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;

Bookmark This Post

Love And Lodgement In Iquitos

A guest post by Adrian Walker, The Snake Whisperer

6 Months in Iquitos passes not without drama but without the lodge I came for. A relationship collapses, health problems such as a serious dose of dengue and deep vein thrombosis intervene as do false leads. Lodges for sale that are absurdly overpriced and partnership offers that crumble quickly when financial arrangements are discussed, nights in company of bedbugs and mornings of trudging through swamps as I inspect these unsuitable options become the norm.

The city birdlife maintains my sanity as amidst the common Kiskadees, assorted Tanagers, Vultures and Kingbirds, appear scarcer species such as Blue Tailed Emeralds, Crane Hawks, a range of Nightjars hawking the street lighting in search of moths, Parrots of varied hues come and go as do Yellow Hooded Blackbirds, Jacanas and a host of others. My city list eases past the century.

Finally an opportunity appears one evening when an associate tells me of a parcel of land that may be for sale and advises that the missionary owner will be in the city the following day. I request a meeting and a lunchtime chat reveals what sounds like an ideal position but at an impossible asking price. I resolve to pursue the matter.

A further few weeks slide by and Iquitos’ glow begins to fade as I use the slow internet connection prevalent throughout this isolated city to delve elsewhere in Peru and beyond in search of that elsuive butterfly, the ideal lodge locale. Then my associate mentions casually that the missionary I had met with is selling up his Peruvian interests and it may be opportune to renew my consideration. I think about it for 10 seconds, decide to have a closer look and so arrange a visit the following day. I am deeply impressed and upon my return to the city transmit a low offer, less than half the original asking price. When a positive response comes back I am frankly stunned.

Sadly, it falls over quickly but another month slips by and news comes that the offer is to be accepted, perhaps the missionary has received divine advice?

I revisit and the birdlife is stunning, Pompadour Cotingas, the elusive and rare Iquitos Gnatcatcher, Hawks of innumerable flavours and other delights which will be spoken of in times ahead. The place is perfect, a long river frontage, a longer boundary to the reserve, flood free and a shell of building with a friendly village near at hand but not so close as to pose a cockcrow issue.

I contact my business partner and the deal is settled, at least verbally. Peru time however has tricks left up its long Inca sleeve, and the lawyers uncover minor problems which result in delays, cruel to one who has endured what seems enough in this meandering road, or perhaps river as the Nanay does flow in widening loops, making distance from points ridiculously short yet absurdly lengthy in time. One by one the small problems are resolved as the day of settlement nears.

Numerous visits to explain to the enthusiastic villagers are made, many dineros are spent on small gifts to establish and maintain a relationship with the people I hope will one day become employees of a thriving eco lodge. Throughout all this a further development has occurred, I have met a woman who shares my dream and is willing to join me in this maddening quest. She is truly a diamond amongst the pebbles as I feel the land parcel to be, thus the patience of a naturalist is rewarded twofold with a bounty that i could not have suspected.

Our journeys to the land reveal Harpy Eagles, White Hawks, Snail Kites, countless bush passerines of beauty and the realisation that our soon to be land and lodge is a stronghold of Jaguars, that most majestic and shyest of  big cats. The dream draws closer and the company of one I have learnt to love makes it feel even more worthwhile.

Finally, after a mere 47 weeks and two days in Iquitos, I find myself in a legal office signing the documents for the sale of this magical piece of Amazonia. Cotinga Eco Haven has endured a long gestation and buildings remain weeks from completion but from this point on our lives will be spent in the jungle, rarely venturing into the city. Here we will make our home, a home to share with the rich and diverse wildlife that has been my lifetime study, a home to share with the Peruvian woman who has given me love and support for the previous months and encouraged me to believe that the darkest nights break to golden dawns.

The Road Goes Ever On

A guest post by Adrian Walker, The Snake Whisperer

More articles for you to read, by Adrian Walker, about his experience 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 –on Fact Or Fiction;

Golfing The Amazon;

The Amazon Toad;

Ayahuasca, Eternal Life – A Skeptics Viewpoint;

The Flight of Death;

Man of Le Launcha;

Bookmark This Post

Iquitos Peru, A Really Dirty Story

A guest post by Dag Walker

We got 30,000 pounds of stink on wheels and we are rolling through the night like drunken pirate kings of the slum seas as we grind and jerk our way through the most desperate poverty known to man in the Amazon jungle city of Iquitos, Peru. This is a voyage through the Belen district of Loreto Region, where life can end with a flick of a knife and no one would notice the body silently submerged in the creamy dark ever-flowing river on its way to the ocean. Quick and quiet and lost to life never to be found. So it makes good sense for a couple of lads on the bum to explore the rough parts after dark in the closest thing one can find to a tank if one cares to look beyond the daylight hours of Belen life when the sun sets on the bustle of small meat trade and greenery witchcraft stalls and bony fishermen hauling back-bending sacks of charcoal up the decaying concrete walkways or corpulent women carrying buckets of the day’s fish catch to dump on slimy wooden tables lining mud oozing lanes. We travel when the day folk have long gone to cramped homes floating with the flood on cork logs. Our night time trip takes us through the more settled if less prosperous sections of road mud holes and dusty craters of neglect into the darkness of total poverty not well hidden by doorless gaping hole shacks and bare adobe huts that leave a snow-dusting of powder each morning on the floor; Belen, home, where the hard folk lurk. We’re settled safe and sound in that one impenetrable coach even the toughest and stupidest thug wouldn’t think to attack and rob: We ride the through Belen in the night high up above it all as we sail across the city in a garbage truck.

