It's 4:46 AM, December 31st the final day of 2014. I've been awake for the past 20 minutes just staring at the Termite tunnels bored into the ceiling of our two story hut in the back of the Hobo Hideout hostel. It's Roy's daughters Quinceanera today, and although I'm curious about how it will play out, It is hardly the most pertinent thing on my mind. Now more than ever the questions I have asked myself for decades have lost or are loosing the battle for importance in my life. In only 20 minutes of a DMT flash I have succeeded in doing what I thought could not happen, and indeed for many long lonely years what I "knew" could not happen. What am I talking about? I'm talking about discovering the soul. I'm talking about God with a capital G, but not the biblical one, surrounded by fire and brimstone, judgement and eternal damnation, the one we all know or refuse to know so well, but the ego-less God of all creation that is impartial and loving to all.Ironically what brought me to Atheism in the first place was the madness of religion itself, now the utter madness of a religious experience has brought me back to faith, although hardly in denominational form, and nothing like what it once was. For years I drew further and further away from god, but ever since my first mushroom experience, I have been coming closer and closer to the soul, to the essence of God. The funny thing about life it would seem, is that from start to finish were on straight paths we think will not change, and then somewhere along the supposedly straight line, we realize it's actually a circle, and that the lessons are learned through the journey, not from a starting or ending point.Our lives are filled with circles that teach us lessons through belief, change, rejection, and belief yet again. They seem to be unrelated, but they begin and end with an idea, usually a meme of some kind passed down to us from the depths of time, Such as "Love is Forever" "Duty above all" "Wealth before Health" or "God, King and Country." The level to which we are aware of our place in these circles depends on our point of view, and that I now believe, depends on more than luck or circumstance, we are far more than the random byproducts of chance. We are, I believe, elements of the eternal, expressions of the timeless, actors in an endless waltz, living and dying with purpose, knowingly or not. It's 4:46 AM and this where my mind is..At 5:20 Am, I heard and saw Jimmy on the patio below us smoking a cigarette and cleaning the floor, as he does nearly every day at this time. By 6 AM on days that we work on the farm he usually calls up to us, "You boys awake?" to which we always answer "yeah!" even if only having woken up from the question piercing through to us in our dreams. Today was not such a day, for at 5:30 AM I descended the winding metal staircase to the 2nd story, went through the abandoned air conditioned halls and down the grand wooden staircase, exiting the inner front door to the foyer where Jimmy was sitting in his usual spot, looking out at the early morning traffic through the large swinging window, still smoking his cigarette, but now sporting his equally usual large cup of instant coffee."Morning Jimmy" I said wiping the sleep from my eyes. He didn't reply, he simply nodded his head and washed down a quick drag of his cigarette with a large swig of the cups contents. A minute later, as though continuing a conversation we had flawlessly paused from the previous day, he said, "Won't be any work at the farm. Got to get these fucking papers signed or I'll go bankrupt!" Another drag of the death stick and a sip of the dark stimulant ensued, which was followed by long aimless stair out into the street and then a question as he turned again facing me as if noticing I was there for the first time, "what are you bozo's up to today?" I smiled, enjoying his humor, even in the early morning hours, and told him we were attending a friends daughters Quinceanera as her chaperones, which he already knew, and that not much else was planned.When a reasonable hour for business activities was reached, Blake and I went to the internet cafe and bought our tickets for Lima to San Francisco. It was a little weird really. When we first began our journey to South America we had ideas of the world collapsing around us, and life becoming something very harsh and trying. We didn't know if or when we'd ever return home, somehow buying the tickets established a connection to a different reality that we had left behind and thought broken. Home for us is a place rich in history, a place with family and friends, but also a place that has destroyed many of us, pulling us down into a slum of corrupted ideals, lost hopes, and very limited opportunities. Those of us who remain are molded into things we never intended, or wanted to be. I suppose it's much more common of a thing than I realize. Pacific Grove is a beautiful place, that much is certain, but its tremendously expensive to live there and to survive you must become a corporate stooge, be incredibility hardworking (probably just to fail anyways) or already be wealthy. In any case, I'm