Sure, all the gringos with a taste for the bizarre swing down here for a sampling of the ayahuasca.  But you’ve got to get a bit deeper — and weirder, I suppose — for some of the more uncommon flavors of the local Indian people.  “Flavor” might not be the correct term, as neither of these medicines is imbibed orally, thus keeping taste completely out of the equation.  It’s also possible that “medicine” might not be the most accurate descriptor for either of these, though I’m still desperately shying away from using the “D” word.

Sapo and Nunu, both more fun to say than they are to apply to one’s body, have a long history with the local people of being applied prior to an important hunt, given the positive effects they bring about on both stamina and perception.  Sapo, a milky secretion garnered from a terrified local tree frog, is believed to induce a purge of toxins from the body inspiring an hour of intense nausea and discomfort, followed by at least a day of heightened energy and clarity of mind.  In a sense, the experience is like a reverse hangover.  Nunu, on the other hand, is a powder made from the ground bark of a local tree.  It’s inhaled through the nose like snuff, and has a reputation for enhancing sight and sound (and smell?) for about an hour or so.

Despite my excursion into the jungle to capture a baby alligator (or perhaps because of it), I think it’s clear that I am not much of a hunter.  But who couldn’t use a bit of enhanced senses from time to time?

Nunu: “It burns, it burns…”

The Indian’s sitting slumped over on the edge of the “medicine room,” next to a slender wooden tube similar in appearance (and, in a way, in behavior) to a blowgun.  He fumbles a bit with a small container, opening it over his palm and tapping the edge softly to dislodge a few pinches of the grayish-brown into the cup of his hand.  As usual, I’m first in line, sitting nervously beside him as he pushes one end of the tube into his palm to fill it with a single serving of the nunu.

“So, he’s going to blow all that up my nose?” Nods in my direction confirm this to be the case.  “Cool.  Can’t wait…”

I lean my head back, exposing my left nostril to the freshly raised and filled bamboo tube.  It’s awkward, but seems to fit my nose well, which isn’t surprising as that is its sole function.  Hopefully they rinse it off from time to time.

“Just start breathing in deeply,” they tell me.

Only split-seconds into the inhalation, the burst fills my skull and I sharply recoil back from the tube, momentarily blinded by the forced gust through my head.

“Did I pull away too quick?”

“Nah, you’re good.”

There’s a definite burning sensation coursing through my freshly browned nostril, snaking stingingly down into my throat.  The latter is immediately parched from the dusty coating now spread across it, and has a slight itchiness as well, though no significant pain.  It’s much like having a minor cold and being perpetually on the verge of a sneeze that never arrives.  Nothing about the experience so far could be described as “fun” or “enjoyable” but it wasn’t that terrible a cost to pay to gain the closest thing I’m likely to find that would make my childhood dream of having Super Powers come true.  I begin to stand to allow the next person in line my spot.

“That was just one pinch,” says Peter, motioning for me to remain seated.  “You need at least four to six to notice anything.”

I sit back down slowly.

“Oh.”

A ring of brown now lines both nostrils unceremoniously (well, entirely ceremoniously in this case I suppose…).  It’s not a good look for a night in the city, but it’s hardly a fashion faux pas as deeply off the map in the jungle as we are.  Each burst of the powder is worse than the one before it, for no other reason other than the nervous anticipation preceding its entry.  Stopping early would mean that each burning sample I’ve already experienced would have been for nothing.  So bring it on.

I take a spot on the porch several feet from where the nunu is being administered and stare out looking for a change in my perception of the world that comes about as slowly as a boil to a carefully watched pot of water freshly placed on the flame.  A mild light-headedness descends over me as I focus on the nearest tree.

Is it any different?  Looks green.  Looked green before.  I guess it could be.. greener?

The snuff doesn’t affect my clarity of mind, leading to an intensely focused introspection as my eyes dart across the already too-vivid landscape.  Slowly it dawns on me that my range of focus has expanded from a single point to an entire range of targets before me, as the tree — once simply “green” — becomes comprised of leaves of emerald green, creme-de-menthe green, lime green, forest green, unripened apple green, pine green, algae green, pea green, Kermit-the-Frog green and every other green available from designer paint stores combined with the stucco yellow and the Captain Morgan’s spiced rum-colored amber of a few leaves just about to fall.  Then the shades between take on sharply individual colorations of their own, every leaf almost vibrating in contrast from every other, first on the same tree, and then throughout the whole of the jungle taking up my field of vision.

Four years back, I had LASIK surgery on my eyes, enhancing my eyesight from an abysmal near blind status to a nearly acceptable 20/30.  I have no regrets at all, but a sharpness of lines and edges that glasses and contacts once brought to my sight is likely gone forever, leading to an almost imperceptible haze over the stark rigidity of reality that I assumed must be permanent.  Suddenly, this is no longer the case.

Across a landscape dense with foliage, a bird lands on a tree over a hundred feet away, slightly off to the left from where I’m focused, and my eyes flash over to it unbidden.  The bird’s head pivots to the right, followed by a short hop further down a branch in that direction.  It sits still for a second then disappears, deeper into the jungle and out of even my newly enhanced sight.  Before me is a jungle that before I only knew to be inherently teeming with life; now, that life is exposed before me with a sharpness that shouldn’t be possible.  There is no peripheral vision or singular point of focus, so much as an entirety of visual perception laid bare before me.  Rain drizzles down from the sky, and I’m aware of every falling drop that collides violently into a softly recoiling leaf, only to gradually make its way down from leaf to leaf toward earth like nature’s Plinko.

I should be overwhelmed, but I’m not.  What we as humans are capable of is so far beyond what we’re ever likely to experience.  But for just an hour, I get a small taste.