Folks have been in a panic since I first mentioned that I sometimes venture into Belen at night in search of searching. They tell me it is so dangerous that only the craziest man would go in alone after dark, like some suburban suicide search in a barren stretch of an American city long ruled by Democrats where the question of life expectancy is met with a dull stare by the yellow-eyed hulks who tip up a brown paper bag and swill booze bought with swapped out food stamps and blood donations. ‘It’s dangerous out there after dark,’ they all say. So we go, ready for combat against our fellow garbage and muck seeking comrades of the high tidal smells. I’m riding shotgun with my razor sharp hunting knife to be used only if my mate for the evening, Joeri, a Belgian on the Rainbow Road, gets ‘em down so I can finish ‘em off so they don’t get up again to hurt us. We’ve stripped us down to the bare essentials so we make piss-poor targets for the zombies of Belen at night: no watches, no wallets, no nada that we would miss were we beaten and robbed by gangs roaming the night. Danger. We live for it. We climb aboard our vessel and off we go into the deep dark sea of stench. Garbage. It is our life and our love this warm and warmer evening as the wind whips around us with its scents and our struggles to remain calm of stomach and clear of mind. High up above the waves of nausea, we’re afloat on the wine dark sludge. We are defiant. We will rove the city in search of black sacked slime. Basura. Our mission, our quest: to see from on high the life of cleaning up the mess of living. We are ready to kill and die for it. Joeri, standing out somewhat from the usual crowd due to his blond hair and bright red pants with multi-coloured India-geometric patterned and a clashing-like-Titans coloured embroidered cotton shirt, stands in the Belen shadows flicking a spring-loaded asp, the riot police steel baton I lent him to be the first over the edge if we come under attack. I adjust my knife and consider putting it between my teeth so my hands are free as I swing down to attack our foes from the deck of the garbage truck should we find enemy action “out there.” We are set, and we climb aboard the truck, saying farewell to all that is normal and right about life on land as we set our sails for the Mystik Sea of Garbage in Belen.

Our vessel:

Dongfeng 375 hp. T-lift dump truck. Cummins engine, 375hp. Hydraulic assist.

Kerb weight: 11,910 kg.

Quick Details:

• Drive Wheel: 6×4
• Capacity (Load): 21 – 30t
• Horsepower: 351 – 450hp
• Transmission Type: Manual
• Emission Standard: Euro 3
• Fuel Type: Diesel
• Engine Capacity: 6 – 8L
• Gross Vehicle Weight: 2,500 kilograms
• Place of Origin: Hubei, China (Mainland)
• Model Number: DFL 3258
• Dimensions (L x W x H) (mm): 8668*2496*3410(mm)

What do I know? I grabbed hold of the inside door rail and hauled up myself enough to get a toe-hold on the first cheese grater metal step of three into the cab of the truck; and then it didn’t get any easier, having to climb around like a monkey to make it up so high as the interior where I fell into the seat that was broken and the seat fell back with me when I landed and we crashed into a labourer curled up in the back. There were two small dark men behind the seats, and we ignored them and chatted up the driver, our captain, he being nervous about his foreign stow-aways aboard.

We were safely stashed away for our voyage across Belen with garbage. Sail away, our captain, for distant shores.

We’d waited long hours for our departure, our dozen friends at home having a party and wishing us good luck on such a dangerous trip in such a dangerous neighbourhood, many Cuscena beer bottles knocked over and spilled, foaming and frothing on the tile floor as people got up in a rush to hug us and kiss our cheeks and some to almost cry at this parting amidst dribbling rum bottles and empty jam jar glasses and smouldering cigarette butts laying half dead on the ground awaiting eventual removal to the kerbside maybe in the morning or so when folks woke up and staggered out of their beds and sipped organic tea and talked about vegetable dietas and Mother Ayahuasca while the cleaner swept away all the trash of the hard night before. Garbage. We throw it away and don’t give it any serious thought. Garbage. The word itself is so old and German that we probably couldn’t find it at the bottom of the slag heap of language if we cared to. Garba. It means garbage. We stepped around our friends sprawled on the floor and stepped over the trash littering the courtyard. We went into the night to Belen.

Garbage collection is something different at Belen Market area than it is in the rest of the city where garbage is generally bagged and set out at the kerb; at Belen men go forth on foot and scoop up what they can from small piles of rotten stuff, and they bring it as they can to the main site, an ever-growing pile by the idling garbage truck on the sidestreet where men and women sit in the glare of lightbulbs hanging from frayed cords, people quietly playing cards at plastic tables, people sipping beer, people hardly talking. Small, quiet men working for Brunner Corp. funnel garbage down and down the dark lanes to the heap till there is a full load to fill the truck, the compactor churning and mashing the detritus of a market day into a solid chunk of stuff that will eventually make its way from the market and down the city streets to the aeroport junction where the truck turns off to go to Kilometer 31, the site of the botadero municipal, the city dump. Till such time my Belgian companion for the night and I stand around admiring the filth as if it were some exotic treasure we have been graced by luck to find in the outer Amazon.

We seem to be the only tourists around who are doing this. We watch men coming out of lanes, arms loaded with garbage dripping and slopping on the muddy pathways, and we watch as they toss it into the pile and make their ways to get more and more till there is enough to fill the truck bed. We spend some of this time negotiating with the driver so we can catch a ride with him and his crew, telling him it’s in the interests of the people of Iquitos and the general population of the world to know just what goes on in terms of garbage in this jungle city. One driver looks at us incredulously and smiles and thinks this is the funniest thing he has encountered in a semi-sheltered life. He stands and smiles at us and barely shakes his head in bemused unbelief. “Yes,” he says, “I will take you, but we don’t leave till 3:00 a.m.” I am yawning already at 7:00 p.m. Joeri, the Belgian, takes the driver’s consent as a good sign. I suggest we look around for an earlier departure so I can get some sleep this sweltering and calm, cloudless night.

Thus we find a sullen and nervous man who reluctantly agrees to take us on condition we pay some smallish bribe and sneak into the truck when his supervisor isn’t watching. We sit on the kerb and stare while men walk zombie-like to the shrine of slime, one man hauling a partially filled light orange baby bathtub braced against his belly. Stuff falls out from the gaping holes and small cracks in the bottom of the plastic tub. The pile grows. I wasn’t expecting men in crisp navy blue coveralls with spiffy company logos embroidered on their breast pockets, smiling and smart young men picking up commercial strength plastic bags set niely on the trimmed grassy walk out front of the white picket fence, athletic men gracefully and almost effortlessly tossing said bags like basketballs swooshing into the garbage hoop. I expected men trotting ceaselessly behind the never stopping truck as it creeps along its petty pace and the runners sweat and toss and endure. Instead, slight, stooped men shuffled in the market night grabbing stuff by hand or handy container and then bowed down before the high mass to contribute sacrificial offering to the Garbage Gods. I was expecting something perhaps a little classier.

