A red flash appears at the end of the road. It has already been several hours since we have been driving through the Peruvian Amazon, so I think my tired eyes are playing tricks on me. But as we continue to move along this dirt road flanked by pineapple fields where workers wearing straw hats are active, a woman appears, her purple dress resembling a flame. We approach, and I notice a cascade of necklaces on her chest. Around the waist, she wears a belt decorated with snail shells attached vertically like a pearl curtain, which clatters and tinkles as she opens her arms to welcome us. "Welcome to the Nuwas forest," she says in Spanish. Our host is Margarita Cumbia Sawao. She is an elder of the local Awajún people, among whom women have become the guardians of this once threatened tropical forest area. With other groups of indigenous women from the San Martín region (mainly in the Peruvian Upper Amazon), they work to preserve the ancestral knowledge of their peoples. In recent years, some of these groups have begun to welcome tourists from around the world, with whom they share their customs and traditions. At Nuwas, guests are invited to discover the lifestyle of the Awajún, once threatened by intensive agriculture and the illegal settlement of Peruvians from the Andes who migrated to the region. Margarita leads me through the entrance of the Nuwas forest. All around us, rows of palms and lush green shrubs sway under the effect of the tropical breeze. It is here that Margarita and the other Awajún women grow their native plants, most of which have medicinal properties. I can smell oregano and lemongrass in the air, which are used to treat stomach ailments and colds. My host explains that she left her Awajún village, located a bit further north, to come live here 40 years ago. "We had family who lived there who we visited. The community wanted other Awajún families to settle here to obtain land ownership," she recalls, her toucan feather earrings swaying as she speaks. "There was nothing at the time, just the forest." Margarita and two other women asked the community leader if they could use an isolated piece of land to cultivate medicinal plants. "He replied, 'What are you talking about? Why do you want to cultivate on land so far from your home?' But we persisted." The women started working, planting this wild parcel of the forest. "We all worked very hard. It was a lot of work," Margarita recalls. Now, 26 families live here and the women are at the head of the community, preserving the ancestral knowledge of their people by growing medicinal plants once used to treat all ailments, from typhoid to skin infections. Margarita shows me a tall, sparse plant dotted with tightly closed cylindrical flowers. She tells me that this vanilla orchid, which only blooms once a year and must be hand-pollinated, is revered within the community. It is often mixed into a tea for the flu. The Awajún women perfume themselves with it before going to parties; a way to signal to men that they "are ready," Margarita confides while giving me a knowing wink. "If a man betrays his wife and returns smelling of vanilla from another woman, she knows what he has done," she adds. We get back into our van to go deeper into the forest, the open fields giving way to wild, gnarled thickets as we bounce along the road. We arrive at a clearing where five Awajún women dressed in traditional attire are on guard, like a row of glowing red lanterns. "Welcome," says Nivia Cumbia with a big smile. Like Margarita, she wears a multitude of necklaces. She explains that they are made from seeds collected in the Nuwas forest. Nivia places one on my head; it is made of red and black huayruro (Ormosia coccinea) seeds, which symbolize spiritual protection and luck. She then paints dots with a dye made from roucou, a local plant, on each of my cheeks. This gesture is traditional for Awajún gatherings; the number of dots indicates the marital status of the person wearing them. We follow the women along a path that follows a sacred route through the Nuwas forest. The tinkling of the beads on their necklaces is heard with each step. We finally reach a majestic tree, whose well-developed canopy rises 50 meters above the ground. It is the tsaik, the "tree of life" of the Awajún. Nivia tells me to put my arms around its massive, striated trunk. "Breathe and release what worries you," she says. The Awajún believe that the tsaik carries away negative energies. That is why everyone who visits the forest must get rid of them before entering. "It solves everything," declares Nivia. "If you have marital problems, it will solve them." We continue down the path, avoiding the entangled vines that block the way. The air is heavy with humidity and the smell of burnt wood from a distant fire reaches our noses. The vegetation explodes from the line of trees bordering our route, rising up to the sky like fortifications. We stop to pay homage to the guampoo, whose enormous buttress roots seem ready to swallow us. Nivia strikes one of them, producing a hollow, strong sound that pierces the calm. "This tree houses the spirits of the forest. When it produces this sound, we know the spirits are happy," she explains. We continue on our way and arrive at a thatched-roof hut made from woven wild reeds, where several Awajún women are waiting. Their faces light up and they smile widely as we approach. They invite us inside, where they have set out many fresh fruits picked from the forest. I don't recognize most of them. Nivia opens a cocoa pod and lets me taste its fleshy, rubbery seeds. There are many varieties of cocoa in the Nuwas forest and the Awajún women own and operate a chocolate factory not far from there. I then taste the aguaje, a vitamin-rich, delicious fruit whose fibrous skin I peel away to reveal an orange flesh, as well as the cocona, an orange-yellow citrus resembling a tomato and used against diabetes. "You can find everything you need in the forest," Nivia specifies. Before leaving, we are invited to go in front of the hut so the Awajún can say goodbye with a traditional dance. Accompanied by the slow beat of a tantui drum, made from the hollow trunk of a tree, one of the women sings a love song that tells the story of a wife pining for her absent husband. We watch the rest of the group dance and spin in a circle, the constant clinking of their