Category Archives: ayahuasca

On The River

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Sitting here in Iquitos at the Yellow Rose of Texas, I have time to reflect. Plenty of time, really. I’ve given myself 3 weeks to soak up the history of this city and to find a way for explaining to myself just what Lima was all about.

My 4 months in Lima slipped by in a blur. After a number of false starts I finally admitted to myself that I was standing too close to events while still caught up in them to be able to recount anything accurately. This opportunity for a bit of geographical separation permits a chance to place those months in context. Here at the Yellow Rose, where I generally breakfast, I can more clearly look backwards and a bit forwards as well.

Also here at the YRT, “where the beer is colder than your ex-wife” you can find a Margaritaville style sports bar, restaurant and cafetería (what they call a coffee bar in Latin America rather than what we call a collection of steam tables back in the US of A). It will also host a TV broadcast of Super Bowl 50, so I expect to return and fight for table space this next Sunday as well. The staff is bilingual and the tables are plentiful with an unhurried feel to the place

I got to Iquitos by floating down 2 rivers after spending several days in a jungle reserve with an indigenous family. Now I’m here, where one of the rivers, the Marañón joins another, Rio Ucayali, to become the Amazon. And I’m trapped. There’s a vaguely Golden-ish Retriever asleep on my right foot and I haven’t the heart to disturb her from her snores.

Even as auspicious dates play a major role in traditional Chinese culture, so too I saw no reason not to incorporate them into my own life. A week ago, January 23rd, marked the day one year past when I landed in Ecuador on a flight from Miami. I commemorated this day by saying goodby to Lima and boarding a flight to Tarapoto. I have 5 months left on my Peruvian visa. On the surface that seems to be a lot of time, but Perú is a big place with much to see and do. And if I hadn’t left Lima when I did, I might never have done so. Yet since I accomplished most of what I set out to do there, I can view the time spent as time positive.

Primary among my goals was the important one of personal physical well-being. Traveling full-time I had fallen into the trap of many who live on the road: I was eating a lot and doing little about it other than to eat some more. Compared to my “sedentary” lifestyle before I started flexing my passport, my new habits included virtually no time to maintain any sort of muscle tone. This turned out to be a dangerous and eventually a life-threatening practice which I realized far too dramatically in September.

Once visitors arrive in the Galapagos (always, of necessity, by air) they need to board a ferry and cross a small channel between the flat rock that hosts the landing strip and the main island of Santa Cruz. As I was hoisting my bag, too big and too heavy, to heave it onto the top of the ferry, I almost landed in the water between the dock and the bobbing vessel. It was a dramatic reminder that in 9 months of travel with no proper physical exercise, I was woefully out of shape. I already knew this from earlier experiences, but there is nothing like a close call offering potentially great bodily harm to drive home the point.

An extended stay in Lima would offer the chance to rectify my physical decline and it did. Shortly after settling in at SAE/Lima I enrolled in classes at Ashtanga Perú. This type of yoga is a highly energetic form which requires the practitioner to balance on one’s hands between poses and expects the neophyte to have already attained middling level of flexibility. It kicked my ass.

But now, with the knowledge of Ashtanga gained, I can be holed up in even the smallest of hotel rooms, and have enough space to roll out my yoga mat and pummel myself into keeping up a modest level of muscle tone. By far I haven’t incorporated all the poses or asanas, but I carry a plasticized chart of them and slowly move forward, learning new asanas over time. I owe a deep thanks to Fernando, Pedro, and the rest of the staff at the Lima studio.

El Enano, Miraflores, Lima

Pulling this feeling of gratitude forward, I’m also deeply indebted to the folks at “El Enano,” which is Spanish for “the dwarf” though I never once saw one. This outdoor eating establishment, open virtually every day of the year from 6am to the next day is hugely popular with Limeños. El Enano was half way along my path to and from the yoga studio, so after practice each day it was my sole choice for breakfast with none of the other nearby eateries coming close.

Posted along the inner wall of the seating area (26 bar stools bolted to the concrete) and up near the ceiling was a menu of nearly 200 items. By far the majority of these were fruit juices, offered either singly or in combinations of 2 or more fruits. There were simply not enough days in the week, nor weeks in the months I lived in Lima for me to try them all. Though I did mark off my choices on a take-away menu I carried in my backpack just for this purpose.

Combos like carambola/maracuyá/tuna (tuna’s the fruit of a cactus) or fresa/mandarina/uva (strawberry/tangerine/grape) kept my imagination soaring and always in anticipation of the next day’s selection. Up in the northern hemisphere we keep hearing about “superfoods” and how their concentrated benefits outshine conventional products. Unless you can actually see them, arrayed in their spectrum of colors, it will be nearly impossible to know what we don’t know; thank you Donald Rumsfeld.

Shortly after arriving in Quito, Ecuador early in 2015 I discovered the wonder of such fruits that I had never heard of let alone tasted. More than a dozen years living in Hawai’i had kick-started my love of tropical fruits, but the sheer variety here in South America vastly overwhelmed even the wonderful options back in Honolulu. And now that I’m here along the Amazon, Perú offers even more than I found in Ecuador. Fruits like arazá, copoazú, taperiba, mamey, camu camu, aguaje, gamitana, cocona and many more are exciting elements in my daily life.

Fruit Vendor, Lima

Fruit Vendor, Lima

And if, for some reason, the 4 blocks to El Enano from the SAE/Lima Clubhouse were somehow too far to travel, I just walked 3 doors down to the corner and visited the pushcart street vendor. Pretty much any direction from the Clubhouse and no more than a block or two distant, vendors with their pushcarts offered fresh produce and/or fruits with this dizzying array of options.