I didn’t know what to expect, really, from the Brunner Corp. located downtown at 487 Yavari. Brunner Corp. and its C.E.O Llens (James) Brunner Ruiz Moore, a perennial losing candidate for seemingly any available political office (National Congress 2010; Governor of Loreto Region 2011), is in charge of hauling away trash in the night. Old habits die hard, because when I showed up to meet the man he had skipped out just as the sun was setting, his security guard threatening me with gaol if I took a photo of the front of the building, a solid concrete bunker with knobless electronic front doors. This is not to suggest Brunner and company have anything to hide behind the bunker walls or the inch thick steel bars over the two square foot window at street side from where the guard threatens people on the sidewalk. And Brunner himself shouldn’t be nervous about being seen, looking like a movie star, one of the Sopranos, I think. The short Soprano. Brunner is short, dressing up for a golf game attired like James Bond’s opponent Uric Goldfinger dressed in knee high length short pants and almost knee high white socks, his golf clubs standing from the ground to Brunner’s shoulders. This is not to say Brunner isn’t a powerful man: recently he was involved in a severe car crash that nearly killed a government official. Brunner was already in some trouble with local authorities, perhaps facing serious prison time for criminal charges pending from business malpractice. Regardless, what the Brunner corporation decides on a daily basis determines the health of the city to a large degree. Over 40 of the city’s intelligentsia, as one would expect, complain in uniform published petitions in local papers, (Feb. 2008.) Poets and lawyers and architects and artists of all sorts and even people without titles sign their names in papers condemning Brunner because of slime seepage into ground water. The intellectuals read the report, and they know; and in knowing, they put their names to a six point complaint. I know about half of the signers, and they are decent people. They are concerned about water. They want the dump site to be moved from its current location at kilometer 31 to somewhere else. Studies show this is a smart move. The smart studies cost upwards of 200-300,000.00 nuevo soles, or, in terms of general cash, a mound of bills bigger than the piles of garbage we wait to be loaded into our truck. Things will be done, sources said, but it will have to be considered in committee before a resolution can be presented. 300,000.00 n.s. Garbage is worthless, but intellectuals… they are just priceless. Meanwhile, men start chucking raw stuff into the metal maw and the motorised compactor squeezes everything to a solid, if wet, cube, reminding me of the unfortunate similarity to making orange juice or coffee in the morning. Backward reels the mind. The smell is intense. Joeri and I sort of discuss Descartes’ idea that animals don’t actually feel anything but instead react like machines programmed to respond as if they feel.

Our mission, which we have chosen to accept, is to journey to the city dump in the night. The dump site is controversial, the same group of intellectuals as above reminding us again in Aug. 2009 that this is so. At the same time, a judge at the Supreme Court issues a legal ruling about it, noting that the land was owned by the mayor’s friend and there were no bids. In my loose translation, the Court’s legal ruling reads: “Yeah, so wa’ da fuck?” I am satisfied. The dump was previously at kilometer three, the place where the vultures were sucked into jet engines. The good news, as all concerned hasten to tell, is that no one died. Vultures don’t count. But the complaints continue anyway.

Empressa Brunner, the garbage company, is unpopular, “an irresponsible company,” according to Regional Director of Health, Dr. Hugo Rodriguez on 12 Jan. 2013 in Diario la Region. The dump could be a breeding ground for dengue-carrying mosquitoes. Or it could be that Brunner corp. has workers in the midst of it all without masks, no lamps, no tools, no proper containers to haul the stuff away so they use their bare hands and get sick and only recently get some sort of medical care for on the job disability. The guys scoop up trash with their bare hands. Brunner’s contract expires in Oct. 2013. A Spanish-Colombian consortium is bidding for the new one and the dump site to come at kilometer 14. With a new broom, all will be swept clean.

We have exhausted our conversation on Descartes. Joeri tells me that because he’s an anarchist he has done a lot of dumpster-diving and he knows a lot about garbage. I know a lot about projectile vomiting because I used to get migraine headaches. I figure between us we have this evening philosophically covered.

There are three areas of Belen, roughly: there is the famous and totally exotic market filled with the weirdest stuff one could hope to find, a place stinking and putrid on a dry and cool day at the best of times; and there is the outlying Belen neighbourhood, not too different from poor places anywhere on earth, people living in one room on a dirt floor without doors or windows, a charcoal stove, and thin sheets separating the living quarters from the outside where one uses a broken and unplumbed toilet; and there is the floating slum of shacks on cork log floats, everything flowing away into the open sewer of the river that is life. Garbage collection there is spotty, one might say. It’s a dirty place in many ways, not that the people are personally neglectful, but that there’s little to do with filth but to toss it away and hope it stays gone. Like a typical day in the Middle Ages, this requires faith. Miracles do happen, though this is rare. So, Belen has a bad reputation among the better classes of people, and they all say that Belen is dangerous and that we must be crazy to risk our lives going there after dark where men will kill us for our flip-flops and strip us of our gold teeth and leave us in our underwear if we’re lucky. I’ve fought my way in and out of many such places around the world, and I don’t take it lightly.

Going to a rough place at night I am ready and able to defend myself and my skinny vegetarian hippie companion, the anarchist Belgian who tells me about the conspiracy of shape-shifting Lizard People who are controlling the world in secret. Joeri wanted me to bring a sackful of weapons, but I haven’t got the desire to wage war here, just a basic will to survive and get out of a bad spot with the least harm done all round. I want to see the city cleaned; I don’t want to add to the mess and misery. I want to celebrate health and regeneration. Joeri wants to save the world and expose the social injustice of stuff and capitalism. I like him. He’s having serious trouble with his school teacher father. I can appreciate that, too.

Brenner has about 30 trucks, though at any given time only half are on the road working. The remainder are in for repairs. Each truck dumps an average nine tonnes of trash per night at el botadero municipal. There, during the daylight hours, our driver tells us, “the stench is unbearable.”

