Deep in the Amazon: Encountering the Curupira Legend in Brazil
The Curupira came to visit me the second night we camped in the forest.
I am at Ney Eco-Adventures Lodge for 6 days and 5 nights, 2 of which we’ll spend at a camp in the forest.
I’m overexcited because it is my childhood dream to be in the Amazon.
Jorge is the native guide. He’s Ney’s – the owner – brother and he knows this part of the forest as his hand, because he grew up here. The first night, we sit around the fire and Jorge tells us stories.
Stories of his youth, stories of hunt, stories of the forest. It was listening to Jorge’s stories carefully that I hear about the Curupira for the first time. The Curupira is the entity protecting the forest. A sort of guardian spirit of the Amazon, that scares and punishes all those who do not approach the forest with respect and reverence and try to harm and destroy it. Hunters are on the top of her list. (Note about the gender: according to most of the information you can retrieve, the Curupira is a boy. For some reason, however, in my head I have the image of a lady and I can’t refer to the Curupira as if he were a man, so I’ll refer to HER, I hope nobody gets offended).
Jorge tells us that when he had learnt to hunt, when he was younger, the Curupira had to teach him not to be greedy, i.e. to hunt only when necessary, for food, but not for the sake of hunting itself, for the adrenaline of killing animals. How did she do so? Once, he was in the forest, resting after an unnecessary hunt. The Curupira came to scare him. A cold, creepy shiver starting from his feet till the head and a fear that you cannot control invaded his body, together with the feeling that someone else was there. After that experience, Jorge no longer hunted, unless it was a need to provide food, and became much more aware of the life in the forest. I have no difficulties in believing him, because I had that very same feeling myself a few times: the impression that some being is there and a cold wave of fear passes through my body. (Though I was home or in a hotel, so not sure which was the lesson I had to learn). I can’t refrain from telling Jorge that I had experienced the same in the past.
What I don’t tell anybody is that from the moment Jorge mentions the Curupira, I want to meet her and I start secretly praying her to come and visit me. “Please, come. I want to see you. I want to meet you. I love the forest, I love the nature so much. Please come to meet me”.
That night, in my hammock I cannot sleep. I listen to the noises of the forest, which is equally relaxing as a good sleep. There is a stream of water nearby, where we go to drink and bath. Animals do the same at night, so we can hear the splashing of the water. Birds, monkeys… we can’t see which creatures move around, but we hear them. At a certain point a hoarse roar covers any other sound.
In the morning, I ask Jorge: “What was that roar?”
“A black panther”.
(A black panther in the Amazon is basically a jaguar with a genetic modification of his coat, that appears black).
“Wow. A black panther so close to the camp”. I’m thrilled at the idea and also a little bit scared. It reminds me of the roaring lion in South Africa last year, when I was at Umlani Bushcamp.
After breakfast we start the hiking in the forest and our lesson, so I forgot about the black panther.
The second night comes and I am again awaken in my hammock. My eyes are closed, because it is so dark that it does not really make a difference if you keep them open or not, you won’t be able to see something anyway. I have Nadja on my left side and Emily on my righten one. As Nadja was cold, I gave her my emergency blanket. At a certain point, I hear the rustling of the emergency blanket and think “Nadja is changing position”. A second later, my hammock swings and – I SWEAR, IT IS TRUE – someone sits under my hammock, pressing its body precisely under my arm which is supporting my head as I’m lying on my left side. And it stays there for a good while.
A whirlwind of emotions sweeps through me: at first I’m afraid the creature would eat me, so I’m scared to death. Then I decide that there’s no point worrying. If it wants to attack I won’t be able to escape it and if that was its real intention, it would have probably already attacked me. This though calms me down and I just enjoy that mysterious presence and that contact, that has something magic and miraculous. I don’t move, I barely breath. I’m tempted to turn on the torch to see what it is, but I know the time I would move the animal would be gone, so it’s not worth trying. I just lay down, on my arm, wondering if I’m dreaming, but not, I’m not. I feel that hard muscle on which my arm is resting and I feel the animal breathing in and out, its body inhaling and exhaling, right under me. It’s only when my hip aches and I stretch my leg, that the creature decides to leave. It stands up, my hammock swings, I hear again the rustling of the emergency blanked and nothing else. No smell, no steps. It goes back to the forest, from the same direction it came.
Needless to say, the rest of the night I wonder about the creature and as soon as I hear that Jorge is up to light the fire, I jump out of the hammock to speak to him.
“Jorge, Jorge! Something happened to me tonight!”
He listens to me seriously and then he asks me a few questions:
“Were you afraid?”
“In the beginning yes, but then no.”
“Did you try to see what it was?”
“No, I was afraid to scare it and it would be away, while I wanted it to stay”.
“iI don’t think it was an animal. I believe it was the Curupira”.
That hits like a revelation. So, in the end, she did come to see me!
The other are skeptical, somebody is incline to think it was a dream, but Nadja confirmed that she felt her hammock swimming as well, and this is the evidence I did not dream at all.
I spent all the day meditating on this event, amazed at it. I feel lucky and very special and I thank the Curupira with all my hearth for having come to see me.
A few days later I tell about it to my friend Eva. Eva is an energy healer. She confirms it was the Curupira. She said that the Curupira was attracted by my energy, very similar to her one, and was observing me from distance to assess if I could represent a danger for her or not and when I went to sleep, she then took the form of a black panther to sit under me, smell me and give me a closer look. In the end, she left me quietly and satisfied with her analysis.
One month has passed from that episode, as I’m writing this post, and I am still surprised and grateful for it. I spoke to AI and she thinks (of course my AI is also a “she”), that whatever interpretation we want to choose – the supernatural one or the zoological one – the panther was attracted by the heat, it was looking for a shelter and the white color of my mosquito net might have played a role in attracting its attention (I was the only one having a white mosquito net), the conclusion is the same:
The Amazon Forest recognized me as a friend and accepted me.