attire producing a percussion rhythm. Earlier, Nivia had explained to me that this sound imitates the sound of a waterfall. With my eyes closed, I imagine hearing the waterfalls cascading in the tropical forest. The next day, we leave our base located in Moyobamba, the regional gateway to this part of the Peruvian Amazon, to go to Chazuta, a small town in the foothills of the Andes. The journey is sometimes dangerous: the winding roads take us through the dense jungle, where we are surrounded by cliffs covered with vegetation rising from the misty banks below. As we approach the lowlands, the mountains give way to agricultural land and the río Huallaga, whose waters shimmer under the morning sun, becomes visible between the trees. A plaque, similar to an urn, welcomes us to Chazuta. The town is a regional center for traditional pottery thanks to the local indigenous population, who have passed on their ancestral techniques. It is also a real beehive: merchants sell buckets filled with wild Amazonian catfish at the market; three-wheeled mototaxis speed through the narrow streets; fishermen descend the river on wooden boats with loud engines. The low houses, in bright green, blue, and pink colors, display dusty courtyards where children play and stray dogs roam. We stop in front of a long building with a thatched roof. A woman wearing a pink powder-blue skirt and coral-colored flowers in her hair is waiting for us in front. This is Consuelo Ríos, a member of Yana Rumi, a collective of artisans from Chazuta who seek to preserve the town's artisanal heritage. "Hola," she says as she opens the gate leading to a garden planted with palms and an open studio traversed by the breeze. The walls are coated with yellow canary plaster and large hand-thrown clay vases decorate every corner. Seated around a table with bowls filled with tropical fruits, Consuelo's family greets us. Her sister, her two aunts, her niece, and her grandmother are also members of the collective. They wear the same outfit as Consuelo. The hand-stitched geometric floral insignia on their blouses is the family symbol, they tell me. A similar emblem in white, red, and black, the colors of their ceramics, decorates the wall. It was Consuelo's grandmother who created the original motif, inspired by wild flowers she found in the Amazon, which Consuelo's mother and sister then painted. While it is known for pottery, the Yana Rumi collective also produces all kinds of traditional crafts. It was born in 2019 with the desire to gather the many artisans working in Chazuta in order to better preserve their ancestral techniques. The collective had some men among its members at its inception. "But they all left," Consuelo explains. "It was too difficult work for them." The women return to their stations and resume their work where they left off, weaving baskets from palm leaf fibers and spinning raw cotton using a hand spindle. Seated on a traditional loom, one of Consuelo's aunts pulls threads of all the rainbow colors using an ancient Amazonian technique to form complex, interwoven patterns. I follow Consuelo to the other end of the studio, where the shelves overflow with tools and the floor is covered with giant hemp sacks. These are filled with shaño, a powder obtained by crushing pieces of fired pottery, which is then mixed with clay to make it more granular and easier to handle. Consuelo shows me how she makes it using a massive maray, a mill passed down from her grandmother. Sitting on the floor, she swings the mill back and forth over the pottery shards, reducing them to dust. Once this is done, the dust is mixed with clay. With the feet, as tradition dictates. Consuelo convinces me to help. I take off my shoes and plunge my feet into the large trough where the clay dries after being taken from the banks nearby. "It's therapeutic," she says, while her sister plays a compilation of pandilla music, a frenetic dance style originating from the Amazon. "<em>Baile!</em>" the young woman orders me. We then start stomping and swaying while incorporating the shaño into the moist earth. Under my toes, the clay becomes smooth and pliable. Consuelo takes some of it and leads me to her worktable, where the pottery takes shape. "You have to first spread it to remove the air it contains," she says as she slams a handful of wet earth onto the table before flattening it with her palm. We follow her example by pressing the cold clay until it forms a flat circle. She then shows us how to shape the raw material into a container by forming long cylinders and stacking them one on top of the other on the base. "It should look like intestines," she describes. Then, she shows us how to smooth each ridge. And there we are with a small bowl ready to go into the oven. But we are not going to fire our objects today. The traditional process, known as shuntu, takes up to 13 hours and requires a colossal amount of wood to fuel the open fire heated to white-hot. The women light it at two or three in the morning, constantly feeding the pottery kiln with wood gathered from the forest. I approach the huge stone oven. Flames escape from the small opening while Consuelo's aunt puts logs into it. Once the containers have hardened, they are decorated with natural dyes made from materials from the tropical forest. The white clay is mixed with yellow clay to obtain lighter pigments, while the black is obtained from yana rumi, a local stone that gave the collective its name and has been used for a long time to give objects their shiny, recognizable appearance. Consuelo picks up a tinaja (a traditional jar) that has been fired and whose grayish clay has turned terracotta during the process. It is decorated with the same geometric floral motifs that adorn the women's blouses, which have been drawn with fine hairbrushes. Around the edge, Consuelo has also painted three lines, another distinctive sign of Yana Rumi, representing the three generations present within the collective. The sun is now setting, flooding the pottery, the women busy with their work, the flowers on the wall, with golden light. As I watch Consuelo's family move around in the studio, creating precious treasures from the raw materials of the forest, I feel that we are not alone in the room. The spirit of their ancestors, guiding the hands of their descendants who preserve their heritage, is there, with us.