The fruit-sellers all had their assigned locations and would set up just after dawn, hawking their freshest of fresh foods throughout every day but Sunday. Life was good and it was easy. Healthy eating, in spite of not cooking for myself, was never a difficult prospect. From weekend organic farmers’ markets to natural food stores, good food that was good for you was never far away.

Also close by I met a slowly roving band of cynical middle-aged expats who moved in circular migratory patterns throughout my adopted neighborhood. Introduced to them by a Canadian SAE Club member early in my stay, I paid my dues and joined the club for a bit. Buying a round for whomever stumbled into whichever bar they fancied that hour of that day made one a charter member. I was in.

After a week or two, or perhaps three, or was it four? (I’m a bit cloudy about those details) I realized that I didn’t want to resurrect old depression-inducing patterns and learned to keep my distance from the gang. They were nice enough guys, at least superficially, but endemic bitterness toward a world that done ’em wrong grew to be too tedious for me; especially after the 47th time of hearing the same grievous injustices.

I did pick up some tips on how to snag the best hookers and score some righteous weed. Great, just what I needed. NOT! Though they did introduce me to my street-smart Spanish teacher and until we had a cultural falling out a few months later, Ely taught me a great deal. However, picking scabs, especially in this tropical heat, will fester wounds, so let’s say goodbye to Ely and the gang and then move on. But before I go, I will say that I benefited from yet another ayahuasca delayed effect that I never would have discovered if not for this group of merry men.

Just like the disappearance of my life-long seasickness through after-effects of ayahuasca, which I discovered during September in the Galapagos, hanging out with the barflies in October taught me that I could, for the first time ever, successfully mix tobacco, alcohol, and weed without puking my guts. In previous encounters over many years I could mix any 2 of the 3 and remain vertical. But try as I might, and yes, I have tried over time, I could never join all three in one harmonious union. Now I can. Ain’t that something real special?

So yes, one could argue that Lima did slow my forward progress. As if I have some defined direction or timetable. But I don’t and if I did, just which direction is forward? And when do I have to be there? I’ve mentioned before that early on, really the first week in Quito, Ecuador a year ago, I learned that I can only make decisions one step at a time because each step opens up the most amazing circumstances and I’m taking my time to feel them out.

Two weeks from today (Super Bowl 50 played last night, I’m a bit slow posting this) I’ll be puking again at my next ayahuasca sessions. This particular retreat serves up a “pre-game” purgative for all the participants before we start with the brew of the vine. Designed to void all the cheeseburgers and fries we seem to accumulate in our “normal” lives, the folks at Nihue Rao believe that no one really practices the proper diet before an ayahuasca retreat, so the purgative will level the playing field. As it were.

So that was Lima, and this is Iquitos, with yet more jungle experiences to follow.

 

 

Dramamine Monologues: Galapagos, Pt. II

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After the first week spent exploring the most populous island of Santa Cruz I was ready for a change. Knowing, though not focused on the warning to beware of what one wishes for, I was in store for a very big change on a much deeper and purely personal level.

So I hopped on a 6am speedboat headed to the largest of the islands, Isabela. By now it was mid September and the calm, tranquil waters offshore were gone. By far the best times for diving were over. With rough seas came silt and sediment, so underwater visibility is greatly diminished.

sea_sick_railing_cartoon

Those of you who SCUBA dive would be best served by fighting the hoards of the July-August high season, when the water’s warmer, calmer, and clearer. It’s also rumored that those times don’t demand a wetsuit either. But 2 weeks after US-Labor Day the lazy days of summer are gone. And so was breakfast for at least 1/3 of the 15 or so passengers on board for the commute. Oddly enough though, not for me.

Some of my earliest childhood memories, predating Kindergarten no less, were of the times spent puking on Sunday drives with the family. Joining my dad, smoking one cigarette after the other motoring down the highway, my mom riding shotgun and passing around sandwiches and kool-aide, was my older brother pasted against the left side of the back seat, hoping to avoid any backsplash. He was mostly lucky in this regard.

670px-Treat-Motion-Sickness-Step-4

Motion-sickness has whipped me about the head, shoulders and stomach my entire life. I’d get sick in wide-screen movie theaters, riding the ferris wheel, often even a teeter-totter, anything that moved in more than one direction at a time; for-my-entire-life. Often my motion-sickness has been the deciding factor, the weakest link, in determining directions, adventures, roads not taken for more than 65 years. What was going on now, here in the Galapagos?

The chop was breaking over the bow from about 10 o’clock, and we were headed due west with a strong wind from the south. This 40’ sport fisher, with twin 300hp Yamaha outboard engines (and a monster 500hp spare) was battering through, under, and occasionally over waves while fish-tailing and slipping sideways with constant irregular lurches. And I wore the biggest ear-to-ear grin the entire time enjoying the bouncing and pitching and rolling the sea was throwing our way.

So here’s a disclaimer: an hour before launch I had downed a Dramamine. Having grown up using the drug I also knew that it rarely if ever had a damping effect on my upchucks. But I had received what may turn out to be a lifetime supply of the stuff earlier in the year from my support staff back in Hawai’i, specifically delivered to me for my Galapagos trip. I really wanted to visit these islands and overcome my dread of the sea with handsfull of the pills.

But not only didn’t I have the least bit of queasy feelings, I pushed my luck and started reading my Kindle part way through the ride. The chop was so intense though, that I had to stop for fear of cracking the tablet lens on my forehead. Nevertheless, this was a major event; I couldn’t bring on even a hint of discomfort. Another test was in order.

Six days later I boarded another boat, this time from San Cristóbal back to Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz. Believing that I am my own best Guinea Pig, I chose to wait until the boat was underway before downing a pill; normally Dramamine takes 1/2hr to an hour to kick in. 

