Food for Thought

A Future in Peru

•Dreams have a way of finding people who can bring them to life, but first you must believe that they can come true, and to do that you must work towards them as if they are already happening, one step at a time.In the morning we ate breakfast and played cards as usual, then joined Wilder, the cook and Moisess' son on a gorgeous boat ride to the largest and nicest village we've seen yet. Our mission was to, yet again, acquire fish and medicinal plants for the camp, for without new guests arriving, management deemed it a waste of resources to properly feed the workers, guides, Blake and myself. It would after all require them to send a boat from Iquitos solely to feed us, and we didn't pay for that kind of extravagance now did we?Anyways, when we arrived the son and the cook went their own ways while we joined Wilder on a stroll through the village, which had solid concrete pathways and better street lighting than Pacific Grove does, the town I live at in California.While we were walking Wilder told us he had a property before that he was growing fruits with, but a flood came during the rainy season and washed it all away, so he sold it. Then he told us that if he had $5000 right now he would buy the land he needed and start his own resort for tourists. This sparked the idea for us to start one ourselves, and the spark quickly became a wildfire of ideas and plans to make just such a resort possible.Blake, who I've been trying to convince for years now to return to Australia with me to work there for far better pay than in the States, surprised me by suggesting we go there to work and build up the starter money necessary to begin our retreat. Many more ideas came to us in the hours that followed, and we would continue to add more as time went on.Having scored a couple cat fish from one of the local fisherman we returned to camp and ate them for dinner. We played 13 with Wilder afterward, he caught on very quickly, I have little doubt that he's very skilled in card games. Yesterday I had been a little pissed at Wilder for not bringing the books a second time, so just to keep myself busy I decided to start writing my own damn book, more of a short story really, but something to write and read through while we wait for the books to come non the less. During and after dinner I wrote a couple more pages in the story as well.When we returned to our hut Wilder set up the most Jerry rigged sauna I've ever seen. It was a lawn chair with a 4 foot stick in between the legs, we were to sit down and then be covered by blankets. Then he put 2 pots of boiling plant water beneath the chair, one by our feet and the other by our head. I was the first to go, and it was worth the experience only because I get to say I did it and get to share it with you all here and now.When it was over Wilder left, Victor cleaned up and then continued relentlessly working away at clearing the brush surrounding our hut with a machete.There was supposed to be a big soccer match tonight that everyone was going to watch, except us of course because Wilder said the strong sauna would make us weak and semi delirious and it was for our own good that we were in bed no later that 6:30 pm. Non of that mattered though because the game was cancelled. Something about there not being enough policemen and security guards in Peri to protect the 190 players, Lol what a crazy planet we live on!