We climb into the cab and drive away with a full load of trash and we go off in the night to the dump. I try to take notes with my pen and paper on the dashboard, but the truck is weighed down and each pot hole in the road sends up shaking so badly that by the end of our trip I can’t read a single word I’ve written down. A slow crawling police car hogs both lanes ahead of us until our driver honks sharply and the cops veer to the right damned fast. “We have some respect,” the driver tells us. We speed ahead, bumping and shaking. Not that it’s a bad trip. Not at all. In fact, this is one of the nicest times I’ve had in Iquitos in close to a year: Gripping the handrail inside the door I brace myself against the jolts of the road and sit in to relax as Joeri sits between me and the driver as we all sit in front of the two labourers wedged behind us in the cab. I enjoy the quiet and tranquility of the night, the green of jungle calming because it speeds past as I sit alone with my thoughts and I am untroubled as I think of a fine and peaceful world of sewers and flush toilets and cemeteries and garbage dumps. The ride is almost rhythmic, the soothing hum of tyres playing sweetly like a bow over a tarmac violin. I tell the driver he has what could be the best job in the Amazon. He says yes, “Muy tranquilo.” He’s a sullen and nervous fellow, and I find it hard to want to be nice to him. He sulks in the darkness. Out of nowhere, suddenly he says, “I have four children. They say I keep the city clean. My oldest son wants to drive a truck like I do. My children think I am a hero.”

We turn off at Kilometer 31 and shake down a rutted, lumpy dirt track to the mountain of reeking landfill, our truck backing in at a creep and coming ever so slowly to a jerking stop at the edge of the pile as we are enveloped in stink so thick one can feel it settling in ones stomach like cheese. Our labourers climb out and round the truck as the driver hits the hydraulic lift, and with the steep angle of the box – nothing. The trash is so tightly compacted it will not come out without the labourers reaching up and yanking it out, bit by bit, nine tonnes in clumps per night, by hand. I tie a doubled over black cotton bandanna over the bridge of my nose and tuck the flap under my chin and Uri splashes agua florida over his face over and over and I cannot smell it even with his leg and shoulder pressed tight against me in the truck cab. The driver says, unbidden, “The smell used to bother me, but I’m used to it now.” He takes a tired drag of his cigarette: in the darkness an intense red burst flares like a cluster- fuck of fireflies, a phantom trail of grey smoke twists slowly upward out the open window to freedom in the vast starlit beyond. Our driver sighs.

I turn my head and see for the first time a second crew at work in the night, dark little shapes with small miners’s lights attached to their foreheads, scavengers picking through the load of garbage we have dumped, men carefully sifting through the slime and the muck and the sickness like beetles poring over a bloated corpse forgotten and rotten on a killing field. The nimble pick and pull and stash away in pockets and packets little bits of shit they can eat or use. I realise I am seeing live Henry Mayhew’s Nineteenth Century London poor. Household waste, commercial waste, hospital waste, all this unsorted filth is fair game for the silent scavengers who clean the dump itself. It is ecologically sound.

I move my dizzy head slowly, slowly to keep down a slowly rearing wave of nausea, and I see across the two truck wide dirt track to our left a hulking gang of now idled major moving-machines that during the day rev up in black clouds of cloaking diesel smoke and then lurch with the roar of grinding gears to hurl themselves heedless reckless frontal first into the grim mountain of muck, bulldozers that mount the mountain and tear it to pieces like blood-crazed Crusaders entering the city and mash and spread and regroup, raging garbage terriers shaking the dead body of a bloody rat, and then at sunset to rest and warily contemplate it all, eyes half closed at work day’s end, ones reward before them laid up like a tray full of sick cookies piled high and steaming on a waiting jungle plate. Three bulldozers and a giant front end loader hunker still in the night. Just beyond them is a grass malocca, a windowless hut for someone to sit in. But it sets a far lean and long arm’s reach from the very edge of the mountain. I ask what it’s for, why anyone would choose to sit so close to the mountain. Our labourers and our driver whisper about this, and the driver quietly announces: “It’s an ayahuasca lodge.”

Our load is dumped and the labourers climb over Joeri and me, brushing over us as they climb back behind the seats and listen to a radio softly playing exuberant Spanish love songs, and with them climbing on us we are truly putrid, the stink in our clothes, our hair, on our skins, filling us like a giant ayahuasca worm slithering into our mouths and nostrils, curling up in thick coils, sleeping heavy in our lungs and guts. We will seep stink for days. Joeri and I chain smoke oily black mapacho from a smooth wooden short barreled pipe and turn our attentions to the inner peace of the road ahead in darkness.

Our light load on return allows us to simply glide over the jolting pot-holed road that made illegible my work notes scribbled on paper set on the dashboard. We soar. And then we arrive at port again in Belen, that frightening landscape of danger and fear where lurk the desperate and violent in secret places waiting for scraps of human flotsom to devour, flip-flops, shirts, life itself.

Our driver enters a back street and parks our giant truck in mud and filth that I drop down to when the steps give out from the cab. I pay the man in coins. I walk away so he can’t come over and demand a bigger bribe. I look warily for small gangs of thin faced killers with cold black eyes watching us from behind broken slats of shacks in the slum. Joeri and I are ready for them, we being sufficiently armed for street fighting and death.

But the shacks are silent and the streets are otherwise deserted and the slum-dwellers are asleep, resting for tomorrow’s daily drudge of haulage and suffering in the sticky, sickly draining heat. We stand back to back and wait. And wait. Man, the place is deserted.

Looking down the lane in the pale grey yellow of dust-covered street lamps we see the old bent bones of abandoned vendor stands draped in limp plastic sheets spotted with mud and bird shit. In the far distance we see two immaculately uniformed police officers in white helmets and brown suits standing, black booted legs apart, tapping stiff black rubber truncheons on their palms, unfriendly cops staring straight at us. At the moment then they don’t even register in my suspicious mind, that being set on those who would come for us and do us harm. We turn left and leave their line of vision, moving cautiously into the depths of the empty market lanes, looking back, concerned that perhaps the supervisor of the garbage group will send out men to beat us for not paying him his due. We round another turn and see a light bulb burning under a torn blue tarp over a plywood stand where slumps a sleeping vendor, head resting on folded arms by a see-through plastic cover on a pile of black skinned fruit and wilted vegetables awaiting the bender. We are thirsty, and Joeri approaches while I stand back to guard us as money is exchanged for drink.

We have awoken a yawning twelve year old girl in a fuzzy white sweater pulled up over her arms and laid across her chest, the night air surprisingly cold for the locals as we sweat. I wipe my face on my shoulder and scan the lane for drug-blown maniacs and drunken brawlers. The girl slowly peels aloe vera leaves and lets the juice ooze into the blender like a mix of egg whites and snot, adding something else till the drink she’s made comes out the colour and texture of dish soap. It doesn’t taste like much, but I say I like it. Because it’s probably healthy.