This trip, if anything, was even more violent than the first and I was sitting amid-ship, inside and away from any views of the horizon or anything else but fellow passengers. This location was where the pitching was far more noticeable. It’s hard to imagine, but my grin was even bigger than during the first trip. What was going on here? An older gentleman taking the commute in the stern of the boat and confined to a wheelchair was thrown to the deck 4 times from the strength of the battering waves (he was grinning though the whole time though, a great sport). I badly needed a reality check.

Back in Puerto Ayora I met with Janina for a deep debriefing. The week before she told me that when she was younger her father had insisted that she have an ayahuasca ceremony. She had been experiencing some very serious health issues that were just not responding to “conventional” medicine and he believed that it was time for a more traditional indigenous approach. So, knowing that this woman is wise beyond her years, I sat down and talked this nausea thing out with her. We both agreed that something deep was going on here.

During my April-May ayahuasca intensive I received 2 separate messages from la medicina. The 2nd message dealt with my immediate future in Ecuador and revealed that it was time to quit Quito, which I subsequently did. But it was the first message that had a connecting link to this motion-sickness issue.

At the time I arrived in Ecuador, and for nearly 5 years previously, I had been plagued with what my primary care physician diagnosed as “intractable nausea.” He was of the notion that a chronic liver condition that I have was the root cause of the nausea, but being cautious he wanted additional opinions. So I spent several years and multiple thousands of (health insurance) dollars with medical specialists trying to pinpoint the origins of this nausea. All of these examinations failed to discover anything definitive, though I did receive several scares of more serious conditions. It was fortunate that those frights were all false alarms, and yet the nausea remained.

So when I received the first message from the ayahuasca ceremony, clearly explaining what the cause was and how to cure it, I was very happy to be lying down at the time. I was rocked to my core. And now, talking to Janina I realized that I was experiencing continued healing from that ceremony from nearly 6 months earlier.

Clinical research, both here in Perú and elsewhere in South America, has frequently shown that ayahuasca can and does have delayed healing effects. While it could be argued that my experiences are purely anecdotal, I’m getting ready for another experiment.

successs-sounds-a-lot-like-motion-sickness_Fotor

A few hours south of Lima are the Ballestas Islands, billed as Perú’s answer to Ecuador’s Galapagos. It is my intent to go there without any Dramamine at all. This Guinea Pig’s ready for some real action. As the year winds down we’re now heading into a showdown with El Niño and the seas are not smooth and they are becoming less so with the passing weeks and months. If I’m truly over my life long motion-sickness I’ll know it pretty clearly. If not, keep your boots on.

But enough about me, what about you? We were talking about Isla Isabela, the largest of the Galapagos Islands, so let’s get back to business.

Returning To Quito For Some Basics

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I’m back in Quito after more than a month on the road circling Ecuador. From Otavalo and Cotacachi in the north to Guayaquil, Zaruma and Loja along the coast and in the south, to a retreat near Cuenca, I’ve met some wonderful sights and seen some interesting people. Or is it the other way around?

Rooming at the SAEX/Quito Clubhouse for the next month, I have set aside this time to review what has transpired and what will come next before I leave this amazing country and move on to Perú. Having 2 months left on my visa I expect to flesh out the 2 big targets on my agenda: the Amazon Basin and the Galapagos Islands.

Through connections here at the Club I am negotiating a trip to the Amazon, most likely from the city of Coca. With a population of about 45,000 people, Coca is the staging point for trips to both the Cuyabeno and the Yasuní Reserves and sits at the confluence of the Coca and Napo rivers.

The Napo is a major tributary of the Amazon River and was the route taken by Francisco de Orellana when the conquistador made his way east as the first person to cross South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic. You might have seen the movie “Aguirre: Wrath of God” (1972) that was an artistic take-off of the expedition. I’m hoping my trip won’t be quite as surreal! And anyway, Brazil’s pretty expensive, so I’ll skip the Atlantic for now.

On the Road to Cuenca

On the Road to Cuenca

My way back to Quito from Loja included a 12-day retreat near the village of Gualaceo, itself about an hour outside of Cuenca, which I have now visited 4 times. I’d have to say that the road from Loja to Quenca, only a few years old and in beautiful condition, has to be one of the most stunning I have ever traveled, anywhere. Within minutes of leaving Loja the road begins its love affair with the mountains and canyons separating the 2 colonial cities. This twisting route hugs the cliffs along the way and reveals to the traveler wondrous vistas of mountains, rivers and bottom land, often a thousand feet below the pavement. I’d consider visiting Loja again, just to repeat witnessing the drama along the highway that leads there.

After a night in Cuenca I made contact with Javier, the axis of a multi-generational family of taxistas. He drove me and 2 others over another beautiful but rough road to a private 55-acre retreat that we will call Sacred Earth for now. Javier is the person you want to know in Cuenca. He seems to know everyone and every place and will connect each to the other upon request. I enjoyed his company immensely and we’ve since traded several e-mails. We had a great conversation about life on our way to our destination.

I had reserved a spot at this retreat 2 months earlier and I was eagerly looking forward to repeating my spirit world journeys of April/May while visiting the Shuar. But it was not to be. Just because both retreats each held ayahuasca and san pedro ceremonies, just because both use state-registered shamans, and just because both profess a path to the divine, was no assurance that both would, or could for that matter, deliver the same experience. And this turned out to be the case.

