Having alluded to a forthcoming “all the foods I ate” post for close to a year now, I figure it’s about time to ante up.  And so I present this picture-heavy display of various cuisines I was cognizant enough to take pictures of while abroad.  It’s far from complete and woefully lacking in description and character, but, as always, is better than nothing.

Peru

My time in Peru was divided between kooky “jungle medicine” tours in January and my Machu Picchu adventures in June.   Since food from the earlier trip was covered in this post, I’ll only cover the latter delectables here.

Alpaca.  Like its cousin, the llama, these South American beasts of burden are used as pack animals, tourist attractions (Peruvians love to dress them up in brightly colored clothes and then ask for money after you take a picture of one) and, of course, food.  They’re surprisingly good, too, and not nearly as tough as I would’ve guessed.

Chile

I didn’t grab many shots of Chilean food.  Santiago had many seafood restaurants, though I couldn’t find sea bass anywhere.  Also, I really don’t much care for fish, so these restaurants did nothing for me.  Combined with the fact that Chile was the most expensive country I visited in South America, I didn’t eat out very much.

Ecuador

Food from Ecuador was also mostly covered here, but I’ve got a few additions.

Brazil

As popular and enjoyable as Brazilian barbecue restaurants are in the states, I wasn’t overly impressed with Brazilian food.  Maybe we went to the wrong places.  My friend Jaimee joined me for much of these spots and we had similar lackluster reactions to the country’s offerings.  We visited one steakhouse that, like its US counterpart, involved serving men roaming about with a wide variety of all-you-can-eat meat to slice for their patrons, all with several buffet style tables of fresh food in the background.  It was good, but bore little difference from what one would expect at similar restaurants in the states.

A popular local delicacy that I never quite figured out was manioc, a powdered form of cassava root that, throughout Brazil, is served with slivers of beef jerky.  This side can be found served with almost any meal in Rio.  Despite its ubiquity, we found it fairly bland and pointless, like eating bits from the bottom of a jerky bag that had been dropped into sawdust.  Meh.

Top of the list in Brazil was the açaí (pronounced “ah-sah-EEE”) smoothie.  Mixed with bananas, ice and sugar (apparently the fruit is, by itself, quite bland), this densely blue drink is both energizing and uniquely flavorful.  I made a point of having at least one of these daily.

Uruguay

I only visited Uruguay for about three days, and the food wasn’t terribly different from what we found across the river in Argentina.  One treat that we were told was Uruguayan in nature was Clerico. Much like its red sangria cousin, clerico is a white-wine based fruit punch served with an ample supply of fruit.  My mother’s not much of a drinker, but she was so taken with it that we ordered two pitchers.  From a recipe online:

And the winner is…

Argentina

The cuisine of Argentina is, much like its urban architecture, more heavily influenced by Spanish, Italian and French culture than anywhere else on the continent.  For instance, no breakfast is complete without medialunas (literally: half moons), the Argentinian name for croissants.  Breakfast is meant to be simple and light, to the point where those seeking fare more substantial than the standard coffee, orange juice and medialunas are generally out of luck.  Ham and cheese sandwiches are also fairly popular for breakfast, though for some reason no one believes in making these with more than a single slice each of ham and cheese, regardless of the thickness of the bread.

Brazil, the -guays, Chile and Argentina all have variations of the empanada (Note: there is no tilde over the ‘n’ and thus these are pronounced em-puh-nah-duh, and not “em-pan-yah-duh” as I mistakenly said for the first week or two that I lived here), for which I am thankful.  The doughy half-circles are sold with a wide variety of different stuffings in the middle.  Ground beef is typically my favorite when selecting one of the quick, warm mid-day snacks, though another variety includes a densely starchy corn pudding that’s also quite good.  Most vendors sell chicken varieties as well, but empanada de pollo always ends up tasting a bit dry.  There seems to be an unspoken rule that the dough that wraps each different filling be folded in a specific way to make the varieties more recognizable.

Rounding out the fast food selections is a wide sampling of standard sandwich fare.  Like anywhere else on this continent, hamburguesas are widely popular, as are “hot dogs” (that’s how they’re called here as well).  However, why one would go for a simple hot dog when choripan are available, I’m not sure.  From “chorizo“, the insanely good Argentinian beef sausage and “pan” for bread, this sandwich slices a massive chorizo down the center, coats it chimmichurri (a spice rack’s worth of different seasonings all in an oil and vinegar base) and serves it on a fresh French roll.  There’s a reason why there are so few American fast food restaurants here — they’re unnecessary.  Of all the countries, I think Argentina had my favorite street food.

All of these are merely lead-ins, of course, to Argentina’s most famous of coronary-inducing main courses.  No, not red wine, though there’s plenty of that to be found here on the cheap as well.  I’m talking, of course, about steak.  Massive, bloody, succulent, affordable steak.  How affordable, you ask?  Well, this massive cut of tenderloin that I used to make about seven large cuts cost me the equivalent of four US dollars:

Yeah.  I miss that.  Parillas are Argentinian barbecue restaurants, and typically you can find several on the block of any busy street.  Restaurants like these specialize in meats, typically served with a side of meats and your choice of two additional meats.  Sometimes, these meals come with a small side salad, though it should be noted that the salad is made entirely of meat as well.  In short, Argentinians like their meat, and tend to order a large platter brought out to the table on a hot plate (often with a compartment for hot coal kept underneath to keep the food warm throughout dinner) with about 4-8 different meat varieties.  Purees of either regular or sweet potato are available, though that’s generally it as far as non-meats go.

The only downside to this is a general lack of options for dinner (which, I’ll remind you, is eaten between 10 pm and midnight throughout most of Argentina).  Most restaurants (and parillas for that matter) also serve a handful of pasta and noquis (gnocci) dishes, though the pasta options are almost identical throughout every restaurant in the entire country.  As much as I miss the steaks, I think the lack of options in Argentina would’ve gotten to me over time.

And for dessert?  Helados, and lots of it.  Meaning iced cream, the typical Argentinian helado is closer to Italian gelato than anywhere else I found in South America.  The frosty treat is popular across the continent, though harder and more similar to US iced cream elsewhere.  The Argentinian style is rich, creamy and ubiquitous.  There are almost more helado shops than parillas, with each one trying to out-gourmet the next.  Equally widespread are alfajores (al-fah-WHORE-eys), which some friends and family were lucky to get upon my return home last May.  These treats are made from two cake-like cookies pressed together with dulce de leche (caramel) in the center, and then usually coated in a thin layer of chocolate.  I found them “OK” at best, but the locals love ‘em.

Oh yeah.  Mate. Argentinians love their tea, and specifically, yerba mate.  Mate is a holly plant used to make tea throughout most of southern South America, though most popularly in Argentina.  As boiling the leaves tends to make them unpleasantly bitter, mate is instead steeped in hot water.  Due to high amounts of caffeine, the drink is a stimulant and is considered a social beverage in Argentina where it is passed around in small cups made from gourds called guampas.

Mate in Argentina, from Iguazu Falls in the north to Ushuaia in the far south, is inescapable.  Argentinians carry their guampas with them everywhere, typically with a small bag of tea, a bombilla (metal or wood straw used for drinking the tea while filtering out the leaves) and a thermos of hot water.  The leaves typically pack enough punch to be used for 7-10 servings of hot water; when they fail to provide any flavor, the mate is discarded and the gourd promptly refilled.  On buses, Argentinians pass their gourd around like a joint in a college dorm room.  At parties, it’s as likely that they show up with a thermos of hot water and a bag of mate as it is that they’d bring beer or wine.

Personally, I like the flavor but never quite got used to properly handling the bombilla.  The majority of these straws are made from metal, which doesn’t have much of a problem conducting heat.  Combine this with the near-boiling temperature of the hot water and it’s searing pain on the lips.  Though the response from all Argentinians is the same: “Oh, you get used to it…”

Thomas (a new Swiss friend I’d met along the Incan Jungle Trek) and I slowly ponder our fates.  Back in Cuzco, the buses we’d hoped would have resumed their regularly scheduled routes by now were still firmly grounded in the many and varied parking lots of Cuzco.  Drivers remained passively on call without the appearance of irritation, despite this weeks-long threat to their livelihood.  Protests over the riots in northeast Peru that had claimed the lives of upwards of 60 indigenous peoples and policemen alike still continued to block all regional traffic coming into or leaving the sacred valley.  Epic adventures near and around Lake Titicaca would simply have to wait, at least as far as my involvement in them would be concerned.

A local agency had found Thomas one of the last flights out of Cuzco to La Paz, Bolivia, this Thursday — the day after the much hyped “Inti Raymi” Incan festival, a celebration of the sun that has occurred semi-regularly for centuries (despite the demise of the Incans close to 500 years back) — and might be able to find one more.

Bolivia.  It wasn’t originally on my list, though several travelers here at the Loki have been ranting about how La Paz is home to the much-hyped Route 36, a club that specializes in the (almost) decriminalized serving of cocaine along with its mixed drinks.  More interestingly, “The World’s Most Dangerous Road” sits just an hour outside of town, a stretch of narrow one-line highway dynamited out from the side of a mountain which has in recent years turned into a tourist hotspot for anyone stupid enough to bike down it.  Well, I’m stupid enough.  La Paz, it is.

Lan Airlines, ever pleasant and accommodating, would work out the logistical change of getting me from La Paz to Quito in time to enjoy one last month of ever-looming danger in my favorite, unwholesome city in South America.  Skipping Colombia after spending the past year hearing praise after praise heaped upon the country by nearly every tourist was a difficult decision.  But with a July birthday and just one month left of total freedom before resuming work (of some sort), the familiarity of Quito just feels more proper.

Work, you say?

“Why, I thought you were into being a homeless, shiftless, traveling vagabond?”

This life is no doubt an inexpensive one, compared to say, living in New York City (or Des Moines, for that matter), but a man still has to eat.  I’d been pondering travel in Asia after hearing so many comparisons and contrasts of the southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam — I’d probably have to visit Burma as well) with those in South America.  Like our (we, being the United States) southern neighbors, the Asian countries all offer affordable travel and unique experiences (and even more strange and unique food options), and there’s a solid enough hostel infrastructure to make travel feasible despite such different languages.

As fun as the idea of being unemployed might be (if you can pull it off without begging, starving or prostituting yourself in a seedy public restroom somewhere [Note: I have pulled it off without resorting to any of these things thus far]), the pointlessness of it all starts to wear on a person after all this time.  Work, effort, what we invest the whole of our energies into, “the good fight” — it’s generally what defines us as individuals and lends purpose and meaning to what is, essentially, pointless.  If you’re fully engaged in something droll, boring, repetitive and/or depressing, then it won’t be too long before those adjectives begin to be applied to you.  But that doesn’t mean all toil can be broken down eight hours of soulless misery a day for a paycheck.

With this newfound acknowledgement of the potentially rewarding properties of A Good Day’s Work, I gladly sent in my resume for the position of college lecturer at the University of Chongqing (pronounced “choong-cheeng”) in China.  A friend of mine had put in some time here teaching English on behalf of the Peace Corps (one of their cushier jobs, by the way — nice air-conditioned apartments, hot showers, internet, etc) and one of her contacts was looking for computer science teachers for the university.  Qualifications?  Several years working in software engineering.  Check.

On a Friday, my resume was sent.  By Monday, they began work on my work visa.  If all goes well, I’ll be there in September, teaching the Chinese (in English, at least) how to computer program.  [Note: As I am writing this from Chongqing, it's safe to say that all went well.]

But there will be plenty of free time to talk about Chongqing.  Oh, so much free time…

On With the Festival, Already!

Processions of children, tourists, locals in indigenous garb and strange, barely comprehensible floats (do pigs flying an airplane labeled “H1N1″ really represent Incan traditions in any way?) pour down the hilly streets of Cuzco towards the picturesque main square that dominates so many of the city’s post cards.  Most of us are tired and hungover from celebrating the holiday’s eve nearly until dawn the night before, a seemingly poor choice of behavior the evening before an all-day festival like this one, though based on the raucous energy throughout the city it was clear we had little choice in the matter.

Up the steep hill out of town, we walk to Sacsayhuaman with blankets, snacks and the requisite amount of wine to honor the Incan gods.  Or the sun.  Or Peru — to be honest, none of us were terribly certain what this holiday was about yet.  It’s still early, which means some of the decent free spots would still be available, even for a group of our size.  For nearly two hours, we would sit and wait for the primary players to arrive, as the patches of grass and dirt around us steadily fill up with Peruvians.  There are some tourists here, obviously, but this is definitely not one of those showy song-and-dance festivals that spring up around tourist season with the aim of entertaining (and making a few bucks off of) gringos.  Based on the hundreds of locals in costume, Inti Raymi is a big deal to Cuzquenos (people from Cuzco).

So, what exactly is the holiday?  Luckily, programs are available in English — It’s broken and choppy, but serviceable.  The scene here early on is much like that of the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, replete with vendors of every type making their way through the rapidly diminishing walking space around us.  By the end of the first hour, we’ve all got paper hats, programs and a wide variety of indigenous snacks (read: Snickers).

