Vsiting Achuar people in the Amazon Rainforest

The first few days of my trip were amazing! I stayed with the indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon, Achuar people. Their communities are located in very remote areas of the Amazon. To get there, it’s a 50-minute flight from the nearest town on a 10-seater plane. The flight was incredible. We flew low over the Amazon rainforest and for miles all you could see was the lush, dense rainforest with tall trees and the Pasteza River running through it. Every once in a while we flew over a small Achuar community and you could see their huts from above. We landed on a muddy strip of land and from there it was a 30-minute ride in a canoe. The only other way to get here from the nearest town would be to walk through the rainforest, which I was told would take about 3 weeks. I stayed in a hut build on stilts in a lagoon surrounded by the rainforest. All you could hear were birds, insects and frogs. The air was so clean. I was the only guest, which was great. I had the whole community all to myself. In the morning we hiked through the rainforest looking for medicinal plants used by the Achuar people. They showed me their hunting techniques with bow and arrow and spears. In the afternoon we took their traditional wooden canoe up the river to different lagoons and in the evening they entertained me with their songs and dances. Food was actually pretty good. They eat a lot of fish (catfish, piranhas), howler monkeys and a LOT of yucca. Of course, they have a welcome drink and it’s actually something they drink all the time. It’s made of yucca fermented in spit. I know; sounds delicious. It tastes kind of like beer, but for someone who does not drink beer, it was about 10 times worse. It is generally prepared by the woman of the house. She boils a huge pot of yucca and then chews it and spits it back into the pot. It ferments for about 3-5 days and then it’s ready to be consumed. Even small kids drink it. I tasted it, but could not bring myself to have it more than once. I was even invited to prepare it with the wife of the president of the community I visited. But I had to politely decline. The woman is valued here by how well she cooks, how good her “chi-cha” is (the fermented yucca drink) and how well she takes care of the household. Obviously, I would have failed miserably in this community. But it was so exciting observing them and spending 4 days with them.