Andreja Jagodic was the only solo female rider at RAS. Together with PlanetBIO and some other companies she raised money for mother and her two sons. She was riding a bike for 2 days 9 hours and 5 minutes.

Seventh edition of international ultra-marathon DOS-RAS Extreme 2013 took place from 9th to 12th May. Riders started in Postojna city and returned there after riding approximately 1.200 kilometres and 14.000 meters of height difference. Road race ultra-marathons are long single stage events. They usually last several days. Among the best-known ultra-marathons is the Race across America (RAAM).

We’d like to congratulate Andreja for her race and charity and we also wish all the best to the family.

Photos by Anja Peternelj and Milan Simčič.

What do we need for vegetables soup?

• 1 smaller leek
• 1/3 cup of chopped potatoes
• 1/3 cup of chopped broccoli
• 1/3 cup of chopped cauliflower
• 1/3 cup of lentil
• 2 garlic cloves
• olive oil
• herb or himalayan salt
• turmeric
• ginger
• pinch of fresh chive

First braise leek in oil, than add other vegetables with and water. Let the soup boil so long that the potatoe’s cooked. Finally season soup with spices. Cook lentil in another bowl and add it to the soup before you eat.

Westerners are literally surrounded by different toxins from the environment as well as the toxins, which the body itself produces during its normal life functions. As the burden of toxins increases over the years, our excretory organs cannot eliminate them regularly, and they start to accumulate in our body and can eventually cause problems. Hence, it is very important to help our body detox, in order to keep our health, well-being, youthfulness, slenderness, vitality and mental clarity.

With detoxification, we enable our body a more effective elimination of toxins. Simply put, detoxification of the organism begins when the intake of toxins is smaller than the elimination. When our body is clean, we are in balance, our digestion, assimilation and excretory functions are more effective, our immune system is stronger and our body is capable of self-healing. Positive effects of detoxification also result in weight loss, youthfulness, glowing skin and beautiful, healthy hair.

Spring is a perfect period for taking care of ourselves and for an effective detoxification. It is especially important to give up on processed foods (salty and greasy snacks, fast food and other pre-prepared meals), fried foods, white flour products, sugar and sweets, excessive use of salt, sweet and carbonated beverages, and also alcohol, coffee and cigarettes. If possible, we should also limit the use of animal proteins and gluten products. For an effective detoxification, we have to consume unprocessed, wholesome products every day (with an emphasis on basic foodstuff to ensure an acid-base balance), and a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. A big emphasis should be on green leafy vegetables, rich in chlorophyll and minerals, which our body will be thankful for. Apart from salads, we should also consume other forms of green vegetables, namely the green smoothies. We suggest they become our regular morning companions. To speed up our detoxification, we will add some superfoods that will reward us with an abundance of nutrients. If we manage to consume only fruits, smoothies and freshly squeezed clear fruit and vegetable juices in the morning and a lot of fresh foodstuff during the day, we will start this summer looking healthy, slim and rejuvenated.

On Friday nutritionist Karla Klander talked about food. She believes that what we eat is what we are and what we feel. After that PlanetBIO associate Nina Horvat explained how we can use superfoods. For example if we’d like to detox our body, than green superfoods like barley grass, wheatgrass, chlorella and spirulina are the perfect choice. If we’d like to balance our hormones, we should add maca or ashwagandha to our smoothies. If we need energy, the best substitute for coffee is guarana powder and so on.

Dušan Z. M. Badovinac played gong. Gong therapies are good for releasing stress, stimulating positive thinking and strengthening nervous system. Qigong instructor Anita Nina Kajtezovič had the last Friday’s workshop about relaxing face with special energy.

On Saturday and Sunday participants embraced the day with yoga. Yoga teachers, who are also PlanetBIO’s associates Nataša and Primož Kastelic, presented some yoga poses or asanas, which helped the ladies by reaching the goal of the Sensa weekend.

On Saturday motivator Dobra vila Maja reminded everybody, that we are the only ones who’re responsible for all the things that happen in our lives. If we think positive and do whatever it takes to be better, than things will change and our dreams and wishes will come true. Maja completely enchanted everyone who wanted to clean their mind and body.

After that Barbara Radojlovič, also known as Barbarella, green chef, made some delicious vegan smoothies, salads, sweets and more.