happy to come home for my family, if only for just a while.Blake and I returned to Aries Burger, where we met Roy II, the 62 year old Englishman whom I can barely understand a word of, both because of his low volume and his accent. He's a character for sure, I just wish I could hear him better so knew how much of one he really is. We each had a Multiorgasmo shake(Filled with natural stimulants and other strange powders of questionable affect) and then returned to the Dawn of the Amazon for breakfast. Our waitress for the night of the fire approached and kindly reminded us of our unpaid bill for the night in question. We explained that we had come the next day and settled the bill, she hurried behind the counter, conversed with the others and quickly returned, thanking us and then taking our new order.After Breakfast Blake went to buy mopacho cigarettes for our tobacco cleansing diet for the new year. Did I just say Tobacco Diet? Yes, I did.. One of Ian's other "patients" I guess you'd call us, told us about a week long tobacco diet he was doing involving drinking pure tobacco water 3 times a day, without food. Well we weren't prepared to spend our final days in Iquitos drinking nothing but tobacco, which is supposed to be the most horrible thing you'll ever do, so we went with the baby step program, which was to snort the liquid twice daily. While he was doing that I returned to the internet cafe and tried and failed to buy our tickets from Iquitos to Lima, apparently they don't accept debit cards. Something's truly wrong with the world if people prefer to accept debt rather than actual assets, if you could call Dollars such a thing.I returned to the Hideout and touched up the bathroom with new paint. While I did that Jimmy repainted the Foyer. Blake returned and the three of us spent the evening on the couch watching Game of thrones and talking about some of Jimmy's more radical stories of youth. At 10pm Roy arrived at the hideout and took us in the taxi to his house about 15 minutes away. The taxi couldn't make it all the way so we had to walk for a few minutes to get there. When we did His daughter descended the stairs wearing a crazy pink gown, with ruffles, she had a reserved smile and was beautiful. What struck me most was just how out of place she looked with the wrecked buildings, mud and sewage "streets" destitute looking children half clothed and a crippled girl on a single Jerry rigged crutch zooming down the street with her cell phone in her free hand. All of this and she looked like she was about to accept the slipper that fit in a fairy tale you might remember.
Blake took her hand and escorted her back up the same disintegrating road we came by and took the taxi to the Red Plaza for pictures, with the mother, Sister and myself trailing in another taxi. After that we returned to the house and waited for the party to begin. Roy's sister offered me a drink, which I took but did not drink, for it was obviously very alcoholic. A man sitting next to me, who had clearly been enjoying the fiery substance for some time, kindly relieved me of the burden. Before the party even began fireworks lite the sky from all over the city, it was midnight, 2014 has come and gone, and now a new circle begins.It's now 30 minutes into the new year and I'm sitting in a brightly lite room with very loud trendy music blaring, Blake's standing at the very front with Roy's daughter still in hand and all her friends and classmates on one side of the room, and their parents on the other. Roy and the family stand up to give speeches and then Blake gets to have the first dance with her, then Roy, and then every guy in the room, including me. Gifts were then bestowed and by the time food was even mentioned, which we thought there would be plenty of long before now, which is why we skipped dinner, we were ready to leave. It was already 1:40 AM and there seemed to be no end in sight for the festivities, so we thanked everyone for the experience and gracefully exited the scene, but did not easily escape the temptations of darker traditions, for we were assigned two of the less than coherent members of the party by Roy to escort us to the street. They offered us every drug in the manual and more, assuring us the party would continue at full power once they got home, and that we were more than welcome to pay for the majority.... I mean, join them with our snow shoes to enjoy the miscellaneous white powders they intended to vacuum through their brains. I just kept walking and thanked them for the offer.We made it to the street, got a taxi back to the Plaza de Arma, had a Shake at Aries Burger and made it to the Hobo Hideout at 2 AM, the cut off point for being able to return before the door would be locked till 6 AM. I fell on to my cot rolled to my back and once again stared at the industrious legions of termites busily building their bunkers of decaying wood into our abode. As I stared, thinking about everything that had been in 2014, I thought about the new year to come, and everything it would bring. I thought to myself, " It is the year 2015, and all that you know changes now. Or so they say..."