Apparently, the Incan emperor led this ceremony to honor the sun and the Incan god Inti every year on the winter’s solstice.  Of the four primary Incan holidays, this was the largest with a lead-in of nine days of dancing, finery and various other sorts of revelry before the festival’s close.  This end was typically marked with an animal’s slaughter in the hopes of receiving a year of good crops and whatever other blessings and benefits one might hope to get from divine types.  Not being a particularly Christian holiday in any way, it was banned outright in 1572, effectively killing the holiday except for the few descriptions maintained by historians.

Flash-forward to 1944 and it was time to bring Inti Raymi back in full force.  Peru’s about as Christian a nation as (a Christian) one might hope to find, but a natural urge to follow in the footsteps of one’s ancestors restored the holiday to its current status of being an annual practice, and it’s remained (and thrived) as such ever since.  Sadly, animal rights types have gotten involved in recent years and the sacrifice of a llama has been softened a bit, to the point where the animal leaves the stage unharmed and in one piece (though thoroughly confused).

In sight, though far down below us, the first official players in this ceremony have arrived and begin to line up in formation with one another in anticipation of the “Emperor.”  All free space has now been claimed, to the point where a large Peruvian woman’s knee is resting on my leg.  Slightly buzzed from the wine and the sun, I banter with her and she laughs, sometimes responding.  Neither of us understand one another.

Everyone remains seated, despite the poor view from below.  Quickly, we learn why this is the case, as a Peruvian in what looks like a green football (American football, that is) jersey stands up to watch the procession below.

“Sientate!” the crowd bellows, in short bursts at first and later, in unison, as chants build around those that refuse to bend to the will of the masses.

“Sientate! Sientate! Sientate!!!”

Plastic bottles and small rocks fill the air, meticulously aimed at those offenders that don’t immediately give in and sit back down.  Not all shots hit their marks, as hapless spectators whose only mistake was sitting next to someone that would eventually block sight of those in the back rows begin to get pelted as well.  They turn out, mildly agitated, but not terribly surprised.  Apparently this is not unexpected behavior at these events.

Tall and gringo, a plastic bottle hits me before I even finish standing myself upright.

“Sientate!!” they shout, not with anger so much as with the fervor of those yelling “Olé” at a bullfight.  I turn to address them, as if commanded by the Incan god of wine.

“Que???  Me… siento?”  Whatever could you people be asking of me?  My banter and smile, both alcohol-inspired, are infectious, and while the crowd continues to throw things at me, they laugh as we banter.  A small girl gleefully tosses a rock at me.

“Niña pequeña!  Por QUE?!  Queeee lasssstima!!” She giggles and hides behind what I assume to be her mother.  Ready to acquiesce, I take a final shot of the crowd and then sit back down.  The pelting immediately stops.

Eventually, standing up would be required in order to take in the ceremony as fully as possible, and it seems that the time for standing occurs semi-organically.  People stand, only to be pelted into submission (free reign to throw rocks at people easily being my favorite part of the festival) and return to the ground.  However, over time, more and more of the seated determine that it is time for a better look, until the clusters of standing viewers grow to the point where sticks, stones and names can no longer hurt them.  As if sharing a massive group-mind, the crowd accepts that the time for sitting is over and, en masse, rise to watch the remainder of the show.

Now standing, it’s safe to say I have a better view than anyone else.  I’m taller than most Americans, and Peruvians — especially the indigenous types — are about as short a people are you are likely to find in South America.  Perhaps for this reason, a woman tugs on my shirt and firmly, but politely, offers me her daughter.  Not one to be rude, I accept, and thus end up with a small Peruvian child on my shoulders for much of the last hour of the performance.

“I see you got yourself a Peruvian child,” states and Israeli, returning with some water.

“Yup.  She’s just been sitting here for a while.  I have no idea if she’s loving it or in constant fear for her life.”

“She’s just kind of watching the show.  Doesn’t seem happy or sad.  It’s like, this is a very normal thing for her.”

“Oh,” I say.  I pull my paper hat off and put it on her head.

“Ha.  I think she likes the hat…”  He takes a picture.

The show is almost over — only the “sacrifice” is left.  The program describes an actual sacrifice, with a full description for what is to be done with each of the llama’s various organs.  However, too many people have told us that the sacrifice is “faked” now, leading to a debate amongst the gringos and a bet.  I take the side that the llama will be slaughtered in a large bloody mess for the thousands of gawking spectators (myself included).  I lose this bet and buy several drinks later in the evening.

While the llama isn’t terribly tortured, it is terribly confused, as men in robes tie it down upon the platform and the “emperor” comes at it with a large knife.

“That’s definitely a knife,” I say.  ”That’s a slaughtering knife.  You would only brandish such a knife if you were about to make a real sacrifice.”

“No, it’s an act.  The llama isn’t even afraid.”

“The fuck?  We’re hundreds of feet up and away.  How can you tell if the llama’s afraid?  Look, he’s cutting.  There’s red!  It’s organs… like intestines, or… stuff.”

“Fuck you, that’s a red shirt.  Or a red sheet or something.”

“No, it’s not!  Look, he’s still pulling it out.  That’s definitely blood.  No.  Wait.  Ok, that’s a red sheet.”

And like that, a bet is lost and the festival is ended.

At night, I say my goodbyes, pack my belongings, charge up all the chargeable electronics and plan for the flight to Bolivia the next morning at dawn.  Early morning flights are never pleasant, and I consider staying up straight through before eventually deciding that this is a bad way to start Bolivia.  All of the things I plan on exploring in La Paz will require me at my most alert and aware.

I’m not, nor ever have I been a morning person, but I stand slumped outside the moderately decrepit hostel tossing pebbles at the window of the two in our party that are slowest to rise.  If I’m going to be up before four in the morning, prepping a long, slow, uphill march in the dark to the poster child of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, everyone else better damned well be down here as well.  I’m not the only one peeved about the situation, though I might be the most vocally persnickety about it.

In my backpack: Two bottles of water, a Snickers bar, two bags of chips, an iPod, two cameras, a rain slick and a copy of Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume.  I break out the iPod and sit down, my best show of “waiting patiently.”  Too early for chatter anyway.  Eventually the others stumble down.

It’s about a half mile out of town to the base of the climb, and we pass the buses, lined up expectantly, along the way.  These are the enemy.  Machu Picchu opens promptly at 6 in the morning, and the first busloads of aged and/or lazy tourists are dumped off at about the same time, with additional full loads of passengers being deposited at five-minute intervals for the remainder of the park’s open hours.  Beating these buses to the punch is well advised for multiple reasons:

1. Avoiding the tremendous lines that build up, especially in the first few open hours.
2. Getting to enjoy the purportedly majestic ruins without having them be filled to the capacity of an amusement park on a summer Saturday.
3. And, most importantly for those with any desire to see it: Wayna Picchu.  The tall, green sister mountain looming over Machu Picchu in most pictures is actually covered with ruins of its own and a fantastic vantage point to take in the primary ruins from above.  The one catch: Only 400 visitors are allowed to explore it daily, and even those are limited to 200 at a time (in groups departing at 7 and 10 am).  As the main gates open daily, Wayna Picchu enthusiasts shoot forward across the whole of the ruins, momentarily ignoring the grandeur to secure their golden ticket at the entryway to the taller mountain on the opposite side of the park.

As undertaking this early-morning trek rather than hopping on one of the first buses really just beats about 100 people to the punch, I suppose it could also be said that those of us making said journey are really just slightly masochistic.  But it’s a better story, if nothing else.

From the start, the small, carved boulders that form the steps of this climb are large and unevenly spaced.  For an hour and a half in the dark, only a single headlamp and the bright, darting circles of white from the flashlights of others light my way.  The morning chill disappears quickly and is replaced by a thick layer of steadily flowing sweat.  After three days of exertion, we’re warmed up, but we aren’t prepared.  Some rocks are as high as three normal steps from the rock below, and the high altitude does nothing to assist in the climb.  The music helps tremendously, and I lose myself to a steady rhythm that guide my steps as surely as the beat of any marching band.  Of the seven in our group, I cannot tell who is ahead or below me, as I pass several people (and in turn get passed) by the minute.

And then the trees simply open up, and I am there.  Backpackers already line the steps, seated in clusters, though there can’t be more than fifty up here yet.  Half of my group sits in a circle and I join them, softly wheezing.  They ask about my climb and I just smile, give a thumbs-up.  Can’t talk yet.  The sky is beginning to light up as we wait, and wisps of clouds gently envelope the mountains around us.  It’s beautiful, but from our spot at the gate no evidence of Machu Picchu’s gloriousness is visible.  After all the Incan relics we’ve been exposed to over the past few days (not even including the treasure trove of history that is Cusco), this place better live up to the hype…

Machu Picchu Lives up to the Hype

Ok, fine.  It’s spectacular.  It’s not overrated.  It’s pretty fucking awesome.

Immediately on the other side of the gates, the early risers all walk briskly into the park, aiming not for the Waynu Picchu ticket area (tickets are required to be one of the 400 daily climbers, but do not actually cost any more money — It should be noted that the park entry fee is around 40 US dollars, though that was included as part of the Inca Jungle Trek package) but to claim some spot of the magnificent complex entirely for themselves.  Within an hour, people from around the world will dot the area like confused, multi-colored ants, but for now it is quiet.  Pristine.  Mine.

I bear left, and make a gentle ascent to a spot opposite the ruined city from Wayna Picchu’s looming presence, and take it in as though I were the solitary visitor in the park.  From time to time, I hear footsteps or see the motion of a brightly-colored hoodie darting somewhere far in the distance, but for the most part, Machu Picchu is mine.

Freshly meditated, I break out the copy of Jitterbug Perfume and balance it precariously on top of a carved Incan stone.  My friend Liz gave it to me before I left for Peru, despite my warning that she might not get it back for a long time, and certainly not in the near mint condition it was given to me in.  ”That’s ok,” she said, “just take it to some interesting places…”  The plan is to have the picture made into a postcard, but it would turn out that no photo store in Peru, Bolivia or Ecuador knew how to accomplish this.  But I’d at least show her the picture eventually…

Inner peace achieved, it’s time to secure my spot on the other mountain.  Most of our group is already in line, closely to the front no less.  Sweet.  We’re among the first fifty to grab tickets for the 10 am spot, giving us a few hours to let our tourguide show us every nook and cranny of Machu Picchu that his broken English is able to impart upon us.

Waiting for the Sun

It’s barely six thirty and nearly everyone awaits the coming of the sun with fervent anticipation, like concert-goers awaiting the grand entrance of whatever big name act they’re there to see.  The Incans worshiped the sun and, as such, designed their architecture around it.  Sunrise shadows play games with rocks, windows, obelisks and other carvings in the stone, drawing pictures on the large canvas of rock using only the absence of light as media.

Our guide isn’t the clearest English speaker, often piquing our interest by alerting us to the presence of something noteworthy, only to leave us baffled as to what he’s actually saying.  From talking to others, I can tell where the key spots are to await the sunrise.  The Temple of the Sun sits up on a hill, though real estate is limited and long since claimed.  The Three Windows is another spot — there’s probably an official term better than Three Windows, but that’s what everyone seems to keep calling it.  Literally, three windows are carved into one of the sun-facing walls, steadily plotting out three bright squares on the floor behind them.  At another spot, two jagged rocks several feet apart form a singular shadow, with only a small triangle of light planted on the ground between them.  And so on.

At this point, it doesn’t matter much.  While some sought early morning solitude upon entry and others ran straight for Wayna Picchu, those “in the know” about the Incan sun light show claimed the key viewing spots, and stragglers like myself were left with the crumbs.  On the plus side, the sun isn’t exactly fast-moving, so it’s unlikely I really missed much…

Separate from the group, I wander to a quiet spot away from everyone else to explore in solitude, only to come upon a group of six Peruvians in a circle around a small basket filled with strange trinkets and totems.  One man wears a fairly westernized suit, though the man everyone else faces is dressed in indigenous garb like some sort of Shaman.  The man in the suit spots me staring and says, in English, “Hello.”

“Hi,” I say, nodding in the direction of the basket. “Are you guys setting something up?”

“No,” the man answers, “this is just my wedding.”  His sarcasm comes out in perfect English as well.

“Ohh.  Oh.  Congratulations.  Bye.”

Awkward.

Wayna Picchu

By 10 am, we’ve wandered the rocky hallways of the main city for close to four hours, so it’s about time for something new and exciting already.

The climb feels more arduous than the early morning’s ascent, likely because most of us burned through our energy reserves then, combined with the addition of the sun’s heat bearing down as well.  A few people actually give up midway through the climb, though witnessing this for some reason always recharges me.  I am better than them.

I’m a fairly simple person at times.

Another difference here is the narrowness of the steps which, combined with the altitude and uneven steps, gives the hike an enjoyable added element of fear.  At the top, my trepidations are once again dashed; the view is breathtaking, both the local scenery and Machu Picchu, now far down below.  At the very top, a single rock sticks out precariously, and we take turns slowly working our way up for photo ops.  Based on a single day’s evidence, this also seems to be an incredibly popular place to smoke weed.

It’s probably my favorite spot in the park, and well worth the effort.  Machu Picchu was one of the first things I set out to see when madly fleeing the country on what was to be, at first, a three-week trip.  Things changed drastically since that point, but I’m happy to know that the impetus for it all more than lived up to expectations.