On Sunday Melani Kovač told ladies how big is the impact that perfumes have on us and before the Sensa weekend was over, Melani and Nina Horvat made anti cellulite oil and face peel for ladies.

After the Clean body, clear minds weekend everybody was happy and went back home satisfied.

Photos by Helena Kermelj

Squeeze 3 oranges and add 1 teaspoon of MSM to juice you’ve got. You can dilute the juice with water, if you want.

MSM is a natural source of sulfur of plant origin and is good for improving our skin condition, boosting immune system, balancing pH levels in the body, soothing inflammation, promoting healthy nails and shiny hair and a lot more.

What do we need for Good morning smoothie?

• 1 cup of chopped pineapple
• 1 cup of frozen or fresh blueberries
• 4 stems of stem celery
• 3 teaspoons of barley grass or wheatgrass
• water (as much as you prefer)

Put all the ingredients into strong blender and blend them. Enjoy your smoothie and have a great and successful day.

Bon apetit!

What can we mix in our salat?

• 1 cup of chopped green salad
• 1 handful of chopped (red) chicory
• 1 handful of alfalfa sprout
• 1 small cup of cooked beans
• 1 spoon (you decide between tea or table spoon) shelled hemp seeds
• hemp oil
• pinch of himalayan salt

Mix all the things together and dinner is served. Bon apetit!

What do we need for green detox smmothie?

• 1 big banana
• 1 apple
• 1 big bunch of spinach
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 3 tea spoons of wheatgrass powder
• water

Blend all the ingredients in a powerful blender, sit down, if possible facing the sun, relax and bon appetit!

Living in the South American jungle is a special experience. Hunting, fishing without a rod, the danger of tiger attack which always attacks from behind. Jungle potatoes – yuka, dried salty meat – charque, manual shelling of rice in the carved trunk on a stand – takú, are just part of normal daily living. Tina B. decided to go live with the natives to the jungle when she was twenty-one. She wanted to experience genuine nature, and for 1 year wild distant jungle gave her everything she needed in her daily life. In this part we will learn more about (super)food.
Previously you were talking about hunting and diet. What about superfood?

When I hear the word superfood I start to laugh – not out of mockery or because I would feel smarter than the rest, but because I see there is such huge gap between contemporary modern world and natural lifestyle. Let me say first that all things that the natives exchange with the traders make them “slaves” to the world. I should emphasize that they are becoming “slaves” unnecessarily, because jungle offers everything. It is part of human nature to want things you do not have. “My natives” also preferred an aspirin from a natural weed which grows in the woods. In the jungle you can find a cure for every disease. It is also interesting that when I was out with them in the jungle, I was always told: “This bark is good for this or that disease. These branches are good for kidneys. Those leaves are good for liver. You can cook tea that cures lots of diseases from this climber, it also contains water, if you ever get lost and you cannot find running water.” But they swore to aspirins and antibiotics they could only get from a remote civilization!

In the jungle all the food is superfood. Without an exception! Everything grows and abides in completely clean air – there were no airplanes flying above us! Everything has 100% pure energy and nothing is unhealthy. If we go back to the things that the natives exchange with the traders I can show you how they do not need them at all! They do not need clothes because it is hot, and if they did, they could cover themselves up with the natural animal coats. They hunt almost every day and throw animal coats into the river. Tropical climbers are as solid as ropes and useful for a wide range of applications – we used them to “build” houses, as belts on trousers, etc. Shoes are not needed because the feet get used to the natural ground (I often walked around barefoot, even inside the deep jungle, so I know this from my own experience). Many of them had bad teeth because of the white refined sugar. They could get enough sugar from fruit. Bananas, papayas and sugarcane were really sweet!

