We got some new rocks! I know, that sounds pretty funny, huh? Not a
lot of people get so excited about rocks, but we do! Especially when they are
new volcanic rocks for our San Pedro and
Ayahuasca
Ceremony in the Sweatlodge (Temezcal in Spanish).
First we want to say a BIG THANK YOU to Csaba and Mika for their kind and
generous donation toward this effort, as the cost of going and getting these
rocks was a little bit daunting. It wasn’t cheap to rent trucks, taxis, pay
drivers, hotels, etcetera, even though the rocks themselves were free for the
taking at the land where it was near the volcano. If it wasn’t for Csaba and
Mika, we couldn’t have done it!
A BIG thank you to you two beautiful and lovely souls. Now we’re going
to have an even hotter sweatlodge than ever, thanks to you! I’m sure all
the future participants will be saying thank you too with a big groan as they
sweat out all that “stuff” that it’s time to let go of, ha!
Read our Adventure Story with our Ayahuasca Shamans and the Volcanic Rock
Hunt!
Salvador and Paulina, our
ayahuasca
shamans, went with their daughter, Marko (one of our lovely volunteers) and
Christine
Breese to find some new volcanic rocks for our sweatloge ceremony during
the
ayahuasca
retreats at Gaia Sagrada. We weren’t quite sure where to go… to get them,
but we figured being near a volcano would be a good place to start! It’s not
like you can just go to the store and buy volcanic rocks. You have to go out in
the country and find them!
We took a night bus to Riobamba
and stayed overnight in an affordable but nice hotel. The driver of the truck
stayed at the same hotel. We met didn’t get to the hotel until 12:30 am, and
were finally in bed by 1 am. Then in the morning at the breakfast buffet we met
the driver (Ruben) and his wife. We couldn’t all fit in his truck so we got a
taxi to take the extra bodies (us) along for the ride.
We left Riobamba and were headed for the
volcano called Chimborazo, but the driver of the taxi (Julio) told us that
there weren’t that many rocks to be found there but there were a lot of rocks
to be found near Banos, a popular tourist destination in Ecuador. So we
decided to let the taxi driver lead the truck there.
What a good decision that was. As we were driving toward Banos, there was
someone burning cedar wood near the road, a sacred tree in the
ayahuasca
ceremonies and the san pedro ceremonies that our
ayahuasca
shaman and san pedro shaman love to use in ceremony for cleansing moments
when they come up. That was affirmation from the universe that we had made the
right choice to go to Banos instead of Chimborazo.
We all took a blessing from the smoke in the taxi as we passed.
When we got close to Banos, we drove around and found the pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow! A publicly accessible quarry type of place with
thousands of volcanic rocks! Yay! Success!
We all happily went about picking rocks, and even Salvador and Paulina’s 5 year old daughter
joined in, as well as the truck driver, his wife, and the taxi driver. Within a
couple hours we had a truckload of delicious looking, seriously solid volcanic
rocks that would heat up the
Gaia Sagrada
sweatlodge double what the river rocks we were using could do. The truck
driver, his wife, and the taxi driver were having fun too because they never
had such a strange and weird request from some silly people who wanted a bunch
of rocks! There were a lot of laughs. What joy these rocks came into our lives
with!
It was a good time had by all. We went the last 2 km to Banos and had
a great lunch, browsed the rafting, ziplining, and hiking brochures in the
local shops, and then headed back to Riobamba to
get on the bus back to Cuenca.
When we arrived in Cuenca
we met the truck driver and unloaded the rocks with laughter at 1 am and then
collapsed into bed afterward! Today, the volunteers are washing the dirt off
the rocks.
We are ready to give you a seriously hot sweatlodge more than ever now! It
was already hot. Now during these next
ayahausca
retreats let’s sweat out all those toxic emotions, thoughts and bad foods
we ate in our lives, and be reborn into a clean and new life!
