A quick review

After an infructuous airport meeting, I finally met my mother and my little brother in downtown Quito. We had planned 2 weeks together and I let them the liberty to choose the itinerary upon their interests.

Ecuador is rather small but still, concessions are necessary with only 2 weeks of time. We decided to skip the coast and focus on the inside of the country. The central region has plenty of hikes and volcanoes to get your legs tired before an eventual trip down to the Oriente, where the Andes dive into the amazon basin.

I’m not really use to rush in between places so I tried to hang on behind the planning, having difficulties to catch up with the lack of sleep I got from the Ayahuasca retreat followed by a 24hrs journey to Quito… Insomnia was not far!

People in Ecuador are definitely not as open and outgoing as in Colombia but still really friendly. My mum was really happy, relaxing while her two sons were guiding the journey through (my brother speaks also fluent Spanish). I enjoyed seeing the excitement they felt while traveling around. Indeed, I am probably spoiled but especially tired of so much travelling as the main things that draw my attention are inner landscapes… but I have to say that the Andes and its whitish volcanoes popping everywhere did get my respect & wonder!

A Talkative shaman…

My brother being interested of experiencing an ayahuasca ceremony, I found a good contact through the FSS (Foundation for Shamanic Studies), someone reliable where I wouldn’t get us into sketchy circumstances. I was really happy to get a chance to introduce them a little bit of what I’ve been doing and what is hiding behind that mysterious word: shamanism. We met Jose at his house the day before just to have a chat and decided to head out to his Finca in the jungle. My mother could come without participating, which was just perfect.

We quickly understood that our host was quite of a character: I never met somebody speaking sooooo much of himself!

Indeed, he is apparently one of the most renown shaman of Ecuador (the most if you listen to him). It’s true that he has quite of a story, starting taking ayahuesca at 3 month old, having died 3 times, healed that many people and so on… BUT after 2 days he still didn’t know our names!! Yep, our dear friend was just experiencing too much astrological sun / big ego-burn out, so classic of Self realizing stars! At some point, he even started telling his stories during the ceremony ahaha, I couldn’t believe it!

Anyways, he is really good at what he does and pretty funny on its own way. My brother had a good first journey, that was the most important. Plus the whole experience was really authentic: the hike, the family, the jungle, the ceremony…

Another highlight for me was our jungle excursion. I’m not a big jungle fan, I find it too repetitive. But during our 4 days, I loved rowing across small canals & fishing piranhas, almost naked under the warm pouring rain, a must!