Instead of bullets they could use spears, bows. Hunting is easier with guns, though … There is a natural plant that paralyzes the fish but it does not poison them. They come up to the surface, looking dead, but they are not really. You can get as much fish as you need from the lagoon, and after a while the rest of them swim away without being harmed. I saw one native catching a fish with a bow. Since their sweat does not smell they do not need soap to wash and smell nice. They just need to jump into the river, wash off the sweat and they are clean. Maybe some soap is needed for the clothes. In the jungle you cannot produce your own soap, but in savannah women used to boil cows’ skins mixed with ashes in order to produce homemade soap. In the jungle a person does not stink. You do have a specific smell, but it is not unpleasant like here in civilization. It all has to do with the food you eat. Later I found out what we smelled like (including me). We smelled like monkeys did! I do not understand why, because monkeys did not eat meat as we did, only fruit, but our smell was the same as theirs… Instead of oil I preferred using animal fat. There was always more than enough of it, after each catch. There was so much fish grease I used it for cooking for several days. The most appreciated oil was the one you got from liver of ray – it was medicinal. Once I tried to fry liver of ray in the pan but it practically melted down and turned into oil. Then the natives taught me that ray is not good to eat and that all this oil is a cure sold at a high price in the civilized world. This was “sold” to traders as well.

The natives were producing alcohol by themselves. They were using corn to do that. This drink, unfermented initially, was called chicha. If you put some sugar in it and drank it in a few days, it was like a dense juice. If you left it to stand for several days it turned into alcohol. To make it ferment faster, women would spit into the pot during the preparation! When I was cooking it by myself in my jungle house, my jungle mom secretly came around the corner and spat in it when I was not there, because she knew, that for me this was a disgusting custom. Then, after a couple of days she would usually tell me that she had spat in it. And that she had good saliva. Of course, I was shocked and I would make faces and everybody was laughing while I hoped she did this during cooking, so it was at least well boiled … Next time I was cooking chicha I would watch over it and guard it so no one could sneak around the corner again and spit into my bowl!

There is no milk in the jungle (because you cannot have cows without pasture, and jungle is impassable). Breast milk is the only source of lactose for the children so mothers breastfeed their children longer than in the civilized world. Let me take this opportunity to share the following true story with you: in our nearby small jungle village, where there were around 50 families and school, one day a little boy came running from school and while running he yelled from a distance, so half of the village could hear him: “Mamá, mamá, dáme la teta!« Which means “Mommy, mommy, give me your boob!” Besides breast milk there is one that is called “milk” but it is not real milk. There is a palm tree that has fruit called majo (read: maho). Over the longer process of these fruits leche de majo is made, which means milk from “maho” fruit. This milk is highly esteemed and is even better than the animal’s, it is very delicious, thick, not completely white but slightly purple. Since the process of making it is so hard and long, it is therefore even more appreciated. There is only one thing I would “miss” in the jungle – I do not know what the natives could use instead of salt for preservation of food. I do not know exactly what tribes who have no contact with civilization use instead of salt – they probably live without it. We used to “dip” meat into ashes which gave the food a nice flavor, as if lightly salted.

What about cocoa, camu camu, guarana, etc.?

We were preparing chocolate ourselves from the raw cocoa beans. We would first dry the beans in the sun for at least a week, then roast and shell them, and finally grind them and make chocolate lumps which became hard as stone the next day. Whenever we wanted to cook hot chocolate we would grate some from that chocolate lump with a knife and boil it in water to make delicious and nutritious drink. Getting hot chocolate in the jungle was a really long process – from the tree where the fruit was hanging to the phase of drinking it. But since I’m fan of hot chocolate I could not bear without it – not even in the jungle! I can give you the recipe: boil 1 lt. water/milk (we did not have milk), add 2 or 3 tablespoons (depending on how strong you want the hot chocolate to be) of ground chocolate (we grinded it by hand, on those old iron little mills from the 2nd World War), stir into boiling water, cook on low heat for about 5 minutes. You will get real homemade jungle hot chocolate. Add sugar while cooking. We put a lot of white sugar in it in the jungle – that was a costume there. You can add milk or cream at the end (if cooked in water). The smell of this chocolate is amazing. The flavor is even better. It is in no way similar to the hot chocolate you get in European restaurants! I do not even want to start talking about how healthy chocolate is. Real chocolate, of course …

People were using coca leaves a lot as well. In the jungle, and even later when I moved to a jungle village with approx. 12,000 inhabitants I saw this natural leaf was “inspiring” the whole country, not to mention the tourists who considered it as something very special – too special in my opinion. I mean – it is just a plant, nothing special about it! In the jungle we would stuff leaves in our mouths, chew them a little, roll them inside the mouth forming a small coca ball that we called bola, which means a knob, then we would add a little bit of baking soda – coca leaves react better in such combination, and if someone brought chamairo (that was a dried root), we would chew that a little bit and everything got a sweet, very pleasant taste. If you had bola or two in your mouth – one on each side – you were not asleep, you had plenty of energy and you were not hungry. This leaf is widely used in South America. It is also very good when you are on high altitude. You put leaves in hot water to make tea.

