Amazon medicine retreat

We had a wonderful two week retreat with our Shipibo family back in April.  Now I'd like to announce the next one which will be from 7 - 17 July. 
Please contact me at  martinstevens@juno.com  if you have any interest in joining us.

April Shipibo Ayahuasca Retreat

I'm putting together a small group of 3 to 6 people to join me in the Peruvian Amazon for a nine day traditional healing 'dieta' with maestro Teobaldo and his extended family in the Noya Rao plant spirit medicine center near Pucallpa for the first two weeks of April 2011.
Contact me at  martinstevens@juno.com  for further details.

Happy New Year!

Grandsons Bruno and Zair

Lourdes and I spent Christmas with our large family in Lima which was a first for me.  Nothing much happened on Christmas Day itself, all of the activity was on Chrstmas eve with a big meal late in the evening followed by singing up-tempo Christmas songs around the tree, opening presents and at the stroke of midnight the whole sky lit up with fireworks.  Christmas with a Latin flair.
On a whim we decided to head north by bus and we spent New Year's visiting Lago Azul near Tarapoto in the extreme western end of the Amazon basin which makes for a combination of mountains and jungle.  The lake itself was beautiful with an ideal tropical climate and not a bug in sight.  We are thinking of buying land there......



Our grandson Zair appearing as a chicken



Solstice and Yuletide greetings!

I climbed Apu Linley 2 days ago for this view of the town of Pisac and the Vilcanota river.

The Kusi Kawsay school is above the town on the left in front of some trees.  Our new house is just to the right of center.

Many thanks to all for reading this blog and for the help we have received over the past year in our work with Shipibo children in the Amazon and poor chidren at the CEBA school in Pisac.

It's been a great year that has seen the founding of the Kusi Kawsay Andean/Waldorf school which is now flourishing despite a rocky start as we all faced dealing with massive flooding in the early months of the year.  The school's success has been felt by all as a triumph by way of a positive project into which we have put our energies, a cooperative community effort in which we have shared the sensation of overcoming adversity and disaster in the creation of a wonderful new venture.

Lourdes and I have moved to a new house two blocks from the main square in Pisac from our house in Coya 7 kilometers distant where we have been for the last 3 years.  The new pad is a slightly ramshackle and eccentric building but we have fixed it up and are now enjoying living near many friends and close to both of the schools in which we are involved.  I now have a new woodshop as well, one mile away.  I commute by bike and I like the excercise.  We are using our car a whole lot less.

Kusi Kawsay School, Pisac Update



Kindergarten children with teacher Sara and Eurithmy teacher Darsi (my step-daughter).
The newly finished kindergarten building is behind.



The beautiful new kindergarten building is now up and running.  Yours truly built the Inca-style doors.

We are now at the end of the southern hemisphere school year and Kusi Kawsay school is one year old.   It's a new initiative combining Andean traditional culture and the agrarian calendar of the Incas with Waldorf alternative education.



The school is off to a really good start and we had a Unesco film crew come for one day which resulted in us being included in a promotional documentary covering schools who belong to the Unesco educational association.  These are schools recognized for holding to high standards promoting environmental awareness, equal rights and social conciousness.



We finished the school year with each class presenting dances and theatrical pieces.  Our secondary study group of older students wrote an Andean adaptation of Shakespeare's 'A midsummer night's dream'. They made masks and costumes.  It was a lot of fun.  The character of Bottom was transformed from a donkey into a 'cuy' or guinea pig and 'Inti' the sun presided over everything.





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'Inti' the sun and 'Cuy' in Andean version of 'Midsummer night's dream'.



Shamanic journeys in Peru 2011

I plan to accompany a small group to the Amazon jungle in April to partake in a 9 day dieta with my Shipibo friends near Pucallpa.  Dates to be determined.

Following on from a fantastic journey with four friends in 2010, later in the year I want to offer another shamanic pilgrimage to sacred sites in the central highlands and northern coast of Peru for friends and trusted friends-of-friends.  The idea is to be up at Chavin for October 28 which is the Mayan calander end date according to Carl Johan Calleman and Barbara Hand Clow.

For further information please contact me at   martinstevens@juno.com

Andes mountain high

I just got back from an overnight hike up a local sacred mountain, Apu Pitusiray, above the town of Calca near where I live.  There are ancient legends concerning an Inca princess who was turned to stone and a puma.  They can be seen as huge shadow profiles projected on an immense cliff face on and around Oct 1 every year.  I wanted to see this phenomenon for myself and hiked straight up the mountain for seven hours with a friend.  It was a challenge for me as I fractured my ankle in a motorcycle accident some months back and it is still not 100%.  But I took it easy, stopped a lot and finally made it to our campsite, a rock overhang overlooking a high mountain lake called Pawaray which was set in front of a spectacular backdrop of very rugged cliffs and peaks.  We shared the campsite with Walid Ode who has written several books about his investigations into ancient Inca legends and he filled us in regarding details of how our present location had been a ceremonial site for millenia before relapsing into obscurity for 500 years with the arrival of the Spanish.
We got up very eary in the morning to see the legendary shadows but unfortunately the cliffs were obscured by clouds.  We had to make do with looking at a video that Walid and another friend Jose had made the previous day when there was a clear sunrise.  Some snow started to fall as we packed away our tents and we headed back down the mountain.  I didn't feel disappointment at not having seen the shadows, I just made a resolution to come back next year.  The site alone is absolutely spectacular, I felt an easeful elation the whole time I was there.