Alchemy & The Flame
It was our first full day off when Jimmy went out into town and came back with Ian's card. He handed it to us and said, "this is the guy, he'll take you where you want to go." We thanked him and then I called the number twice, leaving a message each time. From there we walked to the Plaza de Arma where we ran into none other than Roy, the maker of our jewelry."Hey Roy how are you?" We asked. "Good brother, good. Any plans for new years?" he asked."Well were trying to do pure DMT, you know anyone who has it?" I asked."I know Ian." he replied. Blake and I both looked at each other, I took out the card and showed it to him."You mean this Ian?""yeah thats him, you want me to take you to him?"yes" we said in unison, and off we went in a taxi to Ian's house. We got off the main road and walked down a descending dirt road for about 150 yards to a nice looking place nestled between other houses of similar refinement. Roy knocked for 10 minutes until finally the shutters opened and a long haired balding Chinese man poked his head out from the darkness."Thats him? Thats our guy?" I thought to myself. A passing confusion as Roy quickly snapped me back to the present, "Hey, is Ian here?" He said. The man blinked very slowly as though half conscious and then said rather fluidly, "yeah.." With that he disappeared and a moment later the gate opened. We went inside and were introduced to Ian, the man that we had truly come to Peru to see, but we didn't know that yet.He told us of his experiences with the different psychedelics, how after mastering a substance, by doing it a thousand times or more, he would get a tattoo of its molecular form on his body. He had the DMT molecule on the back of his neck, the LSD 25 on his arm, and Mescaline on his leg. He had other interesting tattoos as well, those combined with his mohawk, tall stature and lovely Welch accent really gave him a distinctly memorable persona. We met the other cast of characters staying with him, Olympia, his polish, Vietnamese girlfriend, very fiery and opinionated, mike the British born Chinese man I've already introduced and his girlfriend Kate, also from England. We then made a plan to smoke his DMT tomorrow and said goodbye, leaving back to the Plaza de Arma with Roy.When we returned he told us It was his daughters 15th birthday on new years eve, something of a big deal in latin America, and he invited us to join the party, but not just as guests, he wanted one of us to be the official chaperones for his daughter! The responsibilities of which included, a photo shoot, first dance at the party and to escort her wherever she went. I wasn't so keen on the idea but thankfully Blake said yes before I had to say no. I felt so good at that moment that we returned to Dawn of the Amazon and broke the six week ayahuasca fast with a Red curry. Blake had already broken it a few days before at the Karma Cafe with a falafel burger.Jimmy didn't need us at the farm the next day, so I painted the upstairs bathroom for him. Initially it was as a trade for two weeks stay at the Hideout, but Jimmy had to apologize later saying that he could only give us a week free, since he was nearly broke from funding his fish farm. I see the crazy stress he's under day to day, and he works his ass off, so I understood. The only thing that really sucked were the toxic fumes From the paint, it was so bad I nearly passed out, so I had to quit and save the rest for another day.We had lunch at the Dawn and then called Ian, shortly after arriving at his house. We talked for a few minutes, Ian asked which one of wanted to go first, for some reason I volunteered right away, then he gave me to the count of finishing his cigarette to prepare for the DMT experience.He walked me into a white walled room with psychedelic drawings, tapestries and feathers hanging from the walls. He asked me to lay down on the bed so that my head was a foot from the wall and then sit up cross legged, he did this so that when you passed you wouldn't fall back and hit your head.Ian waved the huge eagle feathers and blew mopatcho smoke over my body. Then he aligned each of my chakras with a sonic bell, basically a metal bowl, and with a wooden stick he rotated around it creating a lovely loud ringing. After I was cleansed he went through how I was to properly hit the pipe for a break through experience. You don't just hit it once and off you go, theres a procedure to it. You have to hit the pipe three times to make it all the way, each hit must be held and followed by a quick inhale to push it further down.I said I understood and we began. The first hit went well, the second too but it was very very harsh, by the time I exhaled and went to hit it the last time everything around me was melting and growing at the same time, an incredible buzzing noise was filling my head and Ian was barely recognizable to me, morphing between every person Id ever met. He put the pipe right in front of my face and repeated,"hit it hit it hit it.." And so I did...It was extremely difficult to take a solid drag from the pipe, somehow though, I managed to ash it. I inhaled one last time and felt all of reality being forced away from me in every way imaginable, instantly leaving my body, with my limp shell falling back and hitting the mattress, my soul exited the top of my head and trillions of entities swarmed around me in an impossibly large, but enclosed space in another dimension, each