We walk away down the empty streets, our lethal secrets hidden, our thoughts turned again to philosophy and the meaning of garbage. We walk slowly home like sailors returned from the sea who find all is exactly as we left it, we who have seen strange ports and the endless ocean.

Exhausted, I drag my 200 pound of stinking self across the beer bottle and cigarette butt littered courtyard of our home, and I stagger through the night like a rum drunk pirate up the crumbling concrete staircase to my room on the rooftop. I hobble and bob my way through the low rent poverty of sleeping backpackers laying around on the floor of heap a hostel in the Amazon jungle city of Iquitos. This is a voyage to the toilet and then to bed where I can end my day with a flicker of eyelids and no one will notice my body and tired mind silently submerged in the velvet darkness of ever-flowing sleep running its way to the oceanic. Quick and quiet and lost to waking life, I long for sleep, a peace so rarely found. Peace, buried so deep. It makes good sense for a tired old man on the bum to explore even the rough parts of dreams found in sleep in a dusty little room on a roof when one lies down to look beyond the daylight hours of cautious life when the sun sets on the bustle of small coffee matters and joke trading with passing people who won’t recall the adventure of climbing up decaying concrete walkways to a restless home. Peace. My dreams take me through a troubled sea from which I rise safe and secure in the warm rays of morning sunlight. Me, settled safe and sound in a near impenetrable coach of dreams even the self wouldn’t think to attack and beat: in sleep to dream at rest through the night high up above it all, I float free above the city in a black-flagged ship across the starry skies of mind. The trash of a day is gone, and I am at rest.

I don’t think it’s possible for me to summarise as well as does Joeri the high adventure we shared as we sailed into the darkness of Belen and the embracing green surround, we being safely settled in our giant floating vessel, the Dongfeng 375 hp. T-lift garbage truck. I leave it to Joeri to sort out the tormented wash of jungle garbage imagery and the monkish stillness of meditative being in our urban Sea of Tranquility.

I beg the reader’s indulgence as I have taken the petite-bourgeois liberty below of changing some minor points of punctuation, capitalisation, spelling, and so on. The rest is all Joeri’s.

But no! That would be a gross injustice to Joeri’s gently florid mind and the unrestrained laughing exuberance of his didactic poem. Joeri is, to be blunt, special, a laughing, loving, lovable boy of 30.

He writes:

we are also the media,just been lastnight on Iquitos rough area for making docu about the unknown or unwanted to know surreal trashbashbattle , we, me and an American psychocowboy, warjournalist from Idaho and way beyond the eye of god , f…ully armed with safe and sound equipment went with the garbagetruck to visit holy mount garbage cruising trough treasure island confronting heavy trashmetal and all kinds of wicked shizzle, whats ina name, who needs a job to apply for intensivecare, just follow the vultures and follow your nose ,shockingblue but real mellowyellowhoneysweetness,lonely rangers planet versus bambamspamstories , good to share and spread the message, smells like teamspirit we are change from the ground op, connected with the divine, we can learn from all colors and all dirt is a blessing of cleansing the soul we are one, even with the trash, viva la basura, karmasura sutra jaia gaya aum namoshivaya

Iquitos Peru, A Really Dirty Story

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; and here is another article about Iquitos in the Captain’s Blog, Iquitos, Peru: Black Days, Red Nights: Riot ’98.

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A guest post by Dag Walker

Rumours of war became the realities of battle one late afternoon in Oct. 1998 as thousands rampaged across Iquitos, fires raging, smoke and flame covering the city as bodies laid in the street amid pools of blood and broken glass.

Fury reigned for days. In these later years those who were there say, “Yes, I was there, but I can’t remember it.” The dead were buried in the acid soil, the blood was washed away by the heavy Amazon rains, and the thick grey ash blew away years ago on hot winds. Life is now, not then; and the city today is at peace. Days and nights of violence: that is memory long lost. For the locals, the riot of ’98 happened, but it was too long ago to think about, or even to recall at all. For some, though, the memories are clear and never-ending. Those memories are the black and red realities in the pale, dim mists of phantom rumours in private lives so hard to recall exactly. The Iquitos Riot of Oct. ’98. Some will never forget those days.

Political demonstrations in Peru can be ‘enthusiastic’ at the best of times, manifestations, as they’re called, and the assembly at Independence Square in Iquitos, Peru’s Plaza 28 de Julio, had from the start the basic elements of any bad situation. The point of the mass assembly on 26 Oct. 1998 was to demonstrate against Ecuador having seized a chunk of historically disputed Peruvian territory ranging from the Ecuador border near the Peruvian village of Pantoja to the tiny town at the end of the dirt road leading from Iquitos, Nauta, about 50 miles away into the jungle from the city. Wars have been fought many times over this area, and those men and women assembled that Saturday afternoon at the park were emotionally prepared for another war. By the time people found that the story of invasion by Ecuador was all nonsense it was too late: the dead were already dead, and the city of Iquitos lay under a blanket of ashes, smoke, and ruin. The ‘invasion’ was maybe someone’s idea of a joke. It might well have come to little more than an average manifestation but for one accident that changed the mood and purpose of the crowd into that of a violent mob. For three days, in spite of the lack of an actual invasion by Ecuador, the city was like a war zone. To make matters worse, it seems someone was buying and passing out free beer to the people at the plaza. People were not only angry, they were often drunk. Demagogues had been priming the people for a couple of weeks previous. The rumour of war furthered the cause of those we know not exactly of. There are rumours.

At 5:30 p.m.– and closing in on 6:00 p.m– Mike was in the living-room at his first floor apartment at #633 Prospero St. having a beer, lying in a hammock with his feet up, relaxing in his home at the back of the one story building. Not unusual, the electricity went out in Mike’s flat, so Mike got up and walked barefoot down the hall and outside to survey the extent of the outage. He stepped onto the sidewalk. He looked down toward the Plaza de Armas in the twilight and saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the city going about its business without light; and then he turned to the opposite direction, toward what would be in the distance the Plaza 28 de Julio. The Plaza is half a mile or more up Prospero with a sharp right rurn down the road even farther. In turning toward the Plaza, instead of the distant park, Mike saw a roiling tidal wave of rampaging demonstrators coming straight at him, angry people who were smashing windows, setting fire to shops, people ripping up and toppling shallow-rooted twelve foot palm trees in terracotta post which they smashed on the street as they came foward, a solid wall of screaming fury on the march– with Mike in their direct path a matter of meters away.

