We both got up early to have the same breakfast with Carolina. This time I had the fish head and boiled plantain instead of the fish body and grilled plantain. We got another 10 soles bag of orange juice as well. Once we were back in the hostel we made our final preparations to enter the jungle. I made one final blog post about us going dark, then we loaded up the van with our gear and that of the two Spaniards. We left the hostel by 9 and picked up two more adventurers at a different hostel. Lisa, from San Francisco and Rachael from New Zealand.It wasn't a long drive with everyone in the van, for soon Caesar* our shaman, Miosess, Blake and I got into another vehicle, which was a prehistoric Mitsubishi wagon from who knows when, only 2 of its windows were capable of going up or down, a feet accomplished only by pulling a string that was attached somehow to the glass. To get it down you had to feed the string back with the window while you pushed it down. The seats were a thin layer of foam probably an inch thick and became uncomfortable the moment we were sitting for more than 5 minutes. It was the same road we took to the pond but went even slower than our overheated motor taxi did. It rained the whole time as well but the driver didn't use his windshield wiper until it had stopped raining, which was scary because he was playing chicken with every car coming from the opposite direction, without even being able to see them while trying to pass the even slower vehicles.Moises got us waters outside of the airport and we drove from their to Nauta, another port city, in relative silence. We unloaded our gear and together with the rest of the group got into 6 motor taxis and drove a short while to the "port" where I argued with a guy for charging me 1 sole for using his pisser but his disregard for my position was absolute and I walked out of his hole in the wall looking for another one to use. Wilder told me it was only .30 - .50 max, but when the Spaniards wanted to use the restroom as well and needed me to show them where after finding no other place, I took them to the guy and handed him the sole he required begrudgingly.Before getting on the boat Blake got a kilo of delicious purple grapes and some very hard jungle apples that tasted great but were like unripe pears to bite through. Once on the boat Blake gave a few of the apple to the boatmen and then we settled down for the hour long ride into the jungle. During this time I got to talking with Rachael and Lisa, but mostly Rachael. She told me she had worked on the special effects team on the happy feet movie, which had won an academy award. She left the movie industry to travel, which gave her a payout for her good work and was here in Peru where she had met her fiance at a Vipassana Ayahuasca retreat in Cusco.If your unfamiliar with Vipassana, it is an ancient Indian practice developed roughly 2500 years ago to remedy almost any ills effecting the body or mind. You do not speak the entire time you participate in the session, usually 10 or so days, and it is free to attend, even the food and lodging are covered. It is paid for by the donations of those few volunteers who are willing or able to do so. My sister Michelle has done a few of these courses herself and seems to enjoy them very much.During Rachaels session in Cusco she not only had to be silent the whole time but was also taking a powerful psychedelic. In one of her sessions she was told by the Ayahuascan spirits about one of the other participants, they told her that he had fallen a long time ago from a building and nearly broken his back. Rachael told me that at the time she didn't yet believe in any spiritual stuff and was skeptical, but the spirits told her that she was a very powerful healer in a previous life and that this man was once her husband. The spirits told her to ask him about the fall and a few other things and find out for herself what was real. She did and the man was amazed at the accuracy of her questions relating to his life, from that experience on they got together and are now engaged and attempting to set up an ayahuasca center outside of Lima.Then she told me about how her mom back in New Zealand had called them after a conference an hour outside of town and then called immediately afterward telling them that she had seen a large craft over her as she had gotten off the phone and the next thing she knew she was 10 hours away on the other side of the Island, an impossibility even with a supersonic aircraft. We also went into really interesting things about Ayahuasca, how when enough DMT, (dimethyltryptamine) the active ingredient of Ayahuasca, is taken, the persons consciousness can be taken into the same dimension that Dark Matter inhabits. I had never heard this before but she told me I could read all about it in the Spirit Molecule book.Then she told us about all the experiences she had with some of the best shamans in Peru, some of which were in Pucalpa, a river city 5 days south by boat from Iquitos, they did nothing but sing the entire time without using a chakapa leaf wand or touching you at all. She gave me the names of these shamans and also of an 80 year old women Shaman, supposedly the 2nd strongest in Peru, who lives in Iquitos. But she has no phone or address so we have to find her one legged brother who can be found around the main plaza in town to find her =D She highly suggested I visit both to have the full ayahuasca treatment.The funny part is that what got us talking in the first place was the necklace that she had on, which I recognized as Roys, the same guy who sold Blake the ones he got for us. I'm very grateful to have met Rachael, she inspired me to further our journeys down the ayahuasca path, beyond this month in the jungle, even though we have yet to pass even a single day there.We arrived at camp and unloaded our gear, as we did other guests got on our transport and left. The two couples who remained were from Spain and Germany. For dinner we had boiled eggs and beats, carrots, and cucumber salad in a sad decrepid dinning area with every single mosquito net loose on the walls and molding to boot. After which we followed Caesar into the jungle, going approximately 100 meters through before coming out into a small clearing in which a tin roof hut was built. It was a fair size, with the front portion being a veranda like space with metal mosquito nets going all around it. Then there was an inner room with 2 single beds with nets and a bunk bed without any mattresses on it, which was to be our room. Outside of the room to the left down a short corridor was a door-less bathroom with a shower. There was virtually no water pressure to speak of so any attempt at a shower was reduced to a dribble of water that one had to stand under for 20 minutes before you could even consider yourself "wet". We put our things on the ground of our room and tried to get some sleep before our first ceremony, which would be at 9pm.Five hours later we got up and joined Wilder and Caesar in the veranda, sitting down on thin foam pads in a semi-circle. We drank and an hour and 20 minutes later Caesar got up to hit the chakapa against my head and cleanse my spirit. As he did, he blew the ridiculously strong, pure tobacco smoke directly in my face, something I would have swung on someone for in my youth, I've never liked tobacco in any form, especially the smoke, I immediately vomited in the bucket provided for us, but Caesar kept hitting my head with the leaf wand unabated like a champ even as i puked my guts out in the bowl beside him. I felt totally normal right after and kicked myself for having such a weak stomach. Hours later however, when the ceremony had ended and we were laying in bed the feeling of floating and being very awake came over me, I saw slight psychedelic shapes, but nothing as strong as our first experience back in Iquitos. A few hours later Blake threw up as well, it sounded very painful for him. We both tried to get some sleep, but neither of us really did...
Money Matters
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...