AMAZON RAINFOREST RETREAT | AMAZON EXPEDITIONERS

AMAZON RAINFOREST RETREAT

Destination: Amazon Rainforest

Country and Region: Peru, Loreto

Arrival/Departure City: Iquitos

Main Objective: To Connect with the Teachings of the Earth, Sacred Plants, Indigenous World-View, Ancestral Ways of Living, and Teachings of Zen Buddhism in Order to Discover the Unity, Wisdom, and Love Residing at Our Core

Retreat Phases: Indigenous Customs and Traditions, Master Plants, and Sesshin-Zen Style Meditation

Others Events: Wildlife Sighting, and Humanitarian Assistance to Villages

Advance Booking Conditions: 2 Months Minimum

Booking Payment Conditions: 50% Required

Booking Payment Method: Credit/Debit Cards

Remaining Payment Method/Deadline: Cash at Arrival

Event Availability in 2024: Month of July Only

(M - C)

REQUEST ROUGH OUTLINE AND RATES HERE

JOIN RETREAT JULY 9TH, 2024 FOR 21 DAYS

AMAZON RAINFOREST RETREAT 21 DAYS - "A Spiritual and Cultural Immersion Into the Depths of Sacred Amazonian Lands in Search of Peace, Harmony, Self-Healing, and Connection to Mother Earth."

This is a 21-day rustic retreat, removed from the comforts, complexities, and stress of modern civilization. This retreat is for travelers seeking to have a profound educational, cultural, traditional, spiritual, meditative, mentally and physically challenging experience in the depths of the Amazon jungle. This expedition is an off-grid Amazon Rainforest Immersion coupled with a Plant Medicine Intensive and a Zen-style Meditation Retreat. The main objective of this expedition-retreat is, "To connect with the teachings of the Earth, Sacred plants, Indigenous world-view, Ancestral ways of living, and teachings of Zen Buddhism in order to discover the Unity, Wisdom, and Love residing at our core".

This very well-organized trip will be divided into three essential phases with some overlap, each lasting 1 week. (Week 1) "Indigenous Customs and Traditions", (Week 2) "Traditional Amazonian Master Plants", and (Week 3) "Sesshin-Zen Style Meditation".

If this sounds like a very interesting fit for you, then we think it is definitely the expedition/retreat you are looking for!

Our journey will begin in the city of Iquitos, with a beautiful and relaxing day along the Amazon River, and then down other tributary rivers to reach the deepest part of its lands. While this navigation lasts we will appreciate the current local lifestyle of several riverine indigenous peoples. As we advance in our immersion into more remote jungle areas, we will witness how gradually the ways of life begin to resemble more ancestral Amazonian lifestyles.

Next, we settle at our base camp, an isolated piece of land with rustic structures we call "EL CENTRO" (in english translation meaning "THE CENTER"). This will become "OUR CENTER", our base camp and home. El Centro is where most of our initial activities will be learned and performed, collecting and processing plants, learning basic survival skills, and imbibing the ways of traditional and modern-day Amazonian sustenance living. Here we will loosen our ties with mainstream modern culture and develop a simple, direct, and genuine connection with the raw elements, returning to the basics, to the origins of who we are and how it is that we truly belong to this beautiful Earth. Participants will experience ancient customs and traditions that little by little are being forgotten by the new generations, but still are preserved by a small group of Amazonian ethnic people in the area. From this first week onward, we will also begin to incorporate Zen meditation into our daily schedule.

Our second week in the Amazon will center around Master Plants. During this week there will be short and long segments of preparatory diets and meditation. This will include rest days in which we will fast, reduce sun exposure, and will not take part in any physically strenuous activities. This middle week of spiritual self-encounter, guided by Shaman Master Healers, and Jungle Survival Instructors, will be an intense concentration showing us the correct use of various Amazonian Master Plants and other traditional medicinal plants popular in the Peruvian Amazon. These are powerful and effective ancient native plants that cleanse, treat, heal, and harmonize our bodies, hearts, and minds.