The bus is 45 minutes late, meaning I probably could have (and should have) slept in.  I’m the last passenger in our makeshift “Inca Jungle Trek” (their name, not mine) group, with all six of the others pre-loaded onto the bus from the same tour company.  As much is it may look like there are scores of distinct agencies in Cusco, there are really only a few trips of each type leaving daily and all companies access the same ones, mixing and matching spots to make sure every van headed off to the Sacred Valley is filled to capacity.

Four other Americans are on this trip — an anomaly in South America.  One of them has been living here for several months working on establishing a non-profit teaching organization.  The others are his brother and two parents, in town for a thrill-seeking visit, an Englishman of Indian descent (named Deepak, his rap name (a second career in the works) is Deep imPakt) and a Swiss man on his second year-long trip around the world (”I wanted to visit all the friends I made on the first trip,” he explained).

Our plan is to get dropped off in the cold morning hours at about 14,000 feet above sea level, and spend the first day steadily bicycling around 8000 vertical feet down the relentlessly swerving roads over the course of the day.  There are some dangerous curves and dangerous passing drivers at times, but it’s hardly The World’s Most Dangerous Road (that ride, in Bolivia, is still a few weeks off for me…).  Days two and three would be spent hiking our way to Aguas Caliente (literally “hot waters”), a city at the base of Machu Picchu that seems to exist solely to support the thousands of tourists that swing by weekly (expect massive price gouging).  And finally, on the fourth day, we venture up the mountain at the crack of dawn to see the famed ruins.  Our guide’s English leaves much (if not all) to be desired and the meals are sparse and unexciting, but it’s not a bad deal for $140.

Day 1

More than an hour out of Cusco and we’re stopped at Ollantaytambo, an Incan site dating from the 15th century that houses some of the oldest continuously occupied dwellings in South America.  Fifteen minutes gives the hungry (me) just enough time for a quick breakfast, while others shop along the main street for tourist kitsch almost identical to the mass-produced crap sold in Cusco.  An advertisement for Coca beer on the wall reminds me that coca (the plant used in making cocaine) leaves are processed and sold as candies and cookies here, and are not only legal but recommended to relieve the all-too-common altitude sickness that tends to set in on this trip.

The road snakes its way upwards as we ascend to the drop-off point.  Despite the relative warmth of Ollantaytambo (situated barely 8000 feet above sea level), this altitude adds a sharp chill to the air coming in through the windows, and the mountaintops are now all densely covered in a thick crown of icy whiteness.  Eventually, the road levels off at a large patch of flat land that currently serves as a parking lot for Machu Picchu cyclists.

Pato, our guide, works with the nameless (as far as I know) driver to lower the bikes, while we shuffle about prepping for the long journey down.  Two of the others have iPods on, which is enough to get me to drag mine out; it’s potentially less safe, but a ride like this deserves a good background soundtrack.  In this case, I opt for the Beatles.  We ride around the parking lot in shoddy circles, adapting to the feel of the gears and brakes and then, following Pato’s lead, make our way onto the road letting gravity do most of the work for us.

It’s a smooth ride and enjoyable, if not necessarily adrenaline-inducing.  Passing trucks provide the most awkward moments, but even those are rare and pass quickly.  Two hours in, we stop for lunch and stare out at the zig-zagging of the road ahead of us, knowing we’ll be staying with it until eventually hitting the bottom, some time in the late afternoon.  Paved road eventually gives way to dirt, and the last hour is less smooth than those that’ve come before it, as well as hotter due to the lower altitudes.  All of us, who started the day in sweatshirts, are now down to t-shirts, and sweaty ones at that.

As the road enters a small town, we’re told that the ride is through and explore a local Incan site while the bikes are reloaded onto our van.  No signs explain the age or meaning of the site.  We’ve passed several collapsed structures and walls evoking centuries of forgotten history, but the sheer number of such sites preclude all but the most significant from warranting tourist attention.  It’s ruin overload.

Day 2

Uphill we go, barely cognizant of the constant stream of epic vistas that surround us due to the sheer exhaustion of such continuous trekking upwards.  After thirty minutes of ascension, polite conversation has become too exhausting and we amble slowly up the trail in silence (or with mp3 assistance.  Phish, this time, circa ‘98).

Pato stops us at a cluster of evenly arranged bushes most of us immediately recognize as coca plants.  We swoop in and admire them as two short Indians warily watch us from the ground where they work.  Their fingers dart across the branches, ripping out handfulls of leaves at a time only to deposit them in a large, shared plastic bag.  Their peculiar gaze stays affixed to us as we march off, filled with an emotion I can’t easily put into words, though clearly related to “disdain.”

There are few signs of life or communities here, but the trail isn’t entirely devoid of locals.  At one point, a girl of about 10 dressed in colorful indigenous wear sits upon a rock in the shade with bottles of water and gatorade.  As no homes are visible from the trail for an hour in either direction, where she’s come from or how she’d gotten all the beverages here remains a minor mystery.  No books, toys, games, company, the girl remains on the rock staring forward distantly with little interest in our passing, and I can’t quite discern the difference between spending all waking hours as she does waiting for the trickle of gringo tourists to pass and a day spent by prisoners locked in solitary confinement.

An animal named “Picuro” (the sign says so) greets us at a large shack an hour or so later with a large (for him) bottle of gatorade.  It’s uncertain whether Picuro’s a proper name or simply what this species of animal is called, though none of us have ever witnessed anything like him before.  There’s a monkey here too, and I should be getting bored with the creatures by now, but they always seem to take a liking to me.  The shack serves as a makeshift Andean snackbar and is well stocked in drinks, local candy bars (and Snickers) and, of course, more coca candy.

We arrive at the hot springs at dusk, and spend an hour or so soaking off the days exertions in the expansive, relatively clear waters.  As in Banos, Ecuador, a thick stream of cold water pours down into a separate pool, though I’m the only one to take advantage of its chilly shock value.  We’re given the option of walking to town from the springs or riding in a collectivo (a van that serves as a small bus, despite taking on enough passengers to fit into a normal-sized one) for a few dollars more.  In the dark?  After relaxing in a hot springs for the past hour?  There’s no debate.

Day 3

The last day of hiking feels more like an afterthought than an epic journey through the Sacred Valley.  For one thing, the path is almost completely flat for the four hours of hiking that we do.  For another, it is flat because we are walking along a railroad track.  The great Incan railroad track?  Nope.  Just a generic, Peruvian one.  If it’s still in use, we wouldn’t know — the track remained completely devoid of cars for our long, slow mosey over its monotonous wooden beams.  But it’s a nice day, and the twin mountains of Machu Picchu and Wayna Picchu (the taller peak in the background of most Machu Picchu postcards) show themselves a few hours into the trip, providing both shade and a prominent foreground while covering our final steps into the town of Aguas Caliente.

A large bus parking lot is the first sign we’ve arrived, though the town isn’t far beyond.  Built alongside the river, Aguas Caliente is small and seems to exist solely to support Machu Picchu tourism.  Named for a hot, natural spring, we’ve been advised by guides and fellow tourists alike to avoid the town’s namesake as the water apparently looks, smells and feels foul.  All of us take the advice.

The town is larger than it initially appears to be, but not by much, and nearly half of the infrastructure is hotels.  Food options are better here than in most places in South America (pizza?  burritos??), but there’s a large increase in pricing across the board, from meals to massages to bottles of water.  There’s no shame in price gouging here.  A bridge crosses the river into the other half of town, and immediately there’s a marked shift in its character.  No hotels on this side, and the stores are standard mercados rather than the souvenir stands across the river.  It’s a sharp dividing point between the tourists and those that actually make Aguas Caliente their home.

Our last dinner is on us and we opt for the more expensive route mostly to escape from the monotony of “pasta and tomato sauce”-esque meals we’ve been stuck with for the past three days.  The urge to celebrate with drinks is there, but with a 3:30 wake-up call the next morning to stumble up over a thousand steps to the ruins, no one’s particularly feeling the need to slam anything down.  I’m in bed by ten and out within five minutes; walking along railroad tracks for half the day might not be the most exciting thing we’ve done this week, but it’ll still guarantee you a good night’s sleep when the day is done.

Of all the cities that put on their daily architectural make-up, batting their stucco’d window eyelashes and sticking out sexy, chisled stone legs at hapless tourists looking for that “real” antiquated atmosphere, Cuzco does it with the most panache and short-term believability. Talk to any of the gringos that’ve been there a while and you’ll hear it’s all just an act with a seedy underbelly that almost comes close to tourist-antagonistic, but to casual passers-by, it’s a happening scene.  In the late autumn month of May, the dry hills provide a rich backdrop of yellows, oranges and a touch of green from almost anywhere in the city of unanimously rust-colored roofs they seemlessly encapsulate. Buildings of wood and stucco complement their natural surroundings with soft earthtones, all wind-beaten and dust-covered after over five centuries of cool, high-altitude Andean weather.

Three blocks uphill to the Loki Hostel leaves me far more winded than I’d been in Quito, but again I’m relatively untouched by any real altitude sickness. Loki hostels (there are four of them now) have a reputation throughout the continent, though no one really elaborates on what that reputation is.

“Oh, you’re staying at Loki” with a roll of the eyes. Or, “I stayed at the Loki in Lima for 5 days, but had to switch to another for another week just to recover.”

I didn’t find this entirely to be the case. It’s true that there’s a centrally located bar that charges all drinks directly to your room, making it easy to mindlessly imbibe over the course of how ever many weeks one opts to stick around for (more than one person in the common room had been there for well over a month) without any thought of the cost until moments before departure.  But the bar isn’t really what set Loki apart from its peers — in fact, shutting down abruptly at midnight, even on weekends, it made the hostel far less of a “party” atmosphere than nearly any other hostel with a bar.

The place simply has a good vibe, and visibly puts effort into maintaining it.  Movies are played daily in the common room at 4 pm. Elaborate dinners are cooked nightly for anyone on the ball enough to sign up for them by five in the afternoon.   And most importantly, a giant chalkboard advertises daily activities for all guests: Horseback riding on Mondays. High-altitude paintball Tuesdays. Mountain-biking. Bungee-jumping. Quiz night (a solid win at this on my part won not only a free t-shirt, but prepped me for a job as Quizmaster in the near future). Poker nights. Saturday parties. It’s enough to make almost unemployed backpackers with a taste for the bizarre stick around for at least a week.

And this is a good thing, as it turns out that short of flying, there’s no way I’m getting out of Cuzco.

The First Stragglers Arrive

A South African couple walks into the bar.  It’s not the lead-in to a joke, nor do they have anything to laugh about, their eyes glazed over and heavy, their clothes covered in a thin but noticeable layer of filth.  The Irish bartender — a transient, like most of the employees at Loki, he’d enjoyed his stay at the Loki so much that he stayed on for a month to live there — offers them a drink.

“Love to,” coughs the man, exhaustedly in that distinct South African accent.  ”Can’t.  We absolutely are sleeping as soon as our room is ready.  We’re coming from Arequipa…”

“Do people know what’s happening out there?” his female companion (who turns out to be his wife) asks us.

People do not, and are soon informed.

It actually all started in northeast Peru when indiginous groups protested new legislation that would’ve allowed oil drilling and loggers onto their land.  The protests grew in size and ferocity until a major clash with police (with many of the indiginous apparently fighting back — successfully — with spears) left as many as 60 people dead.  Major protests took place in Lima when I’d been there just days before Cuzco, but by now, anger had spread throughout the country and protesters aimed to hit the country where it hurt: Tourism.  So long as the national protests continued, Cuzco would be effectively blocked off from the rest of the country by land.

(Apparently, opportunists also were quick to take advantage of this situation.  While some roads were blocked in protest, others were blocked with the option of the block quickly being removed for a small local toll.  Viva Peru!)

“We left Arequipa 21 hours ago,” the couple tell us.

The bus ride from Arequipa to Cuzco typically takes six hours.

Protesters piled rocks in the roadway, pelted tourist buses and filled the streets, making passage anything from slowed to impossible.  The transportation nightmare came to a head on a particularly remote mountain road where a bridge — typically deemed necessary for crossing rivers, chasms and other forms of landlessness — had been inconveniently removed, leaving only its frame.  This gesture turned out to be more than ominous enough for the driver, who stopped the bus and simply walked away without talking to any of the passengers (at least, not to any of the gringos).

Some locals informed the gringos that another bus area was just a few miles ahead on the other side of the bridge and, lacking options, passengers slowly crossed the skeletal remains of the bridge.  Weighted down with backpacks and travel gear, they walked sideways over the rusty metal bar that once maintained the bridge planks, holding on carefully to a thinner second bar above that ran parallel to the one they walked over.  For several hours, low on both water and food, they walked over a mostly barren mountain road in search of a bus station that seemed less and less believable as the time passed until it improbably appeared before them.

No one could accurately tell them when the next bus to Cuzco would be leaving, and so the bedraggled group sat in a state between sleep and vigilence for several more hours until the right bus was finally ready.  They’d be sleeping well tonight.