Community Center Garden

Community Center Garden

In the most charitable of times I might be able, I suppose, to consider the Sacred Earth retreat as a kind of summer camp with ayahuasca. Though we received many pep-talks at Sacred Earth about how we were there for spiritual growth and how Sacred Earth was set up for this “life-transforming” purpose, in fact and in deed this was really not the case. More attention was placed on and directed to Kumbaya-style creature comforts with a little jungle medicine thrown in for authenticity. And very little at that.

In nearly 2 weeks of very comfortable living, we attended 4 ceremonies: 2 each of both ayahuasca and san pedro, with a lot of free days in between. In comparison, during the 18 days I spent with the Shuar, the participants attended 16 ceremonies, 11 of which were natem (ayahuasca in the Shuar language), a san pedro ceremony, and 4 other ceremonies relating to the ayahuasca vine that also provided opportunities for spiritual assessment.

Each of these 2 very different retreats had set participants back about the same in costs on a per diem basis: about $125/day. In comparison this expense is a 1/2-off bargain to what is available at the new age-y retreat extravaganzas in Perú, where you can also get your hair done and your teeth straightened, with maybe some paragliding thrown in too. But what was delivered by these 2 Ecuadorian retreats differed immensely both in quantity and in quality. Surely let the buyer beware.

To The Ceremonial Maloka

To The Ceremonial Maloka

Sacred Earth is truly an ayahuasca beginner’s resort and and it’s really rather more an introduction to the Wonders of South American Spirituality. Compared to the Spartan offerings of the Tsunki retreat, this experience was closer to a Club-Med for your summer vacation. I suppose if I had read more closely between the website lines and asked a few more pertinent questions beforehand I could have detected the difference, but Así es la vida, such is life.

What with the 3 full-size hot tubs, a “sauna-ish” room, a media room in the Community Center with an extensive video and music library, wi-fi connectivity and a yoga pavilion, massage and Reiki, we were offered any number of diversions with a high level of creature comfort. Oh, and don’t forget: an ayahuasca ceremony on Tuesday; try not to be late! But don’t fret, because Saturday is a free day and we’ll all hop into vans and go into Cuenca for shopping, ice cream and dinning out at any of the numerous groovy restaurants.

During the Shuar ceremonies each participant had an understanding of reverence for the procedure. I don’t remember it ever being discussed as a rule to follow, but for at least an hour before the beginning of each ceremony, as we singly prepared for what we knew would be a long and difficult night, there was little to no talking since each of us was focused on the intent of being there for our personal journeys into the spirit world. Even as a newcomer I understood that this was a sacred undertaking and by no means a trivial jaunt. Silence and contemplation, like the Zen retreats I attended many years before, was a given and an expectation; you just did it.

Maloka Ready for a Ceremony

Maloka Ready for a Ceremony

At Sacred Earth however, each lead-up to a ceremony was entirely light-hearted and even when the shaman appeared and began his incantations, his songs and his prayers, the group behaved as if we were taking part in an adult version of a sleep-over; with jokes and silly banter and fluffing the pillows just right; all this sharing was going on back and forth around the circle as the night closed in and the ayahuasca took effect.

I was speechless at such a casual approach to what I’ve previously only understood to be regarded as a deeply religious experience. Yet at Sacred Earth we were assured that all was taken care of and everything would be fine, because the tobacco smokers among us would have the option of a smoke-break part way through the night’s proceedings! Sacred indeed.

In the past few years, as ayahuasca has become quite well-known in the “developed world,” a division has grown between 2 groups seeking out this indigenous medicine. There are those who recognize the power of the vine and its ability potentially transform one’s life. This group believes that through millennia the people of the Amazon developed their protocols based on keen observations and their integration into the natural world around them, and developed the reverence necessary to realize the full potential of this powerful path.

Those who studied these cultures and their approach to the path of self-discovery both accept and welcome the traditional steps necessary for such an experience. As it happened, the majority of the people in my first retreat had been working with the plant for years. A woman from Germany who helped introduce me to protocols during the retreat, believes, by her own calculations, that she has taken ayahuasca about 80 times.

Then there is the other group that I can only regard as tourists: people who add the ayahuasca “experience” to their lists as just another must-do, like storming the disco bars down in the Zona Rosa, like buying the perfect trinket for a new setting on the dining room table. These are the ones who race to South America’s natural wonders, grab a selfie, and move on. Sacred Earth fully caters to this second group and is really nothing more than a beginner’s guide to what’s hot and what’s not in natural medicine south of the Equator. It’s really pretty sad as it lowers the drinking of this important medicine to just another thing to do while on vacation. Wait ‘till we tell the guys back home; I should say.

Oh, right, I just did.

The Natemamu Vision Puts Me Out Of The House And On The Road

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Natemamu, Part IV: The Spirit World Among the Shuar

For the rest of the time at the Finca we continued with ceremonies every night except the last one. The idea being that the final day would start early, about 6am, and be quite full before nightfall. The following morning, a Monday, we were to board, first the taxis, and then 2 separate buses that would take us to Gualaquiza, in Morona Santiago province. Paul wanted our energy levels high for these leapfrog transportation undertakings, and it was just as well. Non-stop ceremonies had a cumulative effect for by the end of a week none of us found much time for sleep.

Once the goodbyes concluded, we worked our way back through Catemayo where about ½ of the group split off to return to Quito for flights back home. The rest of us, about a dozen or so, purchased tickets for Loja where we would locate a bus to Morona Santiago. The weather, as it had been during the retreat was in the mid to high 70’s and no rain, so moving our mountain of luggage, though much smaller, was also easier in these pleasant conditions. And we were all grateful since the scenery, which was certainly beautiful outside of Catemayo continued its dramatic unfolding with grander, broader vistas of misted mountains and rivers that kept increasing in size.

