Follow the Journey

Hola familias! The second half of our week in the Amazon went quite swell. On Thursday, we worked in the garden harvesting turmeric, which is used for medicinal purposes in local communities. After that long, hard day of work we got to go tubing in the river! Tubing was fat lit. Maddy and I held hands the whole way and Paxton got some mosquito bites to remember the trip by. We all had a blast!
The next two days started off with long hours of work and a lot of us were feeling drained and unmotivated working in the hot sun, but everyone did a great job pushing through. Luckily, on those days we had our afternoons off and had more free time than we knew what to do with. We filled that time with refreshing in the river, playing games and doing a self-reflection activity. We played back to back to back rounds of Mafia and pranked people with the game, Fantasy.
Sunday was our last full day and it was my favorite because we worked for less than one hour. After some chill time, we headed to a small community further up the Arajuno River. They greeted us as we arrived and told us about their lives. They barely have anything, but are still able to be happy and self sustained. The children put on outfits and performed a dance for us and pulled us out of our seats so we would dance with them. We weren’t the greatest at it, but had a great time. Then we got demonstrations from their natural healer, or shamana, who waved leaves over our heads while chanting and blowing smoke on us. It was meant to clear any bad energy and put in good energy. That night was our last night in the jungle, we had an amazing dinner and watched the presidential debate. Since it is the first election we can vote in, we found it both interesting and humorous.
That concludes our week at the Arajuno Jungle Lodge! Que buen tiempo!!
– Hollyn