As days passed, more people came in with harrowing stories like this one and while initially it didn’t appear to affect me past being the recipient of good travel anecdotes, I began to realize that the ongoing strike did have one negative side effect: No buses were leaving the Cuzco region in any direction.  Sure, Machu Picchu and all the local attractions were still widely available, but the two weeks I’d reserved for hiking in Arequipa, flying over the Nazca lines in Nazca, boating around Lake Titicaca and sandsurfing in Ica.  Suddenly my options were limited to simply being stranded in Cuzco.

At least the Machu Picchu condition takes close to a week — maybe the protests will be over by then?  (foreshadowing: they won’t be)

Horsing Around Sexy Woman

It’s my first day in and I don’t know a soul.  Hoards of Peruvians, grouped together in colorfully indigenous outfits like centuries-old marching bands take to the streets, blocking traffic and making a spectacle.  No, it’s not another protest that just happens to be gorgeously photogenic — Inti Raymi is only weeks away, I’m told, and every perfectly synchronized act of marching, dancing, singing, music playing or performing of any time must be picture perfect.  Troops of all ages pour in after one another, divided only by differently garish wardrobes.

What is “Inti Raymi”?  Some kind of festival.  I’ll be gone long before it starts, so it doesn’t really matter. (foreshadowing: It’s the Incan Festival of the Sun, and I’ll definitely still be around for it)

Because right now, I aim to see something spectacular.  I’ve got no idea what, but after a fairly boring, insipid week in Lima, Cuzco and all its majesty better live up to expectations.  Bring on the cobweb-covered Incan temples of human sacrifice.  Bring on the adrenaline pumping adventure.  Failing that, bring on a cold beer.  Every street downtown is lined with tourist agencies, all hawking indentical services with drastically varying prices.  Salespeople line the streets reaching out to gringos as they pass (often physically) with offers of every possible service, from Machu Picchu excursions to shoe shining to massages.

I don’t get the shoe shine boys.  Shoe shining is actually huge through a lot of South America, though it does stand out as being a bit bigger in Peru.  The locals seem to love a nice pair of freshly shined shoes, and often give these boys plenty of business.  However, it’s not locals that these boys chase after for blocks down the streets.  No, it is the gringos with tennis shoes or sandals that they decide really need a good shining, despite relentless protestations otherwise.

Now the massages are a different story.  The going rate is 30 soles for an hour-long massage, but they can be talked down to 20 immediately.  That’s about six dollars for a fairly intense hour of full-body — no happy ending — work.  While in Cuzco, I get about six of these.

Machu Picchu is the main event, but the Incas literally covered this place in holy sites cum minor tourist attractions.  There’s Moray, a peculiarly circular terraced site outside of the town of Moras; Ollantaytambo, an Incan site built into the narrow, eastern end of the Sacred Valley (the region that houses nearly every major ruin around Cusco); Pisac: Umm.  More ruins.  Built into the mountains.  Valley backdrop.  Yada yada. Forty bucks gets you a pass to everything but Machu Picchu, though most of them are confusing bus trips, and quite honestly, despite the history and beauty of the other ruins, how many ruins are non-archeological types expected to explore in any given region?  If Machu Picchu doesn’t sate the innate need for Incan culture I never knew I had before, I can always double back and hit up some of its lesser known cousins next week.

One ruin that does bear exploring, however, is Sacsayhuaman (prounced “sexy woman”).  Sure the imposing walls are massive and precise, and sure they were built using no mortar or binding agents, with rocks held together solely by fitting so closely together to one another that they’ve stayed in one piece like a puzzle for centuries now.  All that’s great.  But despite the catchy name, if Sexy Woman were more than 30 minutes travel outside of town, it’s unlikely I’d make the trip.  Happily, the massive stone walls are erected on the large hill overlooking Cusco, providing both an easy trip to the site and a stunning (especially at sunset) view of town.

“You want trip Machu Picchu?” a street hawker asks, standing outside Sunshine Travel.  Or maybe it’s Sunrise Tourism.  Sun Adventure Fun Times?  Every other building is a tourist agency, and every other one of those has the word “sun” somewhere in the title.  It’s an Incan thing.

“I want Sexy Woman.”

“You want horse?”

“Huh?  No.  Sexy Woman.  Sec-Say hWah-Man!”

“Siiii, si.  You want take horse Sexy woman.”

“How much horse sexy woman?”

“40 soles.”  About 13 bucks gets me a three hour horse ride up to (but not into — like most things around here, the ruins have an entry fee) Sacsayhuaman.

“Si.  40 soles.  Yo voy, yo voy…”

A truck takes me up out of the city; the father drives as the preschool daughter shares the back seat with me, eyes curiously affixed to my face for the entire ride.  Another gringo waits for us at the stable, and we chat (the standard travel talk: where are you from, where have you been, where are you going… permutations on locations and times) as the driver negotiates things with what looks to be our guide.

The stable area has a small (about three feet high) stone wall built around it with a single exit, and we’re instructed to lead our horses through it.  Grandstanding, our guide motions for his horse to walk over the wall, though the pile of stones (clearly not stacked by the precise Incans) collapse immediately upon bearing the horse’s weight, sending both horse and guide fumbling forward awkwardly, and upsetting both of the gringo-laden horses.

“Sweet start, brah.”

My horse, Pedro, is a dick.  Not perpetually so — it’s as though he forgets what a dick he is most of the time, only to remember during those rare times I complacently let my guard down, causing him to venture off in strange directions despite those directions being drastically at odds with what I believe my reins to be instructing.  Generally, enough kicking, pulling and yelling will get him back on track.  During the few uncomfortable times it does not, the guide is usually there to kick a bit harder.  So he gets a tip.

Trails go through woody areas and ravines, thin mountain passes with sheer drops that the horses don’t seem particularly bothered by (do horses ever commit suicide, and if so, how often do they bring along a gringo or two for the ride?) but leave me more than mildly disconcerted.  After an hour, we stop at large rock formation and jump down to let the horses water themselves at a nearby stream.  Unlike the many other rocky outcroppings we’ve passed, this one isn’t coincidental scenery so much as the Temple of the Moon — deep crevasses run over, across and through it, with intricately carved stone walls celebrating the trilogy of mythological Incan totems: the condor, the puma and the snake.

Respectively representing Uku Pacha (the underworld), Key Pacha (our plane of existence) and Hanan Pacha (the heavens), snake, puma and condor play tremendous roles throughout both Incan mythology and Cusco tourist gift shops.  A stone archway guarded by one of the many snakes carved into this chunk of rock leads us into the main chamber of the temple, and a local indigenous girl explains the rituals and symbology in broken English as we make our way in.  The innermost room is small and made up of a single large slab of rock with a surprisingly smooth horizontal surface.

“This is very spiritual room.  On full moon, look there…” she says, as she points at a large hole in the rocky ceiling directly over the long slab.  ”Moon is over stone and shaman come here for holy ceremony.  Every month he go here…”

“…and makes a ritual sacrifice!?” I interject.

“Um.  No.  Is not for sacrifice.  Every month he come here on full moon and with a woman they make love.  Is very sacred.  Celebrate fertility.”

“That’s good too!”

“Yes.”

She walks us around the outside, explaining further in detail the rituals and religious carvings throughout the temple, and upon leaving I make my ritual donation of five dollars.  The horses, now properly watered, await our return sullenly, and with a swift kick, Pedro is off once more.

Close to two hours later, my ass is raw and battered and I want no more of this.  These horseback riding tours only seem like a good idea for the first hour or so, and even most of that time is spent wondering what the point of such an activity is all about.  Hopping off, I thank the guide and, less enthusiastically, Pedro, before making my way down the long hill back into Cusco for a much needed six-dollar massage.

Sexy Woman

Despite being dropped off at Sacsayhuaman just a day prior, the ride had been thoroughly exhausting enough to limit any further exploration of the ruins I might’ve otherwise made.  I knew the walking route this time, and had little else to do other than lumber up the long walk back into Cusco’s hillsides.  The ruins are most well-known for being comprised of rocks held together solely by their perfect fit with one another, thus requiring no mortar or other adhesive to keep them together for these past several centuries.  They’re impressive, but by this point the major structures are no more, leaving just a series of well-designed walls and the occasional archway for tourists to gawk at.  While standing before one of the larger stones, a long-haired backpacking type with an American accent approaches me.

“That’s one of the portal stones,” he informs me.  ”See how it’s, like, shaped like a door almost.  It’s a portal.  The Incas believed in portals like this.”

“Where’s it go?” I asked.

“Well…” But he doesn’t answer, instead walking away.  Maybe it was a stupid question.  I walk up and put my hands on the rock, but if it functions in any way like Platform 9 and 3/4, it does not do so for me.

Upon walking out, an old indigenous man approaches me.

“What did you think of our ruins?” he asks me.

“Good stuff.  I really dug the.. the portal.”

“Yes, yes.  This is a very important place to us.  Look, look…” he pulls out a looseleaf binder filled with laminated pictures.  I’m curious, but my teeth grit as I wait for the request for a donation with every word of knowledge he imparts upon me.  ”See these stones…” he says.  I look at a section of wall from one of Sexy Woman’s many segments with mild curiosity, as it looks no different from any other part of the complex.  He turns the page.  ”Now look…”

“Well, sonofabitch…”  It’s the same segment, but now an outline of yellow traces over twelve or so of the joined rocks to clearly show the outline of the Incan condor.  ”Now here,” he says, flipping another page, and then another.  Fourteen rocks meet to form a snake.  Seven make a man with a sword.  Others form a fist.  A puma.  The sun.

“Man, I wish I’dve talked to you before going in.  This is Great!”

“Yes, I am glad you appreciate it.  If you would like, I am having an ayahuasca ceremony later tonight…”

“Heh.  Yeah, great stuff, ayahuasca.  But I think I’m good for now, thanks!”

“Take care.”

Nice Tour Peru

I like a nice tour as much as the next guy, and the proximity of “Nice Tour Peru” to the Loki hostel makes them an easy choice.  I still shopped around, though their price was comparable or better to that of any other agency in the city that I spoke with.  There are four main tours from Cusco to Machu Picchu, each taking 4-6 days (note that it’s possible to do a one-day trip as well, but where’s the fun in that?)

1. The Inca Trail - Beautiful scenery, majestic springs and lakes, relentless Incan ruins.  It’s the most popular hike in South America.  It also books up more than six months in advance and still costs 2-3 times what the other tours cost.  Peru put limits on the trail of no more than 500 tourists a day, making it even more sought after.  I had the opportunity to reserve a spot back in November, but the free-form nature of my post-Antarctica travels didn’t go for the idea of forcing me into Cusco on any sort of schedule.  So no Inca Trail for me.
2. Salkantay - Six days, including one night on cold, high-altitude Salkantay Mountain.  Honestly, I just didn’t feel like hiking up to 17,000 feet above sea level at this point.
3. Inca Jungle Adventure - It’s a fairly lame name for the option I ended up going with.  A day is spent biking close to 7000 vertical feet downhill, followed by two days of hiking through the Sacred Valley and the final day spent in Machu Picchu.  Food included, it’s not a bad deal for $140 (though his original price was $160 — they’re all about bargaining here in Cusco…)

The bus would pick me up at six in the morning on Thursday, and, as an added perk, we would be at Machu Picchu on the 21st of June, the longest day of the year — Not a bad day to celebrate a culture whose entire religion revolved around the sun.

Shameless Self Promotion

Llama, taboot...

Ayahuasca: from the Quechua words ‘aya‘ meaning ‘vine’ and ‘huasca‘ meaning ’spirit’

Located in one of the indices or glossaries of William Burrough’s Naked Lunch, I discovered the vine scientifically known as banisteria caapi for the first time.  The book’s considered a classic in the small, amorphous genre of “drug literature” that somehow covers the entire spectrum between Hunter S. Thompson and Lewis Carroll, and I felt the need to academically justify my newfound interest in the Grateful Dead and its anachronistic, tie-dye wearing culture by throwing myself into additional reading beyond my monthly subscription to High Times magazine.

I still have no fucking clue what that book was about.

That Burroughs has no recollection of writing it only adds to its mythos, in certain circles at least.  But there, buried at the end of the special anniversary edition I was reading, was a surprisingly lucid letter from Burroughs to a peer, describing the affect of what he called the “yage” vine on the consciousness.  He described a waking dream, very much dissimilar from the popular psychedelics of the day, leading to a more deeply profound, personal and enlightening experience.  I can’t remember much else as it’s been well over ten years since fighting my way through that book, but the segment was memorable enough that it almost made chewing down Naked Lunch palatable.

Since then, I’ve heard little of the vine, which goes almost exclusively by the name Ayahuasca down here, but upon researching Peru for travel ideas, books and message boards commonly referred to “ayahuasca tourism,” “shamanism” or “jungle medicine,” as reasons for journeying deep into the rough and rugged town of Iquitos.  It naturally piqued my curiosity.

While drugs like cocaine and marijuana are emphatically illegal here, despite the town’s notoriety as a haven for drug traffickers (I was offered neither while in Peru — a stark contrast to their ubiquity in Quito), Ayahuasca’s either too small an offender or too sacred to the locals to warrant the ire of official agents, leading to a fairly open tourist market built around it.  Online, travelers recall their experiences, ranging from the positively profound to “like being brutally sodomized by a nightmare.”  But there was general agreement to the fact that this sort of tourist activity, more than any other, required an intensely reliable tourguide.  Paulo, the incomprehensible, barely uni-lingual stutterer might be barely passable enough to get by when explaining the grandeur and history of Machu Picchu to you, but do you really want the guy around when your entire consciousness is laid out and put in a blender set to “puree” for upwards of four hours?

