Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part Four

A guest post by Dag Walker

“Only when the dusk starts to fall does the Owl of Minerva spread its wings and fly.”

G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, “Preface” (1820)

The philosopher who wanted to explain the nature of things, to create, to shape, to make the world in his own image, finds that it is only at the end of his history that he is able to see that story at all; and then it is too late to do more than at last understand. Wisdom comes when all else is over.

John and I took a mototaxi across town for the third trip to take ayahuasca at Low Town in the shack with local ladies looking for cures for curses and relief from harmful spirits that plague them. Our taxi nearly spilled us as the driver sped reckless down the flooded street in the pounding deluge, missing sight of a hole hidden by the flood, the rear tyre falling deep, smashing into the ground, jerking the little buggy sideways hard and threatening to toss us all into the lake of mud that is the street. Then we sank in the mire and could go no further except on foot to the ayahuascero’s dumpy little house in the dark. Sometimes wading knee-deep in mud and flowing water we went to the man’s place for me to seek enlightenment and wonder from ayahuasca, soaked and cold and expectant of greatness. Having taken only a cupful of ayahuasca last time out, this time I was determined to do it right, taking two cups and maxing out the higher limit of the possible. Grim but smiling I entered the curandero’s place and took my seat and waited my turn for a cup of foul ayahuasca. John explained to the man in far better Spanish than I can manage, that I would this evening take two full cups. The curandero objected, saying it’s too strong and that I would be in danger. I shook my head and insisted. The old man shrugged and passed me the cup. I drank it down and held it out for more. He shook his head and said I should wait, and if I really needed more he would give it to me later. And so I sat and listened as the maestro sat and with him sat ladies come for his healing prayers, his sacred chanting and his mapacho blowing, the smoke being a terror to daemons, his presence enough to cast out evil from the worried ladies who brought their children to sit with strange foreigners taking drugs in an old and decaying building in the night. The rain pounded on the tin roof like an army of mad pagan fists.

The first hour went by for me as I amused myself thinking of Child Services agents swooping in from America like golden eagles to catch up and soar away with little children safe in their claws, removed from this hellish scene of abuse where dark-skinned Indians sit in the dark to be saved from spirits. My stomach almost rumbled, and so I had John fetch me another cup, though the curandero said it would be too much. I took the first mouthful and grimaced at the taste, far worse than ever before, the lingering aftertaste of the first cup still making me sick of it, and then two more gulps to the point I could hardly stand it. But down it went. The ladies and their sleepy children one group at a time got up and left as their prayer sessions ended, leaving me and John and a couple of young men to remain and deal with ayahuasca itself. Shortly thereafter the Peruvians were puking up bucketloads while I sat waiting, listening to the curandero chanting his sing-song icaros.

In every group of twenty ayahuasca drinkers, it seems, there is one person who spends long hours in terrible boredom while all around are in various states of mental weirdness. That one person who is bored is perhaps one who has “blocked chakras.” Or he might be anal retentive. Perhaps he is chakra retentive and or anally blocked. For some, ayahausca does nothing. For a few it is nothing at all.

Blocked chakras? I suspect it is a matter of physical strength, as the curandero tells me in his inimitable way, mapacho cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his large uncovered belly sagging over his pants, his raspy voice chuckling that “I am very strong.”

Ayahausca is a delivery system for chakruna and other DMT-containing drugs. The ayahuasca is not a hallucinogen itself.  Ayahausca is meant as a purgative, to rid people of worms. It is the DMT that produces the “visions” that the drug tourists come to Iquitos and take ayahuasca for. Talk about “ceremonies” is a cover for the cover. It is all about DMT. For DMT to enter the bloodstream to affect hallucinations, the ayahuasca must sneak it into the body’s system before the body breaks it down. It is not the blocked chakras of anally retentive people that prevents the DMT effect. It is a strong gut. Thus, to fool my own belly, I took a cup of ayahuasca and let my body destroy it and the DMT; and then, being a clever fellow, I took another cup when the body had done it’s work on the first.

Shortly after taking the second cup, the first had a mild laxative effect and I relieved myself in the adjoining space (i.e. the bathroom) containing a 50 gallon drum of water meant to flush the hole in the ground that doubles as a shower drain and toilet. I returned to my cot and laid down, waiting for the visions I was so keen to see, for that entry into the undiscovered land of altered consciousness that would give me hope of a better world on the horizon, or at least some insight into why such a world as our is as it is, a “cannibal banquet of the soul.” I laid down and closed my eyes, waiting.

John had curled up and gone to sleep and the other Peruvians were gently swinging sideways in hammocks, a couple of young men who would occasionally spit and vomit in the plastic paint buckets they kept handy. The curandero chanted icaros and whooshed mapacho smoke at me. I closed my eyes and saw a neon embroidered soccer ball hanging in front of my vision. I mentally kicked that one down the road and it was replaced soon after by endless shelves of indistinct cookie tins. I was then greeted by the welcome sight of a science fiction movie scene of massive blobs of puke bubbling on the walls and floor. Taking this as my cue, I stuck my finger down my throat and puked up a record amount, spitting to make sure I did as well as the others around me.

