that assaults us on a daily basis.” You can legitimately question the extent to which all this reflects the traditional nature and intent of mestizo shamanism, and the extent to which it is a transplantation of New Age ideals into the Amazon jungle. But if this sounds like your cup of tea, check it out. You can also take a look at don Agustin’s biography, written by Jaya Bear – Amazon magic: The life story of ayahuasquero and shaman don Agustin Rivas Vasquez (Taos NM: Colibri Publishing, 2000), ISBN 0-9674255-0-6.
Jeff Randall and Mike Perrin have been leading jungle survival trips in the Amazon for a number of years, and they are now the official agent of the Escuela de Supervivencia en la Selva, the Peruvian Air Force school of jungle survival for downed pilots. The training is six days long and taught by Peruvian military instructors, and the course has been taken by both military and civilian airline personnel. RAT takes care of all logistics and accompanies the students through the school. Randall also offers a four-day course in jungle aircrash survival and medicine, offering techniques for surviving aviation accidents in remote jungle locations and using wilderness medical skills to prolong survival. This is not an ecotour. As Randall says, ”If you're looking for a tree-hugging, feel-good, politically correct training organization – you're at the wrong place – and will more than likely be offended by our attitudes, services, weird humor, and raw honesty concerning these operations.”
If you want to see the real Amazon, have your outdoor skills challenged by real wilderness, and do some good at the same time, then volunteer for two weeks of medical assistance work with the Rainforest Health Project. Wilderness medical training – such as a WFR certification – is a plus, but is not necessary. RHP is a nonprofit, international relief organization providing humanitarian medical assistance to the people of the Peruvian Amazon. Four times a year, medical and non-medical volunteers travel to the Amazon Basin to provide humanitarian medical assistance to villagers in need, while working hand-in-hand with traditional healers. RHP provides medical care to villages who request their assistance by incorporating modern medicine with local plant medicines and spiritual healers. In order for a village to host an RHP medical clinic, it must have someone who acts as a promotora de salud or “promoter of health” – that is, who has been trained in basic first aid and hygiene in Iquitos and then transfers that knowledge back to the village. “We believe,” says RHP, “that simply offering medical aid to developing nations is not the solution. It makes them more dependent on outsiders, and reinforces the presumption that the West has all the answers. By incorporating traditional healing practices and opening the door for our medical people to learn the value of traditional medicines all sides will prosper. Empowering individuals from differing cultures to freely exchange the best of both worlds is the backbone of our strategy.” This can be one hell of an experience.
Sentient Experientials describes its Amazon trip – named ”Nature as Teacher, Traditional Wisdom and Rainforest Conservation Strategies” – as an opportunity for the conscious traveler to experience the beauty of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest and meet some of her forest-dwelling people. The journey is designed for those who are genuinely concerned about the well-being of all species, and who care for human communities, healing, and personal growth. This event is a wilderness, grassroots, intercultural experience that has been coordinated by Jonathon S. Miller-Weisberger since 1995, facilitated by a collaborative group of elders and youth – forest masters, healers, visionaries, tropical biologists, and ethnobotanists – who are engaged in long term ground-level rainforest conservation projects and cultural heritage transmission. The purpose is to offer international participants a significant life experience within an intercultural exchange, and to channel funds from the trips toward ground-level rainforest conservation and cultural heritage projects through Grupo Osanimi in Ecuador. A portion of the funds also supports the Usko Ayar School of Amazonian Painting in Pucallpa, Perú, directed by don Pablo Amaringo, whose paintings were the basis of one of the best books yet written on Amazonian shamanism – Luis Eduardo Luna, Ayahuasca visions: The religious iconography of a Peruvian shaman (Berkeley CA: North Atlantic Books, 1999), ISBN 1556433115.
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