The rising of the Teepee!!

The teepee standing proud

Up it goes!

Erection party!

The Teepee, a North American 26foot 8 meter diameter huge ceremonial teepee that Benjamin gifted to TierraMitica finally arrived after many transport and customs adventures from Colombia after travelling there from Canada through the US and found its home in TierraMitica.


 It is a location with spectacular views of the mountains and the valley, of Tarapoto and TierraMitica and of the Cordillera Azul, the spectacular mountain range framing Tarapoto that is a protected natural park full of wildlife.                                                    

Hand painted wooden pegs by Marion

 Lying a few minutes uphill from the shamans tambo, it offers views and privacy at the same time with wild gorges and jungle near by. It will be used as an isolation tambo for dietas, accomodation for people who wish more privacy, for various events and ceremonies, as a romantic place for couples, a resting place for the Temazcal, the traditional Sweat Lodge that we will build in the bowels of Mother Earth and much more.

 It has a dry toilet and a shower next to it with running drinking water from our mountain spring. We made an adobe floor for it with a built in fire pit, benches and hammocks and furnished it with beds and couches, wooden tables, a small altar and netting wardrobes. 

Sara and Mieke making adobe

Putting it up was a massive undertaking, we needed 20 wooden poles 10 meters length each and everybody in TierraMitica to help, so we made a party and a picnic of it!! 

main triangle is up

Amin led the erection and everybody helped in various ways: Carrying adobe bricks and materials up the hill, making adobe plaster, lifting trees, sanding them and preparing them and it was great fun!!!

Lucas the acrobat!!

Lucas climbed fearlessly up the Teepe to tie and pull and fix, Sara and Mieke enthusiastically stomped on mud to make plaster, Tim, Kumoo and Loretta among others decorated the fire pit with river stone and for lunch we ate yummy sandwiches that Loretta and Sara had made for us.

Magical nights!

 

Erection almost done

It took us many hours, but we made it. Afterwards, a great party ensued to celebrate the departure of our dear friends and Argonauts of the Mythic Voyage Amin and Marion that had stayed with us for almost a month after the Mythic Voyage and opened our hearts (besides fixing everything in the place!!

taking form

the fire pit with Sara, Tim, Marion and Mikis

Matias enjoying the night

The teepee was already used in a joint dieta in December by Jens, Hase and Matias and proved itself as a beautiful addition to TerraMitica life. Especially the beautiful nights with the fire pit blazing and the flutes and guitars charming the birds and the animals of the mountain were precious. It will serve many people for a long time. Thank you Benji!!!

The Wedding of the Year

The TierraMiticans who found love

Sweet secrets

Wedding Cake

 Sara Villeneuve and Ferdinand Tongston are the first new TierraMiticans. They joined us volunteers from the beginning and grew to love Tierra Mitica, the land, the project and the soul.They are now fully committed to Tierra Mitica and have joined their lives with the project, the holy work of helping people find love, vision and clarity in their lives and the art of creating Tierra Mitica. They learned to love everything about it and are amazing guides giving love, presence and insight to all those who come here to seek their transformation.
In the process, they fell in love with everything and everybody in Tierra Mitica, including each other and chose to walk (or fly?) a common path in life.
Their friendship started quickly and grew beautifully, each one supporting the other fully in their own, personal transformations towards happiness and openness and their romantic union is recent but decisive and full of intention.

Thus, they decided on New Year's Eve to fully commit fearlessly to a life together and asked to be joined and blessed in their decision that very day. 
Members of the community and happy Argonauts that had recently finished the December Mythic Voyage alike created with their heart amazing flower thrones , flower gates and candle lit flower strewn passageways and spectacular art in the Yoga deck by the main water fall over the natural pool , baked them a wedding cake while others were fighting the weather and delayed buses to pick up Spyro who arrived at the last moment to make it just on time to participate in the ceremony and the party just on the change of year 2012. 

Chocolate, Honey Cinnamon cream and Mango cake!! Yummy!!!

Our thanks to Jens who directed the efforts and to Hase and Matias, our Swedish friends and brothers for ever who gave their hearts to helping and everybody in Tierra Mitica who is our human family.

With Ruben, our master Ayahuasquero

 The wedding was an amazing ending to an amazing year, a year of creativity, transformation, creation, openness, hard work and endless challenges that have been part of the process of creating Tierra Mitica : The healing center, the community, the work of Art, our home, our lives, our offering, our purpose, our hearts.

May they be happy for this and many lives!!!

The wedding dinner

Union on flower thrones

Why are words needed?

Blessing Sara and Ferd as the first TierraMiticans

 They are the first TierraMiticans, inhabitants of a place and a community of beauty and their Union date is carved artfully for ever on the wood of the Yoga deck, a monument to their path and love.

 Sitting on their flower thrones they received the gifts and blessings of the community, the friends and our Shipibo shamans. 

Happy Happy Happy Happy

We all felt deeply their love, their commitment, their happiness and their intention to keep openning to each other and the human family, supporting each other through thick and thin in the beautiful adventure that is life.

Here comes the bride.....papapapam!

 Sara was shining, spectacularly beautiful and Ferd was in full presence and love.



WE LOVE YOU!!!!!

 

Casablanca, the Plaza Mayor of Tierra Mitica

Casablanca under construction

 Casablanca, our main social building is in its finishing stages. It is a building in the shape of an Andean Cross (not an Inka Cross), virtualy a circular building with a cross running through its center creating a big, 220 square meter circular main hall that will serve as the main dining room, living room and main ceremony room when it rains and until the main ceremonial maloca is built. 

View from the West

It is also a place for celebrations and fun and all types of events and workshops that require big spaces such as Yoga and others.  The legs of the cross protrude as 4 separate units, situated symbolically exactly North, South, East and West.

The main hall

 North will be our main kitchens, South bathrooms, showers and a Spa room for massages and other healings, East a small two room apartment with a kitchenette and a bathroom to house the family of our carpenter and our building and electrical expert (and visiting craftsmen) and finally West will house our office and a small bedroom with a bath.

 There are skylights to allow everything to be bathed in natural light and huge netted windows for spectacular views of Tierra Mitica. Art will be exhibited on the walls when finished and the East wall will serve as a huge screen for our projector so that we can watch movies together and also offer fun to the children of the workers of Tierra Mitica.

Skylights bring natural light everywhere

  Casablanca is situated above the dirt road that goes to Okopua, a few minutes from the waterfalls and the Eye, on a beautiful grassy hill. 

Casablanca view from the mountain

We will make gazebos and gardens around it, loungers and hammocks and it will play the role of the main "square" or Plaza Mayor of our community.
With its proximity to Okopua, our main accommodation it will create the social axis  Tierra Mitica, concentrating it on the North side of the river, allowing the majority of the land on the South side to be dedicated to the sacred, to our Shipibo shamans, to nature and isolation, to the unspoiled holiness of the land.
By now, it has progressed way more than in the pics. It will be fully operational by the opening of the season in April.