The coca leaves are not drugs. People produce cocaine out of them through chemical processes. Just for general knowledge and information to all those who have the opinion that the coca leaf is a drug: for one line of cocaine it is required 300 kg of coca leaves. Camu camu, or ”achachayrú”, as we call it, is not particularly appreciated or popular in the jungle area. It is a very good fruit but most of it is discarded. It has quite thick but brittle shell with white very soft juicy “meat” that covers big seeds which form the main part of this fruit. We threw away the seeds and did not consider camu camu as something special. Coconut is more appreciated in the jungle. Its water is very nutritional and they compare it to the power of quality intravenous infusion. Some other popular fruits were guayaba, also known as guava fruit – the most widely known are white and red guava. Maracuyá, also known as passion fruit; it has high content of vitamin C and is very refreshing and great for juices.

Papaya – great for digestion, its leaves and seeds are useful as well. Green papaya is edible, too. You boil it and serve it in a salad. Delicious! Tamarindo – a bitter and tart fruit, impossible to eat without a large amount of sugar. It makes an excellent juice, very good for digestion. Carambola is also great for juices, with its characteristic shape of a star. They also call it starfruit. Grapefruit is the size of a baby’s head! We never ate oranges (or other citruses) but peeled them so that the white inner peeling remained on the fruit. We would cut a cone at the far end (where it grew) and just squeeze the fruit to drink the juice, as if drinking it out of the glass. The rest went into the trash bin. I would usually buy 100 oranges for 2,50 €, sit with someone, a big bag of oranges next to us, peel, talk, squeeze, talk, drink, talk, throw away the slops. We would peel, squeeze and drink until we dropped! One apple (they do not grow in the jungle!) costs 0,10 € at the market, while you would get up to ten bananas for the same amount of money … but that was all in the village. The first year inside the jungle we only had papayas, bananas and oranges. Why? Because you need to plant a tree and wait for years before you get fruits from it. Only banana and papaya tree give fruits in 6 months.

Was there any food or dish that was especially popular?

Popular food … In the jungle the food is a necessary evil – every day is a fight for survival. If you do not get up early enough, if you do not grow vegetables (surrounded by thousand of mosquitoes and with blisters on your hands on a hot sun and in high humidity), if you do not go hunting or fishing, if you do not catch anything … then you do not eat anything! So, all food is popular, as long as there is some … In the third world people are still fighting for food. Not being hungry means you are rich. Material things are not as important as in modern world. They are insignificant to most people … Most common foods are bananas (plantain – i.e. raw banana, which has to be heat treated as e.g. potatoes), yuka, rice. There is no bread in the jungle because there are no wheat fields, therefore there is no regular flour. You only have flour if you do it yourself. I had bought wheat flour in the civilization but then in the jungle made some other: banana, rice, corn and yuka flour. But the process of making them is too long to explain it here…

You stayed in South America for ten years. What did you do after you had left the tribe and returned to civilization?

After one year I had to leave the wild jungle and my indigenous family. I did not want to. My desire was to stay inside the jungle forever! I only returned to civilization to extend my visa. But after a set of events many locals wanted me to stay there, so I decided to stay. I settled in a smaller jungle village with approximately 12,000 inhabitants. At that time I saw members of a certain tribe coming to our village to look for opportunities of better living. I started to help them because they were living miserably. After a while I met some missionaries from evangelical churches from the US and together we founded a feeding center for children from low income families. It was called “Center for Children”. I served in this center during 6 years as director. We had approximately 300 children. We cooked for them, cared for them, taught them things for living, etc… After 4 years we founded a theater and taught many children and youth through it. I also worked with tribes, natives, orphans, widows and medical doctors. I was an organizer and volunteer in many medical campaigns (I worked with the doctors from the US, even though I never studied medicine). I was also an interpreter and I translated a lot of material from Spanish to English and vice versa. I am currently working with languages, I do translations, proofreading, I write. So far I have studied over 14 languages (I stopped counting at the 14^th). I was born as polyglot and languages are my passion! Despite the fact that I came home after ten years, our “Center for Children” still functions! It has even grown bigger! They added primary and secondary school to our facilities. We have built several buildings. And, as I “built” a 10×6 meters house inside the jungle with the natives with my bare hands, I carried bricks with my bare hands for the “Center for Children” as well.

