Ayahuasca has burst into global consciousness, frequently regarded as a quick path to enlightenment or a vehicle for social media-worth spiritual moments. Once a sacred medicine that was used in ceremony, it has been reduced to a wellness fad. Yet in the Darién Jungle of Panama, away from tourist-recommended spas, Ayahuasca is still what it has been: a sacred ritual, facilitated by trained shamans and grounded in a centuries-long line of ancestral practices.
At Jungle Ace Adventures, we don’t market Ayahuasca as a recreational experience. We don’t serve it as a spontaneous add-on or a short-lived getaway. With us, Ayahuasca is handled with reverence, concern, and integrity. Our ayahuasca ceremonies in the Darién are led by Emberá shamans who embody the traditions, safeguard the plant lineage, and perform each ritual with commitment. It’s not a quick fix to enlightenment, it’s a journey that requires you to show up.
Deep in the Darién: A Different Kind of Ayahuasca Journey
Darién is one of the Earth’s last remaining truly wild areas. Hugged by vast rainforest, navigated by serpentine rivers, and free of modern development, it is a unique environment. There are no roads that lead into Darién, just water ways, trails, and local know-how from generation to generation.
Welcome to Jungle Ace Adventures. Co-founders Ace Elkins and Solrate Barqueño have built the uncommon blend of professional backcountry experience and indigenous tradition. It’s not an exotic offering they’re selling. It’s preserving that which is a truly sacred place, and doing so with stewardship.
For those who are drawn to investigate ayahuasca in Panama, this jungle creates the environment to do the real work. There’s no air conditioning here, no five-star accommodations. There’s candlelight, river winds, and howler monkeys vocalizing through the forest. It’s not a set-up environment, it’s rough and real. That’s important, because real healing isn’t accomplished in comfortable places. It’s done where the veil is thinnest and nature still has a voice.
Guided by the Emberá: Tradition Over Trend
Our ceremonies are facilitated by Emberá shamans who have spent their lives keeping alive the spiritual and medicinal traditions of their forebears. These are not online-programmed practitioners with weekend workshop credentials. These are keepers of the traditions, born into the rhythm of the jungle and learned through embodied experience.
If you sit in ceremony, it won’t be in the guise of spectacle. There are no dramatic rituals, no stage lighting. Instead, you’ll sit in a ceremony circle under the light of sacred fire, surrounded by chanting, prayer, and the very presence of the forest. Each thing has a reason. Each sound, each quiet, each movement is medicine.
Co-founder and cultural ambassador Solrate Barqueño is crucial to explaining the significance of each step to our visitors. Speaking Emberá, Spanish, and English, he makes each participant walk through the experience clearly, respectfully, and connected. It’s not tourism. It’s trust.
Preparing for the Medicine: Life in the Jungle
One of the greatest strengths of participating in a Jungle Ace Adventures spiritual journey is the time spent staying with the Emberá community in La Chunga. It’s not a resort vacation, it’s life. You’ll live in the village’s stilted cabins, open to the forest’s fresh air. You’ll dine on dishes created with locally sourced, organically farmed food, grilled fish fresh from the river, cassava, jungle greens, and wild herbs.
Most importantly, you will reconnect with nature. You will awaken with the sun, walk the speed of the river, and learn to listen, to the earth, to your body, and to a deeper part that has been quiet a very long time. It is the precursor to ceremony. It’s not a body-detoxing process. It’s getting your spirit ready to hear what the medicine has to tell you.
The Ceremony: Not Escape, But Encounter
At ceremony time, the room is arranged with a deep sense of purpose. The Ayahuasca brew, which the shaman has carefully concocted from sacred vines and leaves, is presented not as a drug, but as a teacher. People partake not to trip or to flee, but to see. To feel. To remember.
What comes next is intimate. Visions can occur. Feelings can emerge. Physical cleansing, or la purga, can purge the body and soul of things that have lingered too long. It is not entertainment, it’s transformation. The jungle does not hold back. Within its shelter, amidst its noises and bolstered by timeless heritage, you confront yourself unfiltered.
Ace Elkins, a veteran wilderness guide, makes sure that the environment is safe and conducive to the experience. The survival, navigation, and expedition planning experience that he has give the ceremony a framework wherein it can take place unafraid. He has a deep sense of respect for the Emberá people and their traditions. He knows that he’s not guiding the ceremony, he’s holding space to allow the ceremony to unfurl, respecting its origins.
Integration: The Real Work Begins
The ayahuasca experience does not conclude once the ceremony has ended. It’s often just the start. That’s why we focus so much on integration, gentle riverside mornings, discussions with the guides, time spent in quiet in the forest. There is no rushing to “get it.” There’s room to feel, process, and start to embody that which has been revealed.
You come back home altered, not through the promise of magic, but through the experience of it. The jungle does not offer enlightenment. It reveals to you what is blocking you. It reminds you of things that most people have forgotten how to do: to be fully alive, fully grounded, and fully present.
A Call to the Spirit, Not a Shortcut to Healing
At Jungle Ace Adventures, we hold dear the purity of the sacred. The ayahuasca ceremonies of ours within the Darién are not open to everyone. They are invitation-only, for those who are genuinely ready, not seekers, not chasing a fad, but willing to sit with the Earth and listen.
Much of our profits are returned to the Emberá village of La Chunga, invested in education, healthcare, clean water, and the preservation of traditions. As our guest, you’re not a consumer. You’re part of a movement to save one of the last sacred places on the planet.
So if you are willing to try ayahuasca in a way that respects the earth, the indigenous, and the plant medicine, then come respectfully. Come with humility. Come with willingness to transform.
That’s not a trend. That’s a ceremony. And it’s waiting for you in the middle of the wild.