Sapo: It also burns.  Literally. (or “Got me a sweet lookin’ prize today…”)

I’m not sure why we’re venturing into another strange jungle remedy while still firmly under the thrall of the nunu and its entertaining effect on the senses.  I worry as treebark-flavored saliva drizzles slowly down my throat in a near inexhaustible supply.  An increase in downed saliva almost always leads to nausea and queasiness on its own, and now we’ve been forewarned that the coming sapo may induce vomiting as well.  I purposefully skipped breakfast.

Flash back to a day prior and we’re gathered outside the dining hut around four small posts jammed tightly into the ground, roughly in the shape of a square.  From inside his blue plastic cage, a mid-sized lime green sapo frog sits completely still over a broken off tree branch.  He has no idea how weird the next few minutes of his life are going to be.

Sapo frogs give off their poisonous — and despite being twisted into a roundabout vitality serum, it is technically a poison — secretions as an obvious defense mechanism against attackers that would otherwise find the frogs quite tasty.  Once frightened, even a small taste of the little fellow would cause any mouth to swell up to unhealthy levels; a big enough swallow could close a man’s air passages up entirely leading to a slow, uncomfortable sickening descent into misery and death.  For reasons that can’t be explained, somewhere along the line it was discovered that applying the same deadly salve to nearly burnt skin’s actually a pretty good time.

Handling the frog as delicately as possible, the Indian wraps a loose bit of green twine around each foot, tying it into a solid knot with as much gentleness as possible.  Attaching a single line of the twine to one of the four posts doesn’t seem to cause the animal too much grief, though this all changes as he works a second leg onto the opposite post, stretching both legs out distressingly in a way that makes many of us inwardly cringe as if sharing in its obvious discomfort.  The remaining front and rear leg kick and stretch ineffectually, causing the frog to spin slightly until the third leg is secured, followed by the last leg which is secured almost effortlessly.  Stretched tortuously taut in four directions like some stoic amphibious messiah figure, it hangs there unmoving, an implacable gaze staring straight outwards from its unmoving eyes.

By now, a layer of thin, white mucous has built up around the frog’s entire body, indicating that something about the situation has indeed inspired some degree of fear within the animal.  With a thin, foot-long wooden stick shaped a bit like a long nail file, the indian slowly scrapes the animals body to gather up as much of the secretion as possible.  He’s thorough, moving across the entire top of the animal’s body and well over each leg, but he’s also gentle enough that the treatment doesn’t seem to cause much (more) distress to the ensnared creature.  The collected fluid covers more the half the stick and will provide more than enough sapo for this group of neophytes.  As the process is now complete, the frog is untied and released back into the jungle, hopping away with a far lighter insouciance than would be expected after such an ordeal.

Back to the present and I’m on the edge of the deck with warm chills along my exposed right arm as the Indian burns a small, pencil-sized piece of wood just inches from it.  The round end is flat and glowing a bright orange as he removes it from the fire and makes a quick jabbing motion at my arm.  There’s a quick sting, but it’s less agonizing than anticipated by far.  Each burn makes an immediate circular scab of ash gray on the upper arm; I’m told that I’ll need at least three to be properly affected by the medicine.

One dosage will leave me queasy and weak.

Two should make me keel over in extreme discomfort.

Three will likely inducing vomiting and the sense of undirected pleading for mercy that only the worst of hangovers typically can provide.

Four is the maximum for an initial attempt.  I have no intention of trying this, and so I do not even ask what the effects will be.

Everything has been explained and clarified so that we’re all going into this with open eyes.  Fifteen seconds from the secretion hitting our skin, we’ll feel unpleasantly light-headed which will degrade into a strong and active discomfort with lightning speed.  Fifteen minutes will pass slowly which will be the worst of it.  Nausea.  Headaches.  Extreme exhaustion.  The remainder of the hour is spent in a nearly passed out state, though with less of the unpleasant side effects experienced during the first fifteen minutes.  A nap may or may not be advisable at this point.

Why would anyone put themselves through this?

Excellent question.

Ostensibly, the secretion works its way into the bloodstream and does an immediate purge of all toxins and bad mojo within the body.  I’m not certain any scientific research has been done to verify any of this, but I’m going with it.  More importantly, the follow-up period after the initial “reverse hangover” supposedly brings with it intense feelings of health and vitality.  Used for the most important hunts, the affected hunters run tirelessly through dense jungles unaffected by heat, hunger or exhaustion.  What are fifteen minutes of misery in comparison to that?

Quite a lot, apparently.

The scabs form immediately, and less than two minutes after being mildly burned, Peter scrapes each one off, leaving three circles atop one another marching up my forearm toward my right shoulder.  By the time the dried secretion — turned liquid once again with the addition of a small quantity of shaman saliva — has been touched to all three of the unnaturally pale circles of fresh, moist skin, the dizziness — the sense of wrongness has set in.  I use what I rightfully guess is my last reserve of energy to stand up and move a few feet out of the way of the others, and the collapse.  Hard.

Rolling over immediately onto the floor and then almost as fast off the deck onto the cool, wet mud, I’m almost motionless for the next half hour — double the fifteen minutes of misery expected.  My body rejects what I’ve done and I roll my head up onto an arm and attempt to purge the wrongness from deep within me, only to find that only a small amount of brown, bark colored saliva issues forth from my mouth.  My eyes blind with tears and I roll the side of my now-swollen face back down into the mud.  Think nothing.  Do nothing.  Ride it out.  Let it pass.  Peter laughs and takes a picture of me.

“You’re gonna want this for later,” he says.  “There’s always one person that gets the froggie face and you lucked out.”

I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

I’d find out later.

Pain ebbs and is replaced by an unnatural exhaustion and all I want is to sleep.  I barely manage to wipe the mud from my face before limping back into my net-enclosed bed and falling into a deep, necessary unconsciousness.