Of all the horrible sights to see during that three days of blood, fire, and death, one of the worst must have been seeing Mike, middle-age, vastly overweight, and barefoot, running wild-eyed and sweating down the pot-holed Prospero street in the dark toward the Iron House seeking refuge from a mob ready to kill him.

The second floor of the Iron House back in 1998 was the location of the Regal Restaurant, and it was also at the time the residence of Phil Duffy the British consul at Iquitos, Duffy’s wife, and young child. In both instances the Iron House served as a place of safety for expats in times of trouble: have a beer while you get your passport sorted out. Over the course of that long weekend the Iron House was home to 18 people wondering if they’d survive at all. Mike ran through the door and up the stairs and, in the same manner he does to this day in ordinary circumstances ordering another beer, bellowed in his broad countryside English accent, “Bolt the doors! They’re coming!”

Inside the Iron House on the second floor, looking out through the crack of the shuttered window at the now dark city, one could see smoke blowing across the red domed sky as the city burnt: houses and shops aflame, six of the city’s very rare cars on fire, while hotels and government buildings were smashed, looted, set afire and left to burn to the ground from one end of the city to another. People were killed. Mayhem ruled the city. Mike, with 17 other men and women from four nations, trapped and fearing for their lives, said later of those days and nights as he and his fellows refugees waited for savage beatings at the hands of raging mobs and death by fire inside the Iron House, “We had a helluva good time.”

Another witness, living across town at the time, said he was sleeping at his home and dreamed that he was back in the army, and that he was ducking tracer bullets during basic training training. He awoke to find that basic training over and the war was now real. “It scared the hell out of me,” he said.

The rioting was all about nothing, originally, but in the end it left, according to newspaper reports, a minimum of three dead, with eyewitnesses saying the total was closer to 20. Papers record that 30 were seriously wounded and that over a hundred were arrested. Buildings big and small were destroyed, and property damage extensive and expensive– in the multiple millions in this less than wealthy city. And yes, surviving such a thing is often the high point of a lifetime, though at the time the only possible beneficiaries of the violence and destruction would have been the organised drug lords whose records were tossed by the armload from the Supreme Court building onto the street, and there the records were burned.

In the immediate beginning of the riot, the Soviet-style concrete block Supreme Court building, nearby to the Plaza 28 de Julio was torched when the demonstrators had finished throwing computers and fax machines and burning papers out the windows onto the street. When the crowd tired of that destruction, they crossed the street and burned down the elegant Neo-classical luxury Rio Grand Hotel. Then the mob turned and marched on the city centre itself.

The English novelist Graham Greene calls it “The Ministry of Fear,” that dark place that houses the secret police of a nation at war against its own people: The Ministry of Interiour. The Orwellian term could be “MINI-CULT,” whose agents wear black trench coats, hard men who arrive silently for the 2:00 am. wake-up call of a jackboot smashing in the door and then muted ride in a small four door black sedan to that place one never returns from because one was never really there and one never really had a name. ‘No, there is no such person in our records.’ At the Ministry of Fear, all things are known. One knows nothing.

As the crowd protested at Plaza 28 de Julio against the supposed Ecuadoran invasion of Peru back in late Oct. ’98, a general from the Ministry of Interiour was having a small, official engagement at the Rio Grande Hotel across the street from the flat and grassy plaza where one of the first of the city’s public transport train locomotives sets like a large toy on a concrete block. The crowd in the park were riled up by rumour of war, of betrayal by the generals. The crowd turned their attentions toward the hotel where Minister of Interiour was at his meeting, and he, in a state of nervousness, decided to flee by a hotel side door to discretely avoid the crowd riled to madness over the supposed give-away of their homeland to enemy Ecuador. In his haste to escape the demonstrators, the minister’s car ran over and killed Sra. Corina Coral Arana, aged 47. Her accidental death alone could likely have set off the demonstrators, but the general’s car also ran over and killed Maria Katerina Echeverria. She was two years old.

The ‘Ministry of Fear’s’ general, Jose Villanueva Rueseta, who later received a nine year prison sentence for massive theft, (convicted of crimes against the public administration,) sped away after killing the woman and child.

The Hotel Rio Grande and the Corte Superior de Justicia de Loreto remained even after the general fled, and they were burned down. With those building in flames and smoke and ashes swirling in the wind above the city the crowd turned its attentions to the rest of the city, and it was then that Mike found himself facing the surging mob coming at him on Prospero street as the sun set on the city and fire lit the night.

Mike was an insurance salesman back home, and as he was trapped in Iquitos’ Iron House and the mob outside were smashing at the iron doors to get in to kill everyone, thought of actuarial tables of insurance gave way to, not the well-known and professionally calculated odds of long term survival, but to the thought of the chances of living through the night. Was there any chance at all of living through the next assault from the mob downstairs smashing the doors downstairs?

Along with Mike, the British consul and his family, were two other Brits, two Australians, a few Peruvians, and a handful of U.S. Marines from the Riverine Support Team under the command of Marine Corp Lt. Colonel Michael Pierce, absent that period. Regardless of the skills of professional soldiers, the U.S. Marines would have been under the temporary command of the British consul. Outside, their opponents were under control of the Furies. On the corner of the block by the Malecon Tarapaca Peruvian soldiers stood in formation, nervously pointing their rifles as they faced their own people with the possibility of having to shoot them and kill them.