Jungle recipes

BANANA CAKE

• 6 to 7 (or 10 – I always use 10) well-ripened bananas, crushed (if they are black a little bit – even better)
• 2 cups (brown) sugar (or less if bananas are very ripe: 1.5 cup – the riper they are the less sugar you should use – you do not want the cake to be too sweet)
• 2/3 cup oil (you can also use one butter instead)
• 4 eggs
• 2 and ¼ cups flour
• pinch of salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda (or baking powder)
• 1 vanilla sugar (or 1 teaspoon)
• 1 teaspoon rum

PREPARATION

Crush bananas with a fork, cream them with sugar, oil and eggs. In another bowl mix dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, salt and sift over first mixture. Mix slowly with blender. Stir in vanilla and rum. Grease baking pan, pour the batter evenly into it and bake for up to 45 min. at 175 ° Celsius (350 Fahrenheit). Tip: more bananas, better the cake. If you use a lot of bananas the cake might look “raw”, especially in the middle part. This is just a sign that it is delicious! It is not necessary to bake until the dough is dry and hard, as is the custom for traditional cakes – this is precisely why this cake does not require icing. Ay, que rico!

PAYUJE (read: PAYÚHE)

PREPARATION

Peel any number of bananas (suggestion: 10). Cut black bitter stalks of bananas (a little part at the bottom) and put them WHOLE in cold water (it is very important not to crush them!). Pour enough water to cover all bananas. Bring to a boil. Remove the foam that appears on top during boiling. Boil on low heat until the water becomes greyish-violet (you will have to boil it for a long time). The best indicator that payuje is done: when we try the water, it must be sweet. Leave bananas in the pot to cool well and place in refrigerator.

SERVING

Take any amount of cooled boiled bananas with the juice bananas were cooked in, crush bananas slightly and add milk / condensed milk / cream – it is optional, depending on how rich you want payuje to be. Stir a little bit and eat. (Note: here payuje is never as rich in taste as the one made of jungle bananas; before the transportation preservatives are used which change the taste of them.)

Read part II
Read part I

Tina will gladly answer any of your questions or respond to your comments. You can contact her at: chiquitingaa@gmail.com

At twenty-one, Tina B. decided to leave civilization and go live in the South American jungle. In search of the Absolute Truth she wanted something genuine, embraced with pure nature and the universe. Acquaintance, who visited the indigenous people earlier, took her to the tacana natives, where she stayed for a year, a day and a half away from civilization, taking a speedboat, going down the mighty jungle river. The river, by which she lived, had huge anacondas. In the second part you will learn something more about indigenous people, their traditions, and in the last part something about (super)foods.

You were presented to the tribe, with whom you later lived, through a friend. White people (people from modern world) are probably as exotic to the tribes in the jungle as they are for us. How do you know where and if you are welcome?

Oh, tribes. One really wild tribe lives in deep canyon near the Peruvian border, called Patas grandes. They do not mix or interact with anyone at all and no one can get near them, because they live in an inaccessible area and are truly “wild” – they attack to kill anyone who dares to approach them (there were some “good” people who tried something: they flew above their village and dumped some “charitable” packages – blankets, etc.; what they saw from their airplanes was Patas grandes attacking those packages and tearing everything into little pieces!). Patas grandes are still genuine and do not have anything to do with the civilized world. Other tribes are no longer real “wild” unclothed tribes who would depend only on the jungle but, as they call themselves, are natives or indigenous people. Some of them mixed with newcomers. Others changed their earlier way of living – culture which at the beginning was totally independent of civilization. They are no longer barefoot and covered with leaves, and in addition to their own language (there are over 200 of them!) they speak the official state language, i.e. Spanish, in which education takes place. These people are called indigenas which means natives. These are the people I lived with. They spoke Spanish, besides that they had their own native language called tacana.
A foreigner (it does not matter whether you are white or a little less white) in South America is always considered as “gringo”. This word has its origins in the past, when Northern American soldiers came to these places wearing their green uniforms. They were not well received by the locals and in those days they would send them back to the US with words: “Green go!” Today, in South America a tourist or a visitor can generally feel like “at home”. We are appreciated and welcome.