My vision will be a sorry disappointment to most, I fear, though it is as true as I can make it:

I saw in the jungle by the river a beetle rubbing his legs together and making a lion-like roar to attract all the hottest beetle babes for miles around for great sex all the night long, just with him. Other beetle guys were standing off in the darkness, worried shitless that all his big noise would attract as well as the babes all the beetle predators possible, that he first would be eaten and be no more. Some beetle guys tentatively rubbed their legs together, and a few huddled nervously round the guy with the cell phone putting in a futile call to 911. There is no law in the jungle but life and death. But the big guy carried on as loud as living, his roar that of the Beetle God of Eternal Life. “I am alive, and let us together make beetle babies to cover the earth!”

That vision, I hasten now to add, did not come from ayahuasca, it came from being stranded in the jungle for a few nights on a broken-down boat in the  wilds of Bolivia. That vision in the night showed me life lived at a frantic pace so fast that there is only life and death, eating and breeding, living to breed so others can eat ones children, too. The meaning of life? It is life itself, not anything more or less.

Healing ceremonies of Mother Ayahuasca? Life is about living, however long at this cannibal banquet of the soul, and having babies, however long they live and whatever they might do; babies living and growing and having babies in turn; the Plaza filled with little babies in parents’ arms; children living; boys and girls wandering; adults striving to keep them all alive till they all die. Babies and beetle babies and bugs and living things I cannot see, all of life is living. This wisdom comes a bit late for me.

Not much of a vision, and none of it from Mother Ayahuasca. I ate Mother Ayahuasca, and then I slept.

In a fragment from one of Aeschylus’ lost plays, The Myrmidones, he writes of an eagle finding itself impaled by an arrow. Seeing himself thus, the eagle says, ”Thus not by others, but with our own feathers/ are we undone.” My body defeats me when I drink ayahuasca. I’m unhappy with that, and I feel that I have so far failed to win this battle I set out for. I don’t like failure; and thus I won’t stand it forever. I will keep drinking ayahuasca till I receive the right effect. I might go so far as to make my own ayahuasca and learn from those masters who know it’s secrets. I’m a lazy guy, and I don’t like the idea that I have to live for decades traveling, listening, reading, thinking, experiencing the world, the earth, life itself to find enlightenment. I want it now, like others who drink ayahuasca. So, I might sit in jungles for a long time learning till at last this instant enlightenment in a bottle works for me. Mother Ayahausca? I’ll defeat it even if I have to beat that bitch to death with a two by four. Ain’t done yet.

Seating Ayahausca at the Cannibal Banquet of the Soul (Part Four)

A guest post by Dag Walker

This piece is an excerpt from my up-coming book, “Iquitos, Peru: Almost Close,” a popular account of Iquitos, its history and people.

You will want to read;

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part One;

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part Two;

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part Three;

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

If you would like to read more about Iquitos Peru, click this link to my blog, No Dhimmitude;

Hi Bill Grimes here. As always, the views expressed by guest authors are not necessarily the views of Bill Grimes, Dawn on the Amazon Tours and Cruises, or the Captain’s Blog.

I do think you will be interested in these articles by Dag Walker posted here in the Captain’s Blog;

Iquitos Peru, A Really Dirty Story;

Iquitos Peru, Black Days, Red Nights: Riot, ’98;

Bookmark This Post

A guest post by Dag Walker

“When Reason sleeps, there be monsters.”

Franciso Goya (1797-99)

The round-faced and still pretty for some years to come 20ish German girl said, “Why would I want to take ayahuasca? It changes you; and I like my life as it is.”

Many ayahuasca users I have met are covered with tattoos, and often as well they wear costumes designed to display some juvenile rejection of middle class conformity to the rational norms: baggy pantaloons, neon embroidery shirts of psychedelic designs, and rat-dos that must weigh almost as much as I do. This type of ayahuasca user also rejects reason by using a counter-language of what most would consider to be something like childish babble: blocked chakras, sacred Mother Ayahuasca, healing ceremonies, and so on. These people do not reveal monsters, they reveal fairies and elves of infantile minds. They appear to be very determined to change their lives. But I do not assume they don’t like their lives as they are. I assume they like their lives just fine and want more of the same only moreso, which leads them to take hallucinogens like ayahuasca. That’s what possessed me to take ayahuasca. I try to pursue the extraordinary in this life. Of course it would change me. That’s what I like about this life of mine, discovering the incredible strangeness of it all as it creeps this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time….

I travel around the world. I take ayahuasca. I’m usually open to trying strange things. I went to Disneyland a long while ago.

Some people complain that Disneyland is all hype, and that at the heart of it it’s just about some rich white guys making even more money. Disneyland, they argue, isn’t real. It’s not authentic. Disneyland is to them just a lot of marketing nonsense covering up a small core of enlightenment. Whoa, not as I recall it. Disneyland is where my buddy’s cousin had a job, and it was there, at the age of 14, that Goofy turned me on to my first hit of acid.

I’ve been to Las Vegas many times, too, once with a girl trying to kick her heroin habit, we going to a casino for dinner and she rapt at first sight of the inside slot machines, not moving from the spot till she was accidentally shoved and then nearly killed the guy with the hunting knife she kept stashed in her pants. Other than these things, she was sort of OK.