Hours later I awake to find no superhuman strength, energy or clarity of mind.  I’m tired, still.  It’s not the all-encompassing exhaustion from hours earlier, but the idea of running through the jungle chasing down wild boars while feeling anything like how I do now is beyond ridiculous.

“Just wait,” Peter says, “just wait.”

I wait.  For the remainder of the day, I sit hunched over and take to swinging myself listlessly in hammocks until dusk brings with it the daily onslaught of mosquitoes.  Three days from now, we’ll have an opportunity to try sapo again.  I already know that I will decline.

But eventually, the experiment does prove to be somewhat effective, though not as powerfully as I had imagined.  I have no urge to sprint for hours on end.  There is no burst of inhuman strength or ability, but a distinct change comes over me the following day, that I feel throughout my body.  The promised vitality arrives, not with bells and whistles announcing its presence but with an almost imperceptible feeling throughout the day like my soul fills the space of my body perfectly.  I’m neither hyper nor tired; everything about my being is completely clean, alert and good.  Perfectly balanced.

Are the benefits worth experiencing the initial misery?  Hell no, from my perspective, but clearly others disagree.  When offered a second attempt on the last full day we have at the compound, I respectfully sit out.  If the stuff really does purge all toxins from my system, it’s not too likely I’ve added a significant amount of new ones in the past three days.

I don’t avoid the ceremony, though — regardless of anything else, watching Peruvian medicine like this get applied is far more interesting than sitting in on someone’s check-up in the States.

Next up: Ayahuasca

We’re stopped at another unique jungle tree and Juan’s saying the same word over and over while pointing loosely to a spot on his body where the groin meets the hip.  “Dolores.”  Ok, that’s Spanish for “pain,” a realization that immediately made me feel for anyone with that unfortunate name, having already been permanently marred by an episode of Seinfeld.  Attempting to guess, we talk over one another despite his comprehension of our words about on par with ours of his.

“Kidney pain!”

“Stomach!  Stomach!  Ehhhhstomago!!  Here…” now pointing to the stomach, not at all where Juan is indicating.  Juan shakes his head, no.

“Kidney.. uh, intestines maybe?  It could be intestines.  Lots of intestines in there…”

Juan makes an exiting motion from the front of his groin.  Release.

“PEEING!  It’s for peeing.  He nods that we are on the right track and then makes the shape of a small ball with one of his hands.

It’s like a game of charades that might just save your life.

“KIDNEY STONES!”

“Si,” Juan nods emphatically.  “Stone!  Si.”

It’s not exactly clear what this tree — bark, leaves, pulp, sap or other by-product — might do in the event of a kidney stone, but were I attempting to pass a large, oblong marble through my urethra, I wouldn’t be opposed to further research.

Another plant cures spleen issues.  Probably.  Spleen?  Is it “spleen” he’s signaling?  Isn’t that where the appendix is?  Wait, no.  Why cure the appendix?

Whatever.  Indians here get sick sometimes and this tree does something therapeutic.  Sweet.

Scientists and tree-huggers have purported for decades that the jungles of South America hold the cures for countless maladies we’re afflicted with and our guide and leader, Peter Gorman, tells a good anecdote to illuminate this.  Some years ago, a pair of botanists were sent into the jungle here to categorize and list every plant in a square hectare to capture the general make-up of the jungle.  Two thousand (or was it twenty) species later and the gig’s a huge success.  Except upon reviewing neighboring hectares of the plot of land that they’d just reviewed, it was determined that hundreds of species could be found on either side not available in the first.  And more importantly, a few from the first plot weren’t found at all on any side of it.

In short, there’s a near infinite amount of life down here, each with strange and unique chemical compounds and enzymes potentially appearing nowhere else in nature.  The walking tour covers a wide assortment of barks, berries, leaves, vines or flowers, each mixed, mashed, chewed, snorted or swallowed to deal with headaches, cancer, infertility, nausea or hemophilia.  It’s fascinating, but not what we came here to experience.  No, we’re looking for something a bit more self-exploratory, spiritual and profound.  Yes, we’re here to get experiences that can only come from having powdered tree bark blown forcefully up our nasal passages, drinking a murky jungle vine reduction or applying the secretions of a freshly terrified tree frog to our even more freshly burnt skin.

It’s what I came here for!

Experiences like these can’t be had in Iquitos, however, and so it’s back to my favorite new mode of transportation — the lancha.  It’s not as bad this time.  Peter’s gone all out and rented us a section of the deck with small private rooms, keeping us gated off from the riff-raff that just days before I’d been a full-fledged member of.  For the rest of the people on the trip, fresh off the planes from the States, this is a significant drop in comfortable travel levels they might be used to, but after my last lancha trip, I feel like George Jefferson walking into that penthouse suite for the first time.

“This is something, huh?”  Peter rhetorically asks the group in an accent that’s still far more New York than Texas, despite making the latter his home for most of the past decade.  “I mean, this is how people travel — well, it’s not as interesting to Yancy probably since he just came down on one of these…”  He’s got plenty of “this is how people really live down here” anecdotes and I feel bad that he has to keep adding on a Yancy-specific caveat to how interesting it should be, but I can’t help it that my journey into the bizarre has got a nineteen week start on everyone else.

Travelin’ Riverside ’shrooms

To make the twelve-hour trip more entertaining, he pulls out a large bag of fresh psilocybin mushrooms — also ostensibly legal down here — and offers them out to the group to group in large quantities.  The group is older than I’d anticipated; I’m surprisingly the youngest, with several in their fifties or sixties.  For various reasons, I won’t use any names, but we’re water treatment technicians and computer programmers, psychotherapists and owners of construction companies.  In short, it’s a diverse group.

Despite a few of us never having tried the fungi before, all but one give try a hearty handful of the stuff.  We’re here — besides any other curiosities or spiritual solace we might seek — because of a shared understanding that the world is a bigger, stranger place than any of us will ever truly comprehend, but any organic tool capable of acting as a lens to expand or complement our existing views is worth peering through.

