San Francisco Shipibo Village

San Francisco is a Shipibo-Konibo community of a few thousand people on the shore of Yarinacocha, and it is the most visited of the villages around the lake. The Shipibo are known for kené, the geometric design system applied to cloth, pottery, beadwork, bodies and formerly to houses - continuous interlocking lines that are described by practitioners as visual renderings of patterns perceived in ayahuasca visions and as carrying song, since kené and the icaro chants are understood as forms of the same thing. Women embroider and paint it and sell directly. The community has a school, and Shipibo is widely spoken alongside Spanish. Visits are usually part of a Yarinacocha boat trip, which means a short stop with heavy selling; going independently and spending longer is possible and is a different experience.

What you actually see

• The kené designs - interlocking geometric line work on cloth, pottery and beadwork.
• The connection to song - designs understood as visual form of the icaro chants.
• The workshops - women embroidering and painting, selling directly.
• The lakeside village - a Shipibo-Konibo community of a few thousand on Yarinacocha.

When to go

June to October is drier. Two to four hours. Independent visits by boat allow more time than the standard tour stop.

Honest expectations

Standard tour visits are short and selling is intense. This is a residential community, not an attraction - ask before photographing people or houses. Prices are negotiated. Heat, humidity and mosquitoes. Ayahuasca tourism operates in the area and is unregulated; approach it with great caution.

Nearby

Santa Clara is another Shipibo village on the lake; Pucallpa is east.