I checked out The Temple of the Golden Dawn’s 30 page professionally written p.r.  package, the first 10 pages extolling the beauties of Mother Ayahuasca healing ceremonies and the highly trained ayahuascara serving girls in constant attendance, and then the following 20 pages of legal disclaimers the guest would agree to upon signing and sending in the cheque. Disneyland and Las Vegas all in one at the Amazon Basin. In all cases, very expensive thrills, and all socially acceptable.

I’ve done expensive and acceptable. As well, I shot craps with alcoholic Negroes in Harlem once, which is sort of like Vegas without the big boobs glamor girls in sequined g-strings serving multi-coloured cocktails; and so, having done Vegas I decided to skip the glitzy ayahuasca lodge in favour of a low ayahuasca death bogan in Slumsville, Iquitos. I don’t need disco balls and clown costumes to go with my enlightenment. I like mine straight.

I know that people go to Vegas to “get away from the pressures of work” and to gamble, screw prostitutes, get drunk in public, and take cocaine. From what people tell me about taking ayahuasca, they come to Iquitos because they are deeply traumatised by middle class Modernity and need the healing ceremonies of Mother Ayahuasca to heal their boo hoo. One can now purchase LSD pretty much anywhere, so I honestly do not know why anyone would go to Disneyland.

I understand that most people are conformists and that today in the West most people conform, whether they think it through or not, to the dominant voice of the zeitgeist, Oprah Winfrey. And when all your friends are waiting, how selfish it is for you if you’re not overwhelmingly traumatised when it’s your turn for all your friends to “be there for you.” What will everyone do if they don’t have a chance to feel your pain? Go for it: be so traumatised that you have to fly to Peru to be healed by Mother Ayahuasca. That is far cooler than a week in Vegas, and totally cool compared to taking the kids to Disneyland, even if Junior gets whacked on LSD thanks to that fucking Goofy. Ayahuasca isn’t a drug: it’s a medicine. It’s true, I read it in the p.r handout from The Temple of the Golden Dawn.  Deal with it, special hurt person. Confront your daemons and heal your boo hoo.

It’s easy for me to mock people I don’t know and don’t care to understand. I’m not so vain that I think it means anything much that I feel so poorly toward them. Drug tourists bring a great deal of money to Iquitos, and that is a benefit to all people here, as well as the added benefit of the access to social capital they bring in terms of allowing for jobs that give experience in the Modern world to people who might some day move on to more valuable occupations, having learned the basics in the drug tourism industry. Business, even the drug tourism business, allows people to learn skills and values to rise in the economic reality of a better world, even if for many it leads Oprah rejects to the hopefuls line-up at the Jerry Springer show. Or to ayahuasca lodges to heal that twagic boo hoo.

I’m not making any friends in the ayahuasca lodge industry by thinking like this. I am a prick. I am also a fascist. Now we know.

I am not only a prick and a fascist, I am stupid and evil. I’ve known this for ages, but I had it all explained to me again recently when a 23 year old Austrian girl with a French accent that sounded like a parody of Quebecois, a girl covered top to toe in flowers and Samurai swordsmen tattoos told me all about myself. I am stupid because after all these years of living I don’t know that I should be a vegan. I am evil because I don’t love Mother Ayahuasca. I didn’t follow the dieta. I am surprised that the great healing Mother Ayahuasca was defeated by a glass of one percent milk and a tuna sandwich with mayo. This makes me a fascist.  I am naturally a prick no matter what else I think or do. Life is for learning.

My life is for learning, I think, and thus I go again to take ayahuasca for the third time at Low Town.

The second time I took ayahuasca I drained my cup and then drank what was left in the bottom of the bottle when all the others had had theirs. I sat down and waited, having bought my ticket for the express train to the state of Altered Consciousness. I waited. And waited.

I laid down and flipped through an illustrated catalogue of “Modern Projectile Wounds from BB Guns to .50 Calibre Machine Guns.” That was not what I was assuming from ayahuasca. I walked along the dirt road to the troop truck and looked down at about a hundred infantry POWs lined five rows deep up the berm to the barbed wire fence that enclosed the old farm field, and there I saw among the dull-eyed and slack-jawed one man whose eyes were bulging, his lips stretched so tight I thought they might split  up the middle, his fists clenched, his body leaned forward as if ready to run like a rabbit at the sound of “Go.” Then the machine gun mounted on the truck opened up and men fell like men falling, torn to shreds like beets and olive drab, jerking as the machine gun swept over the fallen bodies again and again till there was little left but a sheet of human sludge staining the grass below. ‘This is ayahausca?’ I asked myself. But no, it is merely that usual state of Dag between waking and sleep.

At some point in the evening, many hours in, I puked up a tablespoon of bile. I laid awake and listened to John and the curandero laughing as they sat outside smoking cigarettes watching cartoons on John’s ipod. They sat together in a state of rapture as the cartoon characters bowled each other over and shouted. I watched them from the darkness as they sat leaning close to the screen, sitting side by side, laughing and swinging their feet like children.

“Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.”

Goya, “Caprichio No. 43.”