Personally, I’ve tried the fungus before with mixed results.  The second-to-last time I had experimented  with the stuff involved me foolishly dislocating my right shoulder — a mistake I’ve had repercussions from for years.  Not to mention the experience itself involved two hours of “Three Stooges”-like confusion and idiocy includng a re-enactment of Mel Gibson’s shoulder relocation scene in Lethal Weapon II [Ed: It involves slamming the arm violently into a wall.  It should be noted that this does not work.]  Given our current calm settings and double digit hours to kill, I grab a handful and chow down.  They’re fresh and moist, and the taste isn’t unpleasant as it’s been in the past, but still not something one would purposefully request on a pizza either, unless of course they were looking for pizza that made wood grains “look fucking awesome!”

Clouds take on a thickness and presence in a sky far bluer than it’d been just moments before I noticed a difference in my perception and senses.  It’s not dissimilar from the rich, vivid blur that occurs while staring at Magic Eye pictures right before the brain snaps the “magic” three dimensional imagine into view.  The massive boat creates a wake that pulses violently against the coast, sucking shoreside plants down into the water before they hypnotically ride back along the wave, crashing against the muddy riverside.  But other than a mild dizziness, there’s little more to it than that… no visions of gods or demons or talking burritos here.  Just a dense, brownish-blue river that currently looks more like a high-resolution video-game approximation of river water than the actual thing.

It’s mildly fascinating, and does tend to kick up the entertainment value of nearly everything in sight by two or three notches — which I can’t deny is great when stuck on a lancha for more than five minutes — but on the whole, I don’t care for the ’shrooms.  For one, thoughts begin to race by jarringly, riding on top of one another to the point where concepts and ideas get jumbled and any epiphanies the psychedelic might bring about are soon lost in the rush of oncoming thoughts, unprocessable.  Similarly, I find sentences I’m in the process of uttering collapse in upon themselves in the rush of new thoughts and ideas, leading to choppy, broken conversation.  A storm descends alongside nightfall, the lightning becoming a visual toy for our amusement, but I’ve had enough by this point and excuse myself in the name of getting a few hours sleep before we reach Jenaro Herrera.  Unconsciousness comes only in spurts, bringing with it no solace or rej

Jenaro’s a major port city along the Ucayali River, meaning it’s got a full three tiendas servicing the townspeople and visitors alike.  There’s a bustling market as well that’s surprisingly large, though only seems to be open during the early morning hours, giving off a nearly abandoned appearance by eleven in the morning each day from the mass exodus of the meat and produce vendors.  It should be noted that, much like in Pantoja, Peru, being up by eleven should be no problem at all.  This is because once again, a loudspeaker blaring grating music (apparently the locals find it quite happenin’) and a speaker sharing the daily propaganda begin their daily city-wide proclamation each day prior to six in the morning, continuing for at least an hour or so until it’s assured that anyone with aspirations of unconsciousness has tossed them aside entirely.

We arrive at port in Jenaro Herrera at three in the morning, dropping things off quickly in a large open room with six hammocks set up for us in advance by Peter’s crew.  We’re told there’s soup on the way and collapse around a long wooden table as the local dogs come to investigate.  We’re in a great deal of luck as none of the dogs are nauseatingly hideous, as is the canine custom in Peru.  Peruvian street dogs are the most disgusting dogs I’ve ever witnessed.

There’s debate over whether a horrible disease is running rampant through the dog population or if a strain of Peruvian Hairless Dog DNA has made its way thoroughly throughout the local gene pool, but a good percentage of the dogs passed on the street are stomach-churningly disgusting.  The unpleasantly noteworthy feature is a series of large pink, hairless splotches covering the dogs’ bodies.  Sometimes it strikes in small patches, while other times it’s an all-encompassing nightmare of pink, furless-ness.  Where hair meets the barren regions, it tends to be coarse and jut outwards at unreasonable angles, leading to an even more disastrous overall effect.  I regret not taking pictures.

Conversation around the table is muted, and bubbles up sporadically at best, with the rooftop pelting of the rain that’s been pouring for the past six hours filling up the dark, quiet early morning air.  I don’t need powdered coffee.  I don’t need soup, either.  I need a long, prolonged, mosquito-free unconsciousness.  The hammocks are finally ready and I stumble through the dark down the one paved road in town to our “hotel,” which is basically a large, dirt-floored open room with six hammocks set up inside.

Until now, the forcefully curled-up position imposed by hammocks on all slumberers has been an insomnia-inducing feature of the hanging body-slings, but it’s not a problem now.  At 5, I’m resting as comfortably as is possible with my body outstretched like a wide, bony “U,” and by 5:06, I’m as soundly asleep as I’ve been all evening, wrapped in dense, cottony unconsciousness.

At 5:27 it’s all jarringly ripped away, without grace or dignity.

That’s right, it’s time for morning announcements and some uplifting, static-y music to start your day, people of Jenaro Herrera.  Before, morning propaganda had only been impossible to ignore.  Now it is all-encompassing, enveloping me far more effectively than sleep ever has.  It’s far beyond cruel and unusual punishment.  The loudspeaker is on a pole directly outside our sleeping space, the brunt of its power raining down directly upon us, with enough volume to reach the entire village.

This isn’t what I came here for.

The Compound

Peter’s relationship with the late resident shaman of the area began (and much of this is from memory, so should anyone else from the trip read and find my recollections wrong, feel free to comment!) in the early 80s.  I’m not sure what brought the man to Iquitos in the first place, but he clearly developed a love affair with the city that stretched on through the next few decades, leading him to acquire both an Iquitenan bar/restaurant and an Iquitenan family (the wife was a package deal, complete with two sons at the time of the marriage, both of whom he’s now adopted).  The wife and the bar aren’t his anymore, but whatever personal pain their loss might’ve caused him at the time, it’s become great fodder for quality storytelling now.

