Monkey Business

About ten days passed, during which I decided to look for a cheaper and more permanent living situation. I grabbed a local newspaper and Jessica helped me call apartment after apartment. We would then hop on her scooter and zip around Cusco looking for a suitable room. I very nearly took a brand new apartment in a building that was still somewhat under construction. It was about $100 USD a month, and would have been perfect, hardwood floors, floor to ceiling windows... except I wasn’t allowed to cook in it.... and there was no hot water. Tempting.

I ended up with a different room closer to the historic district. This one allowed me to have a kitchenette, and yes, had hot water in the shower. A place to hang my Beatles poster, so to speak.

We took a car to Pisac the night I signed for it, to hold a small ceremony with Katie. We drove through the Sacred Valley and got to the town around 8pm. I sat in the truck bed as we drove out to the ceremonial space. It was dark but from the enormous silhouettes of the mountains around me, I could tell the scenery was spectacular. We stopped at a beautiful adobe villa, and set up for the ceremony in a small clay room.

Jessica mentioned that the cold and arid climate could potentially mute the effects of the medicine. Perhaps that is what happened. While my last experience had been the strongest to date, this one was by far the mildest. So mild in fact, that I didn’t notice any effects. At one point I heard Jessica whisper “Kat you’re snoring...” I had actually fallen asleep. I sat up, deeply embarrassed. For the rest of the ceremony, I remained awake but still received no noticeable effect. We woke up the next morning to chicken soup and to this view.

Jessica gave me shit for falling asleep (and rightfully so). I came to Peru to learn, but there I was, a disinterested student snoring in the back of the class. I felt horrible about it and was determined to never let it happen again. Still I thought it odd, what occurred or rather DIDN’T occur during the ceremony. Had I learned all I could from Ayahuasca? That didn’t seem possible.

We returned to the jungle a couple of days later. There was no official retreat this time, so we took public transit. As we sat on the crowded bus Jessica pulled out a large bag of dark brown bananas. She was determined that we finish them all before they were totally rotten. While they seemed past that point to me, I decided it best not to argue, and begrudgingly ate the mushy fruit.

Driving into the jungle I realized that Carnival was still being celebrated in these little towns. It had blown through Cusco a few weeks earlier. From what I could tell it involves adolescents, children and tourists spraying white foam and throwing water balloons at the opposite sex in some sort of odd courtship ritual.

There are also trees set up with presents tied to them. Children dance around the trees with an ax and take turns chopping them down, like more dangerous take on a pinata.

While I had been foamed in the face a few times in Cusco, I mostly managed to avoid getting wet. As we drove into this small jungle town, children attempted to throw buckets of water through the open bus windows. When we reached Pillcopata we checked into a hostel. The large room had concrete floors, but was nicer than I was anticipating. We left our bags, then began walking through the little town to locate our driver for the following day. We were going to the nearby Queros community, but needed to hire private transportation to get there. As we were crossing the town square, a small motorized vehicle packed with teenage boys pulled up. They took turns pelting me with water balloons, including one incredibly forceful hit to the groin. They sped off laughing. Soaking wet and slightly sore, I continued trailing Jessica through the town square.

When we met our driver he informed us that a landslide had occurred on our route, and depending on the weather would either be cleared out or worse the following day. We walked to get dinner and passed one of the “present trees” where I got smacked with another water balloon. The liquid smelled a little strange, and I wondered if it was in fact water. When we got back to the hostel I went to take a shower, but it wouldn’t turn on. I gave up and went downstairs to where Jessica was outside smoking mapacho. I asked if I could join her and she gave me a cigarette advising me not to inhale the dark jungle tobacco. Across the street someone was playing loud music, a woman singing almost screeching in Quechua. The owners of the hostel were blasting a blockbuster alien movie, and I could hear the extraterrestrial speaking Spanish in a warbly voice.

We sat on a curb in front of her room and had a long conversation. She talked about the role of an ayahuasquera and how rough it is to take on other people’s baggage during a ceremony. We spoke of uncontacted tribes and whether it’s better for them to remain uncontacted. We talked about whether aliens (if they exist), have the same conversation about humans. The answer in both cases, seemed to be about the right to self-determination, provided the one making contact is benevolent.

As I went to unlock my room, it sounded like someone was taking a shower inside. Sure enough the water had turned on while I had been downstairs, and had flooded the bathroom. Fortunately it was all concrete floors and drains. As I documented the day in my journal I heard a noise, like a small bird fluttering around the room. Slowly I turned to see the biggest cockroach I’d ever laid eyes on flying around sporadically. It crawled into the curtains and disappeared. I debated hunting it down, but decided to just let it be and hope it didn’t bother me during the night. After all it was far too big to crawl inside of my ear (my usual worry about roaches).