While we were dropping in elevation the mountains within view remained quite high as we followed Andean drainage basins and at some point crossed a continental divide. Now, instead of flowing to the Pacific, these rivers were all destined for the Atlantic via the Amazon. We passed through Loja province and into the southernmost Ecuadorian province of Zamora Chinchipe, and when we reached the provincial capital of Zamora, we headed north into Morona Santiago. It was a full 8 hours of bus rides that finally dropped us off on the highway to lug our bags (they’re not called luggage for nothing) 20 minutes up a hill to Miguel and Gabriela Archangel’s compound.

By then it was late afternoon and time for some quick introductions and another simple but tasty meatless meal. Shaman Miguel had built his own Lodge, one that Paul had lent him several thousand dollars to build. But with this being wet Amazonia, the dirt floor was far more plastic and sticky than that at the finca. And for the 5 days or so that we were there, along with some days of rain, we relied even more so on those Wellington boots.

Landry, Our Oglala Sioux Frenchman

Landry, Our Oglala Sioux Frenchman

The ceremonies, which began that night, were of a different type and style. Each night we were expected to sit upright on hard benches in almost total darkness, while Miguel and Paul sang, chanted, and played their instruments. And mid-way through these ceremonies we had a surprise when Landry, a tall young Frenchman in our group, began playing the drum and beautifully chanting North American Oglala Sioux songs. He was really good! He later explained that he had studied (and studied quite well) with a Sioux elder who took up residence on the small island off central France where Landry lives.

Gabriela Archangel

Gabriela Archangel

By this time Gabriella was also regularly attending the ceremonies. We had been told earlier by Paul that she herself is really a shaman, but she denies all talk of this sort. However her touch gave her away and we all knew from that personal physical contact that she has powers that probably surpass her husband Miguel. After the first night’s ceremony, which was a far stronger brew that brought on difficult struggles for the whole group, Gabriela started passing by each of us and placing her hand on the top of our heads as we were seated on the benches and feeling the first hallucinatory effects of the brew. By sharing her touch, she was able to convey an amazing feeling of peace and tranquility. She also came outside and stood with us while we vomited, since a number of us, myself included, lost muscular control and the ability to make it back into the Lodge on 2 feet.

I had neither visions nor hallucinations during the stay here with Gabriela and Miguel. I discovered later that the reason was due to lack of technique. In preparing for a ceremony, a participant needs to prepare with a heavy dose of introspection. And the product of that introspection needs to take the form of a petition to La Medicina.

The vine should be addressed with a question or an enunciated goal that is both quite clear and very specific. I knew none of this at the time and as a result I came away with little more than a clean digestive tract. I was also still having sessions that were diverted away from the spirit world by heavy body-energy discharges. Diarrhea, just so you know, is also a common method of purging, though usually not as frequently a purge as vomiting, therefore a number of us came away very clean after our stay.

Shaman Alberto Catan

Shaman Alberto Catan

So when the time came to leave I believe that all of us looked forward to a change. And thankfully Paul had saved the best for last. Heading further north to Macas, the provincial capital of Morona Santiago, we started hearing about Alberto Catan’s place. Alberto, if you remember, led our first ceremony at the Finca, and his wide open smile and good nature from that time nurtured our anticipation of staying with his family outside of Macas. Paul had also prepared us with the knowledge that we would take part in the yearly celebration of the Chonta palm and the harvest of its fruit.

In a phrase, Alberto’s compound was a Garden of Eden. He had a fast-flowing stream running through the center of the property and a separate sleeping lodge for guests, which we gladly inhabited during the week we were there. Alberto, his wife María, and their extended family welcomed us all and we could tell that this part of the journey would be fine. And it was.

Shaman Lodge and bridge to our guest house

Shaman Lodge and bridge to our guest house

There was a separate Shaman Lodge, a separate dining house (that straddled the stream), beautifully planted grounds, and an overall peacefulness that we immediately absorbed. As with our first Shuar family, we also began our ceremonies here on the first night. There was some concern among us that, like the first ceremony at the finca, this first ceremony at Alberto’s place would also be a spiritual assault. Alberto cooks a mean brew and sees no reason to dilute his creation. That first session at the finca gave everyone strong hallucinations, so we prepared as best we could.

And strong they were, though again, because of my ignorance, most of my time fell to purging and calming my body reactions. As with Miguel and Gabriela, these sessions were endured on hard benches, though his fire was more substantial, and this helped us keep from stumbling. More light also feeds hallucinations with the increased visual input, and later many reported just that effect. Me? I was standing on the bank (when I wasn’t bent over) and watching the river flow.

But on the night of Natemamu I got my second vision and loved every bit of it. Natemamu is a ceremony quite different than the “standard” natem/ayahuasca ceremony. During a natem ceremony the brew consists of the pounded inner bark of the natem vine and at least one other plant, usually just the leaves of the yagé, though often a leaf or two of toé.

With Natemamu however, it is only the inner bark of the natem, make into a thin tea. And the goal here is to consume as much, and more, as one think’s they are capable of drinking. I was up with the leaders in this go-round, and made 8 or 9 bowls of about a liter each. It was hard to keep count since my bowl never emptied with Alberto’s family circulating with huge pitchers full of the liquid. These never-ending bowls were also accompanied by vigorous shouting and chanting from the family to, in Shuar, “DRINK, DRINK!!!”

At the finca, about midway through the retreat, we had 2 successive nights of Natemamu and somehow each of us found the will to consume this unkind beverage. The afternoon before the first night Paul was explaining the protocol and what was expected of us. Even those of us who had participated in Natemamu before were apprehensive. I, of course, hadn’t experienced this sort of thing, but from listening to the others who had, I thought that I’d rather clean the toilets or something.