Like most great bar owners/storytellers, his tales evoke both an immediate sense of disbelief due to their improbability and a compelling veracity that builds with every small, believable detail added to the novel-like mosaic of the teller’s life.  Did he really cavort with at least two US presidents as well as the members of Led Zeppelin?  I suppose the places and dates match up.  Could he really have been responsible for internationally blowing the lid off a botched DEA operation, leading to calls for his assassination by covert US operatives (whose dark association of government assassins he also maintains near intimate knowledge of)?  Well, the Internet does kind of back him on that one a little.  Sure, why not?

The important part (for this story at least) is that through all his regular misadventures in Iquitos, he began building a strong relationship with a local shaman named Julio, eventually becoming part of Julio’s vast extended family (many of whom cared for our basic needs during the course of this trip).  Just how learned in the ways of these medicine men Peter had become invested in himself is uncertain, though it was clear from his running of ceremonies and intricate knowledge of the songs and traditions of the local Indians that it was more than just a quick study.

Time passed and with it, Peter began bringing more and more gringos in for ayahuasca ceremonies, requiring an actual location for the events to take place.  The land was Julio’s, but Peter funded the building of all of the structures himself, putting up three main covered structures — no walls, or frills for that matter — including a kitchen area with a large, if lopsided, stove.  Deeper inland lay four private shacks, though the majority of us stayed on the ground of a single, large building overlooking the river, deeply covered in the vitally necessary mosquito netting that made nights in jungle tolerable.  Two wooden outhouses serve our excretory needs.

“No toilet seats!” we exclaim.

“Toilet seats are the last thing you ever want to see in a jungle bathroom,” Peter explains.  “Spiders, roaches and everything else you don’t want down there love the shadowed sanctuary of the underside of a toilet seat.”  There are no more complaints.

The Iquitenan family structure seems to follow an “every man for himself” style of behavior, seemingly to their detriment.  Many times Peter has suggested that the siblings (grandchildren of Julio) pool together the money he pays for the ten days they spend catering to us, in order to purchase a taxi.

“But which of us would own it?” they ask, immediately dismissing the idea.

Sharing simply isn’t a concept understood down here.  Juan, one of the older members of the family, desperately needs a boat which could easily be purchased by our group for less than fifteen dollars each.  Privately, we decide upon going through with it only to be stopped by Peter.

“Wouldn’t it be better to tip everyone?”

“Well,” we say, “the others would use the boat too, right?”

“Sure, if they paid him.  These people don’t share things.”

“But those are his kids.  He’d make his kids pay to take the boat out?!”

Peter just smiles.  We give him the cash at the end instead, to divvy up fairly.

Meals here are barely adequate, from a North American perspective.  From a Peruvian perspective, they’re about as haute cuisine as you can expect to get 12 hours out in any direction from Iquitos.  Starch, meat, vegetable.  Mix and match.  Stir.  Etc.  It’s no frills, but we all signed the frill exemption waiver long before we left Iquitos.

My Heart-of-Darkness-esque voyage down the Amazon is long over, but its memory still more than lingers throughout my digestive system, rendering my normal need for sustenance moot anyway; any more than a thousand calories seems to fill me.  Never once do I rush to a meal with anything resembling hunger.  My gut was getting too big anyway…

Collecting the Medicines

I’ve been in a daze all day now, leaving me quiet and reclusive as I seek the refuge of my covered mattress to escape dusk’s onslaught of mosquitoes.  I can’t tell if I’m sick, nervous or simply have too much on my mind, but despite the lack of sleep during the prior evening’s lancha ride, I find myself laying forcibly awake throughout the night, succumbing at best to only two hours of sleep.  This isn’t a state I function well in, nor is it one I want to commence some strange Indian vision-inducing ceremony with.

A hunting party leaves early to seek out a sapo frog and I decline; the frog and I will be getting well acquainted with one another soon enough anyway.  By late morning, I’m ready to join the waking world, still in a haze from sickness and lack of sleep but too unwilling to pass up the unique experiences the jungle has to offer to allow a little mild delirium to stand in my way.  Walking down from our sleeping quarters — the largest of the huts, with two semi-private rooms followed by a large open area for mattress pads and hammocks — I pass a large plastic container with a new inhabitant.

“That’s our guy!” one of the others, a water treatment engineer from Illinois, tells me.  He’d gone out earlier with the hunting party.  Fear induces the impossibly green tree frog to secrete a viscous white substance from its body that is either extremely poisonous or extremely medicinal, depending on your perspective and shamanic background.  Repeated attempts to frighten the creature into releasing additional pharmaceutical payloads weaken the dosage, so we’ve been warned not to kill time by listlessly trying to spook the thing.

For its vivid beauty alone, the frog would make a good pet, but not for its psychoactive properties; attempts have been made to breed the things in the States, though the physical effect of its secretion is diminished or removed entirely.  Apparently, it takes the entire jungle environment to create the conditions necessary for the sapo to be effective.  As the frogs only exist in this small subsection of Peru, the experience is about as rare of one as I’m likely to find, though whether it’s actually enjoyable in any way is still up in the air.

The ayahuasca hunt takes place later in the afternoon, involving a prolonged boat ride deeper into the

jungle.  The iPod’s privately blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival, since if movies have taught me anything, it’s that you can’t take a boat into the jungle without CCR providing at least part of the soundtrack.  The trail’s unmarked if it’s a trail at all, though Julio’s grandchildren are one with this land, darting through just slow enough for our less than jungle-ready group to keep up.