of them going in and out of my soul, adding things to me and taking others away.All of creation joined together with me, intertwining and combining then shooting away, coming back as another thing and joining yet again. I lost consciousness then, and came to at the end of the trip, descending a ladder of dimensions, each becoming more real and physical and each more terrifying than the last. They were both the inner and outer layers of the world we live in, and I knew then the great peril that humanity was in. I felt the presence of terrible predatory evil, swarming around me as eels in a barrel, circling and circling, just waiting for the reaping of their prey.Then I was on a farm in the viewpoint of a chicken, watching as the big birds established dominance through posturing and violence. I could hear the words of James, Blake's uncle and lifelong badass, coming from the top cock of the roost, as he ruled over the weaker and subservient birds, "this is mine, this is real, this is mine, this is real " He said. After that I went into a celestial realm and floated effortlessly back into my body.Ian was cross legged in the corner, smoking a cigarette and smiling at me. "Welcome back." He said. I walked out of the room and joined the others, Blake who was laying in the hammock, stared, giving me an inquisitive look which said,"and? Are we in business?" The look on my face said it all, and he smiled, joining Ian in the room to see for himself.In truth theres no way to describe what I experienced, it's just too big a thing to explain with such limited means as words.It was the most ground breaking and astonishing experience of my life, that much I can say for sure, the rest you just have to go and see for yourself. My trip lasted 20 minutes and Ian told me the parts I didn't remember would come to me in the coming weeks, in dreams and while awake. Blake's lasted 25 minutes, the last 15 of which he was laughing uncontrollably. He came out with a completely astonished look on his face, totally happy to have come back from the brink.We thanked Ian for everything, hugged everyone there and walked back to the main street, still stunned to be alive and well, solidly in reality. We had dinner at the dawn, and almost as though it was a dream the shops across from us next to the cafe went up in a blaze of fire, everyone was screaming and running about, some crying others laughing. Then people started kicking in the walls of the stands, I thought they were robbing the shops but they were taking everything out of them and moving them to the other side of the street, saving them from the fires destructive path.All the while Blake and I finished our pancakes, a first class view not 30 feet from the blaze. We joined another Roy, whose also friends with Ian, at Aries cafe and chatted about our experiences with DMT. Also eating there was the Victor the Belgian and his friends who watched us do the frog venom in the Jungle. Lol, what a crazy day!
A very Ricky Christmas
In the morning, id say at 6am, Jimmy and I walked to a market Id never been to before. I told him yesterday about the market we had been going to and he went on a tirade about how filthy and disease ridden it was, how he'd seen the health report done on it by the UN, and that almost every supposedly extinct disease was alive and well there. Needless to say I had no love for that particular hell hole so I was perfectly content with the wonderful market he took me to instead. Once Blake got up I showed him where it was and we had fish soup there for 12 soles. It had more salt in it than we'd tasted in more than a month combined, so you can imagine how tasty it was to us.We returned to the hideout where Ricky awaited us, he was going to make patarashka for us and needed supplies, funnily enough he took us straight to the market Jimmy had ranted against earlier. The sights and smells of that place hadn't effected us so much the previous times we had been there, now it seemed ebola lurked under every corner. Jimmy's words either really got to us or we were hyper sensitive to smells after returning from the jungle.Ricky's house was small but much nicer than those of his neighbors, the fish he cooked was absolutely delicious! And his family was very nice. Ricky's plan for gifting chocolate, bread and toys to the kids was discussed again and we both gave 100 soles to buy the goods. We thanked him for the meal and left in a motor taxi. During which time it rained so hard I had to put my phone and wallet in a plastic bag because my pants were getting drenched.At the hostel Jimmy told us that if we helped him on his farm he would help us find all the black holes in town, but we would have to find our own way out. Referring to the purely spiritual experience we told him we wanted, and the usually shady people in equally shady surroundings they are provided by. You see, we've decided to skip the less than reliable ayahuasca for now and go straight to the source of it's power, which is DMT, the spirit molecule.The next day we went to the market, got fruits and veggies for breakfast, moved from the room inside the main house to the two story bungalow out back. Once settling in we went to an internet cafe where I skyped my mom for the first time in a month. Apparently she's turning my room into a kitchen, so when I get back i'll be sleeping with Blake in his parents friends garage. Ahh the joys of change, haha.After that Ricky