Jungle Doctor and a Place Called Mashaquipe

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I had been sick in Bolivia for five days. REALLY sick. Lying in bed and moaning sick. Almost sick and scared enough to go to a Third World hospital. I won’t go into details, let’s just say the toilet had to be really, really near by.

I honestly don’t know, other than by my sheer traveling might, how I caught a bus and a plane to the jungle, but I did it. I should have probably been hooked up to an I-V.

I met some great guys from a place called Mashaquipe, which is a cooperative jungle camp organized by indigenous people of the Tuichi River area. When I signed up with them to go to their camp, I told them how sick I was and that I might have to cancel. They told me not to worry; they would “fix me.” As soon as I got into their camp they would feed me a special tea made from the bark of a tree. This was supposed to cure me. I had already tried 2 different over the counter drugs as well as antibiotics, and these had actually made me worse off. However, I actually did believe them about their tea. Hey, I’ve watched that Sean Connery film “Medicine Man.”

Once I finally arrived in camp at Mashaquipe, I was absolutely spent. All I could do was collapse in my hut. Oh, but what a wonderful place to be, even when sick. I had a wonderful cabana tucked way back in the jungle, with exotic bird, insect and monkey calls all around.

So I napped, with many an interrupted dash to the “bano,” while my guide, Luis**, went out and found the special bark of the tree. I don’t know the name of it, and I don’t think even they do. Most of these people have never spent a day in a school, and can not read or write. However, their intelligence to survive in the jungle is unsurpassed, and really, does one need to read and write out there?

A couple of hours later, Luis brought me some of the tea. It kind of tasted like spicy dirt, but I drank down every last drop. Within two hours I was healed, one hundred percent. After seven days of water, Coke and Sprite, I could finally eat again! I can still remember and taste that first meal of river caught fish and rice. From being bed-ridden, to the next day hiking up steep cliffs to see Macaws, in my mind it was unbelievable.

I don’t know what was in that tree bark . . . or how the indigenous people out there ever found THAT particular tree healed stomach and bowel problems. I just know it worked, and it didn’t mess around taking a lot of time to cure. I could have hugged Luis, but instead just gave him a new name. Jungle Doctor.


**Side note—When you arrive in a jungle camp, you are assigned a guide. You DO NOT just “take a walk” into the jungle. It is the Amazon, and one wrong step and you are lost. For a FABULOUS read that I quite frankly could not put down and finished in a day, read Yossi Ghinsberg’s book, Jungle, about being lost for over 20 days in this very area. Four men went in, only two came back out.

If you are planning a jungle or pampas trip out of Rurrenabaque, I HIGHLY recommend Mashaquipe for both places.

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Photos

Jungle Doctor Luis
The tree that healed me

Inside my cabana
My favorite room of the whole trip

Lazy afternoons on the hammock
Bring a good book

Pathway to my cabana
Make sure you have a torch at night!

Clay Lick
They come here to lick the clay

Dense jungle
The Madidi protected area