October 20, 2011
One thing about taking ayahuasca is that you will stay up most of the night and fall asleep around 5am. I got up at 11am on Wednesday morning and didn't feel too ambitious so decided to buy my airline ticket to Lima for Monday morning (9:20am). It was about $100US and they don't offer any other flights so I booked it.
I went around to some of the tour operators just because they speak english and to give me some ideas of possible day tours I could arrange myself since I had no intention of paying their prices. I mean $100US to stay in a bamboo hut in the jungle every day isn't my idea of "value" or money well spent. There was a guy "Carlos" who spoke english that brought me to these tour operators where their was obviously a commission in it for him and later on when he realized I was not going to go with any of them he offered his services which were just a little better but I knew Rene down at Bellavista nanay would give me the local price and decided I would head down to see him on Thursday morning.
So on Thursday morning I head down to "Dawn of the Amazon" restaurant which is owned by Bill Grimes from Indiana USA and I noticed he also wrote articles in the local english tourist newspaper of Iquitos about various tours since he also had a tour company by the same name. As I sipped my morning coffee all my usual "homies" stopped by to say hi and wave etc... which is just a regular day for me here in Iquitos. One of them brings a big black shirt that says "Ayahuasca" and for some strange reason thinks he can get me to buy it for 50 soles. I laughed and then he said "how much you give me?" and I say "10 soles". I couldn't care less about 9 letters on a shirt but apparently he thought it justified a higher price.
I grabbed a motorcycle taxi down to Bellavista nanay to find "Rene" down there somewhere and I had 20 boat operators crowding around me wanting me to use their services which was fine and then a young guy who spoke english asked me and I told him where I wanted to go and how much it would be and he said 40 soles and I told him all these guys around me just offered the same boat excursion for 30 soles so he says "OK fine 30 soles, lets go" so I go with him.
The first stop is the Butterfly farm which has more than just butterflies since I am not interested in butterflies. As we are going along in the boat the young guy says that the river is too low at this time of the season and that we can't go all the way by boat so we will have to stop at this floating restaurant and I will have to pay 3 soles for the rest of the ride at which I say "No problem, I will just deduct that 3 soles from your 30 soles quote" at which I notice he continues to drive the boat slowly past the restaurant and we veer off into a small river path that is covered with small trees sticking up from the river and the river path is about 8-10 feet wide and we go for awhile and catch up to another boat that is full of Peruvian tourists that are going to the butterfly farm as well.
We get off and walk along the trail to the entrance and hear lots of trees thrashing around to see they are monkeys and we have been warned to watch our valuables since these monkeys are 10 times better at taking your valuables than any pickpocketer in Belen Market. I am now with this Peruvian tourist group that is all together and are a bunch of students and we see the butterflies and I am not even looking at them but waiting for the group to keep moving to the animals. Then we stop and see some parrots. After a few minutes we continue on and as I pass one of the green parrots it yells out "HOLA!" which I am surprised since they didn't say anything the whole time we were there. I thought it might be funny to teach it how to say "Fucken hola!". Wouldn't that be a hoot!
Then we see some monkey's in a big cage. I am a foot back from the wire meshed cage pulling out my camera when the little monkey sticks his arm as far out of the wire mesh cage and grabs hold of my camera and luckily I had the string around my wrist. Then we saw another big monkey cage with a different type of monkey with a white face. It kind of looked like "the Joker" off of Batman. Then we saw a young tiger. They had told me to stay back from the cage but I wanted to get up close when it sprang up at me and was now hanging off the cage looking at me straight in the eyes. The Peruvian students were telling me to be careful and stand back from the cage but I told them I can definitely take this little guy!
Jaguars are very rare nowadays even in the wild but they had one here. There was a sign that said they have to feed it 9lbs of meat everyday. When the crowd moved away I decided to get closer for a better shot and to my surprise it jump on the cage and roared at me showing me its fangs as if to say "Oh how I wished you were in my cage for just 5 minutes". OK I was definitely worried about this guy and thought of that movie "Apocalypto". Next was another strange animal and I didn't recognize its spanish name and another animal that I didn't recognize from anything in North America.
There was a pond near the entrance with a little deck built off of it with rails and a roof. There were 15 of us looking into the pond and 10 feet from us was an alligator with just its head sticking up from the water watching each of us carefully and there were also red faced monkeys jumping around freely that were up in the rafters of this little deck. When I turned away to walk away the little bugger would jump on my head and he wasn't the lightest guy as you could hear the "flop" as he pounced on my head and would pull my hair really hard. I was more worried about my passport and wallet that had $300US in it than him pulling my hair. What would a monkey do in the wilderness with $300US?