and his wife came by and we went downtown to buy the toys for the kids. We picked out little plastic toy cars, dolls and bowling sets. It was hard to decide what would be best for so many kids of varying ages. We took the bus and taxi to Ricky's house and spent time with the family as he drove around trying to get more toys. He made us another amazing fish dinner, tailored to the ayahuasca diet as always, and then we prepared to serve the local kids.The second the giant cauldron of hot Chocolate was placed on the street, kids from every direction converged on Ricky's house seemingly out of nowhere. Blake and I were in charge of distributing the toys, which was the most stressful job because the same kids came back to get more over and over. Ricky's wife made sure no one got seconds of the food and drink, which she did very well, her sister handed out the fruit cake, her mother pored the chocolate and Ricky just stood and watched, smiling. It was a beautiful experience to be apart of, well and truly.Before we left Blake and I danced with all the women in the family and hugged everyone, then took a taxi home again. Blake was hungry so we got barbecued fish at the local hole in the wall restaurant. We got our laundry and made a plan to join Jimmy on his farm tomorrow, which Im pretty excited about. Never done anything like this before, so glad we did.
Hobo Hideout
The night dragged on in the slowest of fashion, and the distant morning was the reminder of our nightmare. Few things are more psychologically stressful than sleep deprivation. It's actually a common form of torture practiced all over the world. I once forced myself to stay awake for 7 days straight when I was 16 just to see if I could and that fucked me up for, well.. For life! Every time I can't sleep for more than 24 hours I develop a sort of anxiety that brings me back into the space I was in during that experience, making it even harder to sleep.When the dawn finally came, we went into the dining hall for our last breakfast there. The Canadian dance couple came in and talked to us about a woman who felt like she had worms crawling under her skin. The doctors in the United States didn't know what it was and couldn't help her. So she went to Peru and a shaman gave her a strong hallucinogenic agent administered through the nose in powder form. Now im not sure if they said the woman had the worms coming out of her every orafice or she just felt that way, but the lady continued the procedure for 9 months until she was finally cured. She must have really been suffering to commit to something like that!We had our final lunch and then handed out tips to who we thought deserved it, namely the cook, Ricky, Christian and his apprentice. As we were leaving two new woman arrived. One was born in Ghana but raised in New York and the other born in Iran but lived in the US. They had just attended the climate change conference in Lima and said it was very, very disappointing. I was tempted to go into the global warming hoax and a number of other issues but I didn't.The boat ride back to Iquitos was the most magical one yet. We went up very narrow rivers surrounded by tall grass and Lillie's, with the sun shining and the rain poring all at once. A pod of dolphins swimming beside us and a flock of white storks gliding over them. Just wonderful.As we arrived at Nauta the port we left 26 days past, I felt the weight of civilization press down upon me with all it's loud noises, pollution, garbage and endless swarms of people all competing to survive. It's a lot to take in when coming from an extended stay in the wild. The first thing we did was look for the same grapes we had gotten there the first time, failing that we piled into a motor taxi, which took us to the bus stop, and from there we got a minivan transport to take us back to Iquitos at blinding speed.We didn't care for the first hostel we visited, the Casa de Fraces, it smelled stale and was more than we wanted to spend, but we immediately liked the second one which was cheaper and much nicer, it was called the Hobo Hideout, and we didn't know it then, but we'd soon become apart of the place and the family who owned it.We couldn't find a place to eat that fit the diet so we went to the market and loaded up supplies to make our own food. Upon returning to the Hobo Hideout the lady who checked us in said we weren't allowed to cook past 6pm, but she saw that we were only trying to boil sweet potatoes and relented, actually helping us cook them. Just then we heard a man entering the living room complaining loudly about a multitude of issues to a Peruvian woman. Our first impression of the guy was that he was just another kook traveler staying at the hostel like us, but he turned out to be the owner, the Peruvian lady his wife, and the elder lady helping us cook the sweet potatoes her mother.He introduced himself as Jimmy and began telling us a long and incredible string of tales that he had lived through, how he had just survived malignant malaria and dengue fever when everyone else on the expedition had died, how he had taken Ted Nugent and a host of other Rich and powerful people hunting in Alaska and the Amazon. The tales continued and all the while Anacondas, the movie with jon voight and ice-t was playing on tv in the background, lol. We thanked him for his time and turned in early for the night, I had 28 unread emails but I decided to save them for the morning.
