On the evening of January 21st Colin and I arrived in Macas (originally called ‘Sevilla del Oro’ by the Spanish, but now named after the Macas Indians) in the Morona Santiago province, in the Upano Valley. The Upano Valley is famous for its agricultural product such as bananas and coffee. We were pretty exhausted, and settled on the first hotel we saw across the way from the bus station. Colin managed to find us some chicken and chips for dinner, while I tried to hustle and figure out how we were going to explore the area. I really wanted to meet someone from the Shuar tribe and get the chance to speak with them, but we weren’t sure how to go about doing it – there seemed to be a small tourist industry in Macas!
The next morning on the 22nd we started our day by visiting tourist information. Which was actually informative! They introduced us to a tour guide who had different options available for us to see the local tribes and the jungle. They were all a little pricey though as there were no real ‘group tours’ in the area – so we put that on the back burner and decided to try and do it ourselves on the fly that day.
We headed for some breakfast, which consisted of some delicious cheese empanadas de verde (made of plantains) and a super sweet tea called guayusa, which is very high in caffeine and containing twice the antioxidants of green tea. We heard from a local that the Kichwa and Shuar indigenous communities sometimes drink this tea around a bonfire at a waterfall at 3:00 am in a special ceremony. The high level of caffeine and continuous drinking of this tea (cup after cup for hours) eventually causes ceremony members to vomit. This is desired because of its ability to be a body cleansing diuretic, which is required before drinking the hallucinogenic drink Ayahuasca in order to achieve the strongest effect from the drug.
I found this story about the Shuar origin story of the guayusa tea plant:
“In ancient times, people prayed for a plant that would teach them how to dream. These twins canoed down a river on a quest to find this plant, woke up in the middle of the night, and this spirit village had manifested on the other side of the river. They went to this palace and went up a staircase to the heavens, where they saw all of their ancestors, generation after generation. These ancestors gifted them this plant and said, "This is a plant that can help your people and connect you to the dream world." When they woke up in the morning, they still had the physical plant. They took it back to their community and guayusa became a central part of their culture.”
(Emma Weissmann, National Geographic 2014)
Since guayusa is best grown naturally in the forest there isn’t much people have to do besides collect it in order to use it. In fact, there was a guayusa tree growing right outside the café we were eating at! Even more low maintenance…
After breakfast we caught a minibus to the small town of Sucua, which we passed the day before. From the town center we took a taxi to Sucua’s Jardin Botanico – where we explored Sucua’s part of the Amazon rainforest. There were loads of animal skins and snakes in jars on display, but the best part was just walking through the jungle and seeing the different plants on display along the trails. The orchids were fantastic and the huge Amazonian trees were impressive. There weren’t too many animals to be seen, but the potential is definitely there if they keep planting more Amazonian flowers and different kinds of native plants.
Once we got deeper into the Jardin Botanico we came across the bird tower, built around a huge tree. We climbed up to the top and watched for some birds and animals from the canopy.
At the end of our walk we spoke with some volunteers who were working on the park to plant more orchids. A few of the volunteers were Shuar and once the owner we met knew we were interested in meeting some he introduced him to us and we chatted for a while! Once finished, we took a taxi back to the town center of Sucua, but first stopped by to see some petroglyphs on a rock – though I don’t think we found them.
Next we walked to the Shuar Centro Informativo. The Shuar Center had some paintings and costumes on display – unfortunately they were just closing up to go to lunch so we had to rush through the exhibits. They did give us a good tip though on how to take a taxi out to one of the nearby Shuar villages in order to speak with some local families.
From the museum we were able to learn that the Shuar people have lived in separate households in the rainforest in a semi-nomadic lifestyle, without a form of organized leadership. This was pretty typical of indigenous jungle tribes – their main and strongest link besides any known family ties is a shared language. The Shuar are most famously known for their past practice of shrinking heads (tsantsa), and now they are only supposed to shrink sloth heads as a ‘right of passage’ coming-of-age ritual, though Shuar who live in villages have lost this type of practice. These shrunken heads were supposedly used to contain the soul of the victim, and this soul could control the user’s wives and daughters. I’ve posted a documentary clip below that shows footage of a head being shrunk in Ecuador in the 1960’s.
Interestingly, the Shuar people are known for their fierce warrior style, with both men and women getting involved with armed battles between communities – and they were resistant to the Incan armies as well. They also had a strong shaman culture, and a belief that shaman control tsentsak or invisible darts which can hit people and cause them harm.
After a delicious (and huge, we couldn’t finish it all) fish lunch at a place in town, Colin and I took a taxi to the small Shuar village of Asuncion. We pulled up to one Shuar family’s property which had a sign out front that said ‘Nujan Artesanias.’ The family had constructed a traditional house on their property. They also had a second house they lived in (two parents and three sons) off to the side of the traditional house. Though we didn’t have any kind of appointment (and their house isn’t exactly a ‘museum’ or ‘visitor attraction’ without being arranged through an agency) they welcomed us in and we got to spend a couple of hours speaking with them (completely in Spanish, but we got it!) about their lives.
The couple owned two parrots, the first being a cute little blue-headed parrot. The second larger parrot was a blue-fronted amazon (which I’ve just learned are not supposed to ever eat avocado because it is toxic for them – good to know) which said on the fencepost eating some bright red achiote fruit. Interestingly, this parrot has an extremely rare mutation called the ‘chocolate raspberry’ mutation of bred by the psittaculturist, Howard Voren. Click here to see some photos of his chocolate raspberry parrot mutation!
We spoke with the couple about what it was like for them living in Ecuador as part of an indigenous community. They admitted they had lost contact with the more jungle-dwelling Shuar (most of them have left the jungle anyways) and that the other group was in a very different situation from themselves. While they still speak the Shuar language to each other and their children, they speak Spanish to communicate with other Ecuadorians. They were very curious about what it is like for foreigners coming to Ecuador, how long we could stay in the country and what cities we were visiting. They asked us what we were allowed to take back into our countries (skins, seeds, etc.) in order to figure out what they could sell to other tourists like us.
At some point in our talk they decided it would be fun to dress us up using achiote fruit red face paint and some of their animal skin (anaconda, jaguar, ocelot, etc.) dancing outfits. There were headdresses made out of porcupines and toucans. We got photos. 
As we spoke with the Shuar couple and got to know them more, they decided they liked us enough that they wanted to give us some Shuar names in their own language. Awesome! Colin got the name ‘Nanki’ which means ‘lance’ or ‘spear,’ and I got the name ‘Yaa’ which means ‘star.’ We ended up getting a small bowl from them made out of a small dried gourd. They even took the time to put our new names (Nanki y Yaa) on the bowl for us! We ended up buying a cool bracelet and a pair of earrings from them – and they gave us a couple extra bracelets for free!
It was starting to get a bit late so we decided to take them up on the offer of heading down to the river with their kids as our guides. We played with their kids for a bit and dipped our toes in the cold lake water before heading back to their house. It took a little while (which was OK, because we got to tour their garden in the mean time!) but we finally got a shared ride into town where we were able to get a bus back to Macas, fully satisfied with our unique experience. Once we arrived in Macas we ordered a couple of chicken-filled maitos (chicken and yuca mashed together and wrapped in heliconia leaves) or they could have been ayampacos (the same, just wrapped in ginger leaves) instead – not sure. What we were sure about is that we didn’t like them… way too stinky and mushy, and we would never order them again!
Once we got back to Macas we realized we had done everything we could do in the city. Therefore we decided on January 23rd to head off for Puyo – and see what kind of jungle was over there!
Francesca
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