Trekking through the Amazon showed me how the jungle can nourish and heal

The sound of heavy rain smacking the canopy above begins long before a single droplet manages to penetrate the dense foliage and touch my skin. When four indigenous children — the eldest aged 13, the youngest barely one — were found alive after 40 days alone in Colombia's Amazon, one question reverberated around the world: How did they do it? Appeasing the jungle's spiritual owners "Like all Indigenous people, those children were raised in the jungle with a deep understanding and respect for the jungle and its spirits," Juan says. The tobacco paste is the same substance the Amazon search team used to seek protection from the jungle's spirits. "My ancestors practised science in our way, using knowledge of the jungle and its medicines to see beyond what the normal eye sees," Adrian explained.