8/17/09: The calm before the storm :)

I tried to sleep in but the rooster decided that it would be a good idea to crow all morning, so I got up and hung around waiting for the others to rise. Luckily, Luco was awake and he took me on a walk down to the river where we will be cleansing ourselves every morning at 6am after ceremony to clear the purged energy that is left on our skin from the night before. When we returned everyone was finally awake so we had our breakfast and prepared to depart down river and deep into the jungle to collect the plants going into the Ayahuasca and the ones we will be dieting with. It is so intresting to see how every plant has some sort of healing power. Luco took us around and taught us about the numersoun plants we were collecting. One highlight was when we got to feel the energy of the Ayauma tree with our hands, and bless the Ayauma tree with tobacco smoke before we took part of it. The Ayauma tree as Luco explained it, contains the spirit of a giant with no head so it has no thought, but it has an eye and a heart. We will be putting this in our tea to enhance the healing properties of the Ayahuasca. We also collected Punga Negra, Punga Blanca, and Punga Amaria, which contains the spirit of the Anaconda so that it can join us during the ceremonies. Walking through the Jungle was epic. The trees around us were thousands of years old and hundreds of feet tall. In addition, parts of the jungle becamse do dense that we had to use machetes to get through. After we returned, we had lunch and lounged around for three to four hours. At 6:30 Luco gave us a tea made with the plants we collected earlier to protect us and enhance our experience with the Ayayahuasca.