I jumped into my boat and we headed to see the Yaguas tribe. As we drove in the boat we turned right where Jose's restaurant is (Where we did the ayahuasca the first time) and went another route. There were the Boras tribe that was on their river bank doing a dance and hoping that me and my wallet might come in and visit them but I wasn't interested in dances and was interested in the Yaguas blow dart guns. I got off where the Yaguas tribe was and went up to a straw bamboo hut with some old native guy with orange war paint on his face and a silly straw outfit for clothes and he was carrying a big blow dart gun.
Inside the hut was a boat guy who spoke english that came over and said that he had seen me with Rene a few days ago (Either at the dock or Jose's restaurant) and he interpretted for me even though my young boat driver could have done that. He was there because he was provided boat transportation for the Peruvian tourists that were in the hut with me. They started dancing and the male natives would grab the female Peruvian tourists and a female native grabbed the male Peruvian tourist and a couple of the native women tried to grab me to dance but I said I didn't want to since they just held hands and ran around in a circle inside the hut and that isn't really my idea of a good time not to mention it is just another tourist trap where you pay 20 soles and this tribe is now fully into the commerce and money business which is understandable nowadays. Once you get money in your hands there is no going back to your primitive ways!
I told them right off the bat that I was here for the blow guns only so the old chief brings us outside of the big hut and there is a small wooden parrot that is the target and he shoots his big blow gun and nails the wooden parrot. It is my turn and we are 20 feet away from the small wooden target and after 20 seconds of aiming the big barreled dart gun I hit it in the dead center of the parrot (I think I impressed the hell out of the natives as they considered adopting me as one of their own before hunting season begins). The others tourists couldn't hit it.
After that I had the whole tribal clan around me aggressively wanting to sell me their hand made necklaces and blow dart guns and I told them I had already enought stuff but found out all their stuff was just 10 soles each. The necklaces had anaconda vertibrae bones on them and the males were selling their blow dart guns for 10 soles each ($3.33US). These blow dart guns were dual purpose that served as a rattle and also as a blow gun and came with 3 darts (But I have to put my own poison on them). I tried a few of them but took the one that shot the best.
After that I got in the boat and headed to Bellavista nanay and caught a motorcycle taxi home. Tomorrow I will head to the zoo that is a 20 minute drive and my young boat driver said I could catch the bus down at the Plaza de Armas for 1 sole which I will do tomorrow.
One thing about taking ayahuasca is that you will stay up most of the night and fall asleep around 5am. I got up at 11am on Wednesday morning and didn't feel too ambitious so decided to buy my airline ticket to Lima for Monday morning (9:20am). It was about $100US and they don't offer any other flights so I booked it.
I went around to some of the tour operators just because they speak english and to give me some ideas of possible day tours I could arrange myself since I had no intention of paying their prices. I mean $100US to stay in a bamboo hut in the jungle every day isn't my idea of "value" or money well spent. There was a guy "Carlos" who spoke english that brought me to these tour operators where their was obviously a commission in it for him and later on when he realized I was not going to go with any of them he offered his services which were just a little better but I knew Rene down at Bellavista nanay would give me the local price and decided I would head down to see him on Thursday morning.
So on Thursday morning I head down to "Dawn of the Amazon" restaurant which is owned by Bill Grimes from Indiana USA and I noticed he also wrote articles in the local english tourist newspaper of Iquitos about various tours since he also had a tour company by the same name. As I sipped my morning coffee all my usual "homies" stopped by to say hi and wave etc... which is just a regular day for me here in Iquitos. One of them brings a big black shirt that says "Ayahuasca" and for some strange reason thinks he can get me to buy it for 50 soles. I laughed and then he said "how much you give me?" and I say "10 soles". I couldn't care less about 9 letters on a shirt but apparently he thought it justified a higher price.
I grabbed a motorcycle taxi down to Bellavista nanay to find "Rene" down there somewhere and I had 20 boat operators crowding around me wanting me to use their services which was fine and then a young guy who spoke english asked me and I told him where I wanted to go and how much it would be and he said 40 soles and I told him all these guys around me just offered the same boat excursion for 30 soles so he says "OK fine 30 soles, lets go" so I go with him.
The first stop is the Butterfly farm which has more than just butterflies since I am not interested in butterflies. As we are going along in the boat the young guy says that the river is too low at this time of the season and that we can't go all the way by boat so we will have to stop at this floating restaurant and I will have to pay 3 soles for the rest of the ride at which I say "No problem, I will just deduct that 3 soles from your 30 soles quote" at which I notice he continues to drive the boat slowly past the restaurant and we veer off into a small river path that is covered with small trees sticking up from the river and the river path is about 8-10 feet wide and we go for awhile and catch up to another boat that is full of Peruvian tourists that are going to the butterfly farm as well.