How was the tribe or the community you lived with?

“My” natives were dressed, civilized and cultivated – to a certain degree from our perspective. Certainly they did not graduate or study philosophy or physics… they were “rich” and “educated” in a different way. They had much knowledge of nature and vast capacity to survive in a completely natural way. They had primary school in the middle of the jungle in their little village and they gained some general knowledge there. These people are very kind-hearted, generous and noble, as I like to call them. For how can a person be considered educated and how is any “good” education actually useful, if people are selfish and evil in their souls? Well, my natives were very warm people. In essence, they never thought badly. If they did something wrong, they apologized. We were always laughing and would find positive things even in difficult situations. Everything was funny for them, even when I hit my foot with a machete and was bleeding while walking through the plantation, thinking: “Thank God I did not cut off my foot!”

How was everyday life? Did men and women have different tasks?

We would get up at dawn, men usually went hunting (I went with them quite often – this was not something typical for a woman there, but I was not “their” woman, so they considered me in a different way – as someone who wants to experience everything they did). We would go hunting even in bad weather conditions, such as flood in the whole jungle area or the wind that came from Antarctica called sur – in one hour the temperature would drop for 15 degrees Celsius! Nevertheless bad weather was rare. Jungle is a place of eternal summer where moisture levels are extremely high – short daily showers are normal. Rain is not considered as bad weather because it usually does not last. Morning departure for hunting meant two things – fishing or hunting with rifles. If they went fishing, they usually walked approx. 45 minutes to the nearest lagoon where they had canoes. They would throw hooks from the canoe which was set slightly away from the coast (of course, they did not have any fishing rods).

Sometimes they went to fish at night. At that time they were at greater risk for the tiger attack, so usually if they were standing on the beach, they would build a fire. Tiger is a sneaky predator, it always attacks from behind. During the day and during the night there were always thousands of mosquitoes. These bloodsuckers were the only slightly annoying thing, but after three months the body gets used to the bites so much you do not feel them anymore! But fishing from the canoe at night in the middle of the lagoon was still more connected with the fight against mosquitoes, than with the concentration when the fish was going to grab the hook…

On days when they (we) went to hunt, they decided to take a certain path or direction. Before that, they had made their narrow paths with machetes and then walked very quickly, looking in all directions, trying to find an animal. Walking was fast for two reasons: first – the more you walked, the faster you ran into an animal, and the other – you had to be faster than mosquitoes, if not you were all bitten by them! When you stopped, your pile of mosquitoes came running right into you! I have to say that the natives are exceptional hunters. An animal that I could not even see (because of the density of the jungle), they hit with a rifle and then, if necessary, ran after it (while accidentally hitting themselves in the palms’ long spikes), they would fight their way through the greenery, wade through water – sometimes up to their waists or shoulders! I felt much compassion for the animals and felt sorry for them, because I come from a different world. But in the jungle, if you do not hunt, you die. There is a struggle for survival. They were often hunting with dogs, as well as bows.

What about the women and children?

Since we lived by the mighty river, the preschool children who remained at home or those who have completed their classes, would often fish straight from their “doormats”. They would often catch some good fish, which then served as lunch before the hunters came home with their prey. Jungle kids know how to survive in the jungle since they are little. They swing their knives and machetes like true connoisseurs before entering their first year of school! It was not uncommon if a “kiddo” caught an animal with a shotgun!

Women stayed at home. They took care of children, house, pets, animals (chicken, geese, etc.), prepared rice and other dishes from vegetables or fruit that were on hand at the plantation, close to home. Husking rice was hard work – I had bloody blisters because of that. You put some rice in takú (this is a carved container on a pedestal, made out of trunk), then you hit the rice with thick carved stick until the hard shell falls off. This is a long and heavy work. Once in a while you have to “wind” the rice (you pour the rice from one container to another so that the husks fly away with the wind; if there is no wind, you have to walk around in order to produce it, or you simply blow strongly into the rice until you feel dizzy).