I did not.

One of the better written reviews excoriated the slew of ayahuasca tours currently available in the city, and just how unlikely a positive experience would be for nearly anyone that came down to Peru to take advantage of their services would be.  “Unless of course,” he wrote, “you go on one of Peter Gorman’s trips.”  I wasted no time in searching the guy out.

Three Rules

“There are three rules you need to know before we go into this, three things to keep in mind while the Ayahuasca’s working its magic,” Peter explains to an almost abnormally attentive group.  We’re here for the Ayahuasca.  We’re very excited about the Ayahuasca.  We’re also somewhat scared shitless about the Ayahuasca.  The pent-up anticipation is similar to that felt prior to skydiving, though the freefall is a bit more metaphysical.

“First off, you don’t have to worry at all about the side effects of the medicine.  You’re probably going to throw up.  Not always, but most of the time.  That’s what my guys are there for.  They’ll guide you out, hold your hair, pat you on the back and get you through it.  If you lose control of your bowels, which is a possibility, they’ll take you out and clean you off, as nasty a job as you know that’s gotta be.  They’ll hate it and at the time they’ll probably even hate you a little.  But you won’t know it.  And you’ll never hear about it again from them afterwards.  These guys are professionals.”

“So the three rules are more about how you handle yourself.  This is strong strong stuff and it opens up a gateway into you that a lot of look-i-loos want to get through.  I call ‘em that because they’re always looking in.  You’ll probably see them out there — you’ll know they’re watching.  But that’s all.  The shaman and I are going to make a circle around the camp that they can’t cross,  so long as none of us are stupid and open it up for them.”

“So that’s the first rule: You can get up and walk around at any time.  You can have us help you to the bathroom or to get a little water.  But once we’ve closed the circle to the spirits, no one is to cross it.  Whether you believe in the spirits or not, I’m telling you… one of the guys I had out here ignored this once and ran down to the water and the second — the second — that he crossed the line this huge whooooosh of wind pours in and that was it, man.  Everyone had a bad experience that night, cuz once they get in, they ain’t getting out.  And you don’t want to be the one that ruins things for everyone else!  So don’t leave the circle.”

“That’s the first rule.”

“The second is that, if something gets too intense for you… if you don’t like what you’re seeing, or feel like some spirits are bothering you — bloooow them away.  Whusssshhhh! Just like that.  Just a quick burst of air.  You’d be amazed how well that works.  Alternately: get BIG.  If you’ve got things surrounding you and you feel trapped, just make yourself huge.  Bigger than the room.  Bigger than everything.  And then you’ll see how small they are and how little they can do to you.  That’s the second.”

“The third.”

He pauses like trying to grapple an old memory he hasn’t accessed in a while.  Maybe there are only two rules?  Tension in the room swells from the power of his pregnant pause.

“The third,” he repeats, “is this.”  He’s got something now.  “If you see someone or something in a vision, and they’re staring at you.  And maybe it makes you a little uncomfortable.  Ask them: ‘Are you my teacher?’  Because maybe they’ve got something to show you.  And those are the ones you don’t want to send away.”

It wasn’t the most typical pre-activity primer, but I’ve seen few speakers get such undivided attention.

Being a cynic, I’m not too sure about any rules laid out to protect one against spirits and anything that would fall into the category of “mojo.”  The first one’s easy enough to follow though, though my general laziness is far more of a deterrent from running off into the jungle than any spirits might be.  I store the second away for safe keeping, though it’s far from thrilling to think my best defense against spiritual attackers is to “blow them.”  But “Are You My Teacher?” sounds a bit too much like the title of a Dr. Seuss book for me.  No matter how far out this stuff might take me, the thought that I might potentially be knelt over pleading with a tree for advice on health, wealth and happiness is too much for me.

The first two days at camp are to get acclimatized to the general weirdness that comes with being deeper in the jungle than most tourists are ever likely to get.  They’re also needed to prepare the medicine itself.  We’d gathered the vines our first day here, but much more is needed before we have anything digestible with all the quirky side effects we’re counting on.  Ayahuasca vines are gathered together and smashed into a relatively fine pulp, then mixed with a variety of other jungle plants, each with varying effects.

Psychotria Viridis, known to the locals as chacruna leaves are layered on top of bark from a Lupuna Negra tree — “the tree of light and dark” — to add clarity and profundity to the experience.  Catawa bark is caustic and can cause blindness.  If there are positive reasons for its addition in the stew, Peter doesn’t tell us.  Lastly, Caipirona, a bark whose powder adds a joyful element to the medicine.

Freshly mashed down, Peter boils the mix together in about ten liters of water, reducing it down to about three.  The solids are gathered and the reduction is set aside, while a new 10-gallon mix boils down to three with the same solids as the first batch.  Both mixes are combined and furthered reduced to around two liters for our ceremonies.  It’s a fairly intricate procedure, but not one you’re likely to see any time soon on the Food Network.

Our first excursion into the wild world of Ayahuasca then is to be on our third night, followed by an encore on the fifth.  Several days later, upon return to Iquitos, a third trip will be optional at the home of a shaman located just twenty minutes outside of town.  Peter has more of a personal connection with the Matses Indians here, twelve hours downriver from any major towns, but he stands by the alternate shaman as well.

Three ceremonies.  Three evenings likely to be fairly memorable.

The First Ceremony

We sit on foam mattresses, just four inches thick, covered in a single layer of blanket.  The air smells loosely of mosquito repellent.  No netting protects us here and we’re warned the onslaught could be bad.  One has to wonder about how a bloodsucking blitzkrieg might affect potential nirvana.

About six Matses Indians mill about the exterior of the large hut while Peter dribbles Mapacho over the damp mud outside in a very loose circle, muttering words in Spanish with a melody hard to latch onto.  Sold as Agua Florida, the perfume-like tonic with a hint of orange odor was introduced to Peru around the turn of the last century and almost immediately became a part of all Shamanic ceremonies.

They just like how it smells.

Peter makes a spitting noise — or possibly he actually is spitting — while closing the circle.  He takes the spiritual barrier quite seriously, spending a good twenty minutes or so preparing it while we look on nervously, talking only in small sentences with little drive for serious conversation.  Puffing his large hand-rolled tobacco cigarettes — and really, at this point if they were anything but tobacco don’t you think I would’ve said so? — he blows gusts of smoke out, marking the end of the ritual.  For the next three hours we may all be clinically insane, but completely free from any malicious spirits.  So we’ve got that going for us.

The shaman takes a central spot in the room as we sit in a misshapen semi-circle around him, one or two to a mattress.  Before him is an unlabeled three liter bottle that once held soda of some sort but now holds something far more potent than caffeine, sugar and yellow #6.  Despite the room’s dim candle-lit luminescence, the thick, brown, opaqueness of the bottle’s contents is clear to every one of us.  We stare with a necessary reverence; the worst thing anyone here could do would be to not take this night seriously.  Peter gives a last word of advice.

“Whatever you do, don’t talk to each other.  It may seem innocuous enough to you at the time, but if some guy’s in the middle of being told the secret to everlasting joy and happiness, only to have it be shattered by ‘hey — you feeling it, dude?’ he’s probably gonna be pretty upset.”

Four sit before me in receiving the ayahuasca.  A separate preparation of the medicine — a separate ritual performed — for each of us.  By the time my turn arrives, the first recipient might well on her way into the experience.  I stare at her with a mix of curiosity, envy and a slight bit of dread.

We hear the name of the first recipient several times in the short prayer the Shaman chants out over the small cup of liquid similar in color and opaqueness to syrup, though none of us speak enough Spanish to comprehend its meaning.  A likely guess is:

“Please, spirits of Ayahuasca, help [your name here] from totally losing her shit tonight.  And I mean that in more ways than one, seeing as I’m likely to be the one to clean her up should any unfortunate messes occur.  Thanks.   PS - I want a pony.”

He blows a final gush of smoke into the cup and it rides outwards over its edges like a supernatural mist descending from a mountain, finger-like  wisps still breaking apart in the air above it as he rises.

The medicine is prepared, but the ritual is far from over.  The shaman hovers above each of us in turn like a force of nature whose intention can’t be immediately discerned, poised to strike or heal, bless or curse.  Taking us in his hands, he surrounds us in an effluvium of tobacco smoke, coating us entirely over the course of five bursts of smoke.  Our hands, our chests, our heads.  Shakras and spiritual centers of our body.  Or something — it isn’t really explained.  Our hands are bathed in the agua florida, as are our heads.  Many days and many showers later, in the safe confine of Iquitos, the invasively sweet smell of agua florida, like a grandmother’s noxiously scented bowl of hard candy would still be firmly lodged in my nasal passages.

Engulfed in an aura of tobacco smoke and coated in the choicest scents the jungle has to offer, I take the cup in hand and swallow in three short gulps.  The texture of Ayahuasca is akin to heavy whipping cream, far more dense and rich in texture than water.  Its flavor is a mix of bittersweet chocolate and mud, sweat and freshly mowed grass.  Burnt caramel.  Stale coffee.  That Karo syrup in the back of the pantry that no one uses, but never seems to get tossed during Spring cleaning.  It’s the essence of the jungle, oozing slowly down our throats with strange, unknown intentions.

We’ve eaten nothing since noon — fasting is a part of the ritual, though just as likely is meant to keep the grounds free from the relentless torrents of vomit that would otherwise be possible with the drug’s stomach-loosening assistance.  Still, a Hall’s cough drop is passed to each of us upon completion of our allotted serving of jungle juice, with the goal of keeping our gag reflexes firmly in check; throwing up may be a standard part of this game, but too soon in the ceremony and the experiment changes from “mind-altering transcendental shamanic ritual” to “drinking weird brown stuff and puking.”  And that isn’t what I came here for.

After my serving, two others get similar treatment and we’re ready.  Candles are blown out and we’re encased in the thick, supernatural darkness of Peruvian jungle.  The following half hour would likely have been spent in a dark hut filled with recurring queries of “Dude, you feeling it yet?” but our pre-ceremony warning keeps us all firmly and silently in check.

“cielo, cielo, Ayahuasca…” ["heaven, heaven, Ayahuasca"] begins the Shaman in a soft, hypnotic chant.  He’s shaking something — leaves — with the same effect as a pair of maracas, providing rhythm and percussion to his endlessly cycling song.  For the next three hours, the song would be repeated again and again, ever with the steady jungle whoosh of dried leaves like the flapping wings of a giant bird descending upon us, carrying it out through the wind and through our bodies.

In silence, I clear my head and focus on driving the experience, of seeing past the trivial minutiae of a life into the real and the meaningful.  Here I am open to all things: Every mistake I’ve ever made.  Every success.  Every weakness.  Everything I’ve loved.  Everything I’ve regretted.  Fully open and laid bare, I let the medicine take hold of me.  I feel my heartbeat accelerate and a wave of mild, pleasant dizziness comes over me, forcing me to lay back on the mattress.  It has begun.

Images, vision, hallucinations, what have you — they arrive with no mass or density, yet a vague substance formed together from the all-encompassing darkness that holds us, and character given from the deep recesses of our minds.  The senses function here as they do in any dream.  Do we actually hear people speak in our dreams, or do we simply know that something has been said?

Many of the others in our group refer to ayahuasca as “she,” a “female jungle spirit.”  My intense cynicism rolls its eyes in ironic disbelief, yet there is something deeper here… a presense.  A group of presences or a collective mind perhaps, that takes turns guiding the course of images that deluge through my mind, imparting snippets of wisdom as needed.  Even were everything my own creation, it would be telling of the vast depths of our subconscious and just how much we see, process and know, if only we could somehow delve below the thin layer of our surfaces.

The potency of the visions seems to feed off the darkness, using the emptiness it brings as a blank canvas for so much more.  As participants rise to purge themselves as necessary of their stomach’s contents, flashlights pierce the darkness, often rousing us from experiences either profound or meaningless, but the Ayahuasca is at its most powerful in complete darkness.  Eyes fully closed bring me into a waking dream, simultaneously lucid and disjointed as I ride through the kaleidoscopic imagery of my subconscious.

Early mental images flow like water through my mind.  Brief meaningless phantasms.  Combinations of shapes and colors that should never exist.  Art and geometry.  Madness.  Prescient animals, loosely anthropomorphized with an awareness in their eyes that could only be human.  Endlessly shifting creatures of smoke and mirrors.  A pyramid of spinning prisms, bathed in a light that forms a near-infinite amount of identical pyramids branching out from the central one.  Without effort or strain, my mind has created this multi-hued temple of fractal geometry, for no other reason than to make sense of the jungle vine’s slowly spreading influence over every system of my body.

Movement is as within a dream; there is no sense of momentum, no bodily mass to be aware of at any time.  And yet I walk, run, spin, fly, expand and contract as the dream allows.  The primary difference is that I retain total lucidity through every psychic twist and turn.  Every image is immediately processed and questioned by the purest form of my ego.  In a dream, we are only aspects of ourselves, acting out our roles as though characters in a pre-scripted play, slaves to whatever subliminal fate our psyches have put together for us on any given night.  In the mornings, all but snippets and fragments are lost with our coffee as the faded dreams add to our near infinite collection of forgotten memories.