Snaking its way across and around multiple trees (each surely with their own specialized medicinal purpose) lies the object of our quest.  Wrapping its way upwards around the other jungle denizens, the vine appears neither sinister nor beneficial, indistinguishable to our untrained eyes from any of the other wiry plants densely making up this subset of jungle.  But Peter and his people have a long, interesting history with the ayahuasca and hone in on it with the single-mindedness of lifelong hunters.

A foot-long piece is chopped off and passed around, displaying the telltale orange, clover-like pattern of ayahuasca’s cross-section.  Slivers of the vine are made into necklaces and tend to be best-sellers back in Iquitos, even amongst those unacquainted with the plant’s more interesting uses.  But certainly with those that are.  The Indians scramble up through the trees cutting a series of two-foot samples that are then gathered up by Peter who blesses each in turn.  It feels like less of a ceremony than many other things we’ve witnessed thus far, but still involves a bit of chanting followed by engulfing the vines in a thick cloud of exhaled smoke from a local tobacco variant.  Said tobacco seems to be involved in blessing nearly everything around these parts.

The Jungle: It’s more than just frog sweat and vision vines!

As a vegetarian (and surely for other reasons as well) the computer-programmer-turned-yoga-instructor immediately regrets calling our attention to the orange eyes fixated on us from across the slow moving stream.  Unfazed by our flashlights, the eyes stay locked in our general direction as Juan deftly crosses the thin body of water and, in a single motion, snaps the butt of his rifle over the alligator’s head.  As quickly as he darted across, Juan returns with the animal — all two feet of it.  The baby never stood a chance, though Juan’s still imminently pleased with his catch.  Peter warned me they’ll catch and eat anything they come across, no matter how small.  Monkeys are included in their menu, as the locals have no problem with the odd tasting meat.  I don’t think I can include the primates on my list however, regardless of how commonly they’re used for Indian chow.

“Is it dead?” I ask, studying the dangling reptile, its eyes open, unmoving.

“Si.”  I poke it and its mouth slowly opens.

“Um.  I think it’s still alive…”

Dazed, the animal doesn’t seem to mind being tied to a small string Juan has handy.  The hunting ground is still an hour ahead and it won’t help to be carrying a frisky, saw-toothed alligator along for the journey.  Some of us want the animal let go, but I’m not among them; “killing and eating an animal” is on my trip’s to-do list, and baby or not, that tail’s got some meat in it.  Sure, maybe that’s a morbid thing for me to list as a possible interest, but I devour meat that’s been killed for me without a second thought on a daily basis, and it seems only right that as a non-vegetarian, I should take in every part of the process.  Or something.

We’ve been hiking in the dark for close to an hour already, after having set up hammocks along the riverside not far from the compound.  It’s a high mosquito area, so much time was spent hanging elaborate cloth hammock enclosures around each dangling bed to keep the things out, giving time for the sun to set.  The place we seek is a watering hole deep without the jungle where nearly every type of local creature is known to congregate nocturnally.  As if on some sort of set schedule, the animals treat the place like a time share.  Majas, a large rodent-like creature, swarm in generally around midnight; monkeys own it closer to dawn.  And so on.

In our case, however, humans seem to be the only occupants tonight, as we sit there for little over an hour unmoving and alone, save for each other.

It turns out that hunting is incredibly boring.

Speeding through a dark jungle, crossing streams over freshly machete-cut tree bridges, the late night trip is more than interesting enough to make up for how fruitless it is from a hunting perspective.  Back at the base camp, we’ve got a fully recovered baby alligator darting around the tree it’s now leashed to; the rope could easily be handled by his choppers but luckily the little fella isn’t sharp enough himself to understand what’s keeping him locked in place and turn around.

Sleep only lasts a couple hours.  My regularly uninvited guest of inconveniently explosive diarrhea has returned again, and dangling from a transformed cotton sheet while a swarm of mosquitoes wait patiently over my netting for any quick exit from me is no place to be dealing with such a messy situation.  Compounding the problem is an unfortunate lack of toilet paper, combined with a neurotic fear of using any strange jungle plant (or “medicine”) as a replacement.  My initial plan to “just ignore it” seems less and less feasible with every sphincter-clenching minute I lay there, my ass frozen in a tight, rectal rictus from a force that just won’t relent.

Ten minutes in and I make my plan for an exit, grabbing one of my socks and ripping open the zipper on the netting encasement in a single motion, dashing only a few steps into the jungle, despite the effect such proximity to my hammock might later have on my sleeping situation.  I feel the mosquitoes on me, taking special interest in bared sections not generally available to their kind.  Making as good use with the sock as I can under the circumstances, I toss it as deeply into the jungle as I can and artfully hop through the netting onto my hammock, zipping it even more quickly than I’d initially unzipped it.

It’d be a perfect plan had I sat in the hammock as opposed to on it.

However, as my ass isn’t perfectly contained in its cottony contour, I slide back over the opposite side of it entirely, my legs still crooked over it at the knees.  The result is an awkward crash of the entirety of my weight over the back of the hammock and down onto the ground, bringing down the netting entirely.

“FUCK.”

I’m inelegant at my most awkward.  Someone calls out in the night as a response, but I’m in a weird knot of hammock, netting and legs, with no clear guess as to the correct orientation of any of them.  In a cacophony of grunts and whining, I maneuver my way back into the hammock, but the netting is completely collapsed over it at this point, smothering me in the hot, dense jungle and not nearly providing enough distance from the mosquitoes that reach through with little effort.

There’s movement outside and Juan says hello.  While I lay there motionless, unsure of what I’d even say about the embarrassing situation even if he spoke English, I opt to say nothing at all.  He rewraps the netting smoothly around me, undoing my damage almost entirely.

“OK” he says.

“Thanks,” I respond, quietly.

