It is the morning after our first ceremony in Iquitos. We skip breakfast and are met by Wilder, the man who brought us to the Shaman and told us about the opportunity his company offers in the first place. He got us a Tuk Tuk and rode behind us on his motorbike. We lost track of him along the way but thankfully I recognized the alley of the Shaman and instructed the driver to turn off on to it. We even managed to recognize the Shamans house, even though it was all very dark when we arrived there the previous night. We went inside and waited for Wilder to arrive. After 20 minutes of waiting I communicated as best I could with the Shaman that I thought he had lost track of us and driven ahead thinking our driver would keep going passed the alley, which indeed he would have, had we not told him otherwise. The Shaman called Wilder and he joined us soon after confirming my suspicions.Together with the Shaman and Wilder as our interpreter, we talked about our experiences with the Ayuhuasca the previous night. Then they discussed how long we should spend in the jungle. Wilder wanted to know how much time we had to spend and foolishly I think we said, ¨As long as it takes¨ something you just don't say to tourist companies before making a deal with them. Always know how long you´ll commit to. We had talked about doing 2 months before even arriving in Peru but I wasn't really serious about it. Blake however said flatly that 2 months would do to start. Wilder looked at us intensely for a moment, confirmed what we said, turned and told the Shaman. With a few exchanges, which I took to a rescheduling of his life calendar for the next 8 weeks, everything on their side of the conversation ended. We thanked the Shaman and returned to the main part of the city and had lunch at Texas Rose with Carolina. Then we went home and slept in our bunk beds until 5pm. Wilder came at that time and took us the offices of the company;You can find the lodge details here: http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/HotelReview-g294315-d3514228-Reviews-RenacoLodge-IquitosLoretoRegion.htmlWe walked inside the office and he asked us to have a seat. He went into detail about everything we would see, showed us on a map where we would be going in the Amazon and then showed us some pictures of the lodge and some animals. Salesmanship tactics differ slightly everywhere in the world but well and truly Wilder is good at selling ideas to people, and we were eager to be sold, a truly dangerous combination. After a little more posturing he hit us with the price. $750 a week, we laughed a little and told him it simply wasn't possible, at that price each of us would have to commit to $6,000 dollars for the 2 month duration, in a place we had never been, under circumstances we did not know, something I was not going to do no matter what Blake wanted.I made a flat offer of 1500 a month, which comes out to $375 a week. Wilder looked less than happy with this amount but I knew how things here go, the price a Peruvian would pay for something like this would still be even lower than that, and were now in the slowest part of the tourist season, deals can be made. Blake however wasn't ready to give in so easily and offered them $1750 a month for the experience. I didn't like it, but accepted it because I was ready to fulfill our purpose here, even at extra cost, which Blake made clear to me was the least of his concerns if it meant healing himself, a notion I agree with in and of itself, but cannot fully endorse without proper assurance of success, I've always been a stickler for money its true, but because of this, I've always been able to buy what I needed and travel when I wanted. Blake's counter offer seemed to turn the tide in Wilder's mind and he excused himself from the table to "speak with the boss" A classic sales tactic that anyone buying a car will know all too well.Wilder came back and said that because we were friends with the boss's daughter he would accept our offer. $3500 a month for 2 people, it's more than I wanted to pay, but like Blake said, "It's a once and a lifetime experience, and for something like that, its not that much money." Blake tried to get money out of the Bank but it would only give him $200 at a time and in soles not dollars, so he asked his parents to Western Union him some money. In the meantime I would front him the money to pay for the trip. We had dinner with Carolina and returned to the hostel to think about what we had just signed ourselves up for...
