In the morning we got on the plane to fly to Pucallpa with the goals to get to know the daily life of local Peruvian jungle communities and participate in ayahuasca ceremonies.
In the airport, we were greeted by Alberto, an uncle of Peruvian friend Pio who we traveled with to Machu Picchu. We took a tuk-tuk to a river port and jumped in the boat. This was a boat that connects Pucallpa with the communities in the jungle. After a hot 2-hour boat ride which featured a blasting 2010s pop music playlist, we walked through a muddy road to take another tuk-tuk and after half an hour we reached our final destination, a village of Ceilan.
Our tuk-tuk stopped next to uncle Alberto’s house and we immediately met a big part of their family: wife, kids, and grandmothers. A 2-minute walk from the house there was a huge area designed for accomodating guests and organizing ceremonies: barracks for sleeping, a kitchen/dining building, a shower, and 2 wooden temples. We met another friend from Machu Picchu Bogdan who was the only other guest/foreigner there at the moment. This was one of many places that lost many visitors due to Covid.
It got dark quickly, we had our dinner and went to see a ceremony. Today we were only spectators but it was an interesting spectacle, with many family members: grandmothers, cousins, brothers, and sisters joining to connect, drink ayahuasca and sing songs in Shipibo. We went to sleep in our barracks early before the end of the ceremony to be fresh for tomorrow.