Guayusa in the Amazon Rainforest

At 4am in Chuyayaku, a small village in the Ecuadorean Amazon rainforest, the villagers wake up to a mix of bird call and the word ‘guayusaaa!’ being called out into the darkness. Then, families will head to the nearest choza to follow in the guayusa-drinking tradition of their ancestors.

Guayusa is a herb which comes from the Ilex Guayusa holly tree, and is native to this part of the Amazon rainforest. It lives in harmony with other plants such as plantain, yuca, and caña, in the ancient forest gardens known as chakras. It is believed to have been used by the locals since at least 500CE. 

The village of Chuyayaku has only been functioning since the 1980’s, first created by a woman called Yolanda Aries who had travelled to the area from her home town by canoe. Her and her husband had been looking for a place to make their home, somewhere between both of their towns, and the area at the time was nothing but foliage and jungle. As such, they took the family of the husband, and now, there are over 60 families in the area - all with the same last name.

It was from Yolanda that I first heard about the moonlight guayusa gatherings. I had tried to leave the village several days before, overwhelmed by the isolation and difficulties of village life, before Yolanda ran into me and dragged me back. 

‘You at least need to try guayusa,’ she told me, machete slung over one shoulder, sack of yuca slung over her head. ‘Go to the choza tomorrow before daybreak and you’ll find a reason to stay.’

And so, the next morning I gathered together with my host family in their choza, a large wooden building with a straw hut. He started a fire, added a pot full of water and guayusa leaves, and once it started to boil, let out the call.

Slowly, several members of the community joined us, some of whom I recognised immediately: there was the woman who kept a baby crocodile in a small plastic bucket of water, there was the security guard who devoted her spare time to spirituality, there was the man who proudly told me he’d waited until his thirties to marry (the average marriage age in the village was 17). 

And there, we sat together in a circle, talking in hushed voices in the light of the flames. Bats flew around our heads as the conversation changed from family news to the price of petroleum. Then, I was served my first bowl of guayusa.

The taste was like a mix of coca leaves and yerba mate: earthy and becoming more bitter the longer it was left. I could taste the sheer caffeine levels in the leaves, and after several cups would become almost woozy from it.

‘Drink too much and you’ll get drunk,’ the crocodile woman warned me as I sipped, my fingertips burning from the heat of the pilchi. ‘But at least it will give you all of the energy you need to work.’

As we took turns sipping guayusa from two bowls of pilchi, hours seemed to pass by as though time was nothing but an afterthought. Before I knew it, the sun had begun to rise and it was time to head into the chakra to work.

The next day it happened again, with new village members gathering to share the sacred guayusa. This time it was in a different choza with a different person taking the pilchi, filling it with the liquid, and passing it along. Then, we would each in turn blow into the bowl to both cool the liquid inside and steam our faces to wake ourselves up.

‘Guayusa is medicinal,’ the spiritual security guard told me as I took my first sip for the morning. ‘It cures insomnia, muscle pain, and swollen glands. My mother is 85 and still strong and it’s all because of this drink.‘ She gargled and liquid and spat it back out, telling me that doing so would fix her bad throat. 

Sometimes, they would add a stick called laynia to the mix. ‘For more strength,’ the brother told me.

Over the next few weeks, I dedicated myself to learning about this beverage. I started every morning with several bowlfuls of guayusa, and felt myself slowly starting to feel a part of the community.

One day, the brother of the village leader took me out to harvest some leaves for myself. There, in the middle of the chakra was a tall tree with evergreen leaves, ready for harvesting. As we gently picked the leaves, choosing the best, he told me about how he’d grown up with the drink.

‘I started to feel like a real man when I started drinking guayusa with my father in the mornings,’ he told me. ‘I felt as though I was part of something important.’

The village leader’s mother would then take me to the house of another relative to score my own pilchi bowls. There, I learnt that you harvest them, dry them, and carve designs into the bowl before it becomes your own.

On my final day in the village, I woke up slightly earlier to help with the preparation of the guayusa. I broke the wood for the fire, I added a handful of leaves, and I kept an eye on the brew as it boiled. Then, my host gave me the first serving of the guayusa to make sure that it was ready.

Over the next few hours, I spoke about my home country whilst the villagers taught me words in Kichwa. Up until that point we had been communicating solely in Spanish, so it felt important to finally learn some of their own language. 

The leader’s father - and the founder of the village - would tell me that the reason the neighbouring men averaged seven wives each was because the guayusa gave them the energy to be so amorous. 

“How do they take care of so many wives?’ I asked.

“Its not too difficult for them: all the women need are their clothes, plates, salt, and guayusa.”

When I left the village, I took with me two pilchi bowls and a bag full of dried leaves, and I continued to drink guayana in the mornings before the sun rose. It made me feel connected to know that somewhere in the midst of the Amazon rainforest, the villagers of Chuyayaku would be doing the same.