Inside the Iron House’s second story Regal Restaurant and British Consulate, the Marines were far from their suburban base at Moronacocha where they had moved from expensive hotels to be lodged instead in luxury 20 room mansions rented from local drug lords. In a city that to this day has only a few actual cars, the Marines drove around the city in giant SUVS, and sometimes the soldiers were drunk, sometimes causing accidents that required the injured to be flown to Lima to receive the best medical treatment available in the nation. The Marines might well have been party to other accidents, in part because they were given $39.00 per diems for food allowances in a city where to this day one can find a good meal for a dollar. Unsurprisingly, for every Marine there were ten local girls vying for his attention. Perhaps as part of the $47 million per year the U.S. Government put directly into the local economy at least some of that was danger pay for the soldiers, well-earned no doubt when confronting drug smugglers, if not furious local boys who couldn’t get a date anymore. To the local lads, seeing the Marines fighting off local girls at the Iron House’s Regal nightly, Marines in danger didn’t look so dangerous at all. As the local hang-out for Marines, the locals found in the Iron House a fair target to set alight once they’d smashed in the door and made their way partly up the staircase to the second floor. They were intent on burning down the Iron House, its floors and walls and ceilings covered in wood.

Mike and some of the others had watched the crowd on the street below by peeking from the second story windows, but in doing so the inside light gave them away, alerted the crowd to their presence and drew their attention toward the Iron House. Those inside had assembled heavy wooden chairs to hurl down at those coming up to greet them, and Anthony Taggart, an Australian, had ordered a Peruvian waiter to boil water in the kitchen to pour on the mob like a scene from a Medieval siege. The Consul said that such a move would only antagonise the mob who had just burned down television station Chanel Seven. So too, they had burned out Discotecas Caimito y Karaoke bar and had burnt down an old school house before proceeding to burn down la Libereria Marisabel and Foto Aspinwell. The mob was at the Iron House, pounding on the metal doors, shouting.

After repeated ramming, the Iron House doors broke open. As the mob made their way up the stairs, Consul Duffy, a man who had at one time unceremoniously snubbed two homesick tourist ladies from his hometown of Wiggan, acted in what could well have been a Charlton Heston scene of Lord Gordon of Khartoum facing down the Madhi army in Sudan. Consul Duffy appeared in front of the mob ascending the Iron House stairs and, dressed in a teeshirt and shorts, shouted at them in imperious consular English, “Get. The. Fuck. OUT!”

Stunned, the crowd turned around and quietly went down the stairs and docilely left the building. But outside the crowd kept on burning Iquitos: la Direccion Regional de Agricultura de Pevas not only going up in flames, but the mob also smashed computers, fax machines, and even tossed a refrigerator out of an Agriculture building window, thereby smashing a gaping hole in the concrete sidewalk. The building housing the Department of Mines was burnt, and so too the Department of Fishing. At least 14 building were burnt during the rioting.

Peruvian president Fujimori ordered five Hercules transport planes filled with 300 black-clad troops, the Aguilar Negra special forces, flown in from Lima and gave them orders to shoot to kill. Luck was with them, as they did not have to wait their turn to land at Iquitos, which in later years would have been the case because planes weren’t the only airborne craft with landing rights in local airspace: some years later the garbage dump was next to the aeroport, and thus the skies were filled with vultures from dawn till dusk, each vulture being big enough to bring down a plane if it were sucked into a jet engine. As it was that day, the skies were clear. The Black Eagles had landed. At least one man, 21 year old Jorge Valles Sinarahua, was shot to death on the street.

Sunday was quiet, and by Monday the incident was over. Years and years later Mike recalls it as a fine time. “There were plenty of sofas inside the second floor of the Iron House, and there was no shortage of beer and food.” For almost everyone in the city today the episode of the riot over nothing is either forgotten or not even known of. People have moved on long since, and this story is but a minor footnote in the history of Prospero St. and the Iron House.

Mike’s girlfriend, by the way, waited for the mob to pass by the open door of the apartment building on Prospero St. before she fled to safety in the opposite direction.

City life resumed, and today, as people move purposively along the sidewalk, there is, as well as a pharmacy on the main story of the Iron House, a trinket shop selling snake skins and postcards and piles of brightly coloured Amazon Indian-style clothing fit for the most fashion-conscious hippies on earth. Upstairs, closed and abandoned, the Iron House restaurant, the setting of more than a hundred years of dramas large and small, sits in silent stillness and gloom, abandoned for now, some memories perhaps collecting dust in the darkness.

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

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;

Bookmark This Post

Tales of Iquitos, Richard’s Story

A work of fiction

A guest post by David Peterson

Iquitos, the capital of the Peruvian Amazon, the jumping off point for “the jungle”.   Where everyone has a story.  This is one of them.  This is Richard’s story.  The names have been changed to protect the blameless.

Richard used to be almost normal.  He had a life, friends, and more than enough money to support his new bachelorhood.  What was love?  He had married his high school sweetheart right after high school.  A year later he regretted it, when the lover turned into Mom, complete with rug rats always in need of something.  Still, he hadn’t cut and run, he frankly stayed for the kids.  He had put up with the damn bitch, his pet name for Sandra, until the youngest of the kids hit eighteen.  Then it was gooooood bye, call his lawyer golf buddy to file the already prepared papers and get the heck gone.  What do you have with 200 lawyers in sand up to their necks and the tide coming in?  A good start.  He loved ambush by lawyer.

Almost fifty years old, Richard figured it was his time to howl.  He partied in his native Canada; he partied in Mexico, in India, and generally trotted the globe.  But part of Richard was a true seeker.  He wanted to know the meaning of life, why are we here.  The word was that Peru was the happening spot, try that ayawaska.  So he went to Peru.

Not just Peru, Richard went straight to the forest, Iquitos.  Not that there is any forest left within 20 kilometers of Iquitos.  But everyone starts there.  Iquitos had a certain charm, if you didn’t look too closely.  A certain mix of utter brazen forwardness with innocent frank stares.  Always reminds me of a nicely done up whore, still a whore but nicely done.  A pride, if you will.  And no matter what is was truly, Iquitos had yet to shed its pretensions airs left from the rubber boom, when millions were made.  The original dot com boom and subsequent bubble burst.  After rubber there was petroleum.  And now ayawaska. The influx of tourists and their money made once sacred ayawaska common place, available to anyone with a few dollars, and profaned the once spiritual.

And there were unlimited offers of ayawaska.  Richard was no dummy; his time served in the military trained him to handle all manner of con men, both in the military and civilians.  Richard received the offers for ayawaska, and they were numerous, made note but for a time he continued on with his primary activity: whores and drugs.  Cheap, plentiful, and at least mid-grade, both commodities that is.  Richard, who was a French speaking Canadian, learned some Spanish before his rival in Iquitos and quickly mastered the language.  He was popular with the streets kids who liked speaking directly to a tourist and o run small errands for him.  The street kids chased down girls, drugs, food, hotels, you name it.  Richard felt like a king, and for not much money.