Finally, during the last week of our retreat, we will do a multi-day Sesshin (Zen Style Meditation Retreat) led by two American Zen Priests and dear friends at our base camp. This will be a silent meditation intensive with up to 8 hours of seated meditation per day. All participants are asked to participate in the entirety of the meditation retreat. Towards the end of the sesshin, as a final celebration and test of rewiring and reconnecting with our origins, our team will immerse each traveler in the depths of the Amazon rainforest, exploring it like nomads, letting ourselves be embraced by the purest of nature that surrounds us. Hiking and sitting by night and day, we will also have the opportunity to encounter nocturnal wildlife.

This is a very unique and special opportunity to combine deep meditation practice with wilderness immersion, master plants, and indigenous ways of living. This time is ripe for us to connect our spirituality with the Earth. Space is limited. We hope you will join us!

Note: The majority of the instruction and teaching will be offered in English, however, the majority of the crew and indigenous peoples only speak Spanish and native Amazonian languages. English and/or Spanish translation will be provided when needed.

AMAZON TERRITORY TO BE VISITED:

The Ampiyacu-Apayacu Regional Conservation Area (ACRAA) is a protected area in Peru, and covers an area of 434,129.54 hectares in the provinces of Maynas and Ramón Castilla, in the Loreto region.

The path towards the designation of the Ampiyacu-Apayacu zone, in the provinces of Maynas and Ramón Castilla, in Loreto, as an area of Regional Conservation (ACR) has been long and intense. It started in 1998, when the population of the area, composed mainly of boras, huitotos and ocainas, gave the alert about the conservation of their forests before the entrance to the area of a mining company.

Starting in 1998, work began on preserve this area. According to the National Service of Natural Areas Protected by the State (Sernanp), which named the area as ACR in December 23, 2010, it is one of the most biodiverse areas in terms of plant species in the world: it is home to 1,500 types of plants. In addition, in this ecosystem there are 207 species of fish, 64 amphibians, 40 reptiles, 362 birds and 60 mammals.

Another important feature of this new ACR is that the upper parts of the Ampiyacu and Apayacu basins are a permanent source of water to maintain the habitat of aquatic fauna, which constitutes the main source of food resources for the 16 native communities settled in its basins.

ETHNIC GROUPS IN THIS TERRITORY:

The Bora Ethnic Group; are an indigenous tribe of the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon, located between the Putumayo and Napo rivers. The Bora speak a Hitotan language and comprise approximately 2,000 people. In the last forty years, they have become largely settled people living mostly in permanent forest settlements. In the animist Bora worldview, there is no distinction between the physical and spiritual worlds and spirits are present throughout the world. Bora families practice exogamy. The Bora has an elaborate knowledge of the plant life of the surrounding rainforest. Like other indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, such as the Urarina plants, especially trees, hold a complex and important interest for the Bora. The Bora have guarded their lands against both indigenous foes and outsider colonials. Around the time of the 20th century, the rubber boom had a devastating impact on the Boras. A book that recorded the mistreatment of the Boras during that time period is "The Putumayo; The Devil's Paradise" which was published in 1912 and written by W.E. Hardenburg. The tribe's ancestral lands are currently threatened by illegal logging practices. The Bora has no indigenous reserves.

The Huitoto Ethnic Group; were once composed of 100 villages or 31 tribes, but disease and conflict have reduced their numbers. In the early 20th century, the Witoto population was 50,000. The rubber boom in the mid-20th century brought diseases and displacement to the Witotos, causing their numbers to plummet to 7,000–10,000. Since the 1990s, cattle ranchers have invaded Witoto lands, depleted the soil, and polluted the waterways. In response to the incursions, some governments established several reservations for Witotos, one almost remote one is located at the Ampiyacu not too far from the Bora Indigenous tribe. Huitoto people practice swidden or slash-and-burn agriculture. To prevent depleting the land, they relocate their fields every few yields. Major crops include cacao, coca, maize, bitter and sweet manioc, bananas, mangoes, palms, peanuts, pineapples, plantains, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and yams. Ethnobotanists have studied Witoto agriculture due to its efficiency and sustainability. Huitoto men hunt with blowguns and shotguns.