String of Ears

For the last few days Blake I have been sharing our dreams in the morning as soon as we wake up. It is a great practice, especially with someone you can tell anything to, which is a beautiful thing to have no matter what situation your in.We had our breakfast, and along with Jamie, the Brit and Hiener our guide, played 13, bullshit, and a new game that Hiener taught us in which you start from the bottom suit which was the ace of spades, and every player must advance the suit in order upwards, you must draw a card each time either way and when your finished the next player must take a card from your hand without knowing what it is. This is because there is a joker in the deck, the last player with the joker card is deemed smelly and unfit for the upper echelons of Peruvian society, according to Hiener at any rate. Jamie had already showered so he wasnt all that phased by being the loser.With the arrival of Wilder, Jamie, who had been camping yesterday, left us yet again, only now he wouldn't be coming back. He had changed his mind about joining us in the ayahuasca ceremony because he had heart problems and didn't want to take any unnecessary risks. He was a cool guy.while we were sitting in the dinning hall asked Blake which one of us should go and ask Wilder if he brought the books. Blakes reply was cold and dry, "whichever one of us wants to be disappointed first." My old confrontational tendencies flaring up inside me,  I rose from the table and walked purposefully right up to Wilder, who was sitting with the workers laughing and having a good time."Hey Wilder," I said happily. "Did you bring the books?" His eyes widened and he frowned, "books?" He said. Then he slapped his knees with both hands and lowered his head between his knees. Then he looked up saying, "ohh! Damn, I made a mistake, I forgot them in the office," with that I nodded my head in acknowledgement and walked down the stairs and into the jungle back to our hut, with the laughing of Wilder and his gang trailing behind me. Blake followed soon after. "No books?" He asked, "no books." I replied.When we came back for lunch Wilder introduced us to our new medicinal plant Shaman, a bow-legged, nearly toothless 75 year old peruvian military combat veteran who's name was also Victor, making him the 3rd one we've met on this trip alone. We didn't think much of him in the beginning, but that would quickly change.Once introduced and given the explanation of what Victor would be doing with us, namely preparing medicinal plant baths and teas, almost everyone in camp loaded on to the large canoe and went up river towards the large village. On the way we passed an elegant house boat with large glass windows which we could see a plush white linen master bedroom, a dining room with an open-ended high class kitchen right beside it, which had 2 chefs working in it. The boat had 3 levels and 8+ air conditioning units on the roof alone. It must have been a pretty penny to stay on that vessel. Wilder told us later it was something like 1,000 dollars a night.Wilder, Victor, Blake and I were dropped off and went through the village looking for the plants we needed for the bath/shower we would take tonight. Later we met up with the rest of the crew and watched as Wilder and a few other of our crew played a game of soccer with the rest of the villagers.One of the things we quickly realized about victor is that he continuously talks to us, sharing his knowledge and experience, even though we remind him almost every time that we dont understand Spanish. He's a lovable guy, and everyone in the villages respects him. On our way back to camp we picked up another guy, bringing our total to 9 men in a canoe that seats 7. We were bailing out water with a cut in half plastic bottle the entire time.When we got back we prepared the shower baths and after dinner at 9 we took our first one. Then at midnight we took another and returned to our hut with strict instructions not to shower off the plant medicine when we got there. A pointless instruction really, seeing as how our shower didn't work anyways. We air dried in the living room and then laid down, our hair still wet and filled with sticky green leafs from the bath. My toe is starting to swell up, it hurts and im a little worried about it..

Repair crew

I opened my eyes to the sound of running water coming from the bathroom and Blake cursing, he was the first to wake up and had twisted off the sink knob while trying to wash his hands. We got Dennis, the camp janitor to repair the thing, while we went fishing with Hiener. I caught the largest sardine I've ever seem, which isn't that big but still a nice catch. I also got a tiny piranha and Blake got a bigger one than that.We returned to camp, played cards and then asked the workers if we could get nails and a hammer with newspaper, because at this point we were thoroughly tired of the uselessness of our huts defences against mosquitos. We got what we asked for and spent several hours patching the seemingly endless gaps and tears in the screens and between the wooden posts that made up the walls of our abode.Blake was also in no mood to use our dribble "shower" to clean up, so when the rain came down hard he walked out into the downpour and had a proper wash. I wasnt going to join him, but after a moment of standing and watching him soak up the Amazonian rain, I did anyway. After it let up a little we walked into camp and jumped into the river for our first swim in the Amazon. My foot slipped into the mud bank and I jammed my toe into a stick lodged there right off the bat. It didn't bother me much then, but it would later. The water was a medium dark chocolate-brown and it felt cool and refreshing.We got out and instead of going back to our hut for a pointless shower we went into camp and used showers of the vacant rooms, which to our surprise had a wealth of water coming from them, and dare I say, compared to ours, even water pressure!When we got back to camp Blake put the hammer and nails to work on yet another task, a pull up bar.. He took a sturdy branch from the forest and nailed it under the floor boards that hung out over the edge of the house. Then he took my swiss army knife and carved hand holds in the wood for a better grip.When that was done it was dinner time. It turned out to be our tastiest dinner yet as well, which we were both very happy about. The fish was hot and had a good deal of flavor, as much as could be expected with our diet restrictions. Also included in the meal was garlic mashed potatoes with a side of steamed beets and carrots. When that was done we remained at the table playing 13 for nearly 3 hours straight until the generator kicked off yet again.There are no other guests in camp now, we spent the day here alone, besides the workers that is. Wilder comes back tomorrow, with the books he promised us and some other things, we hope...