The other non-medicinal element of our week at the compound go more smoothly.  A large nearby lake is home to the pink river dolphins, the largest freshwater dolphins on the planet.  Peter explains that local folklore hold the animals to be seductresses with the power to cause any man caught by their spell to sleep with them.  In reality, this story is told in cases where wives suspect their men of cheating.  “It wasn’t me — it was the dolphins!  I don’t remember what happened!” they would say.

“Does that actually work?”

“It has to,” he says.  “When girls are born five to one over boys, these dalliances are gonna happen.”

The birthrate is one of the more bizarre traits of Iquitos, and apparently was once as high as seven to one.  Scientists have studied the phenomenon but never to much success.  It does help to explain why Iquitos seems to be such a popular destination for male tourists, though.

Another trip takes us out about thirty feet from the compound to fish for piranhas.

“There are piranhas here?”

“Si.”

“But… this is where I’ve been swimming.”

“Si.”

As unfortunate that day as it has been fortunate every other day, none of them bite.

The diversions are rich and interesting, and take up much of our days here between the other activities.  But the latter are what this trip is about.  Jungle medicine.

To be continued…

Should you ever be in the market for a new kidney, or a kilo of uncut cocaine, or perhaps a howler monkey, might I recommend Iquitos?  If you want a good pizza, an iPod or pretty much any modern convenience that is legal, go anywhere else — apparently this town doesn’t waste its time or shipping lanes with petty, lawful wares.  Not that I came close to anything more bizarre on the streets than a purse made from a hollowed-out jaguar paw, but I was assured by many a shoe-shine boy that the most exotic merchandise could indeed be found just off the beaten path.  Not seeking to be beaten myself, I avoided these paths.

“Be careful around them.  They’re keeping tabs on everyone,”  I’m told.

“What?  Who are?”

“The shoe-shine kids.  It’s a network of spies for the government.  They know what tourists tried to buy coke, who’s sleeping with a twelve-year old — EVERYTHING.”

“OK.”  I look over at the kid who keeps offering to shine my flip-flops, despite A) my protests and B) the fact that I am wearing flip-flops.  He doesn’t look that astute to me…

My upcoming excursion into the jungle to sample strange and unusual Shamanic medicines is already poised to fulfill January’s quota of weird, so I’m going against my typical travel calling and avoiding the shadier sections of town this go-around in favor of the standard tourist fare.  Almost nothing but motorcycles and three-wheeled moto-taxis dominate the thin, city streets here.  Roads lead out of town into smaller villages, but none of those connect beyond the all-encompassing jungle, making this the largest city in the world only reachable by boat or plane (the tourist pamphlets all seem fairly proud about this fact).

All supplies are therefore shipped in, explaining why it’s far easier to get a pet sloth here than it is to find a Snickers bar.  Some vehicles — service trucks and vans, generally — have clearly been shipped in, though there are at least two auto plants in town making and distributing motorcycles and the three-wheeler taxis that were all the rage in Mazan.  An old VW bus passes by with a Bob Marley sticker on the back, and I’m impressed by the wherewithal involved in its transport that goes far beyond what the average stoner can generally muster.

Back when I lived in College Park, MD, my neighbor Constantia would chastise me regularly for passing by on my bicycle, unapologetically helmet-less.  In all of my time in Iquitos, despite an unending flood of motorcycles flying by dangerously in every direction, never once did I see a single element of protective headwear.  Upon requesting a helmet while renting a motorbike, I first had to pantomime what it was as they didn’t recognize what my guidebook clearly stated was its Spanish translation, before the woman finally caught on.  I assumed from her ensuing laughter that none were available.

In the city center, my whiteness singles me out as a mark.  Kids try to hawk bracelets and necklaces generally made from local shells, teeth and claws.  But persistence is the watchword here in Iquitos, in every form of begging.  I never feel unsafe or threatened here, as I did in Quito, but it’s rare to walk around in sunlight here without a steady stream of followers, determined to win my attention after days of repeated ignoring.

One kid speaks English almost fluently, despite nearly living on the streets selling repellantly bad t-shirts in red or blue.  He’s got a good sense of humor, but it can’t make up for the shirt’s terrible sense of fashion, and I eventually make a deal with him that if he never pushes the shirt on me again, he can have all my leftovers for the week.  From that point on, every large meal is boxed up and handed over to him when I’m through with it, and in turn, I’m granted a reprieve from stern, repeated “NO”s each day.  It’s mostly a good trade, though at times he forgets and holds the ugly smock up at me for my perusal, despite my repeated assurances of its hideousness.

The MF Andy got me here just in time for the weekend, though the cold that started up toward the end of the boat ride left me mostly horizontal for much of my first few days in town.  My “jungle medicine” tour kicks off on Friday, leaving me with a full week to explore one of the continent’s wilder cities.

Or I can blog.  Good times.

The Market

Various black markets and red light districts can be found throughout Iquitos, but it’s the market of the Belen district where you can go for all the “normal” wares.  You know, fresh turtle and rodent meat, perfumes that will increase your chances of making love and money, powdered barks and vines with expected and unexpected medicinal properties… The good stuff.

All of this overlooks Belen’s famous floating neighborhood.  The poor, compelled for some reason to set up shop in Iquitos, make their way here for their first home purchase.  There’s a premium on waterfront property here, but there’s no mortgage at all on the water alone, and new neighbors show up on a weekly basis to start work on the most basic of floating lodgings until they’ve worked hard enough to make it up onto dry land.  Some never do, but many of those denizens had no desire to; once you’re used to the smell and the mosquitoes, having access to a prime fishing spot literally just outside your front door is a huge perk to most locals.

