At Rainforest Expeditions’ Posada Amazonas Guests Can Experience Ancient Ayahuasca Ceremony

July 25, 2012 - PRLog -- LIMA, Peru,  – Peru’s leader in sustainable tourism, Rainforest Expeditions http://www.perunature.com/, invites guests seeking a visionary experience to partake in an ancient Ayahuasca ceremony during a four-day wellness program at Posada Amazonas, one of its three eco-lodges deep in Peru’s Amazonian rainforest.

Ayahuasca is a native rainforest plant historically used by shamans in the region.

The per person rate for the four night / three day wellness program is $725 double ($165 single supplement). This includes meals, accommodations, services including the ceremony, all river transportation and transfers from and to the airport of Puerto Maldonado. See: http://www.perunature.com/peru-ayahuasca-ceremony-4d3n.html

The Ayahuasca (Banisteropsis caapi), or 'rope of the spirits' in Quechua, is the master plant of the Amazonian rainforest that is combined with Chacruna (Psicotria viridis) into a brew said to have spiritual healing powers. For thousands of years shamans have used its properties to cure the body and the soul and to connect with gods and nature.

“Ayahuasca starts a spiritual relationship that lasts the rest of your life. The experience is visionary and for many it generates a new balance and order to life. This emerges deep from a participant’s roots and life history giving them renewed sense and purpose,” explains Jeff Cremer, Marketing Director for Rainforest Expeditions.

Activities before and after the ceremony (that can last as long as eight hours) are focused on the well-being of guests partaking in the ceremony. They are requested to respect both the spiritual and physical rigors of taking Ayahuasca by fasting, resting and practicing sexual abstinence in advance of the ceremony.

Because of the secluded location of the lodge along the Tambopata River, wildlife viewing is also a part of the whole experience. Day One is travel day to the lodge followed by a climb up a 30-meter tower to view the canopy of prime standing forest. A boat ride and hike may reveal a resident family of nine giant river otters on Lake Tres Chimbadas and such wildlife as caiman, hoatzin and horned screamers.

Guests also will experience an ethno botanical tour, stopping at a communal organization that produces medicines out of forest plants and administers them to patients. A trail explains the different medicinal (and other) uses of selected plants. This is also the site of the Ayahuasca ceremony held in a maloka (ritual house) where a healer sings ikaros (healing songs). In the morning guests return to Posada Amazonas for a day of rest and relaxation.

The Ayahuasca ceremony can also be arranged with prior notice for guests staying at Rainforest Expedition’s Refugio Amazonas lodge for an additional $200 per person.

A variety of other wellness programs and spa services are available at Refugio Amazonas or Posada Amazonas. See: http://www.perunature.com/peru-rainforest-spa-services.html.

Posada Amazonas is owned by and located within a communal reserve of the indigenous Ese’eja of Infierno who manage it in partnership with Rainforest Expeditions. Some 170 native and ribereño (second or third generation settlers) families work and profit from this 30-room lodge (each residence equipped with hot water and a private bath). The property also has a wellness and holistic center for massage and aromatherapy, bar and dining area. A common area includes a hammock lounge and meeting room. See: http://www.perunature.com/posada-amazonas.html

This lodge is one of three in a string of Rainforest Expeditions’ jungle lodges all accessed from Puerto Maldonado airport. Tambopata Research Center is the most distant and secluded. The other is Refugio Amazonas. Guests arrive from Lima or Cusco on daily commercial flights lasting 45 or 90 minutes respectively. Travelers are then transported to the Infierno River Port to board motorized wooden canoes for a 45-minute trip to the first lodge, Posada Amazonas. Refugio Amazonas, the second lodge, is a 3.5-hour boat trip after departing the dock. The third and most remote is Tambopata Research Center, requiring a 4-hour additional upriver boat ride from Refugio Amazonas.  Each lodge is only a few minutes on foot from the river bank.  See: http://www.perunature.com/tambopata-jungle-lodges-puerto-...

In each of the three distinct locations, guests are accommodated in clean and comfortable, minimally appointed, three-sided rooms built of clay, wood and palm fronds.  The signature statement is to leave one wall open to the jungle so guests can hear, see and smell the rainforest.  Mosquito netting adorns each bed.

Rainforest Expeditions is a Peruvian ecotourism company that shares with visitors in a sustainable manner the miracles of the Tambopata–Candamo Reserved Zone, 1.5 million hectares of pristine, still wild, tropical rainforest encompassing an area of land the size of Connecticut and stretching from the Andean highlands to the Amazon lowlands. It includes the Tambopata National Reserve, a 275,000-hectare conservation unit created by the Peruvian government in 1990 to protect the watersheds of the Tambopata and Candamo rivers. It is adjacent to the 1-million-hectare Bahuaja Sonene National Park. Conservation and ecotourism is helping to protect some of the last untouched lowland and premontane tropical humid forests in the Amazon.

Since 1989, guests have added value to the region’s standing tropical rainforest. A sensitively conceived and managed (in some cases by native communities) touristic infrastructure creates a competitive alternative to such unsustainable economic uses as clear cutting the forest for timber or for cattle grazing. Rainforest Expeditions has been verified and certified “a sustainable tourism business” by the Rainforest Alliance http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/.

For details and reservations call: 1-(877)-231-9251 or visit: http://www.perunature.com/

For photos and/or more information on Rainforest Expeditions please contact:

Sara Widness / 802-234-6704 / sara@widnesspr.com
Dave Wiggins / 303-554-8821 / dave@travelnewssource.com
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