Frog Poison Paralysis

We did not pass the night well, we slept true enough, but being surrounded by the spirit of death takes its toll on you in spite of the rest you may receive in its midst. We had not planned on doing the sapo before breakfast, but the guide Wilder sent us to do it arrived at 7 with the small wooden stick covered in a slimy crystal layer (the frog poison) and a wide grin on his face. His name was victor and he told us it would be better to do it before eating because it was likely we would be purging during the ceremony. I asked Blake if he wanted to try it and he rolled in his bed with a long painful sigh, a few seconds passed in silence as he considered the idea, then he said "sure, might as well" with a relenting grunt he got up and joined us in the living room.Victor told us we had to go back to camp to get the other victor, the young Belgian. We did and the German girl and the american boy joined to cheer him on and to witness whatever might happen.When we all returned to the shack everyone took a seat and the guide lit a small dry twig from the woods until it glowed red and then burnt 2 holes into each of us, Blake went first, then me and lastly the young Belgian. It took only a few seconds to take effect, my throat began to swell closed, as did my face, and a great heat seemed to flush out of me from every pore.By the time I started to feel it really coming on Blake was already curled over his puke bucket looking like he was incredibly sick. I was next to find myself in the exact same position. The Belgian puked a little but otherwise handled himself very well. I on the other hand puked out a large amount of terrible smelling yellow bile and all the while my hands were closing fiercely into fists completely out of my control. That scared me the most besides my throat swelling, because my wrists felt like they were going to snap due to the pressure. At this point I was in a spasming paralysis, I felt like my whole body was going to seize up and id be nothing more than a twisted crippled heap of flesh. Blake didnt throw up last night nor did he during this experience. The mans got a lead stomach for sure.Twenty minutes passed and we more or less felt normal again. Our young friends thanked Victor and us and returned to camp for breakfast. Blake and I sat down a little bit and then joined them. During breakfast the young American, his father, the Belgian and I discussed the fine points of linguistics.After breakfast our new guide Hiener, the one who told the ghost stories before our ceremony last night, took us on a walk through the woods down the same trail we had gone down alone a few days ago. He showed us a bunch of cool plants and insects, a 700 year old tree and then he took us to a neighboring camp that was much much nicer and just the same price per day as Renaco Lodge. We met a nice German lady who was the only person staying there, she was from Stuttgart. You can find their site here at Junglewolfexpeditions.com If you plan to visit this area of the Amazon and want a much nicer place to stay than Renaco I suggest this establishment. We returned to our camp by boat and had lunch, during which time we showed our new guide and his buddies the card trick that Ninoska had taught us in Cusco.Returning to our hut when they understood the concept of the trick, Blake tried to sleep and I finished reading an atrocious book about a pig living in a uptown hotel in New York titled Swine Not. We had noodle soup as bland as could be with stale crackers.We played a few games of 13, a fun card game in which the lowest card is the 3 of spades and the highest is the 2 of hearts, the person with the lowest 3 goes first and they can put down 1-4 3's or go up from 3 all the way to 2, in or out of suit as long as you have the cards, the next person has to put down just as many cards but a higher starting card, for example if they play 3,4,5 starting with a 3 of spades, you can play 3,4,5 with the 3 starting with a club, diamond or heart. If no other player can go you have control and can put down what you wish. Id you play a run, such as 3,4,5 or 9,10,jack,queen etc... it must be at least 3 in a row. There are other little rules but thats the general idea.Everyone had left after lunch so we played alone until the generator used up all the fuel and the power went out. We got our boots on and walked through the dark moonless jungle, with only my iphone light to guide us through. At the hut we had a philosophical conversation about how best to put as much love back in the world as we could. Blake pointed out that to start I should stop pointing out each and every negative thing around me all the time, he's so right.