Having failed twice to find a path to ayauasca I determined to return a third time, this time to gulp down two cups. The curandero said it’s too much, but I insisted until he relented. What happened then will be the next installment of my adventures in Iquitos drinking ayahuasca.

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part Three

A guest post by Dag Walker

This piece is an excerpt from my up-coming book, “Iquitos, Peru: Almost Close,” a popular account of Iquitos, its history and people.

You will want to read;

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part One;

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part Two;

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

If you would like to read more about Iquitos Peru, click this link to my blog, No Dhimmitude;

Hi Bill Grimes here. As always, the views expressed by guest authors are not necessarily the views of Bill Grimes, Dawn on the Amazon Tours and Cruises, or the Captain’s Blog.

While we stay tuned for Ayahuasca Part Four, I recommend these articles  by Dag Walker posted here in the Captain’s Blog;

Iquitos Peru, A Really Dirty Story;

Iquitos Peru, Black Days, Red Nights: Riot, ’98;

Bookmark This Post

A guest post by Dag Walker

I stood in the semi-dark of the long, low room of the ayahuasca centre in central Iquitos, red plastic cup in hand, thinking of what could possibly happen to me physically and mentally if I actually drank this stuff in hand. I’m not rash or stupid. I read the work by the Vanity Fair writer and saw how he feared the loss of his mind and chickened out and ran off to England to pursue a non-story rather than risk all of his long life’s work of accumulating skill and memory that he feared could be, perhaps would be lost from one drink of ayahausca. In probably every conceivable way that writer had more to lose than I, but I have my own valuable life and life of the mind that I care about, even so. I’m not willing to toss it away for nothing more than a macho gesture or a cheap thrill. So, having examined my prospects and weighed the possible loss of my mind if not my life itself, I dumped down the cup of stuff I expected to taste like a mixture of shit and gasoline, thinking it would tear a layer of skin off my tongue and leave me hoarse for a week, something like the worst whiskey known to man. To my surprise it tasted a bit like thick dishwater. It had a vague vegetable taste, but not anything particularly bad, not compared to many things I have eaten, some so foul, and some so welcome in the midst of famine where people died by the thousands and anything one could put in ones mouth without literally choking and gagging and puking it up was food, that I am sometimes almost violently upset at picky eaters like vegetarians and those who whinge about McDonald’s. I look at food as food, the stuff one can get down that allows one to live. I’ve seen people die because there was nothing to eat at all. I have eaten rot vultures would avoid. I am not too sensitive sometimes. Ayahuasca was, for me, nothing terrible. I drank it down and sat down in the dark. If my worse nightmare is genetically engineered food, then, as I know already, I am blessed in this life.

I am blessed in this life. I doubt many would agree with that assessment were they to cover front to back any period of my benighted times. I am one shit-poor Modernist. I live so badly so often that I live a literal life of terror. I am blessed, and I am humbly thankful for it. That doesn’t make me a good man or a Christian or a believer in things other assume about the religious. But the gods have blessed me and I am thankful. Others shudder when they come to know me well.

As I sat in the dark of the ayahausca centre with a half dozen men and women in the dark I heard them, one by one, puking and heaving and spitting till I thought I might go mad without a radio to sweeten the sounds of the night. I smelled the night air, the flowery scent of perfumed women, the joy of femininity, the wonder of women. I breathed it in, the smell of women and mapacho, the smoke of the thick, black tobacco cigarettes of the curandero. I smelled the dust in the air and the scent of men who sweat all day. I got strong gusts of puke wafting on the gentle breeze and people around me heaved up the contents of their sick guts. And I sat through it all waiting for my turn to puke as well. Turns out I’m a bit tougher than the average Peruvian. I didn’t quite burp, though I had a litre of milk in me at the time.

I sat in the dark, my friend John beside me to keep me safe should my ayahuasca experience turn violent or insane. This night, John is my mother, the only mother I have.

I had John come with me because I do have deep fears about my own mind. I fear that I am a monster and that, alone, unleashed, I am a dog of war more mindless and terrible than most could imagine. I brought John along to save those Peruvians I would not harm if I were my ordinary self. I couldn’t anticipate the man I might be under the influence of a strong hallucinogenic. John is a veteran from the military here and I expected him to kill me should things get dangerous for others. I have no wish to harm these gentle people. I brought John to save them from me, even though John is one of them and would likely never hurt me no matter. He, like they, is a gentle hand to hold in horror.

I sat alone in the dark, John, a simple fellow whom I do too little for at this time, say beside me, my protector and theirs. The locals puked up buckets. I sat alone and considered myself. I should have brought a book and a flashlight.

This is the first of my three sessions drinking ayahuasca.

I sat in the dark and was left to the contents of my mind. My life could well be a thread of a certain length, some knots along the way to show experience of this or that. Perhaps, though not so much compared to so many, knotty much so. Yeah, lots of knots and a long thread even now, though I’m not so old and expect to live a long time yet, should I follow the course of my family. I could, conceivably, live as long again as I have so far. I am close to 60. I have lived some long and terrible times. I hope to live much and many more. Many of those agonising times flashed through my mind as I sat in a metal framed rocking chair with all the plastic weave in place, a chair of honour for the old guy, I think so. I rocked as images rolled in waves through my mind in the darkness. But ayahuasca, that had nothing to do with me at all.

