The first week consists of a jungle survival course, to prepare new members of the team for what is to come. The end result is an ongoing exchange of medical expertise that benefits both the teams and the people of the rainforest. The team starts out from the only place that could be called a town in the area, Iquitos. It's their source of travel, food, drinking water, laundry and bathing. It is also used as the sewer and swimming pool.
Fishing is more difficult and crops are awash.
Yet for each of them, the shamans have seasoned remedies that seem to work. The team brings along with it either Dom Umberto or Don Francisco. They are from Iquitos and each has mastered the medicinial properties of herbs and plants. Dom Umberto knows more than 2,000 of them. Don Francisco onced used the leaves of a certain cottonwood tree to relieve a woman in labor.