The Final Ceremony
One last time at breakfast we met with the swiss and an Austrian couple who live in Chile and Paris. We discussed politics, economics, education, science, healthcare and finally our experiences with diving, which the Austrian guy had a great deal of, having dived nearly everywhere. He had some interesting ship wreck dive storied tell as well. The Swiss gave me their contact information before leaving back to Iquitos with the Austrians, now I have a place to stay in Zurich.The boat that took them away brought a young Canadian dance couple who were trying to enter the US with 01 visas, which are applicable only to "Artists with extraordinary ability." The pair were also looking to do ayahuasca and were pretty cool to talk to. Their guide wasn't able to get them a ceremony while they were here, but he did find them some plants with high leves of DMT and smoke the leaves. They told us it was like smoking marijuana but much much better.It was decided that our last ceremony would be held in one of the rooms at camp, because our hut was "full of bad energy." The room Christian chose was at the farthest point away from our hut in the woods, it was an enclosed space, with blinds on the windows, making it very dark. At 8pm we entered the room and prepared to make the most of our last shot at visions with the ayahuasca medicine.Christian first prepared the room with the proper incantations, blowing smoke at each wall with a large hissing exhale, even the floor and ceiling were cleansed. Next he did the same with our bodies and after sang a prayer with our names repeated often, asking the spirits to grant us good visions. Because the acoustics were much better in the room than that of our hut, the songs were way more intense and seemed entirely different than before.Blake drank a dose and a half of the medicine, but Ricky told Christian to give me almost 3 times the normal dose, easily more than Id ever drank. Which wasn't a walk in the park let me tell you! An hour and a half later I was really starting to trip hard, sadly it wasn't to last, for I spent the next 10 minutes vomiting painfully hard. Another 10 minutes passed and I still felt pretty bad, so I forced myself to vomit yet again. After which I was much better, and thankfully, still feeling the effects of the medicine, having good visions. Well, better than the last 4-5 ceremonies at any rate.For the next two hours Blake and I laughed like crazy, each of us triggering the other with impersonations of various characters in our lives we know and love. His laugh making me laugh and vice versa, as it's always been between Blake and those he's around, having the very loud, and very infectious laugh that he does. In the end Blake made himself vomit as well, signaling the end of our final ceremony. With one last prayer, we lit the candles and sat in the room talking about the experience.Ricky hadn't drank, but in the middle of the ceremony, while we were all smoking mopatcho*pure tobacco cigarettes, even me because it supposedly helps with visions, I saw Ricky in the corner swaying side to side in a trance, breathing erratically. It only lasted 5 minutes, but he said he was having some kind of flashback, the contents of which he wouldn't elaborate on.We exited the room, swaying on weak legs, and returned to our hut, saying good night to Ricky and the young Shamans. Blake and I were struck by the beauty of the night, the stars were barely visible and mostly shrouded by the clouds, but seemed to be right in front of our eyes, shimmering in the darkness that pulsated with every breath.The moon was low in the sky, illuminating the jungle behind Wilders hut, which we were still using.Blake was still in the trip and wasn't yet ready to sleep, so he got his head lamp and we walked down to the water. This would not last long however, because his light attracted every mosquito in the area, swarming around him in a ball so dense it seemed he would be totally consumed. We returned to the room, escaping the swarm, but not the lasting effects of the ayahuasca, which kept us almost entirely awake till the dawn..