No, I drank my alloted fill of ayahuasca in the evening and sat still and rocked and thought while those about me fell into trances and puked and spat and gained something, I suspect, that I could not catch.

When I first heard of ayahuasca almost a year ago and told the Russian girl I was with that I would try it, she scoffed and said all I would do is find out about myself, and if I didn’t know about myself at my age it was too late.

I know myself well enough. I know I am blessed.

Ayahuasca had no effect on my whatsoever. The curandero said I need to drink more next time, that I am strong and that I need a bigger dose. That could be true, and I will try the three times I set myself. I’ll drink the stuff till I puke if that’s what it takes. And then I won’t do it any more.

I found, as I sat in the darkness with Peruvians, that I am alone. John sat beside me in the darkness, swinging his feet and finding his own contentment in his, how to put this gently, his own lovely mind. Other Peruvians sat around us and communed with the nature of things Peruvian. I reached out for God.

I got up and walked around outside the shack, passing the toe tree, skirting the rabbit hutch, drawing back as the cat raced in front of me, and me stopping only because the lot is tiny. I stood alone, bored and disappointed as the moon rose and shone through the light wispy clouds in the endless empty skies. Nothing. Nothing at all.

To be continued…

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part Two

A guest post by Dag Walker

This piece is an excerpt from my up-coming book, “Iquitos, Peru: Almost Close,” a popular account of Iquitos, its history and people.

You will want to read Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part One;

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

If you would like to read more about Iquitos Peru, click this link to my blog, No Dhimmitude;

Hi Bill Grimes here. While we stay tuned for Ayahuasca Part Three, and Four, I recommend these articles  by Dag Walker posted here in the Captain’s Blog;

Iquitos Peru, A Really Dirty Story;

Iquitos Peru, Black Days, Red Nights: Riot, ’98;

Bookmark This Post

A guest post by Dag Walker

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Francis Thompson, The Hound Of Heaven (1893/1917)

Nearly 60, and on the road for over 40 years all over the place, learning as much as I can in the hope of knowing something that will wrap it all up as sense in the end. Life’s all a mystery. So, there I was, six days and nights on a rusty cargo boat in the back end of Peru going downstream on the Ucayali River from Pucallpa through the Amazon jungle, and during that voyage and after all these years I had never heard of such a thing as ayahuasca. The word didn’t mean a thing to me till I arrived at gringo headquarters in Iquitos, Ari’s Burgers at the corner across from the Plaza de Armas. Then, within minutes of sitting down in a cheap molded plastic chair for my first cup of coffee in close to a week, I heard of ayahuasca and suddenly became curious about this jungle drug the tourist crowd were so keen on talking about. From zero to sixty in a matter of minutes.

Within an hour I was committed to taking ayahuasca. I’ve been finding out about it for close to a year since, and I am not ready even now for the actual experience. I don’t have any fear of the drug and its effects on my mind or body. I don’t think I’m going to have a “bad trip” like so many I’ve read about and some I’ve spoken to. Nor do I sentimentalise this drug. I don’t have any great romantic notions about the Grand Divine and how I have to approach such as a cringing supplicant wailing about my physical impurity and spiritual worthlessness that only proper pretentious attention of silly dietas and cloying humility in the face of “The Great Mother Ayahuasca” can absolve me of if I wish to have some authentic revelatory experience. I know now that the hippie costumes and the New Age spiritual mumbo-jumbo is for the benefit of visitors who want to exoticise their drug-taking and make it into something dramatic befitting spoiled and striving Drama Queens in search of talking status among their peers. Hyping the trip is a big and essential part of the ayahuasca-drinking experience for some. I don’t need it. I’ve seen naked ayahuasca. I’ve seen stark naked and rum drunk hippies take ayahuasca with as good effect as the most spiritually affected middle aged American New Age poseur. The trappings don’t mean anything, objectively. The affectations are solely for the benefit of the affected.

Now that I know enough to see ayahuasca/chakruna as a jungle hallucinogen I can take it seriously and consider it for what it is. I don’t need the fake smiles and the accompanying idiot babble and the phony preparatory dietas and the baggy clown costumes and the top-end yuppy jungle lodges to take ayahuasca. Many people do need the veneers to make their drug-taking acceptable to themselves and more importantly to those they will tell the story to later. The setting has to be perfect, the purpose more than noble, it being spiritual and for the sake of “healing” of whatever nonsense one cares to pretend to whinge about; and the ‘shah-Mahn’ master of the “ceremony” must be close to God to make the narrative attractive to those who will listen in envy as one speaks meaningfully of time in the Amazon jungle with a special guide to the spiritual realms so much deeper than boring old Christianity or Judaism and other banal dogmas handed down by ordinary people, not authentic and oh so special like a 5,000 year old ceremony like taking ayahuasca, like the special person taking it. I can see ayahausca for what it is. I see myself as what I am: Ordinary. I’m pushing 60 and I’ve been around. Soon I will take ayahuasca. But I won’t be taking any bullshit with it. I’m here to find out the real stuff as well as I’m able.