Of course, women also prepare other meals using: bananas (i.e. plantain – raw banana, which has to be heat-treated), yuka (jungle potato), sweet potato (camote), corn, etc. They cook or bake a variety of dishes. When men come from hunting or fishing, meat or fish is then added to women’s dishes. Children must always help with everything. There is no real childhood in the jungle. Everybody has to earn their plate of meal! Raw meat which remains is then thinly sliced, salted and dried in the sun for several days. The final “product” is called charque – this can be compared to our dried salty ham (i.e. prosciutto). Salt is the only preservative on hot sultry ground. Charque (they also do them out of fish) replace the money! In the jungle there is no money, so there is still the old trade exchange of goods for goods. Traders arriving on the river with their large boats sell goods to natives at a high price (whereas they must also make profit themselves). They offer amenities that in the jungle you are unable to obtain or produce. These include: clothing, shoes, salt, sugar, ammunition, soap, oil, alcohol, milk, etc.

Stay tuned for part III.
Read part I

Tina will gladly answer any of your questions or respond to your comments. You can contact her at: chiquitingaa@gmail.com

When she was only twenty-one years old, she decided to go live in the jungle of South America, in an area far away from civilization. There were several reasons for such decision, but above all, she wanted something authentic and different. She did not have the slightest idea of how different life really was out there. The jungle welcomed her and absorbed her completely. She loved the place so much she stayed by the wide jungle river for the next ten years. Tina B. is currently writing a book about how she spent a decade of her life in the jungle. Her experience is so interesting she will present it in the following interview, divided into three parts.

Most certainly you chose an interesting path at only 21 – to go live in the jungle. How did such idea cross your mind?

I’ve never had the intention to go live in the jungle. I’ve read about Australia and have always wanted to live among the Australian aborigines. Australia did not attract me because of the beautiful coral reefs or their accent. My biggest wish was to live with the original people of Australia, the aborigines who live in unity with nature and the universe and besides that I wanted to find that something or someone that “abides” above us and is above all, not depending on humanity and modern –as I call it- artificial world. While thinking and longing for complete disconnection from civilization and the modern way of life I came across a book of a woman who lived with a tribe in the jungle in the middle of tropical rainforest in complete symbiosis with nature. However, this story was happening on the other side of the planet, in South America!

This is how the story that needed to happen started to take place: a set of circumstances and events, some unusual “coincidences”, and a person ends up in the middle of tropical rainforest! A friend of a friend’s friend, Slovenian, who lived in the jungle of South America came to Slovenia for a short visit. My friend, who knew how much I liked the book about that woman who lived with the tribe, took me to these people just to have a “little chat”. He still feels guilty, because he thinks I stayed in the jungle for the next ten years because of him. However, it was only a matter of time before I came to the point 0 and left civilized world that did not give me what I expected of life. I was looking for the Absolute Truth and read hundreds of books, spoke to many so-called “smart” people, but I could not step firmly on anything! It was all just theories and assumptions. That was the reason why, while having that conversation with the Slovenian guy who lived in the jungle, I quickly decided to … “Yes, I’m leaving Slovenia! Like … NOW!”

So you decided to go live in the jungle. Where and how can a person live in the jungle?

I came to the jungle to live with indigenous family whom the Slovenian friend who took me there knew from before. They were very friendly, open and happy when they met me. They did not mind I came – I was immediately accepted by them and later on they treated me as if I were their daughter (probably because shortly after I came, I started to live like them – I never complicated things, I accepted everybody as they were and I embraced their lifestyle as well). We lived deep inside the jungle, one day and a half travelling down the river by speedboat. I do not know how many miles of air route, the river miles would be difficult to measure as well – probably no one knows exactly, because the river current is constantly changing and you have to be a true connoisseur of the river to manage that boat by yourself on those “dark”, wild waters which hide electric eels, enormous anacondas, 700 pounds fish, which grow hair in their adult state! In any case, we were “million years” away from civilization!

The jungle is not labelled with the names of streets, cities …

Precise geographical data for the jungle was impossible to get. At the arrival into the city we were looking for maps to help us move inside the jungle, or to at least imagine it easier where we were, but they did not have any, not even in the book-stores. Of course, they had school atlases, but – as they said – only the army had the accurate geographical maps.

Stay tuned for part II.

Tina will gladly answer any of your questions or respond to your comments. You can contact her at: chiquitingaa@gmail.com