The Spirit of Death

After breakfast in camp we joined Wilder and the shaman on a boat ride up river to the villages to look for some fish to buy. Apparently they didn't send enough food to the camp for everyone. After going to two different villages we still couldn't get any fish but we did see a sloth and a few cool plants, one of which had leaves that reacted by curling up whenever you touched them. Wilder got a bottle of honey for us from one friend and at another village his buddy let us dig up his yucca trees and get the tuber roots, the edible part of the plant, he also gave us a giant squash he grew that we could us in a soup.While on the way home Wilder told us about his experiences with the poison sopa frog, a frog that excretes a paralytic toxin from its back when threatened by an attack. The tribal people of the Amazon found that by getting the toxin into the blood stream, usually by burning their skin with a lit stick and then scraping the wound clean and then placing the toxin on the exposed area,  purges the user of almost any other ailment, including blindness, cancer, ulcers, tumors, parasites, etcetera and they have used it for all these things for centuries. The user feels an immediate flushing of the face, their skin swells, throat closes a bit, they vomit and cramp up as they begin to sweat profusely.We had heard about this experience before and asked Wilder if we could get it somehow. Wilder said he knew a guy and that it would cost us 150 soles, or roughly $50 each for the experience. He said it would be ready by tomorrow morning, before or after breakfast. When we got back to camp Wilder also asked us if we would be ok with the Englander joining us for our ceremony tonight. Neither of us objected to the idea. We had lunch and talked to the guy, his name was Jamie. The German couple left when lunch was finished.Night quickly fell and we laid awake in our beds waiting for the ceremony to begin. Wilder had left with the Germans to tend to office business so a new guide came to the hut with another helper from camp after we had already drank and started the ceremony. He introduced himself as hiener and then went into the story of how his powerful grandfather shaman was killed by jealous bruhos, witch doctors, and that this type of thing was very common in Peru. He told another ghost story and then left with the helper when it was quite clear his being there was not positively aiding our experience.Soon after they left I vomited and neither Blake or I had any visions. Until the ceremony ended and we went to bed that is. It was there that a dark energy brought our thoughts into a completely negative space. It was already 3 am, I was dozing off in a nightmare like haze when Caesar shook me awake in my bed and whispered in a snake like hiss "espiritos muerto muerto muerte!" The spirit of death surrounds us, I told Blake what he was saying and He muttered a low grunt in obvious acknowledgment to the situation. Caesar took me back out to the ceremonial space and again performed the cleansing ritual on me, then he took his cot into our room and slept with us. The dark visions ceased and we all went to sleep, only a little shaken up by it all.

A Deadly Snake

Supposedly we were going to make Ayahuasca today, but I guess we didnt have the materials to make it so after breakfast Blake and I went on an hour long canoe ride on our own down river. We turned back early because neither ofus brought  a hat or water and it was quite hot.lunch was ready when we got back and just as we finished eating 10 new people arrived. We waled passed them saying hello as walked off into the jungle with the rain starting to pore down. We stayed in the hut and I finished reading Psychology of the Transference and then starting listening to Steve Martins self narrated autobiographical audio tape, Born Standing Up. Blake then started reading the transference.At 6:30 just when the rain stopped we strolled back into camp and joined the new people for dinner. There was an American family of 3, a German, belgian, Brazilian, Brit and 3 Peruvians. We told them why we were there and the conversation turned over to the ayahuasca, the  psychedelic realms and then all of our travels before arriving and our plans for the near future.When dinner was finished Blake went outside to return to our hut and Wilder warned him to be careful of snakes, Blake turned to him and said, "you mean like this snake right here?" Pointing to the ground right next to the steps he was about to go down where there was a black snake with yellow and red stripes. Wilder looked over the side and then at Blake, "yeah.., this snake can kill you in 2 hours." He said. With that, Wilder assigned a guide to take us back to our hut through the woods. No Ayahuasca was drank today.