There was a violent storm that night. It poured and the walls of the hostel shook from the thunder. We had a makeshift breakfast of bread and even browner and mushier bananas, then checked out. We found the man who was going to drive us to Queros passed out in his store front. After he sobered up a little we hopped into his truck. Because of the storm, the landslide was worse, so first we drove to commission a tractor to clear the way. Then from what I could tell, we seemed to cruise around the entirety of Pillcopata so the driver could say “buenas dias” to every single man, woman and child in town. This went on an excruciatingly long time, and I’m not entirely sure why. Finally we headed out, but had to stop at the mudslide and wait for the tractor to arrive and clear a path. It took a couple of hours.

Once the road was cleared we drove on, stopping at some petroglyphs along the way. The old man who oversaw the sight seemed thrilled to have visitors, and excitedly showed us the way to the monolithic rock.

He led us around pointing out the beautiful and ancient carvings. The huge boulder stood unnaturally in a clearing as though dropped from the sky by aliens.

At one point we needed to cross a river, and one of our passengers (a teenage boy) had to wade through it to give us an estimate of the water level. We decided the pick-up truck could make it, but lifted our bags off of the floor in case it flooded.

We reached the Queros community and took a tour of the tiny village. A woman who drove with us offered to make us lunch, but we had to head back to Pillcopata in order to catch the bus to Salvacion.

When we got back to town, we took the same rickety bus as last time. We checked into the same hostel, and ate more of the same soupy bananas. The next morning we hopped back aboard the shaky bus, this time towards Shintuya.

When we got there we were greeted by the Parign Hak crew. We took a long hike through a piece of property that Jessica was considering moving to in the future. In the afternoon we returned by boat to prepare for Allison’s 10th birthday party. Allison is one of Jessica’s many friends in Shintuya and was in need of some cheering up and a good party.

It was a hearty gathering for such a small town, perhaps 15 people or so. After dinner Jessica placed a few candles in a round loaf of bread she’d purchased earlier. We sang happy birthday in Spanish and then the two of us sang it again in English. She received some presents; a pair of shoes, a book, some hair clips. I brought her a box of colored pencils and a notebook anticipating the event. She seemed thrilled with all of it.

Jessica later told me, it was probably one of the only birthdays Allison had that was actually acknowledged. I thought back to the U.S. and how I’ve seen kids freak out if they didn’t get a mountain of presents, or the right toy. This little girl was so happy with bread and shoes.

We slept at Vicky’s house, right across the road from Allison's. It poured all through the night and the next morning the river had risen substantially. After breakfast I spent about 3 hours attempting to help Steve pull seeds out of cotton, while he attempted to help me learn Spanish. I went upstairs to the room Jessica and I were sharing. She wanted to show Vicky and Alberto the logo my parents had designed for their website. As they were looking at my phone my eyes wandered to something scurrying around in the rafters. It was a small reddish monkey, a Saddleback Tamarin. Hesitant at first, he soon plopped himself onto my bed grinning at me with sharp little teeth.

                                                 

I was the only one who was surprised. He was the neighbor's pet, and apparently he stopped by frequently for a visit. He wouldn’t stay still for very long. He did somersaults, chewed on my phone case, and hugged my arm. Outside he started crawling up my pant leg, which was cute at first, but less and less comfortable the higher he climbed. Maybe I smelled like bananas...

There was also a bizarre feather-less chicken. An actual breed I was told, and not just a "freak of nature". The other chickens didn’t seem to think so, and ostracized him, perhaps because of his brash nakedness.

There was to be a ceremony that night. Once again it was me, Jessica and a fairly large group of native Harakmbut people from the community. When we got off the boat at Parign Hak, we realized the entire place had been flooded. The river had risen so high that mud came up through the floorboards and into the rooms.

When we were situated we put on gum boots and set out into the dark towards the maloka. The path, now extremely muddy and flooded in parts seemed even more treacherous than normal. The bridge was submerged and I stepped blindly into the water, hoping not to fall off. I wondered to myself... when did I became so adventurous? There was a time when I was afraid to leave my apartment in California.

Inside the maloka we chewed coca leaves and smoked mapacho. After drinking the repulsive brew, I braced myself, ready for the possibility of having my ass handed to me, and prepared to apologize profusely to the plant spirit for falling asleep. However once again the effects were mild to the point of being undetectable. I stayed awake for the duration of the ceremony, then fell asleep when it was over, disappointed.

I relayed the night to Jessica the next morning, confused by the apparent lack of effect. She asked me if I had any expectations. I couldn’t think of any at first, but realized later that I was expecting it to knock me on my ass like the last time we were in the jungle. She told me that just because I didn’t notice any effects the night before, didn’t mean there weren't any. I took a long nap, and awoke to find everyone gone except Jessica. We chopped down a apple banana tree and feasted on the bounty of manzanitas that came with it. A couple of hours later Vicky and Alberto arrived and we took the boat back to Shintuya.

The next morning as we prepared to leave the jungle, I heard a commotion outside. Jessica and I looked out the window, and there was a man in a black suit across the road talking to Allison’s mother. With him were three huge pure-bred German Shepherds barking hysterically. It was a Dominican Missionary. Jessica remarked that he was afraid to walk around the town without his large dogs for protection. She also commented that his dogs eat better than many of the people there. I looked up and saw Allison in the second story window, smiling down at us. We waved goodbye.