Eating Giant Pawn-Fruit Grubs, Chontacuro, from the Amazon
Channel: Illumignostic
Date: 2021-02-16

Hola from the Amazon! My family and I are killing time waiting for our Shuar contact to return from Quito where the Indigenous people of Ecuador are protesting a stolen election. The town where we are staying is named Shell, after the oil company, and is located a few kilometers from Puyo, on the banks of the Rio Pastaza, which hosts one of the most bio-diverse ecosystems in the world. It is home to anacondas, black caiman, boas, jaguars, and over 3000 species of freshwater fish, including the infamous red-bellied piranha.  We took a day-trip to the Amazonian city Puyo and visited a mostly Indigenous market where vendors sell everything from coca leaves and ayahuasca to palm grapes and goat meat.
And also chontacuro, a large palm fruit grub eaten by many of the indigenous tribes here in Ecuador and Peru. We were told that this fantastically delicious grub even has medicinal properties, and is especially efficacious for throat problems. 
 IllumiGnostic, and his 15 month old son,  Nagual, give this delicacy a day in culinary court in this video. For courage, I drink a good bit (maybe too much) of a coca-leaf/punta liquor that I bought from some Kichwa vendors at the same market in Puyo. Punta is like Ecuadorian Everclear.  It was neon green. I say "was," because the bottle is now thoroughly drained. Luckily for me, it was a small bottle.
We are about a month away from our departure into the Amazon.  6 hours by canoe, and another 4 or 5 hours on land, to the Shuar community where we hope to learn from the encyclopedic plant-knowledge and other wisdom of the Shuar people, and contribute to their conservation efforts. We will be posting videos all along the way, and we invite you not only to follow our adventures, but implore you to join in the battle to protect Indigenous lands and culture, and preserve our most precious and incredible recourse, a place that we proudly now can call our home, the Amazon rainforest.
http://www.naturalezaycultura.org/concept/htm/ecuador/areas-amazon-shuar.htm
https://nunkuiamazonia.com/donate/
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/organizations-donate-amazon-rainforest/
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