Visions of Shadow and Light

I had many dreams in the night and in the morning the first thing I did was copy them down as best I could recall in my dream journal. It´s a great practice to have. You can surprise yourself almost every time when looking back on dreams you´ve had in the past. You´ll go back into your old journals and read one you can´t remember at all and wonder, ¨wow, I can´t remember this at all, but it happened to me!¨ The words spell out a fantastic experience that you swore was realer than anything you´ve ever experienced, yet now it´s as though it never happened at all. Sure it was just a dream, but dreams can be just as real as when your awake, and how many dreams have you had and forgotten? How many memories have we all lost in the course of our lives, either real or within our subconscious? It makes me wonder about reincarnation and such, having entire lives before our current ones, then forgetting them completely as we begin the next. Ponder it for a minute...Because we didn´t sleep well the night of our first ceremony, Blake and I decided to sleep in and catch up on our rest. Eventually we got up and walked out of the hut to get breakfast though, which was just a little fish. It doesn´t ever take that long for Blake´s stomach to overcome any other bodily need he may have, I could have just laid there and starved a little, but oh no, not Blake. He´d tear the head off of a mother bear to get the last piece of salmon on the table, only if there was nothing else left to eat that is.When Breakfast was finished Blake was getting antsy to get out and look around. We told Wilder we were going for a walk and he warned us to be careful and not go to far. With that we strolled off alone into the woods, and as we walked into the jungle, I thought of how best to heed his advice, keeping in mind how little I really knew of this environment, and it´s many strange and truly dangerous inhabitants. We took several pictures right away and moved further on down the trail. As soon as we left camp an army of mosquitoes coordinated a massive attack on us from all sides. Blake kept moving down the path taking pictures while I fought of as many as I could. Soon we were a good distance from camp, still within screaming distance but far enough to lose track of our bearings. ¨These mosquitoes are killing me here Blake¨ I said. ¨Yeah me too, but lets keep going a little further.¨ he replied. So we did.When he was done taking pictures with his GoPro, we turned around and realized the path we had taken led us into a three-way intersection, neither of us knew which path was the original, so we took the one furthest to the left, which would keep us closest to the river and logically the best way to return to camp. It was quickly apparent that we were on the wrong path and were going into thicker and thicker jungle, so we turned around and chose the middle path, which thankfully was the correct one and we were soon free of the woods strolling into camp with the mosquito legions trailing fiercely behind us.It was lunch time at this point and we sat down with Rachel, Lisa and the Spaniards. All of which were going back to Iquitos after they finished eating. I told Rachel id email her about the shamans she told me about as soon as we returned to the city. Midway through the meal a new couple arrived on the boat that would take everyone away. I thought at first they were from Spain, based on their rugged looks and dark hair, but they were actually German. We struck up a conversation and it turns out the guy is from Baden-Baden, the same area of Germany that my mom is from. He works as a tour guide in Hamburg now and suggested I visit there when I go back to Europe, Hamburg along with Berlin, Munich and the German Alps.When lunch was concluded and all but us and the Germans remained I decided to get some reading done in the only book I brought along with me, which is The Psychology of The Transference, by CG Jung. It´s a crazy book, I got it because Terrence McKenna suggested reading it to learn more about the Archetypes of mankind. You can find it here on Google: http://books.google.com.pe/books/about/ThePsychologyoftheTransference.html?id=7G2UPwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

After a few chapters we went back to the lodge and at Wilder's suggestion went out fishing with Caesar and a boatman. At first I was the only one getting any bites, but I caught zipo, nothing, nada. Blake caught a silver dollar sized piranha that fell off the hook as soon as we lifted it out of the water to show everyone, that was worth the laugh. Caesar caught seven 6¨ or so piranhas, Wilder got 3, not sure how many the boatman got more than either of us that's for sure. When nobody caught anything for a good 5 minutes we pulled our lines and went bird watching. We saw two Tucans, lots Raptors* brown falcon/Hawk like birds, King fishers, crains, monkeys and all sorts of other things. We tried to get into a beautiful lake surrounded by tall exotic trees that had thousands of birds chirping and screeching from within, but the way was still blocked by the low water, jungle water lilies and other water plants.

We came back to the lodge and prepared ourselves for the second ceremony in the jungle. When it came time to drink I asked the spirits to give me visions, repeating the request over and over in my mind, concentrating only on that. We drank and after 2 hours the visions came. I saw a deep water pool, with the shadows of palm leaves and water lilies lining the edges. A humming-bird with spectral color wings glowing brightly swooped back and forth over the water and disappeared into the shadows. As this happened my thoughts darkened and I again felt the pain of my family and friends at home, with this my heart wept for them, and as it did my thoughts turned darker still, to the police state that the United States has become. What will become of us under their control? I thought. 

And then I saw a massive tower, with an unbelievable blinding light shining from its top. The thing was so huge it would probably reach space. With this the visions ended and so did the ceremony. Caesar gave us a final blessing and we returned to our beds. Both Blake and I laid awake for several more hours still racing with thoughts and feelings, but unlike the previous ceremony, this time we were able to sleep.