Locals take ayahuasca to get rid of worms. The local witch doctor takes ayahuasca mixed with chakruna, wambasso, toh-ay, and who know what else, as an aid to contacting the higher animist metaphysic he lives in. Modernists take the drugs (ayahausca being incidental to that) for the sake of having something cool and unique to talk about it later to impress their friends back home. They dress it up as a ‘ceremony’ but it is no such thing. It’s getting stoned and hallucinating. If it costs $1,500.00 per week, all the better for those who want to spend the money on luxury living and bragging rights. They flock to the lodges like gallinosas to the dump. They come to Iquitos for “healing” the same way they say they go to Vegas to watch Mitzi Gaynor and Wayne Newton do a floor show at Caesar’s Palace. No Vegas-style lodge for me. Ain’t no tourists where I’m going. It’s off the strip. No kerosene lanterns hanging in the Vegas night, no gold plated plumbing fixtures in spotless casino bathrooms. Roulette for life. For me, it’s Jungle Land, the mind tossed across the empty aether and left to fall where it may. Ayahausca.

I might by now have stripped all the fun out of ayahuasca in my puritanical pursuit of what I could call truth. I might have taken Santa out of Christmas, chucked the tree, the rolled up lights, the plucked off the tinsel, returned out the presents, silenced the carolers, burnt the turkey, and made what could have been a fun and entertaining time a grim-faced ordeal in trying circumstances for no great reward.

I’ve heard many accounts by now of ayahuasca trips, recently from a teenage Swedish girl who said her friend took it and masturbated for five hours. I can only go for a couple of hours before I feel guilty and have to get out and mow the lawn and paint the fence. I’m a working class guy, when all is said and done. I’ve heard as well about dark visions and unspeakable horrors welling up in the minds of some who shudder and say no more under intense questioning. I met a starry-eye young French woman all bubbles and smiles who returned early from her date at a lodge, she packing silently and leaving without a word. There is the Italian lad who stayed awake for days from fear of being attacked by a curandero out to steal his mind and soul. I can’t begin to anticipate my experience.

I had early on hoped to take ayahuasca alone in a dark room where I could be alone and at peace with myself and no threat to others should things go badly wrong. If I were threatened by monsters, I fear I would fight back and prevail, perhaps like Ajax victorious over sheeps and goats in the daylight hours. “Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” I have no intention of harming anyone, nor goats. But after repeated warnings from everyone I have mentioned my solitary hopes to I have resigned myself to a communal experience. I trust that I have the presence and discipline to behave even under duress like a decent man. I come to ayahausca alone and without deep expectations. For that, I want only a place to lie down in some peace and quiet. I might have stripped that setting and damped my expectations to the barest of bones. Maybe I’ve gone too far in my rejection of the philistine. My place of choice is one of extreme urban poverty, a setting devoid of aesthetics, a place of squalor and ignorance of those things I like in life, e.g. art and literature and fineness in taste. When I don’t live in the muck I prefer to live life like a prince. My ayahuasca setting is that of a dry pig sty. To me, that is preferable to the ersatz glamor of Vegas, itself an offensive and aesthetically poverty-stricken imitation of Versailles. All or nothing. In this case, for me, it is the latter.

But. But I do have some lingering hopes in mind. I don’t come to this with absolutely nothing. I do hope, though hope is faint, to stop, to turn. Then, perhaps, I to see.

At 6:00 it is daytime. At 6:00 it is nighttime. In the dark hours I take a three-wheeled mototaxi to low town, three soles fare across the city, my usual fare being seldom more than two, rarely two and a half. I grab the metal frame bar that holds the blue plastic canopy over the half-motorcycle with plastic bench on wheels, a funny-looking contraption like a down-scale Model T Ford. There are about 25,000 of these little toy vehicles in Iquitos, and they dodge and dart like go-carts at the county fair. Mine takes me well past the football stadium, the high concrete walls hiding the bright white kleig lights of the astroturf playing field and the empty stands of the hometown’s perennial losing team. Mototaxi traffic is heavy in the evening as is motorcycle traffic itself, but in this area there are no standard motor cars, those reserved for the genuinely affluent in this isolated city in the jungle. Motoscooters, motorcycles, and mototaxis, the occasional foot traffic of dad and mom and six kids families leaving a birthday party to walk home down the narrow sidewalk, often enough three or four feet above the street, the street often enough a wide sand trough littered with construction debris, shattered concrete breeze blocks, bent and rusty rebar, grey and cracked rubber tyres left to age forever in the rising sand as the old folks sit fat and tired and hot outdoors drinking pint bottles of local Cuscena beer and sweating, shirts pulled up over bugling brown bellies, while squealing children play tag barefoot in the dirt among bony dogs and plastic garbage yet to be buried under sand dunes. My mototaxi flies off a concrete slab of street and crashes into a mound of sand that is the rest of the side street, my destination. I am a long way from home.