Here, nothing is lost, regardless of how nonsensical the strangely painted canvas of my mind’s eye might be under the Ayahuasca’s influence.  A cramped, precarious, moving-forward sensation overtakes me like a truck tearing through a narrow hallway of playing cards; the floor, ceiling and walls crumple hastily as it passes by, unremorseful.  An angular, cartoonish cat-like creature — a long-lost cousin of the sphinx — turns its head to peer towards me before looking away, disinterested.  Fractal images too complex for modern computers cavort with flora and fauna that go through a million years of evolution in my mind in split seconds.

“cielo cielo ayahuasca…” the chant continues.

I open my eyes and the spell is broken, momentarily.  I close them again.  Each darkened view of the world around me pulls me briefly from the depths of the ceremony like the distinct ending of a mental chapter in the long, incomparable picture book of the evening, free to all participants with admission.  Eyes close and a new chapter begins.  Many of the images painted out onto my inner eyelids flash by with no coherent reason behind them, no story to tell.  Others are far more clear.

Sunset on a massive tower stretching off above me to points unknown, as wide as it is tall, a checkerboard of windows dotting it infinitely in every horizon, each with its own story to tell.  Formless, something guides me to a specific window where I see myself screaming, reaching outwards; a futile gesture.  “Imagine if roles were reversed,” a voice says, and the implicit meaning is clear to me.  I feel no empathy.  Only pity.  And with it a revulsion of sorts.  “How sad,” I say.  “I know, right??” says the voice in a half-joking tone.  It’s not taking this nearly as seriously as I am.

In another window, I see myself in bed looking outwards, the idealized version of me, perfect in every way.  And yet not significantly different from me as I am, despite my occasional fits of self-analysis and doubt.  Our eyes lock and I’m filled with power and energy, surety of self, confidence.  My eyes widen as I know what I have to do.

The tower fades away into the distance and I’m taken to a large outdoor courtyard looking down on a scene that doesn’t involve me, watching as it plays out.  There’s happiness here — a feeling of contentedness.   “It’s just the natural order of things,” I hear.  “You really should let go, you know?”

“You’re totally right…” I say, but feel no presence around me to accept my response.  Even in the Ayahuasca dream, I feel equal parts foolish for talking to myself and perturbed at any vision that would start up a conversation only to depart prior to my involvement in it.  “Goodbye,” I say, as the scene fades around me, feeling nothing.  Everything is as it should be.

Window by window I see things as they are, as they were, as they should be, as they could be.  Somewhere in the distance, far outside of where I’m at, leaves stop rustling and the slow chanting of a short Peruvian man trails off into silence, breaking me away from the trance.  The tower fades and I sit up in darkness, processing what I just witnessed.

It’s storming outside now.  Residual images fester to be contemplated while new ones dart in and out of creation.  Something with a flashlight, gray and alien, with abnormally long arms, is moving about outside by the boats in bizarre motions.  Eyes snap into focus and there’s nothing special about the man at all.  In darkness, I have no conception of how the ayahuasca affects actual perception.  As hints of light make their way into the hut, all appears normal.  It is the marginal imagery, those things dwelling withing the periphery, that are most affected when my eyes are open and actively examining the world around me.  The things hinted at in the movements within shadows.

Images now come haphazardly, without apparent meaning, when a perceptible shift comes over the experience.  Deep in the dreamscape, I’m in a moderately sized room — a kitchen — with white tiles covering the walls and floor.  The bright florescent light illuminating the kitchen dims suddenly, and a sickly green hue now stretches over everything.  Dense, brown mildew clogs the empty space between tiles, and the room is now old and musty, unwelcoming.  There’s a toilet in the room that wasn’t there before, stained every sickly shade between yellow and brown as though abandoned long ago after a lifetime of abuse.  I already know where this is going, but to hammer the point across in the most ayahuasca-like  way possible, a bird-like animal perches over the toilet, feathers matted down as though freshly from a swim in an oil spill, and cranes its long neck over to look at me with eyes that radiate pain, nausea and revulsion.

It’s time.

The sensation is strong enough that it can’t be ignored, but not so powerful I’m in any danger of uncontrollably heaving out a hearty serving of used Ayahuasca, Halls-flavored saliva and whatever else remains of my jungle lunch of eggs, rice and piranha all over the presumably sacred floor.  Standing’s a bit difficult, and I attempt to gauge how much of my currently poor attempts at coordination stem from being blind and under the affect of a powerful hallucinogen and how much are simply because I always have terrible coordination.  I could use a little assistance from one of the Indians, but don’t want to trample anyone else’s nirvana, so I phrase my query as economically as possible.

“Hola?”

A cylinder of light comes into existence just outside the hut and I gently make my way over, kicking only one unsuspecting leg on my way out, as I make my way to the guiding safety of the bobbing flashlight beam.  The rain is oddly welcoming, refreshing, and as someone takes my arm, I follow the burning circle of light as it moves along the ground, illuminating patches of green and brown that are abnormally vivid and alive with the assistance of the jungle psychedelic.  My guide stops abruptly and tightens his grip on my arm.

“Aqui?,” I ask, feeling a slight hint of pride at ability to recall even the simplest of Spanish given my current state of mind.

“Si.”

And as profoundly as it entered my system — though far more forcefully — the Ayahuasca makes its grand exit.  The process is awkward, but as with any purging brought about from a hangover, a sense of tearful relief overwhelms most of the discomfort.  Through the process, the Indian pats me on the back like a sympathetic parent, comforting me; it’s unexpected but appreciated.  He hands me some tissue as I stand, and a cup of water to rinse my mouth upon returning to the hut.  It could’ve been worse.

Many people have described the Ayahuasca experience as not truly beginning until after throwing up the murky liquid and settling back into a soft, relaxed meditation.  In my case, its power and profundity drops off to almost nothing.  Images on the backs of my eyelids cease to evoke actual imagery in bright, discernible colors and instead become ideas of images, mere clouds lacking body or substance.  My mind wanders to the places it goes in those moments just before sleep where strange thoughts — precursors to dreams, really — come about while one is still lucid enough to snap back into consciousness and wonder why anyone should think such a thought.

A curious boredom sets in for the remaining hour or so in darkness, alternately sitting or laying on the aged, foam mat.  Shamanic chanting cuts through a thick silence, its only competition being the occasional unmelodious sound of heartfelt vomiting.  My mind wanders a bit more than usual, and to far more strange and surreal places.  But the deep, enlightened undertones that marked the transcendental first hour seem to be gone.  Really, I’d just as soon head back to my bed, but a spiritual barrier drawn in mud, smoke and pungent Peruvian perfume blocks my exit.

Instead, I use the time to meditate on the deeper elements of the experience, using equal parts of my surprising lucidity and my still rather expanded perspective on life, the universe and everything.  Quite unexpectedly, the shaman’s chant ends for the last time, filling the area with an unnatural silence, likely brought about from many of us being long ready to retire to our beds, locked in paralyzed silence by the well-established rules of the ritual.  It’s hard to say how long the silence lasts — time flows rather differently in these parts — but Peter’s voice, even toned down and gentler than usual, raises the hair on my arm as it fills the stale air like thunder.

“How is everyone feeling?  Ok?  If you’re ready to go back, you can do so now.”

Quiet mutters of acquiescence.  Movement.  The slow, awkward gathering of one’s belongings and self in near darkness.  No one seems particularly chatty or energetic as a cluster of flashlights fire up in unison cutting just a small swath of the humid blackness that envelops us.  Conversations are politely curt as we stumble through down the muddy hill towards our shared meager accommodation through rain that has trickled down to a meager drizzle.

¨How was it for you?¨

¨It was… it was pretty intense.  You.¨

¨Yeah, intense.  Yeah…¨

The post-Ayahuasca mindset doesn´t really lend itself to much smalltalk or elaboration.

Sleep doesn´t come easy — a combination of the medicine´s after-effects and the weight of too many new things to consider all exploded into existence in a short period of time.  But eventually, it comes.

Just one element of the ritual remains, an epilogue of sorts.  At dawn, we make our way down to the river, shrugging off its morning frigidity as make our way out far enough to fully submerge ourselves.  Once, twice, three times, we self-baptize, covering our heads completely.  The ceremony is closed.

The Second Cup

I know how this thing works now.  I know its rules.  With total prescience and understanding, I can wield the experience like a scalpel through my subconscious, gaining whatever insight there is to be garnered there.  For just a few weird hours, I´ve got a VIP laminate into the infinity that dwells within us all, into all those things we don´t know that we know.  In short, I´m very cocky about taking a powerful, mind-altering drug.

¨Show me what I need to know.¨

I´ve never really been one for mantras, and I know how corny the idea of me perched meditatively in a jungle hut mumbling this to myself (really, I just said it in my head) might be.  But it´s not like I´m reciting this intensely prior to downing a bag of cool ranch doritos.

Physically, nothing is different about the experience tonight.  Same hypnotizing chant, same rustling leaves.  The well-perfumed spiritual barrier is firmly erected once again, and cynic or not, I can certainly attest to making it through the prior evening free from spiritual assailment.  The flavor is just as pungent as before, though it takes more effort to force it down this time, and the Halls cough drop begins to coat my mouth almost instantaneously upon finishing the last drop of my serving.

What I need to know.

Introductory images fly by without narrative properties or any apparent significance.  Again, richly colored patterns and geometric shapes tend to dominate the mindscape, followed by a procession of faces staring towards me with various intents apparent in their eyes.  There´s a slight sense of movement fowards, as though down a hall with no walls, ceiling or floor, a spiritual tunnel into my psyche.  The majority of the waking dream is filled with brief flashes of profundity, pointless snippets that likely make no sense in any context.

But like before, some of the dreams are heavier.  Longer.  More real.  They have a presence to them that makes me take note, and in some cases a sense of a consciousness beyond my own, even if simply an outward manifestation of my subconscious.

What I need to know.

A platform or stage of sorts forms in my mind unbidden, gray and chiseled entirely from a single piece of granite or marble.  Black emptiness surrounds it on all sides, as though an entire small universe has sprung into existence with its borders beginning and ending at the borders of the stage.  Other than a stone post rising up at each of its four corners, the structure is completely unadorned, and there is no distinct front or back — All four sides faces outwards equally, like a boxing ring.

Without being instructed to, I offer things up to the stage for judgment and the show begins.  One by one, all pretexts are ripped away leaving nothing but a vague sense of truth.  Mother, father, family, friends, memories of my own actions, grudges I never knew I held, situations where my feelings were uncertain and ones where I was not even aware that I had feelings in the first place.  Each in turn is presented upon the dais and summarily dissected with a lack of emotion and a clarity I have never felt before.

Early on, the subjects thrown into view come up on their own, an equal mix of the usual suspects and things I never would have thought deserved noteworthy subconscious airtime.  As the rules become clear, I begin to submit topics for judgment manually, and in every case a layer of insight on the matter pours forth.  With perfect lucidity, I realize that for a limited time I have access to the inner recesses of my psyche and as each topic reaches a conclusion, my mind races impatiently with countless options for what to show next like a starving person at an infinitely sized buffet set to close in mere minutes.

People talk of psychotherapy and “breakthroughs” — of seeing a therapist for years, only to discover one day that an incident that occurred when they were seven drastically changed the course of their entire life, and explains a slew of previously incomprehensible behavior patterns.   Imagine that experience, squared, experienced over the course of about thirty minutes, and it might accurately describe the effects of this evening´s Ayahuasca.

The vision is longer and has more staying power than any from the first evening, lasting through at least two whole iterations of the shaman´s long, droning chant.  Whereas before, the cessation of the music would stir me from my waking dream allowing for something new and different to return in its place, the stage is too powerful to be shaken away by a brief foray into consciousness.  I still open my eyes briefly, recalling my actual physical location here in the jungle, making out what little I can through the darkness before shifting positions and closing my eyes once more.  The stage quickly reforms, as before.

True to form, what is exposed upon the dais often falls more into the category of what I probably ¨need to know¨ than what I ¨want to know.”  Mistakes I clearly never meant to take note of now bubble to the surface and can´t be unseen.  Sadness and regret accompany newfound understanding, in stark contrast to the uplifting sense of well-being felt during the first ceremony.  I´m glad for what I´ve seen, but little of it brings me immediate hope or comfort, like most epiphanies experienced by prominent economists over the past year.  At one point, the shaman stops rustling his leaves and I open my eyes and am surprised to find them wet with tears.

A grand finale, a final subject thrown onto the stage for review, dissolves the platform into murky nothingness and I’m suddenly elsewhere.  The sense of outside consciousness that fizzled into and out of existence as needed suddenly grips me undeniably, steering the fever-like dream with unflappable intent.  I don’t like what I’m being shown, but I’m told it’s a necessity.

“Watch,” it says without pity.  I do as instructed, difficult as it is, and the scene plays itself out before eventually fading away.