As Paul explained it, “It all sounds pretty horrible, but actually, it’s much worse!” He wasn’t exaggerating. You think that you can’t possibly down anymore of this stuff, but there’s shouting all around you, you’ve already returned a good bit of it to the soil at your feet, but you remember why you’re here, and you drink some more. He had already counseled us to be ready for a heightened sensory awareness, and that we would be able to hear the earth’s rhythm. Again! The guy really knew what he was talking about. I could sense this noise pattern at the finca, and now here again at Alberto’s compound.

There were new sounds (no, not just the puking) all around me and even though the sun had set some time before, it was light enough to see. A heavy, droning, thumping tone kept injecting itself into my awareness, and I guess that this was the earth’s rhythm Paul mentioned. And then at some point Alberto somehow knew that we were done, and it was time to return inside the Shaman’s Lodge.

We were all pretty weak by this time, and I somehow found the strength to climb up to the 2nd tier of the racks inside the Lodge, and I sprawled on my back in utter exhaustion. Sometime later, and I had no way of telling if it was minutes or hours, I received my next message. Again, the delivery was a mystery, but this time I did have a strong visual that drove home the message.

By this time I had already been in Ecuador four months and most of that time I was quite comfortably ensconced in the house of my school director’s parents. Sofía’s parents are my age and we have become very close, laughing, joking, commiserating with each other as age takes its toll. And I could very easily stay at their place until Immigration pounds on the front door. But I wasn’t sure that that’s really the right way for me to be traveling. Well this message put all these questions to rest.

You have no doubt seen those gag greeting cards that have a pop-up that jumps into place when you open the card, right? Well I essentially received the same setup in this second message. I was seeing the landscape of Ecuador as a giant carpet unrolling, with trees, rivers, mountains and all popping up as the carpet unrolled. And at the same time I was receiving the message that my Quito phase was over and until October, when my visa runs out, it’s my mission to hit the road.

It's Time to Move On

It’s Time to Move On

So after this plane touches down in Lima, I finish my work there, and return to Ecuador, I’ll be on the road, circling the country. I’ll start in Otavalo, an indigenous pueblo north of Quito and witness Inti-Raymi, the Andean indigenous New Year. Since December 31, I will then have witnessed 4 separate New Years in less than 6 months: the calendar New Year (which I celebrated by going to bed before 11pm), the New Year in el campo at the time of Guaranda’s Carnaval, the Shuar Chonta Harvest, and finally Inti-Raymi. It will be a lot of fun.

Since Wood Ashes Repel Vipers, We Could All Purge In Peaceful Bliss

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Natemamu, Part III: Knocking on Heaven’s Door

It’s now June 2nd and I’m sitting in the international terminal of Quito’s Mariscal Sucre airport. I’m on my way to Lima, Peru for 9 days. I’ve got air-miles from American Airlines and they’ve been burning a hole in my virtual pocket for some time. So since I had some personal business to attend to in Lima, it was time to cash in some of those air-miles. It’s free, right?  Yeah, right. And this ticket only cost me some (pretty high) taxes; so much for “free flights.” I’m here ultimately as a result of a message that I received during my second encounter with natem. But this presents a chronological disconnect, so let’s back up a bit.

Before we had arrived at the finca Paul’s assistants had already “ringed” an outer perimeter, 10 to 20 feet away, and completely around the Shaman’s Lodge with a border of wood ashes. It seems to be common knowledge in el campo of Ecuador (and perhaps elsewhere too, I’m a city-boy and don’t know these things), that wood ashes keep vipers away. They simply will not cross such a barrier which can penetrate their scales most painfully.

I’ve never corroborated that notion of ashes, but I will say that none of us reported any snake sightings for the 8 days we were there. We did hear from several of the support staff that the week before there were several sightings, and snakes in Ecuador I’m told are almost always poisonous, and neurotoxic at that! So each night, religiously wearing my knee-high rubber boots, I always remained hyper-aware of a possible encounter while puking my guts out, or removing negative energies, as it were.

Though I never repeated during successive ceremonies the intensity of the Opening Ceremony’s hallucinations, each night’s journey to the edge brought me visions of heightened energies from the plants growing everywhere. No, it was more than visual manifestations , I could sense, I could feel and even hear these energies. And I’m supposed to watch out for vipers too? Were those leaves on the low bushes by my feet moving because of the wind? On more than one occasion it took me some time to return back to my mat after voiding my innards.

I do have to explain that there is a difference, a very big difference, between hallucinations and visions. The hallucinations are visual “fantasies?” I guess you might say, while visions are more than just visual messages. These visions involve multiple sensual inputs which present one with a very different type of communication.

Paul and both of the Shuar shamans took great pains to remind us over and over that a shaman does not provide us with answers. A shaman is a facilitator who helps us prepare to receive our personal messages from La Medicina, the vine. Shaman’s break down the barriers, through the use of various techniques, between ourselves, or better yet our outer selves: those visible characteristics (our ego, in Freudian terms?) we present to the world, and our inner selves. And the medicine then bridges that gap and delivers the messages from our inner selves. All this is taking place in the spirit world that the Medicine Hunter frequently describes.

In my own case, I received my first message and I was totally unprepared for it. So when it arrived, I was only too happy to be lying down. I know that I would have been knocked from my feet had I been up and about during a purging. I say this because not only was the message so true and so fundamental, but the delivery was also as powerful.

As I write this, hoping the Lima plane will be on time, I’m feeling a rising level of anxiety since the very act of articulating this experience will fall far short of doing justice to what transpired. What makes this recounting of the ceremony so weak, so insufficient, is that I still don’t know how I received the message.