Caesars Son
After breakfast Ricky and I took a canoe and paddled several hundred yards up river. Blake was invited too but he chose to remain behind. One of the things I noticed right away was how much more wildlife there was around while paddling as opposed to when using the noisy motor. It was also nice to get some exercise. We didn't keep paddling for long though.Ricky started the motor when we reached the big bend and we went up a part of the river I've never been to, where the water is still black instead of brown, which actually means its cleaner. Wilder told us it was because the sap from all the trees and decaying organic matter purified the water and also turned it black. The brown water is whats just been washed downstream by the rains and contains all kinds of filth from everywhere in the Amazon.We pulled up beside some camu-camu bushes that were mostly submerged in the river and started picking. When we gathered enough, Ricky asked if it was time to go swimming? I didn't say anything I just jumped in. The water there was colder than our part of the river at camp, it was really nice and refreshing as well.Ricky positioned the boat in the middle of the river, lifted the motor out of the water and jumped in as well. With both of us holding on to the canoe from opposite sides, keeping it centered and clear from shore as we drifted downstream.We talked more about his life, how the terrorists had tried to recruit him after he left the military, threatening his family if he didn't join them, and how he had escaped their custody at the border by playing dumb with the guards. Miraculously his military unit came through the check point and rescued him, convincing the guards he wasn't with the terrorists and beating senseless the officer who had beaten up and tortured Ricky to get him to talk. An amazing tale to be sure but it was hardly the last or most intense of which he shared.As we returned to camp, Wilder arrived in another boat with Caesars son, Christian, who we learned was only 26 years old. He also had an apprentice with him who was 24. In my mind a Shaman should be an old man, full of wisdom and experience. But I suppose they have to start sometime don't they? Christian, we learned, had started drinking ayahuasca at eight years old with his grandfather, and became a shaman when he turned 18. Ten years of study.. Fair enough, I thought, we'll see how it goes.At 8pm, Ricky, Christian, his apprentice, Blake and I all went to the hut and started the ceremony. I felt no affect from the ayahuasca but Christian was full of energy and sang beautifully, calming me down and allowing me to enjoy it none the less.During the night I had a nightmare of a black scorpion crawling in my hands, it turned to face me, curled back it's tail, yellow eyes shimmering and lept at my face. It was very very real, and I woke up in a fright. Checking around the room, realizing the illusion, I feel back asleep warily, hoping the dark creature would not return.
The Don Is Gone
Blake left the hut this morning before me. When I put on my gum boots as usual for the mud ridden walk to camp, I felt something squishy under my right heel. I wasn't about to walk to camp with shit in my shoes, so I took it off and looked inside to see what it was. I jumped as I saw a big ass brown spider looking ready to leap out of my boot straight at my face.As I did my boot fell from the stairs landing in the mud, and the spider raced across the ground hiding under the fire wood we used to cook the ayahuasca. I got my boot on and walked over to checked him out. He was obviously wounded by my weight coming down on him, perhaps even mortally so. I felt bad, he just wanted a warm and dry place to sleep. Needless to say, from then on out I always checked my boots before putting them on.The rest of the day was entirely uneventful. I can basically qualify the second ceremony with Don Romano as a non event as well. He was so weak that it lasted less than an hour and we felt nothing yet again from drinking his ayahuasca, which Blake is convinced is nothing but 100% vine of the dead. From what we saw in the pot, he's probably right.The next morning I had the shits and although breakfast was good I was feeling worse and worse. I had to make myself vomit just so I could eat lunch. Which was probably a mistake because of how horrible the dish was. Some kind of rice and prehistoric catfish goulash, "muck n stuff" I called it.We informed Ricky that there would be no more ceremonies with Don Romano and that we wanted Victor or Caesar as our Shamans, no one else. We communicated this in the nicest possible way of course, and Ricky was sympathetic and agreed that Romano had very low energy. He called Wilder on the phone and told him the news. Wilder then talked to me and said that Caesars son would come instead of him because Caesar was in the hospital for his wife. I tried to tell him we were fine with Victor but he was insistent and assured me, if such a thing was possible..., that his son would be fine, then the line went dead. We called back, he repeated his assurances and again the line cut out.Ricky could see we were loosing what was left of our patience and suggested a boat ride to Liberta to search for Victor. The daily rains have begun to raise the water level of the river, opening passages that were previously too shallow to navigate, we would use such a passage. Blake strapped his mini boom box around his