There are a few two-story buildings on commercial or residential streets in this far away area of Iquitos, most buildings only one story, horizontal apartment blocks, they being side-by-side from street corner to street corner, each sharing a wall with its neighbour, each building extending as far back from the sidewalk as the next building allows, some going so far into the block as straight through to the other sidewalk, 100 meter interiour pathways with plywood cubicles on either side of the concrete walkway, a bare lightbulb shared by every two rooms, a room a matter of some plywood walls, a plywood door on cheap brass hinges, and a communal toilet, often a solitary piece of chipped and outright smashed porcelain semi-hidden in a plywood room at the far end of the complex and stocked with a 50 gallon plastic drum half-filled with water for showering, for flushing the unattached toilet, washing clothes and dishes. Roofs, yes, to keep off the sun and the rain, sheets of corrugated tin nailed to long poles and beams salvaged from the jungle, twisted and dried out, they stand above the tops of cubicles and allow for entry of light, ventilation, and bugs. Home to many, for me such is a place to take ayahuasca.

Outside on the street I look at the place I will go to take ayahuasca. I cannot anticipate this entry either, having been too often to such shabby fronts of peeling paint on cracked adobe and oozing concrete mortar only to find myself inside some lost mansion with a sky blue swimming pool inches from the doorway, the lap of indoor urban luxury, tasteful paintings on spotless walls, music for middle age secretaries playing discretely on superiour sound systems, comfortable furniture beckoning the weary. But not this time. Instead, a ten by ten room of concrete with a tin roof, a metal frame rocking chair with all the plastic weave gone long ago, a flickering colour television on a bare wooden table, technicolour posters of Virgin Mary nailed on the wall, a couple of gaudy plaster of paris statues of unidentified saints gazing into dead air, and a fat lady eating a bowlful of rice with her fingers as she watches a half dozen adults on a television set doing something slapstick to entertain the world of Peru’s poor. I knod and greet her and make my way down the corridor to the very back of the complex where I find at last, by the fence that separates this building from the one that begins in the same way at the other side of the block, a separate wooden shack, a place set apart from the rest, this alone with space around it, space filled with a towering toe bush in bloom, on the concrete pad that passes for a lawn, piles of discarded household stuff, wire rabbit cages, stacks of one gallon plastic paint buckets, lengths of wood stacked neatly against a wooden fence, a dark, leafless tree with black branches glistening in the full moon light, the silhouette of a cat sitting high up on a thick limb. I have arrived, my lodge a six by 20 foot shack of peeling wood, a door space, a window with a slab of thick black plastic nailed over it to block out the light. Sitting tight together on a wooden bench are six or so old men, each clutching a white plastic paint bucket, legs wide apart, heads down, puking, a scene from a San Francisco Mission District clinic for dying alcoholics. I enter the main room in a state of hope.

I am so deep into the bowels of the block that I cannot hear the roar and bang of mototaxis any longer, just the retching sound of men sick and the splashing thud of gushing slime hitting the liquid in their plastic pots.

I enter the candle lit centre itself to find it a plain box of adobe brick and hardened drooling concrete mortar all top to bottom painted in bright lavender, the Singer sewing machine table at which the shirtless curandero sits bright lavender, the creaky wooden chair, bright lavender, and his sandals, specked with bright lavender paint.  There are two plaster saints on the lavender table top, and they are lavender. The curandero, decades younger than I, rises and shakes my hand, his grip weak, his legs bandy, his smile toothless, his breath a mere wheeze as he says hello and welcomes me to his healing practice. I look closely at the wall around the curandero’s shrine, seeing there some sepia tone photos of his family, a long lost brother, a newpaper clipping framed, the glass so yellowed now it is impossible to read the print, a small animal skull hanging of a nail in the wall next to a soaring dime store plastic eagle dangling from a string and finally, taped up, a large piece of paper with a crayon drawing of a looping anaconda.

The curandero holds up a 1.5 litre plastic Coca Cola bottle ayahuasca, and he pours a glass, which he sets on the shaky lavender table. He draws deeply on a cigar-sized mapacho cigarette and blows into the glass with the sound of an opening steam valve. Seated with hiso back resting on the lavender wall, he begins a high-pitched icaro, an irritating noise I try to ignore, a mix of words from Shipibo and much going on about Jesus and the saints, a pagan Catholic monotonous mishmash of noise to my ears. I see that there are two camp cots in the room and two hammocks strung across the place, otherwise empty.  This is not Kansas anymore. This is not Vegas. I might be the only one within a square mile who speaks English. There are many people all around me, but I am alone at last. The curandero pours a glass of ayahuasca and I raise it high. I am a guest in this man’s home, in this land among these people. I don’t believe as they do in the vegetable gods of the green aether. But I too am a believer. And I am polite. I raise my glass and– I find myself wondering. To say grace? To salute my hosts? It’s really up to me.

I stand and say with a smile, my steel teeth flashing in the flame light, “Death to our enemies.”

To be continued…

Iquitos Peru, Ayahuasca, What Happened To Me, Part One

A guest post by Dag Walker

This piece is an excerpt from my up-coming book, “Iquitos, Peru: Almost Close,” a popular account of Iquitos, its history and people.