Was it spoken to me? No. Was there writing, perhaps delivered holographically? Not really. And yet the message was very real, very personal, and answered a nagging, serious, and chronic problem that had been physically eating away at me for years. Somehow, some way, the message arrived from elsewhere and imprinted so firmly in my psyche that I had no choice but to accept it as real. And even after nearly a month of returning and immersing into my Quito routine, I know that this separate reality will be with me as long as I live.

To those of you waiting for some juicy gossip, here’s a spoiler alert: I ain’t sayin’ nuthin. My message was for me and if you decide to take part in a natem or ayahuasca ceremony, your message will be for you. The shamans are all very clear about this. The conversation one has with the inner self, mediated by the vine, is as personal an experience as one will ever have. So while I will reveal a later message I had in a later ceremony, this first message is off limits to the casual reader.

A technique common to all shamans is the use of icaros. These are songs, some of which are passed down through generations during the rigorous and life-threatening training a shaman receives in order to finally become a shaman. Other icaros are presented to the individual shaman during their own journeys to the spirit world and then the shaman brings them forward to those he is helping to cure. And still other icaros are of another sort.

Paul Eijkemans

Paul Eijkemans

Paul, who by his own reckoning, has undergone more than 700 natem ceremonies along with other deep training, is also a shaman. Of this there can be no doubt. He is of the first generation of cross-over shamans who originated in the “developed world” and answered a call to enter this more primary Amazonian Basin world of the vine.

Like the Zen Buddhists of the 60’s that I met in Rochester NY some decades ago, or the yogis of the 50’s that I met even earlier in Honolulu during the Flower-Power years, Paul is here, working as a translator to help those of us from the northern countries knock on the doors of perception down south in the jungle. One of his translations is music.

Often using a shaman’s fiddle, a primitive 3-stringed instrument vaguely resembling a western fiddle or violin, or another, single-stringed Shuar instrument that looks like a bow that could shoot arrows, he will play some traditional Shuar icaros, often singing in Shuar. These icaros are tools that a shaman uses to both call the spirits and to help us as participants prepare ourselves to receive messages. He uses these icaros to great effect, and they do get results.

Or he will call on Nial. With his name pronounced like “dial” Nial is from Dublin and not only plays a beautiful guitar (he’s a professional recording artist) but he throat sings, and can make his voice sound like a harmonica, a whistle, and an amazing number of other sounds. During our retreat Nial, as a senior assistant to Paul, brought us his highly evolved ability to read people. And in my case, he knew exactly what I needed to hear.

During this second ceremony each of us individually received a personal cleansing by Paul while sitting on a stump in front of the fire. When my turn came, I sat there waiting for Paul and Nial began to sing. He mixes his own compositions with popular rock and folk songs, knowing somehow, ahead of time, which song is needed for what part of the ceremony, for which person.

A recurring song he played, The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil” always got a huge laugh, and also always turned into a huge, highly animated sing-along. Another sing-along was “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. These songs and others were played a few hours into each of the ceremonies, after the initial hallucinations and purgings were over and we were ready to make connections with our inner selves.

Since I was easily the oldest person at the retreat, and my age was more than once the topic of interest during several group discussions, Nial realized that a unique opportunity presented itself and would be to my advantage. So as I was sitting on the stump, waiting for Paul to prepare himself mentally for this cleansing, Nial started singing Bob Dylan’s “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” and I instantly understood just why I was there.

For far too long, for too many years, for too many decades, I had been postponing decisions in my life. Crucial, critical, and truly life-affirming decisions had been deferred, and for far too much time. Now, in my later 60’s, it was quite clear that the time for deferral, if there ever was a time for it, was most assuredly over; I either act or I go to the grave denying certain personal truths.

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Thanks again, Nial. You knew exactly what I needed to know. Dylan’s song, like all good icaros, bridged the gap between my outer self, and the self that lives in the spirit world. It prepared me for receiving that first core message later in the night. After all those years, I was finally ready to listen.

In Which Our Traveler Finds Natem and Also Finds That He Doesn’t Feel So Good

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Natemamu, Part II: A Strange Brew

So what is it that makes people willingly take a glass-full of a bitter, thick liquid when they know that they will probably be bent over an hour later, purging not only their last few meals, but what the shamans believe are negative energies? Why subject oneself to this knowingly and repeatedly? That was something that certainly ran through my mind as I was bent over mid-way through the introductory ceremony. People not only pay money for this, but they actually come back and do it again? And again?

Chris Kilham, more famously known as the Medicine Hunter, and senior health editor for Fox News, regards this plant brew as the most potent healing agent in the world. And since, by his own admission, he’s participated in several dozen ceremonies, Kilham is positioned well to hold this opinion. He now leads groups to the Amazon to experience for themselves the healing powers of this amazing plant.

Known to the Shuar as natem, to others as ayahuasca, yagé, daime, la purga and many other names, this concoction has been in use for thousands of years in the Amazon basin. Now it is undergoing many clinical trials in South American countries following rigorous laboratory protocols.

Kilham, investigating medicinal plants for more than 30 years and a tenured professor at UMass-Amherst, believes (as do I and thousands of others) that natem unlocks a spirit world and permits us to enter this world in a highly personal way. He also goes on to say that those who criticize, those who disbelieve the existence of this spirit world are invariably those who have never attended such a ceremony. Like the Medicine Hunter, I’ve always believed that it is so very easy to have an opinion, and a very strong one at that, of something about which someone knows nothing.