Fairwell Cusco, Bienvenido Iquitos
Early in the morning, at around 6, I got up and said goodbye to Luiz whose bus left at a 7am, "When I get outside I will cry." he said, gave me one last hug and squeezed through the narrow slit in the doorway with his large pack. A couple of hours later Ninoska left, we had a nice hug, and then it was just the 3 of us, Blake, Humberto and I. Humberto made a delicious enchilada breakfast with last nights left overs and then he too left us to tend to his business.Our flight to Lima was at 2:40 so we waited until 12 to get a taxi to the airport, which was 8 soles. Upon arriving the woman at the Avianca counter asked us for our tickets, we had only the print out given to us at the main office, she seemed terribly distressed by this, asking us if we had signed in electronically via the net, we said no and this didn't help her worried demeanor. She told us it was a security precaution and that someone had already signed us in. "must have been the people at the office we bought the flights in." We said. We eventually we settled this and then she informed Blake that his pack was to unorganized and had to be wrapped in a plastic wrap before being allowed on the plane, so they charged us 35 soles and wrapped it in an alien green plastic sheath.When we went through security the guard pulled me aside and asked me if I had a pocket knife in my bag, I did, he made me remove it and was going to throw it away, I stopped him in his tracks and said, "this is my father's knife, I'm not throwing it away." His face turned ugly and he said it wasn't possible to keep the knife with me on board, I asked him if there was a way to get it into my checked baggage and he said It was very unlikely. With a final plea he let me through the security door in the back and said I had 5 minutes to return through security and that getting the knife checked was my responsibility. It wasn't really my father's knife, but I had gotten it in Switzerland with my mom more than 15 years ago and I wasn't going to let it go just because it wasn't a good enough story to pass mustard with this guy.I went back to the Avianca counter and asked if they could check my knife in my bag, they said it was impossible, I would have to check another bag with the knife inside. I feel silly to have suggested checking my toiletries bag, but I did and they almost snickered at the idea of it. So I checked my trusted yellow backpack, the one I've been traveling with right by my side for the last 9 years, without ever checking it. I did remove my money satchel first though, if nothing else, Id have that to get me through things if it was lost or stolen. Money is the most important thing to travel with after all. I got back through security and joined Blake sitting in the waiting area of our gate.I looked at my ticket and thought I saw our arrival time as 6:05, I had told our couch surfer in Iquitos that we would arrive at 8:30, So I paid the 3 soles at the cafe for use of their wifi and related to her our change in arrival. Blake got a medium size bag of classic Lays potato chips for us to share and we waited for the gate to open. Soon we were boarded, and as soon as our plane took off I checked my ticket again and noticed with great disappointment in my powers of observation that our flight didn't in fact arrive at 6:05, but at the original time I had told her. As if to ease my conscience, the pilot informed us that due to better than expected flight conditions we would be arriving in Iquitos at around 7:40, which made my blunder a little easier to take.We arrived in Iquitos and walked off the plane down the steps on to the tarmac for several hundred meters until reaching the building at the far right side where our baggage would be unloaded. Moments later we had our bags and exited the building straight into the parking lot where an army of motortaxi drivers and anxiously awaiting relatives of all types waited to see their kin, or whoever it was they were there to meet.There standing next to the curb was Caroline, our local couch surfing host. The three of us greeted each other and crammed into the first motor taxi who had a reasonable price, which Caroline was easily able to accomplish. The motor taxis which I refer to are nothing more than split down the middle motorcycles with a back-end resembling a two-wheel cart with a plastic roof. Some are nicer than others to be sure, but anything fancier would require some higher purpose that doesn't really exist around these parts, with the exception of those used for hauling commercial goods that is.We reached Caroline's fathers hostel, named the Salamander Backpackers, and unloaded our gear into our double bunk-bed room with a single rickety fan spinning haphazardly from the ceiling. The beds were 20 soles a night, which we didn't have to pay. She took us to a local sports bar that was owned by an ex marine and baseball player from Texas that had amazingly decorated walls, full of jerseys, sports memorabilia, 25 foot snake skins and much, much more. The upstairs bar was named Margaritaville and aptly so, the winding metal staircase was actually pretty treacherous, in the states we'd call something like that a lawsuit waiting to happen, but here in Iquitos, and indeed in South America at large, no such weakness in a local drunks character, or ability to make any claim of fault except that of his own, exists.Looking at the menu, we found the Ayahuasca diet options in the very back. Blake chose the veggie burrito and the fish and I the personal veggie pizza. My pizza was blander than any Id ever imagined, it didn't even have tomato sauce on it, I nearly choked on the dry crust. Blakes Burrito was the same, but at least his fish was alright. We ended up having to get some sugar-free fruit juices just to get the food down. We spoke a little with Caroline about our plans here in Iquitos, that we were looking for a legitimate Shaman to facilitate our Ayahuasca Healing and that we were not interested in a mass ceremony with many people. She said she knew someone who might be able to help us and that we could talk with them in the morning. We returned to the Hostel, said goodnight to Caroline and returned to our bunk beds to sweat the whole night through beneath the rickety, barely effective ceiling fan.