We get off and walk along the trail to the entrance and hear lots of trees thrashing around to see they are monkeys and we have been warned to watch our valuables since these monkeys are 10 times better at taking your valuables than any pickpocketer in Belen Market. I am now with this Peruvian tourist group that is all together and are a bunch of students and we see the butterflies and I am not even looking at them but waiting for the group to keep moving to the animals. Then we stop and see some parrots. After a few minutes we continue on and as I pass one of the green parrots it yells out "HOLA!" which I am surprised since they didn't say anything the whole time we were there. I thought it might be funny to teach it how to say "Fucken hola!". Wouldn't that be a hoot!
Then we see some monkey's in a big cage. I am a foot back from the wire meshed cage pulling out my camera when the little monkey sticks his arm as far out of the wire mesh cage and grabs hold of my camera and luckily I had the string around my wrist. Then we saw another big monkey cage with a different type of monkey with a white face. It kind of looked like "the Joker" off of Batman. Then we saw a young tiger. They had told me to stay back from the cage but I wanted to get up close when it sprang up at me and was now hanging off the cage looking at me straight in the eyes. The Peruvian students were telling me to be careful and stand back from the cage but I told them I can definitely take this little guy!
Jaguars are very rare nowadays even in the wild but they had one here. There was a sign that said they have to feed it 9lbs of meat everyday. When the crowd moved away I decided to get closer for a better shot and to my surprise it jump on the cage and roared at me showing me its fangs as if to say "Oh how I wished you were in my cage for just 5 minutes". OK I was definitely worried about this guy and thought of that movie "Apocalypto". Next was another strange animal and I didn't recognize its spanish name and another animal that I didn't recognize from anything in North America.
There was a pond near the entrance with a little deck built off of it with rails and a roof. There were 15 of us looking into the pond and 10 feet from us was an alligator with just its head sticking up from the water watching each of us carefully and there were also red faced monkeys jumping around freely that were up in the rafters of this little deck. When I turned away to walk away the little bugger would jump on my head and he wasn't the lightest guy as you could hear the "flop" as he pounced on my head and would pull my hair really hard. I was more worried about my passport and wallet that had $300US in it than him pulling my hair. What would a monkey do in the wilderness with $300US?
I jumped into my boat and we headed to see the Yaguas tribe. As we drove in the boat we turned right where Jose's restaurant is (Where we did the ayahuasca the first time) and went another route. There were the Boras tribe that was on their river bank doing a dance and hoping that me and my wallet might come in and visit them but I wasn't interested in dances and was interested in the Yaguas blow dart guns. I got off where the Yaguas tribe was and went up to a straw bamboo hut with some old native guy with orange war paint on his face and a silly straw outfit for clothes and he was carrying a big blow dart gun.
Inside the hut was a boat guy who spoke english that came over and said that he had seen me with Rene a few days ago (Either at the dock or Jose's restaurant) and he interpretted for me even though my young boat driver could have done that. He was there because he was provided boat transportation for the Peruvian tourists that were in the hut with me. They started dancing and the male natives would grab the female Peruvian tourists and a female native grabbed the male Peruvian tourist and a couple of the native women tried to grab me to dance but I said I didn't want to since they just held hands and ran around in a circle inside the hut and that isn't really my idea of a good time not to mention it is just another tourist trap where you pay 20 soles and this tribe is now fully into the commerce and money business which is understandable nowadays. Once you get money in your hands there is no going back to your primitive ways!
I told them right off the bat that I was here for the blow guns only so the old chief brings us outside of the big hut and there is a small wooden parrot that is the target and he shoots his big blow gun and nails the wooden parrot. It is my turn and we are 20 feet away from the small wooden target and after 20 seconds of aiming the big barreled dart gun I hit it in the dead center of the parrot (I think I impressed the hell out of the natives as they considered adopting me as one of their own before hunting season begins). The others tourists couldn't hit it.
After that I had the whole tribal clan around me aggressively wanting to sell me their hand made necklaces and blow dart guns and I told them I had already enought stuff but found out all their stuff was just 10 soles each. The necklaces had anaconda vertibrae bones on them and the males were selling their blow dart guns for 10 soles each ($3.33US). These blow dart guns were dual purpose that served as a rattle and also as a blow gun and came with 3 darts (But I have to put my own poison on them). I tried a few of them but took the one that shot the best.
After that I got in the boat and headed to Bellavista nanay and caught a motorcycle taxi home. Tomorrow I will head to the zoo that is a 20 minute drive and my young boat driver said I could catch the bus down at the Plaza de Armas for 1 sole which I will do tomorrow.