The only thing that I knew, mid-way through that first ceremony, was that morning couldn’t come soon enough. Within 45 minutes of drinking my first cup of natem, I began seeing some interesting geometric hallucinations. They were tiny, moving lights forming a kind of spider-web pattern overlaid on my “normal” vision. Having experienced LSD many times more that 40 years previously, these hallucinations were actually pretty tame in comparison. I was expecting some of the pure terror that often accompanied LSD “trips” but natem is far kinder in its greeting.

My biggest problem with this first experience, and as it turned out, for the next several nights worth of ceremonies, was that most of the energy of the natem was focused on very stern, almost violent body reactions. This first venture was for me almost completely dominated by heavy twitching and shaking of my lower extremities. My legs were reacting as if I had just completed a marathon. There was no pain, and I was very lucid, but at that point my main concern was that my shaking and jerking about would disturb others around me. While they were making contact with this spirit world, each in his or her own way (and silently, dammit!), I was laying back on my mat behaving as if someone had inserted electrodes into both legs.

As I lay there on the mat, flat on my back, I bent my knees and placed my feet flat on the mat. This slowed down the twitching and my motions were less noticeable to myself and others. The geometric patterns were gone by then, but I was developing a serious headache and some nausea. I found out later that having some water, and frequently drinking same would easily mitigate these reactions. But man, that nausea!

Over the years I have been plagued with nausea to such a degree that I’ve almost become a connoisseur. Almost, but not quite. From heavy and painfully frequent doses of motion sickness as a child, to more recent and regular daily bouts, nausea and I are no strangers. Diagnosed as suffering from intractable nausea 4 or 5 years ago, I even went so far as to register, first in New Mexico and then in Hawai’i, as a medical cannabis patient to fight off daily, and often multiple times a day bouts of nausea. Standard anti-nausea medication would either put me to sleep completely or leave me semi-comatose and unable to function. At least with the cannabis (a personal friend of many years) I could walk and chew gum at the same time.

Well the morning after my first natem ceremony I was so heavily nauseated that I knew that I was going to leave the ceremonies, leave the retreat, and somehow stumble my way back to Quito. This first morning, after having no sleep the night before, was enveloped in one of the strongest, most vicious encounters with nausea that I had ever had. After 6 decades of nausea, that’s saying something. And I was saying something too.

Having a picnic by the river and getting ready for a Ceremony

Having a picnic by the river and getting ready for a Ceremony

Ursula, the German woman who earlier told me that after 80 previous encounters with natem, she was now ready to do some serious personal work, was laying on her sleeping bag to my right. I was explaining to her, while others were slowly dealing with dawn and their own journeys, that I was probably done. I needed to see Paul and back out of this retreat as gracefully as I could. It was fortunate for me that she happened to be next to me, or maybe she planned it that way.

The 2 of us were older than the rest of the group by a full generation, and I am about ½ dozen years older than she is. In Catemayo, while waiting for the taxis, we began talking and resonated quite well. Though chronologically younger, as time went on she became my older sister and her help throughout the time we were all together for nearly 3 weeks, proved invaluable. And of all the help she provided, the most valuable was during that first morning.

She explained that since the nausea was the strongest experience that I took away from that first ceremony, then nausea was my target, was my subject. Ursula believes that nothing is an accident and my initial encounter was my personal message to return to the nausea that second night and ask why. Somehow I believed her. And with her German precision she would hear of no talk of backing out. It was inconceivable and therefore impossible to discuss leaving. Get up, get dressed, we are climbing those cobblestone steps, all 163 of them, for breakfast.

Thank you so much Ursula. You were, of course, correct.

I did make it up those steps. I had breakfast and felt fractionally better. And as the day slowly moved by and I was able to grab an hour’s sleep I realized that I really did owe it to myself to stay for a second night and maybe I could gain some benefit. After all, I had been reading about the amazing properties of ayahuasca for years, and really, a substantial reason for finally coming to South America was to drink the brew.

I had known for some time that ayahuasca is a healing enigma on the grandest scale. In the Andean countries and Brazil, many researchers, both psychiatric/psychological and medical have been deeply involved in trying to find out just how this mysterious plant works. It is, of course, an illegal substance in North America and all of Europe, as defined by the finest minds in politics. But down here, where people take a more rational view of the individual in relation to the environment, one can purchase the vine in an indigenous market a 10-minute walk from my room in Quito.

The term ayahuasca is loosely interchanged with both the vine, Banisteriopsis caapi, and the brew, which varies by country, by region, by shaman, and by what the particular shaman wants to accomplish for a particular ceremony. I refer the interested back to the Medicine Hunter for as much detail as you might like for these variations. His website, the Erowid website, and many others offer truly informative material for the truly open seeker of healing.

In my personal case, some years back I was in a losing battle with what finally was diagnosed as clinical, or major depression. But fortunately my primary care doctor put me in contact with a psychiatrist who is vehemently opposed to pharmaceuticals. She, along with a number of other renegade psychiatrists, were working at the time with the University of New Mexico’s Medical School, studying the effects of DMT as a healing agent.

DMT, from another crucial plant often referred to as chacruna, happens to play a critical role in the ayahuasca brew. My older sister Ursula would argue that none of this is an accident: my having depression, connecting with a scientifically curious psychiatrist, UNM/Med-School research, a plane flight to Ecuador, etc.

Now DMT, you must understand, has also been classified in the USA as a dangerous drug of no medical value. Along with cannabis. These classifications were determined to be true through rigorous medical research conducted by, wait for it: YES!, politicians. Aren’t we happy that they are protecting us from ourselves? Umm, no, not really.

With all of this information rolling around in my mind, there could be no debate. Following another tasty lunch and a shower, I came back to my mat, cleaned up some of the surrounding area, and got ready for the second, or Opening Ceremony. This turned out to be a brew of different proportions and, to put it in a most melodramatic way, it really did change my life.