A sense of downward movement and now I’m in a cave, stretched out infinitely in all directions andlit by billions of small specks like weakly burning matches.  Some fizzle out almost imperceptibly while others come into being where once was only a dark patch of emptiness.  The balance is kept.  A speck in my immediate view shimmers differently from the others, wavering, capturing my attention.  As I watch, it dims briefly than explodes like a pocket-sized supernova, sending off a ripple of wrongness through every light in its immediate vicinity.

“You understand?” the voice asks.

I can’t explain it, not here, not ever, but I do.  I nod my head, as much as a incorporeal being floundering through his own subconscious is capable of nodding.

The final scene played out, there’s nothing more for me to see tonight.

The Third Cup

Just a few miles from Iquitos, the collectivo (a normal van, overfilled — much like a clown car — and available throughout South America for cheap, short distance travel) drops us off by a long muddy trail stretching off into the only slightly tamed local jungle.  The shaman here is different from the Matse Indian who’s guided our travels on the past two occasions, catering more to the typical Iquitos tourist with a taste for the strange and unusual.

He greets us with a smile and a handshake, which in most settings would put guests at ease.  Here and now, it feels inherently un-Shamanic after the stoic aloofness of our prior shaman.  Our new host speaks in only slightly broken English and offers to show us a stuffed Puma.

“Definitely!” I say.

“Ok, later we will see Puma,” he says.

I never get to see Puma.

The buildings are decidedly more modern here, complete with walls in most cases, though still no electricity in most of the buildings.  Our meet-and-greet takes place in the largest of the buildings which also houses a small Ayahuasca museum and an art gallery of colorful pieces that might’ve been done by any number of people I knew in college waiting on the next Phish tour.  My room not only has walls and a door, but screened in windows as well.  It’s no Holiday Inn, but it’s a nice step up from the jungle lodging of our prior ceremonies.

Waiting on the flower ceremony — a new ritual for this go-around — I make smalltalk with a visiting Frenchman there for his first Ayahuasca ceremony.  He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s in for a rough night.

Barefoot, wearing only shorts or swimsuits, we follow a guide down a marginally steep jungle path into a clearing, loosely encircled by a small stream.  One by one, we stand before the shaman, as he reaches into a large ceremonial container filled with water — freezing water, apparently — and the petals from a variety of jungle flora.  Spiritually, I feel no different from before upon the bath’s completion; physically, I an now cold and covered in flower petals that don’t smell nearly as pleasantly aromatic as I had assumed upon being told I would receive a “flower bath.”

Night falls and we’re brought to a new location, as far out into the jungle from our lodging as the flower bath had been.  A white woman in her 30s with a European accent stands by the shaman, preparing the various totems and serving implement used in the ceremonies.  She’s been studying here with him for a couple years now for reasons none of us thought to ask.

The ceremony room is larger, with benches around three sides for us to sit upon while under the influence of the medicine.  A small hole in the roof opens to the night sky, occasionally displaying the bright Peruvian starscape when not blocked by clouds.  Our group watches as the French newcomer makes his way forward for the first serving.  He coughs slightly as he forces down three large sips from the brown, earthen cup, before retreating to a water bottle left by his spot on the bench.

Every batch of the stuff is a unique experience: different flavor, different texture, different ingredients, different visions.   Tonight’s serving, for instance, is chunky.  The taste is only slightly more bitter, but the viscous liquid pours down my through like loose mud.  I make a detour on the way back to my bench and take some water from the confused Frenchman.  No Halls cough drop tonight, and immediately I miss it.

After the initial two servings, I was certain that Ayahuasca was a miracle drug — the “spirit molecule” indeed — enlightenment, nirvana and revelation all rolled into one with a backdrop by Alex Grey and some only-slightly-inconvenient explosive vomiting.  Tonight’s experience brings my elevated praise of the hallucinatory jungle vine drastically back down to earth.

Oh, there’s still surreal imagery aplenty, strange thoughts and new takes on old ideas.  There was no negativity to the experience, no “bad trip” to bring me down.

No, I simply felt drugged.

I know what a strange sentence that is in light of everything else I’ve written here, but despite all the strange thoughts, dizziness visions and nausea, I maintained a level of calm clearheadedness through it all.  Before, it was like being hyper-conscious as the mind drops into the dream state, fully able to process and guide those subconscious happenings without the confused, cloudy haze that normally marks our free flowing unconscious fantasies.

This time?  Dazed and confused in every possible way.  Ideas come to light and are immediately extinguished due to my inability to maintain a line of thought.  My mind races as thoughts collapse on one another and epiphanies are forgotten before they’re even registered.  I feel dizzy and ill at ease as I notice a cat perched up against me and start to pet it.

A hand slaps mine in the darkness.  Bad cat.  Not a cat.  I’m petting Cidalit, one of Peter’s local helpers, and she doesn’t seem to appreciate it.

“Sorry” I tap her head.  “Sorry sorry.”  Pat pat.  “Sorry!”  My hand is flicked a final time as I withdraw it.

I’m almost positive I wasn’t this retarded the last time I drank this shit.

There’s no sensation of an outside force this time, no epiphanies, no intimate perusals of my past, present and future — just a rush of unrelated thoughts and pictures, and a general dizziness that heavily waters down whatever cognizance might still be present in my head.  Thoughts come and go only to be forgotten instantaneously.  And as such, I have no recollections from the evening to write about.

Except the Frenchman.

As my companions have made awkward bee lines outside to purge themselves of the Ayahuasca when nature beckoned, I rarely took note, too lost in whatever mental fireworks display might be going off at any given time to pay attention to what barely amounted to more than someone in the back row sneezing during a movie.  From the Frenchman’s first visit outside of the open air jungle lodge to relieve himself, it’s clear things are going to be different.

“HUUUAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGgllglgllphhtphhhhglglungguckphhglll..”

Collapsing violently to the ground, he vomits as though he learned how to do so from a bad comedy, aimed at exaggerating all the basest and most obnoxious bodily behaviors.  Opening his mouth, he bellows outwards as if to coax the hallucinatory poison from his system from sheer volume alone.  Each time, his tortured baying at the moon ends in a pained, inhuman gurgle, like the victim of some nightmarish alien evisceration loudly coughing out his bloody, dying breath.  And the Ayahuasca, like adrenaline for the imagination, paints a gruesomely disturbing picture with his every heave.

The first time this occurs, it is both distracting and disgusting.  From that point forward — easily upwards of six separate occurrences — my reaction goes from sympathy to annoyance to disgust to perverse amusement.  It’s decidedly low-brow dedicating several paragraphs to someone painfully and relentlessly throwing up, but anything less wouldn’t capture just how disturbing the noises issuing forth from deep within this man were, nor how much his prolific vomiting distracted and perverted the Ayahuasca experiences of nearly everyone in the room.

An hour later and the ceremony is at its close.  Our rooms are still a long walk through the jungle by flashlight, through unfamiliar, rocky terrain, and the vague drugged feeling from tonight’s serving has impaired my coordination as well.  Cidalit guides two of us stumblingly down the path using only her flashlight.  Silently, we chase the single point of light she paints on the ground like mentally disabled kittens.  After far longer than it took to get there, we return to our rooms and I collapse into bed and let the mild dizziness finally overtake me.

Epilogue

All shamans [I am basing this on having met two] seem to agree that the ritual officially ends the following morning when the head is covered three times with water.  None of us particularly cared for the flower bath enough to repeat it, and Peter’s already OK’d our hotel room showers as shamanically acceptable, so everyone holds off on our spiritual dousing for now.

People have asked me since returning from Peru if the ayahuasca was “life changing.”  It was, but that’s a loaded question.  You can have an epiphany while stuck in traffic that’s life changing, if you let it be.  But it’s just as likely that ten minutes later you’ll forget it and continue on doing the same stupid things you’ve always done.  Ayahuasca profundity, as deep and mesmerizing as it might seem at the time, is much the same way — it can only show you so much before the ball’s in your court.  And after the third experience, I’m reluctant to push the medicine on others as any sort of spiritual panacea, as clearly you can come away from an evening of ayahuasca with nothing but memories of pretty colors and a bad taste in your mouth.

But the first two servings showed me things about myself, the world and how it all fits together that I won’t ever forget.  There is, in all of us, so much more than we’ll ever know.

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.

Welcome aboard the MF Andy.  None of us gringos know exactly what “MF” stands for, but we’re just immature enough to make a guess and stick with it for most of the plodding journey toward our ultimate destination of Iquitos.

I’ve taught members of the crew three card games already, as well as shared my aji sauce with them, livening up the otherwise bland fare that’d be served aboard the MF Andy.  If my stomach churns at the idea of this stuff after just five days, how do they handle eating it for years on end?  If nothing else, my gift of flavor has endeared me a bit to the crew, which is likely to make the slow journey down the Rio Napo (eventually becoming the Amazon) more easygoing.  I’ve listened to audiobooks by Barack Obama and Artie Lange, played countless games of solitaire on my iPod, befriended a parrot and napped for several hot, breezeless hours in my hammock (purchased wisely, and out of necessity in Quito).  It’s late afternoon on Monday and the MF Andy is still silently docked in Pantoja.

It seems agreed upon that these boats take at least a day to recover from each journey, docking in town to restock on petrol and food and give the boat as thorough a cleaning as you’re likely to get in the jungles of Peru.  As the scrubdown goes on around me, all I can think is “polishing a turd,” but if some of the recent human waste that might otherwise enhance my trip can be scraped away a little, I won’t complain.  Part of me hoped that this would be completed by morning and we’d still be out of the city by early Monday, but late in the afternoon, they’re still scrubbing the deck just under my hammock while I try to sleep through the soft misty shrapnel coming at me from the hose.

A Russian girl with a large gap between her front teeth, fresh from the trip from Iquitos, gives me some basic information and warns me that the boat will be uncomfortably full by the time I hit Iquitos.  Right now, there are only four hammocks set up, tied to thin metal rods along the ceilings that somehow will support thousands of pounds of human weight.  The room’s fully open on the port and starboard sides, breezy when the ship’s in motion, though when it’s not the excess of entryways are taken fully advantage of by sandflies and mosquitoes, who go on to take full advantage of my arms and legs.

There are three bathrooms — as no-frills as toilets can be — and a kitchen down by the stern.  Each bathroom does have a makeshift shower directly above the toilet, but if I can learn to ignore everyone else’s body odor for a few days, I’m sure they can figure out how to ignore mine.  Besides, like all water on the boat — cooking water included — shower water comes directly from the Rio Napo.  I’ve seen few people swimming in this river, despite the muggy heat here, so why attempt to bathe myself in it?

As I’d been informed, the trip costs only thirty dollars, which seems like a steal when you consider it’s a five day boat ride including three meals a day.  You get what you pay for.  This is a cargo ship, and I am now nothing more than cargo.  The first few plantains the boat picks up may rest comfortably by themselves in on the ship’s roof, but by journey’s end, they’ll be part of a massive mountain of yellow, buried away under the crushing weight of several tons of South America’s favorite carb.  Pigs get about the same overcrowding treatment here, as do chickens.  As do people.

Anyway, I’ve got twelve soles left — about 4 bucks.  The boat makes a stopover in Masan before heading down a long, looping stretch of river that eats up twelve painfully cramped hours along the MF Andy.  I’m told I won’t want to be on this thing a second longer by that point, so I’m more than willing to go with Plan B: A quck motorcycle ride in Masan over a three-mile stretch of land connecting to the other side of the Amazon, followed by a quick jaunt downriver in a speedboat to Iquitos.

The crew of the lancha is mostly male, though two women tend the “bar.”  It doesn’t have any alcohol, but somehow has cold sodas, and were I not desperately broke, I could really use a cold bimbo (the popular brand name of soda here, sold in orange, cola and strawberry flavors).  The blog of someone that’d earlier made the trip mentioned that the kitchen worker is almost always a flaming transvestite, but in this case he only seems to be mildly effete, wearing a fairly normal jeans-and-a-t-shirt combination.  It’s hard to tell the sexual orientation of anyone on this boat, as the men all seem fairly huggy with each other, though one of the deckhands shares his hammock with a woman and it’s often writhing in the background by the kitchen when he’s not at work.

Losing Monday is unfortunate, but the crew doesn’t seem to mind my company a day early, so at least I can avoid paying for another night in the janitor’s closet of the hotel.  It wasn’t comfortable sleeping there (I awoke one night to find my bed hosting an orgy of small ants), but sleeping there did give me access to the supply of sheets, and I filched one to deal with cool nights aboard the moving boat.  A little shady, sure, but karma paid me back by having the sheet smell strongly of stale, garlic-y human sweat, which sometimes was too potent for me to comfortably sleep through.

The sound of a car alarm rocks me from my sleep early on Tuesday.  It’s not even six yet, but I can barely make out the morning wake-up call from Pantoja in the background under the shrieking of the boat’s alarm.  Apparently, this is how it alerts villagers of an approaching departure, and within five minutes, we’re moving.  Glad I opted to sleep here!

The couple from Wyoming have set up their hammocks close to mine, and we spend most of our days rocking slowly in our hammocks, reading or napping.  It’s dull, but the steady passing of lush, green land to either side of the boat at least give us a sense of purpose — that we’re not simply sitting in one place, waiting.  It’s better than Pantoja.

