Previously: Part 3, in which I arrive in Iquitos in a dreamlike state.
We woke early the next day. Outside the window various divisions of the Peruvian military marched around the square and performed a flag-raising ceremony and I watched for a bit before getting my things together. When I was in high school I had discovered Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares so I had a weird sort of quasi-romantic image of… well, Argentina, really, but South America in general. Looking out at the skyline of the square as the troops moved in formation I felt nostalgia for something I really had no experience with, something that was about as real a memory as a Francesca Fiore/Bruno Puntz Jones sketch, but still, there it was. I suppose being in a perpetual state of semi-sleep-deprivation will do that to you.
We left the hotel and found a mototaxi to take us to the Blue Morpho office. Twenty minutes of spinal-adjustments and hanging on to our bags on the luggage rack through the back of the canopy later we arrived. The office really wasn’t much more than an open-air garage space holding two of the ubiquitous wooden buses and a separate room full of chairs and couches that currently held about thirty people. I sat on one of the couches while Sarah chatted with some of the others. I couldn’t really sort out whatever it was I was feeling… apprehension, impatience, a soul-crushing existential weariness? It was something in-between those. The room was friendly but guarded since everyone had their own personal reasons for being there, after all, though there was a certain survivors’ camaraderie you could sense between the repeat visitors. Eventually, forms filled out and money exchanged, we all clambered onto one of the two buses for the hour and a half drive into the jungle.
The woman sitting in front of me had the kind of face that said she’d chosen at some point to love people by default, and I realized I had known people like that before and for some reason always been wary of them. She turned around early in the ride and asked me where I was from and if I’d done this before. I answered and her face lit up, she’d come from Colorado but had lived briefly in Atlanta, so I answered a few questions about the city. She explained she was a frequent visitor to Blue Morpho but that this was her first time back in a few years, and then she lightly broached the subject of why I’d come. I gave her my ultra-slim “extreme depression” answer and she seemed genuinely excited for me to experience my first ceremony.
As we hit the edges of Iquitos our bus pulled off to the side of the road. The driver pulled out a wrench and I wondered if my daydream of being stranded and driving a mototaxi for the rest of my life was about to come true. Another man hopped on board with a large container of gasoline, though, and we were quickly moving again. It was a lonely road bordered by jungle and the occasional thatched roof. The air felt light and different and every now and again rain would fall into the windowless bus. My mood was no better but I understood, even so, that this was something new. I looked around at the others, the ones engaged in quiet, extended conversations and the ones who, like me, either stared out the window or occasionally glanced about. From behind me a guy leaned forward and made a quick remark, I laughed softly in response. Friendly, but guarded. I realized how badly those of us who’d never done this before stood out.
Finally, we turned left off the Iquitos-Nauta road onto a sloping dirt road, past a small lake and into the trees before coming to a stop on a concrete platform. In front of us was a small collection of thatched-roof bungalows tightly surrounded by the jungle forest and we were directed towards the largest and closest of them. Inside, an Australian named Malcolm gave us an overview of the rules and the upcoming schedule and let us know that lunch would be served soon. It was nearly noon and it would be our last meal until breakfast the next morning. Sarah and I went to our room, a small space divided off from a larger bungalow, with some shelves, a small table, and two single-sized mats inside a mosquito net tent. Tellingly, there were two round hospital pans next to the mats. The bungalow itself held three other rooms like this, as well as a sink and mirror, a shower and a toilet. We unpacked and headed back to the main building to eat.
Lunch was plain chicken with pasta, flavored with a mild spice that seemed to be in every single meal I had while I was in Peru. Still, it was more flavorful than I expected with the dietary restrictions we were under. Afterwards, Hamilton, a tall, blond, ex-Californian who was the owner of Blue Morpho and one of the two shamans who’d be presiding over the three ceremonies we’d be taking in total, came in. He settled into one of the lounge chairs and explained what we could expect over the next three days and answered some questions before eventually holding court with a smaller group of people who seemed to clearly be regular visitors. That left the newer among us to get back to the important work of nervously looking at each other without looking too hard, and asking questions that didn’t probe too deeply.
Sarah and I decided to head back up the dirt road to the small lake we passed, a spring-fed body of water that we’d been told was safe to swim in. Before we got there a small, skinny black and white dog came hopping towards us. There seemed to be dogs running loose everywhere in Peru so it was no shock to see one now, but she reminded me of my own dog at home. Worse, she made a pitiful sight in the heat, panting hard and her ribs showing through her narrow chest. Sarah remembered a packet of beef jerky in her bag from the flight (and we weren’t going to be allowed to eat it for at least a week) so we sat for a little while and fed her before continuing on to the lake.
Ever since I was young I’ve had a weird aversion to swimming in anything other than artificial pools, from some combination of living creatures darting between my legs, the sensation of my feet sinking into mud (or not finding the bottom at all) and the fact that I nearly drowned in the ocean once. Deep down I think the thing that disturbs me the most is not being able to see below the surface of the water. So, while Sarah wasted no time getting in I just sat at the edge of the covered dock and dangled my feet.
The first ceremony would be taking place at 6pm inside, appropriately, the ceremony building, a large circular affair with a conical roof. It had been suggested that we make ourselves familiar with the layout, in particular how to get to the bathrooms available in the back, before the ceremony began since we’d be in no shape at that point to figure that sort of thing out. So after drying ourselves off in our room we made our way towards the ceremony building… AND DESTINY!
Too much?
“Too much?”
Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
“Always the puppy… licking the face.” –Bruno Puntz Jones