waist and blared rap and trance music as we slowly rode through the beautiful narrow river, seeing large families of monkeys, iguanas and rare birds.When we made it to Liberta Ricky requested more rap music and then got his groove on to the beets. He's actually damn good. As he busted out some skillful moves he told us about his youth, "Back when I was young, I was really crazy. Many times my friends and I were thrown out of the club, we got so crazy dancing and drinking, you don't know, so so crazy man. Oh my god!"He danced for 40 yards straight across the main walkway of the village until we reached the Scorpion house of Starch, where we hoped to find Victor, but he wasn't there so we returned to camp and decided to sleep in same hut that Wilder usually does when guests aren't using it. We quickly noticed It was the nicest room in camp, practically no mosquitos got inside, it had big windows with great airflow and low and behold a great working shower!It made me remember the first few days we were here, when Wilder showed us the hut and told us it was the best one in camp, "you'll like it here, there are too many mosquitos in our hut, you got a nice bathroom and it's quite, your lucky." Everything That man says just adds fuel to the fire and were the only ones getting burned.We were supposed to drink again tonight, but Victor it seemed had had his dancing shoes on as well and came back drunk from a party somewhere, thus no ceremony took place. The four of us did however play Casino and Blackjack by candle light. Victor won almost every game of Blackjack, but Ricky and I destroyed Blake and Victor at Casino. Victor told us some crazy storied about being in the Peruvian military 60 years ago, and of some wild horny women needing a Shamans special touch, which of course he was obligated to provide. He was definitely drunk..
Water Mission
At 6am I started writing down my dreams, didn't think I had slept very well but there was no fatigue in my body to speak of and my thoughts were clear. We read in the morning and arrived right on time for breakfast to be served. We scarfed that down and played a quick game of criminal punch before going right back to the hut to read.Don Romano, his son and Ricky were already there preparing a new batch of ayahuasca in a 1 and a half-foot wide black cooking pot. All we could see inside was the vine of the dead, the MAO inhibitor containing element of ayahuasca that allows the DMT to be used orally, which is normally not possible because our stomachs contain an acid that breaks down DMT before it can be used by the body, and that's a good thing because nearly everything contains DMT. Otherwise everyone would be tripping everyday and never be normal enough to function.We were supposedly going to be taught how to make the ayahuasca brew and how it all works, but all that they did was sit there and talk among themselves, occasionally stirring the brew. This was all happening under our hut while constantly fighting off mosquitos, and meanwhile Ricky, who was not needed as an interpretor, was laying down in the hut safe and sound.The Argentinians came to visit us then and we talked for a while about their country and what places were best to visit, they gave me their contact information and even offered us a place to stay while we were there. We shared lunch with them at a small table looking out over the water, which was moved there because the workers were fixing the holes in the dinning hall roof, of which there were many.Victor was clearing the entire camp of unwanted brush and helping the workers with moving lumber, as he did everyday before we woke up and until just before dinner. He and Ricky came up to us, smiled and asked if we wanted to go to another camp to get drinking water. "Drinking water?" I asked Ricky. "Yes we are out." I laughed, and we accepted the mission.Ricky stayed behind to manage the camp, since Wilder wasnt there he was next in command. We picked up the cross-eyed soccer kid at the first camp we went too, which was able to give us 4 gallons or so of water. Next we went to Liberta village and were given mixed fruit lemonade. While Victor talked to the owner of the establishment a guide came in and showed us the scorpion he had just caught. He let it out of its bottle cage on the table and the soccer kid was putting his face up to it and pushing the guide into it while he tried to capture it again. Victor had no patience for such things and asked us to take the boy outside.We took the kid out of the village and he showed us a pathway into the jungle where many different trees and crops wed not seen before were growing. The path was full of sharp sticks mud and spiny plants, im glad we had our gum boots, but the boy went barefoot totally unphased. When we reached the village the boy ran off into a house and we rejoined Victor, who was drinking KR cherry soda and watching the local girls play Bingo. We joined in on the game and only once got close to winning. We might have had better luck if we had anymore than a 3 year olds understanding of the spanish number system.We then returned to camp, having succeeded in our mission for water, a mere 4 gallons. We had noodle soup for dinner, of which I ate far too much, and played a few great games of criminal punch with Ricky, who loves card games and shows a whole new personality while playing it, just like Wilder does. New people come tomorrow, I can't wait to meet them!