The food is better as well, suprisingly, but not by much.  One meal consists of plantains, potatoes, rice, yucca and noodles — five starches.  Nothing else.  No meals come with vegetables.  The meat is tough and hard to place — probably pork.  It’s got a strange aftertaste the first day, and I don’t even bother trying it again after that.  One breakfast is a hot liquid made solely from water, flour and sugar.  Some meals I simply skip, in favor of a granola bar from my dwindling personal food supply.  No water is served on the boat, so I was careful enough to bring along a three litre bottle, with some Tang for flavor and vitamins.

Every one to three hours, through both day and night, the lancha slows down to add more cargo to its rapidly shrinking storage space.  It seems full by day two, but by the fourth day it’s still picking up every kind of river cargo.  Again, people are included in this category.  I don’t mind the loss of time that these stops cause, but the rise in temperature caused by a lack of breeze is incredible, and combined with a sudden onslaught of mosquitoes, causes the trip to take a strong turn for the way-more-miserable.

We may stop at a small village, made up of six to seven huts alongside a riverbank.  Similarly, we might stop for a lone figure standing on the edge of a muddy precipice with two small bunches of plantains.  The boat doesn’t seem to be that discerning.  Plantain stops are fairly quick, as the crew is well practiced in jumping out to load them up either below decks or on the roof — whichever has the most space.  Stops for livestock are far more problematic, as none of the pigs seem particularly interested in going for a boat ride.  The crew drags them aboard roughly by their legs as they shriek and squeal, kicking them forcefully into their pens.

By trip’s end, each pen is full to the point where many pigs stand upon their hind legs with much of their body atop a neighbor due to the small area they’re being held in.  Chickens are held in much the same manner.  They crow loudly at all hours, but at least for much of the trip, the chickens are held on the roof deck where their shrill caws are somewhat muted.  Iquitos is known for its strange animal markets, and many travelers coming aboard bring all varieties of monkeys, birds and turtles from the jungle, ostensibly to sell in the city.

Passengers mostly stick with the people they came in with, and there seems to be little trouble between anyone despite higher stress levels.  More babies than expected make this trip, though they don’t become a major problem until the last night.  The only problem passenger makes himself known the first day by leaning weakly out of his hammock to throw up on the ground.  Later in the trip, there would be people and cargo below him, but it’s early enough that his vomit hits a mostly empty floor, though a nearby woman looks on with disgust in her eyes.  She makes no move to to assist him, and it turns out that he’s traveling alone.  Later in the day, the crew questions him sternly, and his answers are weak and shaking.  He nearly vibrates with fever, and as they walk away, he covers himself with the fullness of his hammock for warmth, despite the hot daytime sun.

“Malaria,” one of the crew tells me as he passes.

I’d been told I didn’t have to worry about that here, and didn’t take my Malaria pills.  Great.

The next day, the boat stops at one of the larger towns we pass and a small, faster boat is there to take him off their hands, ostensibly to the nearest medical center.  His hammock was in a prime spot, and travelers zone in on it with their gear, despite the menacing air of sickness associated with his prior location.

A ladder leading up to the roof comes with a sign informing passengers not to climb it, but no one seems to mind that I regularly do.  The breeze is better, and the view is the best on the vessel.   As the sleeping area fills more and more, this becomes the only place to relax and get some privacy, as not many people venture up.  It’s a good place to put on some headphones and watch the jungle go by.  Sadly, by late in the third day, this becomes less of an option.

No one seems to care that I’m up there, and despite the increase in plantains along the roof, there’s still room to stand comfortably.  But space in the sleeping area is at such a premium that newcomers have begun hanging their hammocks at absurd angles above, below and across existing hammocks.  When no one is around, they have no issues taking liberties, moving hammocks already in place uncomfortably close to one another in an attempt to make space where there is none.  The only real way around this is to stay in the hammock constantly, widening my body as much as possible to make it clear that there is no spare room here.

This makes it difficult to go for dinner or bathroom runs, but both of those options are already far less accessible than they’d been for much of the trip.  Hammocks now fill the room like a massive human spider web.  The kitchen is accessible through a series of awkward squats pressed up against the side of the boat, like a limbo competition in Hell.  It’s difficult, but passable.  The bathroom is far more of a problem, as two hammocks, one directly above the other, block the small hallway completely except for a two foot gap between the gap and the lower hammock.  When possible now, I hold it in.

If it sounds unpleasant, that’s because it is, and definitely not a trip that I’d recommend to anyone seeking even a hint of luxury with their vacation.  But until the final night, it’s possible to look past the lack of basic Western conveniences and the almost inedible food and appreciate the journey for being a true taste of jungle living in the Amazon.

I would never wish the final night aboard the Andy upon my worst enemy.

Freshly back from dinner, there are now two new hammocks touching mine.  I ate quickly with this possibility in mind, but apparently I didn’t scarf the plate of rice down fast enough.  One is set directly above me, such that its occupants ass will be dangling right above my chest.  The other is slightly below me to the right, and the cords holding it aloft press deeply into my shoulder.  It’s irritating, but far moreso is the fact it holds a woman and small toddler, just under two, I’d guess.  As I shift throughout the night, it rocks their hammock to the point where the lightly sleeping infant wakes, crying, screaming “ma-MEE!  mah-MEEE!” relentless until wearing itself out.  On the floor, a tarp has been laid and a family of five — two parents and their three children — sleeps directly below my hammock.  The groundwork has all been laid for a terrible night’s sleep.

10:00 pm.  I’m tired and have nothing to do.  The iPod’s dead and the boat’s docked somewhere, the comfort-sustaining breeze that makes the ride somewhat palatable now halted, giving way to the muggy thickness of the combined body heat of 150 dirty, tired travelers.  As someone that generally sleeps on his side, the hammock’s not playing nicely with me, though I’ve managed to find a position at an angle that would almost allow me to fade at some point into unconsciousness were it not for the light and noises of the room.  But the worst thing about the situation is the fact that I’m shivering uncontrollably and it’s not cold at all right now.

Malaria.

It’s hard not to think of it, given the sick man from two days prior, though I’ve already had one Malaria scare since being down here and don’t want to give in to another.  It’s probably just a standard, run-of-the-mill fever.  As far as comforting ideas go, this one fails me utterly.  There’s a slight headache and weakness as well, but those are the only other symptoms so I attempt to just sleep through the discomfort.  It’s probably not Malaria.

The light here is managable, as I’ve got an eye mask.  But ear plugs can’t seem to effectively block the din of the boat, which only seems to get louder the longer I lay there.  Several feet away, one of the kids has a toy that plays a five second clip of music through a cheap speaker, playing on repeat.  It fills the air, but no one close to it seems to mind enough to complain, despite my fantasizing about smashing it with a hammer while the kid looks on helplessly.  An infant is crying somewhere nearby, but it’s the muted cry of baby that’s just about cried itself to sleep.  I know from experience that the screams of the monkey in the basket near me will halt with a single banana, but no one seems to be rectifying this situation, and I’m too afraid of the children sleeping at my feet to attempt leaving the hammock.  It’s 10:10.

11 is lights out.  I’m beyond exhaustion but far from being close to sleeping.  Roosters, now here in the room with us as well as above decks, set one another off with each crow as though in a competition.  I’ve noticed this sonic battle before, but only now realize that crying babies play the same game, with each attempting to outdo the others in terms of noise levels once a single infant utters a cry.  As the night progresses, I learn to fear that initial cry with a deep sense of dread in my stomach, knowing the cacaphony of cries to unanswering parents won’t be silenced again for the better part of an hour.  From below, pigs make love throughout the night, celebrating their sessions with some of the loudest, most inhuman grunts of pain and ecstasy imaginable, their squeals providing an unending soundtrack to a nightmare.

I can’t fight the need to urinate any longer, despite knowing what this will entail.  My initial thought is to let loose over the side, but the boat is filled to such capacity that people sit up against all the open railings, and I can’t find a spot where an unsuspecting head wouldn’t be at crotch level, with a warm misting for them being the best case scenario.  I’ve been viewing the actual bathroom as an impossibility, and a deep panic starts to set in as I realize that it’s the only possibility.

Walking, crawling, contorting myself through the maze of hammocks in the dark, I finally stop at the entryway to the bathrooms with no clear view of how to proceed.  Two hammocks, one less than a foot above the other, fully block entry to the three seatless toilets.  Below the bottom hammock, there’s a gap of about two feet between it and the floor, though the floor is wet and muddy here.  It’s probably just water from the Amazon, but as the wetness extends into (or outward from) each bathroom, I can’t be sure.  My need for release borders on explosive, and I slowly lower myself down and begin the crawl, propeling myself forward slowly, wetly, by my elbows.  The journey is no more pleasant on the way out, but it is at least peppered with a feeling of deep inner relief.  I change my shirt upon return to my hammock and resume the poor charicature of sleep I’d been enacting for the past couple hours.  It’s not midnight yet.

The night continues like this, unending.  From two to three, I climb to the roof and look up at the cloudless, night sky — the first I’ve seen since being on the boat, due to the general cloudiness here.  My chill from earlier is gone, though a scratching sensation in my throat remains, keeping the Malaria fear from fully dissipating.  It’s probably just another weird South American bug, though.  I can see the Milky Way, Orion, the Southern Cross, and a myriad of unnamed constellations blanketed over me as the cool, night breeze along the Amazon rushes over me.  It’s so pleasant that I fill with genuine nausea as exhaustion forces me back down to the sleeping area.

I don’t “wake” so much as “get up” the next morning, as sleep was sporadic at best.  I’d give myself two hours… two and a half, maybe?  There’s a quiet weariness that’s overtaken the entire boat, and those that slept upright on the side benches through the night look lost and miserable, almost making me feel guilty about my comfortable (only by comparison) night’s rest.  People are being unloaded en masse and elation fills me at the opportunity to be free of the Andy, almost energizing me to normal levels.

Instead, this is the boat’s means of checking tickets.  All passengers are dropped off on a nearby bank and either flash their ticket or purchase one before being allowed back onto the boat.  I ask one of the mates I’ve been playing cards with if I can avoid the procedure and he gives me a reprieve, allowing me to watch from above decks as the interminably slow line proceeds.  I’m told we’re two hours from Mazan.

The long ride almost at an end, the other Americans and I begin taking down hammocks and gear, checking supplies to ensure nothing “disappeared” while we slept.  My toothbrush is gone, but Josh is missing an expensive Swiss Army knife, and apparently one with sentimental value.  It’s a shame, but unsurprising.  As the boat zig-zags through the river (it never just goes straight, as the captain knows every high and low point along the journey, and getting stuck would be the only way to make this trip more miserable), with Mazan — practically glowing by this point — finally in sight.

Getting off the boat is temporarily made difficult by the swarm of vendors that rush onto it as we dock.  They’re competing for who can get fresh breads, fruits and meats to hungry passengers, and have no qualms about knocking anyone over to get in the quickest.  Off the boat, an equally large horde of men approach us about transportation across Mazan.  The bulk of the town is here, though a road stretches across the thin peninsula to where the Amazon reconnects on the other side.  Our passage to Iquitos awaits us there.

The taxi is basically a rickshaw combined with a motorcycle, with parts from the latter taking up the front of the contraption while the back is a covered seat large enough for three people.  Gear is strapped in behind the seat by bungee cord.  Transport is three soles (about a buck fifty) regardless of how many people are riding.  As we’ve got three, it works out to a sole a person, which leaves me exactly ten to pay the speedboat for my final ride of this part of my journey.  It should be enough.  Halfway through, he stops at a roadside stand selling bottles of — is it tea? — something for one sole each.  The water bottles, filled with an unappealing brown liquid, are unlabeled, though everything starts to make sense as he opens his gas tank and dumps the contents of the bottles in.  This is a gas station.

Boats wait in the mud, fighting for our patronage until one agrees on ten soles per person.  Perfect.  The downside is that these boats don’t run until every seat is taken, and we wait there for half an hour longer until the water taxi’s carrying its maximum of 22 people, children all sitting on the laps of their parents or siblings.  It’s an uneventful ride, but flying through the river is a refreshing contrast to the near-drifting we’d been doing for the better part of the last week.  We pass some of the city’s famed floating houses (they’re houses only in the loosest sense of the word) before arriving at the dock, which is itself floating.  I hit ground with the added weight of my backpack and shift awkwardly to the side as the dock lurches slightly, though manage to right myself rather than face more embarrassment/wetness.

“[Twelve soles.]”

“[It's ten]” I say. “[He told me ten.]”

“[Twelve.]”

“[No.  Ten.  He say ten.  I only have ten.  I only pay ten.]”

“You Pay TWELVE!” he yells in English.  He’s in my face now, but I don’t back down as I don’t have any more money.

Someone else reaches in and pays two for me, and I thank them shyly.  The stubborn part of me didn’t want to back down, as I was definitely quoted ten before boarding.  But the part of me that enjoys living was glad to have the situation work out the way it did.

I kiss the fresh bills of cash as they fly from the ATM machine and make my way to a mid-range hotel for the night.  My savings only allow for staying in cheap hostels and making due without all the creature comforts I’m used to.  But after the MF Andy boat experience, I’m treating myself nicely for a night or two.  Hot water, television, an oscillating fan — the best luxuries that Iquitos has to offer.

And it still only comes to eleven bucks a night.