The Ocaina Ethnic Group; are an ethnic group of the Amazon that inhabit the banks of the Yaguasyacu, Ampiyacu, jamayacù, Putumayo, and Algodon rivers (in Peru); Although they are known as ocaina, they call themselves Dyo'xaiya or Ivo'tsa. Ocaine language found within the Huitoto linguistic family. Bora-witotoque language family includes besides the ocainas, nonuñas, uitotos, muninanes and bora-mirañas, among others. The Ocainas share history and many cultural characteristics with the Huitotos, Resígaros, and Andoques. These groups inhabited the southern tip of Colombia and were brought to Peruvian territory by the bosses during the Amazon rubber boom. The violence infringed by the bosses descended their population and they are currently in the process of assimilation into the Huitotos.

The Yaguas Ethnic Group; is estimated that there are some 6,000 Yagua living in north-eastern Peru and southern Colombia, in 30 communities along the Amazon, Napo, Putumayo, and Yavari rivers, and their tributaries. This makes it one of the larger indigenous communities in Amazonia, and this is reflected in the name of the recently-created Yaguas National Park in the Department of Loreto. Currently, the Yagua live in some 30 communities scattered throughout a section of the Peruvian and Colombian Amazon basin which can roughly be described as a rectangle 200 miles wide and 350 miles long (70,000 sq. miles) extending southward from the second to the fifth parallel and westward from the 70th to the 75th meridian west.

WHAT IS INCLUDED:

Airport Pick Up and Drop Off Transportation.
Hotel/hostel search assistance upon arrival to Iquitos (if needed).
Fluvial transportation service to/from remote destinations (speed & slow boats).
Entry permits to indigenous territories.
Economic support to villages nearby.
First Responders Wilderness Kit for Emergencies with Antivenom Serums.
Satellite/GPS Communication Devices with 24/7 SOS Coverage and Live Locators.
Daily meals provided during the expedition (based on traditional local food).
Filtered water during the expedition.
Lead Guide/Translator (English-Spanish).
Native Assistant Guides/Translators (Spanish-Any Local Indigenous Language).
(1-2) Master Shamans.
(2) Zen Priests.
Gear (mosquito net, sleeping mat and blanket).

WHAT IS NOT INCLUDED:

Airfare to and from Iquitos.
Personal Travel Insurance.
Hotel/hostel in Iquitos.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTES:

Booking in Advance is Highly Recommended; for the collection of personal information, to request authorization of entry to indigenous territories at all levels (national, regional, and communal authorities), logistic preparation, personnel assignment, etc.
Arrival and Departure Recommendation to and from Iquitos; 1 day before and 1 day after your trip.
Rucksack Size and Weight Recommendations; 55-65 liters and 10 kilos.
For full packing list details visit our What to Pack page.
Be warned; That this unique and very well combined Amazonian retreat is only open to highly motivated participants, with strong adaptive capacities and who are not looking for anything luxurious. Otherwise, it is for those with a pure and humble goal in mind and heart to find peace, love, harmony and compassion with themselves and others, far above all comfort, as well as giving their all to achieve a deep understanding of humanity and living species in general within our home planet.
To Be Better Prepared for this Expedition; Travelers are highly advised to visit our next link "Master Plants Diet Info".
All activities are subject to change due to weather conditions at any time of the year. The main rivers and the levels of the tributaries can vary and, therefore, it is possible that the navigation times and the excursions are modified at the discretion of the guide, this will not alter our motivation to make this trip the best.
For additional information visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.