The experiences during the tours

However, the tours through the forest are extremely tough. Below you can read about the longest tour I have taken so far:

The first day in the forest was fantastic. It always pulls me here like an invisible force when I'm in a bad mood or not feeling well. I had been sleeping poorly in the past few days because of the grass mites (Isango) that were tormenting me at night and biting my feet completely🐜. We rode here on a motorcycle and as soon as we arrived, I felt the incredible connection with the woman in the forest🌏 again. I was immediately much calmer. We worked and ate rice and fresh pineapples🍍. I showed her my feet and she said, 'We'll take a bath later and then you can rub yourself with alcohol.' I waited patiently for the man I came with to leave, because we were supposed to take a bath💦. At first, I still thought she really had something like a shower, but I quickly dismissed that thought because she is so connected to nature. She said 3 times excitedly, 'We're going to take a bath now.' We went to her little stream and she undressed down to her long underwear. I was still a bit awkward and shy 😳and wanted to wait and see what happens before getting completely naked, but then it somehow felt odd. I took off my pants and she quickly washed them with the words, 'You always have to do this after being in the grass because of the Isangos.' Then she took a bucket full of water and poured it completely over her head, saying, 'How delicious! How delicious this water is!'💧. I undressed down to my underwear and couldn't believe it: 'I'm bathing naked in the rainforest with a wild woman'🐷. I grinned from ear to ear while bathing. I felt like I was born again and baptized by the rainforest and her🌾. Truly alive. I could have cried with happiness. After that, she said that I should sleep in her room because otherwise the puma would eat me. I naturally didn't object. She told stories about her brother, who had dengue fever at the time, and about the healing plant that cured him. She made us dinner and a cocoa tea☕, and we ate with a view of the forest. I had so many questions but had a big barrier in my mouth because I couldn't ask them in Spanish. Finally, I gathered all my courage and simply asked her with the words I knew, because I didn't want to miss this opportunity: 'When did you come to the forest? Do you want to die in the forest? Do you know every animal? What do you like most about the forest?' The answers were incredible and I tried to store every word in my heart❤. After that, we looked silently into the forest and saw hundreds of fireflies dancing in the trees✨. Some even made a light as bright as a fist. I couldn't believe my luck and struggled to swallow my food because I had such a lump in my throat from all the unexpected happiness. We went to her bedroom and she treated my feet with alcohol and iodine, using her solar lamp to examine them🔦. Suddenly, all the itching stopped. She proudly turned on her radio and showed me that it worked in the rainforest📟. We went to bed and she chewed my ear off. When I replied with, 'Señora...' she said, 'Just call me Ester... that's my name.' I felt very honored. We had somehow become friends👯🏽‍♂️: Here in the forest and without me speaking Spanish well. She turned off the solar lamp and the radio, and I listened to the forest. The sounds put me in a trance and I saw hundreds of images that I will never forget. I woke up again because of an itch, but she quickly brought alcohol to rub me. She said she couldn't sleep during the full moon anyway because it's evil, and I was once again amazed by her unity with nature. I fell asleep and the sun woke me up☀ and I saw hundreds of leaves in front of me🍃. I smiled and looked forward to the day.

On the second day, we prepared a meal for an NGO organization that wanted to visit our project. We rode on a motorcycle with the man from the previous day, who came again to bring a chicken🐔 and fresh flowers💐, to a farmer to get Manjok, but he wasn't there unfortunately. She found a spice for the dish we were preparing along the roadside and jumped around like crazy, almost falling off the motorcycle when she tried to get back on because she was so excited. We rode back and met another farmer who had fantastic pineapple plants🍍. We went with him to his plantation and ate incredibly delicious pineapples under a red-shimmering tree. He also had Manjok, and I saw for the first time how the plant grows. I asked about the time and we realized that we hardly had any time left to cook. We prepared the food and it only lacked...