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

If you would like to read more about Iquitos Peru, click this link to my blog, No Dhimmitude;

Hi Bill Grimes here. While we stay tuned for Ayahuasca Part Two, Three, and Four, I recommend these articles  by Dag Walker posted here in the Captain’s Blog;

Iquitos Peru, A Really Dirty Story;

Iquitos Peru, Black Days, Red Nights: Riot, ’98;

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The Chariots of Death, Motorcars

A guest post by Adrian Walker, “The Snake Whisperer”

The Motorkar is Iquitos most popular method of travel for tourists and locals alike. They’re cheap, get you between points A and B fairly efficiently and generally the drivers know where they’re going, whether a popular cafe or Belen whorehouse.

There are however pitfalls and dangers in Motorkar travel and the passenger should always take care to obey the following 5 basic rules of Motorkar travel….

1. Unless it’s pouring with rain wear sunglasses or better still, welding glasses. The sand that is being thrown from other vehicles will blind you  in seconds. In the event of it being pouring with rain, walk instead.
2. Carry small change as virtually every driver has none whatsoever to give you change of a note or at times a 5 sol coin for a 2 sol fare.
3. Be prepared for something between a undergraduate chiropractic session and a Ben Hur chariot scene when you step aboard. This is what’s coming.
4. Ensure no body part ever strays outside the vehicle frame or expect loss as the driver passes a bus with less than a millimetre to spare with a fleet of other motokaros coming rapidly towards you all prepared to decapitate.
5. Be frightened, very frightened.

Drivers range widely in both aptitude and talent with some considering themselves Iquitos’ answer to Alain Prost, full speed ahead at all times unless an unwanted red light causes sudden braking hurtling you forwards at unexpected speeds. Others prefer the ‘find every bump and pothole’ in the road technique, this ensuring your breakfast is in serious danger of being lost either on the roadway or (shock, horror) in the rear seat of the vehicle. Don’t worry if this happens as the drivers see it as an achievement and small reward for their skills  They’ll only charge you an extra 2 sols or so for cleaning up after you.

Of course the more experienced drivers are capable of utilising both methods simultaneously in which case a crash helmet is recommended as hitting a deep pothole at 40KMH can render your skull at risk of an unpleasant impact collision with the framework of the vehicle. The seating is something designed by a Chinese mattress manufacturer with considerations for minimal cost. This ensures you will step out with a sore bum is nothing else. Sitting on an airborne crafts wing is probably safer and certainly more comfortable.

Keep in mind that 99% of Iquitos’ Motokaros are unroadworthy, some having no rear vision mirrors, others blowing clouds of exhaust fumes sufficient to give rise to climate change theory, and one memorable occasion when the driver pulled in for gas and removed the sock that had replaced his cap. Fortunately he wasn’t smoking.

Whoever conceived the Motorkar clearly had a childhood fascination with Boadicea and Ben Hur and so after dismissing horse drawn apparatus as too slow and expensive to maintain, they arrived at the chain drive attached to a low powered motorbike. Laotian tuk tuks are as cheap, more efficient in that they carry more passengers, quieter and generally a tribute to Eastern innovation. This leaves the Motorkar as either Peru’s indictment upon herself or a further tribute to eastern marketing. As all of them have Chinese built frames perhaps the latter is closer to the truth.

Also be aware that anyone, even a trusted friend, who advises you prior to your visit to Iquitos, that Motorkar travel is safe, comfortable and cheap either has a substantial shareholding in Honda or Marvila, is a compulsive liar or has never been here.

Of course some people who plan to stay a little longer make the error of purchasing a motorbike to get themselves around on. The motorbike is nature’s prey for Motorkaros, subtly knocking drivers down when an opportunity arises and no police are in view. This obviously results in injury and obliges the once motorbike owner to utilise Motokars for hospital visits following the ‘accident’

Finally also take extreme care when disembarking as Motokars are capable of rolling suddenly as passengers are proceeding to climb off, additionally others are fitted with gringo traps to trip the unwary, causing both yourself and the contents of your pockets to fall haplessly on the road, there to be collected by swift footed passers by who have arrived to assist you, presumably to relieve you of the excess weight factor of mobile phones, billfolds, laptops etc. Generally the driver gets a cut of the proceeds.

Enjoy iquitos, travel the roads by Motorkar as all tourists should do at least once but remember before alighting to be frightened, very frightened.

Chariots of Death, Motorkaros

A guest post by Adrian Walker, “The Snake Whisperer”

The views expressed by this author are not necessarily the views of Bill Grimes, Dawn on the Amazon Tours and Cruises, or the Captain’s Blog.

More articles by Adrian Walker for you to enjoy, about his experiences in Iquitos and the Amazon Jungle;

The Road To Iquitos;

The Road To Iquitos, Part 2;

The Road To Iquitos, Part 3;

The Road To Iquitos, Part 4, Ups And Downs In Iquitos;

Bird Watching From Dawn on the Amazon;

Bedbugs And Their Ilk In Iquitos;

King Of The Boulevard, Iquitos Peru;

Iquitos, An Urban Ecology;

A Cautionary Tale From Iquitos;

Giant Anaconda – Fact Or Fiction;

Golfing The Amazon;

The Amazon Toad;

Ayahuasca, Eternal Life – A Skeptics Viewpoint;

The Flight of Death;

Man of Le Launcha;

The Road Goes Ever On;

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