The following is from an interview I did of Jeff Casebolt in the earliest days of Heron Dance. Jeff was a Colorado Outward Bound Instructor. He had travelled the entire west coast of North and South America -- kayaking from Alaska to just north of Vancouver and then, from there, cycling to Tierra Del Fuego on the tip of South America, including through the Andes.

When I got down into Lima, Peru I met an anthropologist/photographer named Peter Frey who was getting ready to mount an expedition to visit the Achuar in eastern Ecuador.  He invited me to go along with him, and I did.  We stayed for a week with these people.  They have had virtually no contact with civilization as we know it.  They were on a remote river.  We took a bus, then flew five hundred kilometers and landed on an abandoned airstrip that had been put in by oil companies years ago. 
They are a hunter/gatherer nomadic culture.  They move four or five times a year.  They follow the migration of game.  They don't wear clothes -- its a temperate climate — they don't have to. 
      One of the things about them that really struck me was the amount of physical contact we had -- men touching men.  I can remember sitting with a group of three or four men, we were all just sitting together.  It was hot.  We were all sweating.  You would think you wouldn't want physical contact with people.  At first I was very uncomfortable with it.  Especially these guys didn't have clothes on.  Here are these little dark-skinned Indian men who hunt with blow-guns and poison darts and spears.  They were sitting next to me and one guy would put his hand on my leg -- it’s a very touching culture.  At first, I was very uncomfortable with that.  But by the end of the week, I got to where I really liked it. 
      I'm convinced that people are very touch oriented and I give and receive massage now.  I find that its incredibly healing to be touched.  That's an aspect of western culture that is absent.  We lack physical contact.  That has damaging ramifications.  We have lost a form of contact with each other that is incredibly vital and healing.  It really feeds our soul.  After being there for a week, tears were streaming down my eyes -- I realized that I was probably never going to contact a culture like that again.  The other thing about their culture that struck me was that they laughed.  They were people who liked to tease each other and they liked to laugh.  We couldn't communicate with them at all because their language is so esoteric.

Interestingly, I experienced similar touching when living with Dene (Dogrib) people in the bush near Great Slave Lake fifty years ago.