Mosquito land

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Well,

It's crazyness in crazy monkey town with like a billion of mototaxis driving around, so I know I won't be able to sleep, so I'll give this a try. No pictures though ... my cam is still in my room, so I need to upload that tomorrow.

So Sunday morning we took off to Pto Nuevo with a 12 hour boat ride, we arrived way too late in the dark, awaited by some kids and girls from the Shipibo tribe. Pto Nuevo is a little village with about 100 inhabitants, near a river in the Amazon. They have some solar energy which they use for a microphone, a few lamps and a few radios. Besides that, there is no luxury, no ipods, no playstations, no internet, so ... a very nice, relaxing, quiet place.

So yeah, we arrived very late, all got very hungry, we only ate papaya which I bought in crazy monekey town. After a half hour hike we got in the village and got some soup with fish and rice. Which was basically our food for the whole stay, that with yucca, sauce and weird funky fruits, but all very very nice and tasteful. I really love their food. The fish in the amazon is a lot better than the sea fish in my humble opinion.

During our stay we did some hiking trough banana plantages, the jungle and to some other villages, all was marvelous. These people, they are soooooo sweet, they smile, laugh and giggle the whole day. And the children, they are adorable. They don't get too see too much foreigners. Julio comes here twice a year with people, since six years. Sometimes people from the village go live a few years or a year in Pucallpa or Lima and than come back. They don't have a lot, so education material is very very limited, but with the money from the tours Julio is able to buy them a lot of stuff so the children can learn.

They speak two languages, Spanish and Shipibo. They are raised the first years in Shipibo and then during the next years they learn how to speak Spanish. They also have two names, one ordinary Spanish name and one Shipibo name, mostly hard to pronounce. But after every Shipibo name is a nice story, I love it. That reminds me that one night I was with the chief outside looking to the stars and he named all the stars in Shipibo for me. Very cool, I wish I could speak their language.

Argh, I have a bad memory to know what day we did what, if I remember it correctly the first day we went on the river to watch river dolphines. Oh my, what an amazing creatures, so beautiful. When u look at them and see how free they are to swim in the wild open rivers, you just get jealous and want to swim away with them. They are lucky because the people love them and humans are no threat to them. The other days mostly consisted of eating, hanging out with the locals. doing hikes and swimming. I loved the swimming part, the water is very very warm and doesn't stink. The things I didn't like were the mosquitos, damnit I am still itchy, aargh. I also got terrible headaches from the sun, I was really stupid to not buy sunglasses. So, don't ever forget to bring those if you go to Peru, especially the Amazon.

Since I am into shamanism and ethnobotanicals one of the most interesting parts of my journey was the ayhuasca ritual. For those who don't know what it is, search on wikipedia and google. It is a psychoactive brew that consists of two plants, chacruna (Psychotria viridis) and Yage (Banisteriopsis caapi), sometimes other things are added. The plants gives visions and is regarded as an important medicine to cure cancer, aids and other things. It makes you able to be in contact with mother natures and talk with the spirits. I haven't done this brew before, so this was a good opportunity to do it. We had two shamans, Cesar and Segundo, both mostly work with ayahuasca, mapacho and toi (Brugmansia sp) and other medicinal plants. There were two ceremonies, I only participated in the first since I wanted to have a good rest on my last night and these ceremonies take place at night. That's because when it's dark you get now distraction.

Now, for those of you having some experience with psychedelics, ayahuasca is no near to mescaline, lsd or mushrooms, it's something pretty different. I think the best way is to take it with a shaman, since it is pretty strong and these people have experience and know what to do and are able to help you if you are having a difficult experience.

The ceremony took place in the evening, around 9 pm, two shamans, Cesar and Segundo and one pupil, Carlos. All of us participated. There was a short intro and they spit perfumed liquid on you and give out mapacho cigaretes. Then they hand out a cigarette and give you the ayahuasca, the quantity depends on the person. I had quiet much. About fifteen minutes after ingestion it started to work. We were told to now light the mapacho. BAM, when I first hit that cigarette, all started spinning and the medicine started to work. Very very intens. It was too much, so I went outside and I puked for five minutes. After that I saw a lot of visuals and I was in a battle with the forest. But I stayed calm and won the battle. I had nice visions and had many thoughts of people I love. The peak was about one hour and one hour after effects, not as long and strong as I thought. I am not going too deep into this, I rather keep the details for myself.

There are also two healer women in the village, they gave us nice steambaths and I got this nice massages with a special cream to help my headache. Amazing, this stuff is better than any painkiller, I bought a few so I can use them at home.

So, what else did we do? Nothing more than just haning around a bit, do short hikes in the jungle, visit a few other villages, swim in the lake and in the river.

My conclusion, shipibo people are the nices people I have ever met in my life. Here you learn that all that crap we think we need to be happy is all bullshit. Computers, cellphones, expensive clothes, a car, it doesn't satisfy you, but only makes you crave for more and more .... And hey, depression is a luxury disease. Money comes with a price. How long until this people will live like this before their villages are destroyed by big corporations or polluted by materialism? I hope it will never happen, but it's unavoidable.

Next stop: San Francisco.

Pictures:

Half hour later: crap, i have tried all sorts of things to upload pix on the slowest internet pc on earth and it doesnt work. Well, I'll search later this evening or tomorrow for another cyber cafe.

Adios, amigos

PS, I have like 1000 mosquito bites, oooooh, how i hate it 😞

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Comments

[stows]

yage
Glad you had a good experience and hope everyone who partook learned something. Take care.

[anonymous]

Shipibo village is so nice always, sooo sweet ppl, they are so happy have a smile all the time in their faces and they loove when they see u r enjoying there with them. They are admired ppl bc they live in a natural place, thats why mostly their ppl died very old bc of the clime. So Koen said: I was really stupid to not buy sunglasses. Well darling of course u were haha, now im the one who is telling u this, not u :P Annnnnd u got highhhhh? hahahaha

[Magaly]

Angie:
hmm that was me Magaly :P the whole letter down one lol