After talking about ayawaska for weeks, Richard finally made a booking to stay at one of the foreign owned ayawaska lodges, a 10 day 3 ceremony all you can eat stay in the jungle.  Prepaid his stay and left Iquitos on his journey.  The playfulness out of his system, Richard seemed focused, ready to encounter himself.  Now, the foreign owned lodges are nothing more than little factories – money goes in this end, you drink something horrible, and what you get out the other end is bragging rights back home. “Yeah, I drank ayawaska, got really wasted man.” Sure some lodges dress things up to extend your stay – study or preparation or dieta, whatever.  More nights means more money.  All about business.  And the entire basis for the so called ceremonies is the mestizo culture’s use of medicinal plants for natural healing, and occasional use of the powerful plants: tobacco, toe, and ayawaska.  Nowhere have I encountered a culture that has ayawaska every Tuesday and Thursday, regular, for the experience.  This basically means just drinking because you want to.  Would you take thorizine  because you were curious?  Or inject yourself with insulin to see what it felt like? How about drinking ayawaska in an air conditioned temple?  Does that count?  Taking ayawaska for “the experience” runs counter from the beginning to the spirit and intention of this ancient sacrament.  Just wrong on so many levels.  But it is the only access many foreigners have on their condensed rapid visit. “Let’s just try it, who knows what will happen.”

So Richard went off to the lodge in search of a life changing moment.  He got one.  Back in Iquitos after only 5 days, Richard was a changed man.  He renounced all worldly possessions and backed this up by giving everything he owned away to the same street kids who flocked around.  He maxed his credit card and gave away a motorcaro and two motos, assorted generators and small boat motors favored by fishermen.  Someone at the lodge forgot to tell Richard that there is a reason for the dietary requirements of ayawaska.  Someone forgot to tell Richard that cocaine does not mix well with ayawaska.  Nor does alcohol.  The rituals are there for reasons learned from generations of indigenous, distilled to the admixture of the more recent Spanish, resulting in a mestizo ceremony as distinct from truly indigenous.  But no one told Richard, anything.  They sold him a ticket and showed him where to get on.  Not that they were required to.  In Peru you are totally free to screw up your own life. Walk the tight rope without a net.  What a rush.  That feeling of actual danger is marketed in many forms, from paintballs to zip lines.  Baby boomers prefer sitting down and soft lights.  Change your point of view.  Whatever happened to Richard was definitely a life changing moment, just not necessarily for the better.

And Richard didn’t stop giving away his stuff until he was naked.  He literally gave the clothes off his back, including some other parts.  Richard ended up walking around Iquitos naked, a fakker like he had seen in India but so far not Iquitos. When the police objected to Richard’s self-selected clothing option day Richard was without funds to rectify the situation. Clothing was donated by first police and then the gringo community to at least preserve some dignity for those of us who live in or around Iquitos.

Being free of gainful employment Richard lived from handouts and what he could panhandle.  He could be aggressive about it.  Panhandlers are supposed to be invisible not in your face as was Victor.  He did not willing assume the posture which would resulted in some support, instead he clung to his belligerent way while looking like a poster child for a UN program on extreme poverty.  Now in San Francisco you can ask someone for spare change, just not aggressively.  There is a law about this. The “be nice” law.  Even the bums have rules. Richard did not seem to live by any rules or restraint.

For a while those of us watching Richard waited for him to return to normal.  After some time we one by one gave up.  Once Ron, standing in the doorway of his shop, called Richard over and handed him money.  “See that white mangy mutt over there?  Carry her to the animal rescue shelter; leave half the money as a donation and the rest of the money is yours.”  Ron returned to his busy lunch crowd and Richard ran to buy cocaine and cheap rum, really cheap.  He also saved money on his cocaine by purchasing the low priced drug, pasta, the left over from the first step in processing the white power.  Chock full of ether, kerosene, ethyl alcohol and other yummy stuff.  Dirt cheap and deadly to the user.  Later that day when Ron spotted the white dog and Richard in the same square of concrete sidewalk, he got a bit angry so Richard heaved the dog, mange and all, over his shoulders and ran for the animal shelter.  Half way there he heaved the dog off his shoulders and plopped it on the sidewalk.  Walked away. In Iquitos dogs have the same rights as pedestrians: none. That was the end of our active concern for Richard.  The familiar “end game” to drug using crazies was in play.

One day Richard paused at my al fresco lunch table and asked for a match.  Just 2 minutes prior Richard asked me for a cigarette and was declined.  Now he wants a match, and if I give him one he will hit me up for a smoke.  No match Richard.  So he began by insulting my country of origin, my lack of good will, and just got nasty and all in voice decibels higher than the request.  I just looked at him, gesturing madly, really mad as in crazy.  But he didn’t seem threatening.  Maybe it was his choice of uniform.  He was without shirt or shoes, had on ripped pants and was noticeably lacking in the basics of personal hygiene.  He shuffled away and lay down across the sidewalk, forcing walkers to step around him or walk on him.  Dogs seemed to have no issue about walking on Richard. One big male dog even “marked” Richard when he nodded off.  Ahhh…the sleep of the brainless.

Richard’s story has a somewhat happy ending.  Before he was mugged, killed or lost a limb, some kind person notified the British counsel who got Richard on a plane to Lima.  Escorted through the Lima airport Richard was groomed, clothed and presentable.  A small scuffle at the security check resulted in Richard’s monkey escaping from under Richard’ hat and running shrieking though the mass of people waiting to clear security.  Richard gave chase and was last seen racing for the main entrance calling the monkey by name. Richard gave chase and was last seen racing for the main entrance calling the monkey by name.  I don’t know if Richard finally got back to Canada, but I haven’t seen him in Iquitos for months.  The monkey remains at large.

May the monkey run free. Thanks Richard.  There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Tales Of Iquitos, Richard’s Story, a work of fiction

A guest post by David Peterson

If you enjoy my friend David’s writing, click these links for more…

The Snake That Cried;

Dave’s Top Ten Rules For Walking In The Jungle;

A Dark And Stormy Night;

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