I’m slightly upset by the lack of snakes for sale here — apparently all exotic animals are sold in the unlisted markets — but there are stacks of fresh piranhas mixed in with all the other fish.  One aisle in particular is of interest, as it houses all medicines, spices, tobaccos and perfumes.  The latter are pushed with the same enthusiam that the street children were selling their cheap jewelry, and it takes effort to be white and pass by without my  general body odor accumulating a few new and interesting.  In my case, I received squirts of Luck and Money.  Not sure how much either worked…

Two local psychedelic substances, ayahuasca (brown powder made from a local vine, known for inducing visions) and San Pedro (a hallucinagenic cactus) are sold throughout the market as though they were no more than another of the many jungle medicines.  And I suppose that is what both are considered to be.

Monkeys and Other Animals

There’s no shortage of options here for zoophiles, assuming that word means “fans of zoos” and not “fans of bestiality.”  Though technically, the zoo-heavy area would naturally be a treat for those people too, so I suppose Iquitos is win-win on the animal front.  Two official animal sanctuaries are a fifteen minute motorcycle ride away from the town center.  An unofficial butterfly farm now houses monkeys, birds, anteaters and jaguars as rescued animals keep being donated there for safe keeping.  Others are even less off the radar at tourism spots due to animal occupants being hunted and brought in from the jungle (a no-no), but it’s not too hard to get to any of them if you’re willing to take a 15 minute boat ride.

The dock is teaming with boat operators that gang up around fresh gringo-bearing taxis.  English speakers were hard to come by in Ecuador, but a surprising amount of Peruvian locals related in some way to the tourism business, which doesn’t hurt my chances of getting around.  The men huddle around us, practically forcing us to bargain.  Starting price for a trip to the Serpentarium: S/.20  (Note: “S/.” is the equivalent of the dollar sign for soles).

“Who will take us for NINETEEN soles?”  In unison, they all call out loudly.  Yes.  YES!  Nineteen!

“Ok, how about EIGHTEEN soles?”  There’s no pause as they all agree to the new price.  Eighteen!  Come!  Come!!

“SEVENTEEN!?”  Finally, a pause.  One man says “yes” and then another quickly follows suit.  Then a third, though you can tell he really hopes we don’t call on him.  There’s a big difference here between seventeen and eighteen soles apparently.

“aaaaand SIXTEEN…?”  It takes a long pause for a single “captain” to offer his services.  He’s alone in answering this time.  We’ve found our boat.

The motorized canoe seems like it’s taking water for much of  the trip, even as we pass alligators, but that’s all part of the experience here.  Or something.  It’s still a good deal, especially considering the driver sits there and waits for us as we wander around the Serpentario (which has far more mammals and birds than serpents, of which we got to play with one).

And now, lots of pictures of animals:

Grubbing it

Slight addendum to: “Things I Have Eaten.”  Suri.  Grubs.  Not Tom Cruise’s kid, though with these in mind, that’s a possibly unfortunate name.  Suri are very popular around here and known for having high nutritional value, making them a local favorite.  How are they gathered?  It’s simple.  When a particular type of tree is downed or falls in the woods, local women will squat over it and walk along its body, urinating wildly over the thing for maximum coverage.  Something about the fresh urine coating inspires the grubs to swing by for a piss-wood feast, growing to a nice, thick ripeness over the course of several months.  The wood is then opened up and the grubs are culled from it, primed and ready to be put on a stick and served up for special occasions.

The Peruvian Girlfriend

The waitress keeps smiling at me, going out of her way to make small talk, which is all the more small as neither of us speak the other’s language.  I’ve never asked a waitress out before, and lack a Spanish vocabulary that includes the word “date.”  Cidalit, a local girl who apparently posesses the ability to ward off insomnia in others by breathing nearby while they sleep (I’m told…), happens to be along and offers to help me with the initial request.  She comes back from a quick chat with my waitress to explain her success.

“She will go out with you.  I think she will sleep with you.”

“You asked her that??”

She doesn’t answer at first.  “She will sleep with you,” she repeats, nodding her head thoughtfully.

I just figured we’d start with ice cream.

Back in my hotel room, we kiss for a time while Peruvian hip-hop plays in the background from her cellphone speakers.  She pushes me away.

["I can do no more.  Only with boyfriend.  Will you be my boyfriend?"]

["You are pretty.  I leave on February fifth.  I want to be your boyfriend, but I am an honest person.  I go to Brazil.  I cannot stay and be your boyfriend."]

["No.  Do not go to Brazil.  Brazil is terrible and the people are stupid.  Stay here and be my boyfriend."]

["I have to go.  I have the ticket already."]

["Oh."]  She gets up and walks over the window, staring out pensively.

["I have an idea.  I can be your boyfriend and then stop when I leave on February fifth.  Yes?"]

["Ok!"]

My temporary girlfriend and I go out three or four more times, and while I never do the standard boyfriend things like send flowers or learn her last name, she laughs at my Spanish enough that it feels like she’s getting something out of our short relationship.  The conversations alone make me realize that dating someone down here would do wonders for my speaking skills.  Watching The Simpsons one evening, we discuss subtle plot issues through the entire episode, and it almost feels as though I’m truly speaking Spanish, though if anyone were to overhear the ostensibly adult conversation, they’d likely feel as though they were listening in on the retarded:

["So Homer is called Omero here?  That is funny.  He likes donuts, you know?  Yes.  Do you like donuts?  I like donuts.  He likes beer and I like beer and do you like beer?  You don't like beer?  Beer is good.  Oh look, it's Marge.  She has blue hair.  Bart is so bad.  So funny.  You are pretty."]

Our last date is scheduled to be at 3:00 on the day I leave at her restaurant, sharing a pizza and a kiss before or regularly scheduled break-up.  Sadly, my flight is moved up to 1:15, and we are all rushed off to the airport in a mad dash, still packing slightly along the way.  Cidalit tells me at the airport she will give my regards to my ex, but I can’t be certain if this actually occurred, leaving a part of me troubled at the thought of a small Peruvian girl staying late at work for the gringo boyfriend that never showed.