In the Jungle

So many, many things to write about!!

Yesterday mornign, yoga at 6 am.  I was very bad at it.  It was so cool though because we did it in the hammock room, which is right by the dock and so peaceful in the morning.  It's all open so we can still hear all the animals, especially birds.  The is one bird in particular who has a very distinct sound, almost like a pebble dropping into water.  They live in nests that hang from trees with very few branches and look like a softball in a green sock.

After breakfast (which was again delicious) we went for a walk through the jungle.  There is no way I can possibly describe the beauty of it in words.  And it's not even beautiful for only its looks; it is beautiful in every sense - the way it feels, so humid, yet bearable even in long pants and long sleeve, the way it sounds, a harmony of bugs and leave and birds, the way it tastes, every fruit so unique, and the way it smells, so fresh and clean and completely invigorating.

Here are some of the really cool things we saw:
-a moth whose wingspan was as long as my palm
-blue morpha: a brilliantly blue butterfly
-wooly spider: which looks much like a tarantula, about the size of my palm
-sparrow-tailed moth: black with tealish green stripes and white along the back of its wings
-fer de lance: the second most vdeadly snake in the jungle here (there are four kinds deadly snakes here) half the group walked right by it and ne girl spotted it , so we got to watch our guide catch it.  And we all got to touch it -so cool!
-pigme marmoset: a monkey, very little and a light tan color
-secropia: a type of tree that if you don't have a clean water source, you can cut the root and drink water from that.  Our guide that one section of the root that was maybe 5 feet long and 8 inches in diameter (that's a guess, I'm not really sure how big the section was that he showed us) would provide 2 gallons of water!  He cut one small part of the root and we each got to drink from it.  It tasted like wood.

After lunch, we met two Shaman, who are medicine men.  There used to be more than 65 tribes here in the Amazon and each had their own Shaman.  After the Amazonians were enslaved during the rubber trade, many of the tribes got mixed up.  Their languages all intermixed with Spanish.  Now there are about 17 tribes (if I remeber correctly) and not all of them have a Shaman.  Some people still speak the native language but tribes communicate with eachother through a slang version of Spanish/  The two Shaman we met both spoke the Native languages of their respective tribes and one of them spoke English as well.  They taught us about some of the medicinal plants.  One that was really cool is called Dragon's Blood, which stops itching for bugs bites, heals wounds and is very good for your skin.  It is deep red and I may buy a bottle to bring back!

We also learned about Iowaska, a very powerful hallucinogen.  In order to become a Shaman, you have to drink this.  It comes from a plant called Ayahuasca, or Vine of the Soul.  he vine is mashed up and put into a bpot of water, where it boils for 12 hours.  Different Shamans may add different leaves to enhance the visions, but those leaves are not necessary for the experience.  The liquid itself looks like brown milk.  The effects begin about 20 - 30 minutes after you drink a shot of it.  When you hallucinate, you see rainbows and stars and pretty things for the first hour or two.  The drug also makes you very sick.  It is a laxative that helps clear out any intestinal parasites and it also makes you throw up.  After that, you see scary images like anacondas and jaguars and other jungle animals attacking you.  Then, you gain knowledge.  What type of thing/ plant you see or learn about it different for each person and can be different each time you drink the iowaska.  It is a type of spiritual journey; the effects of one shot last about 6-7 hours.  One of the Shamans told us that when he was learning to become a Shaman, his dad took him into the jungle for 4 months and he drank iowaska every Tuesday and Friday during that time.

We also got to see two different types of tarantulas, each about the size of my hand.  One lives in trees and one lives in the ground.  Soo happy I finally got to see not one, but two!!

After dinner, we had music and dancing!  I heard rumors that there will be more of that tonight.  Yay!

This morning I decided to skip yoga and sleep in til 7.  We had starfruit juice with breakfast - absolutely delicious.  We then travelled by boat to Raol's village, which is a 20 minute boatride.  The houses there mainly consist of a small living room, a very small sleeping space (everyone sleeps on the groud, there are no matresses) and a cooking area, which conatins an open fire, no oven, no refrigeration.  They drink the water straight from the river because they think it tastes better when it is not boiled, even though that kills the parasites.  There are only a few houses with electricity.  Raol showed us his house, which was very big and two stories.  They do have running water and even cable tv.  He said when he was younger, the families were much much bigger because it made men feel more macho and they had more workers.  Raol is the 13th of 16 children.  His father had three wives.  The first had 2 children, but was killed after being bitten by a fer de lance.  The second wife had 7 children but died in childbirth with the 7th, who also died.  The third wife had 10 children.  Raol said that the elementary school only went to 3rd grade so his brothers and sisters had to go elsewhere for more education, usually to Iquitos.  When he was older, he stayed with them and earned a college degree studying tourism.  Raol tried to sell his big empty house to a librarian but she decided that she was too frail to live in the jungle and sold it back to him.  If anyone is interested, or knows someone who is interested in buying a beautiful home down here in the Amazon, you may be in luck!

After a long hike through the woods looking at homes and chickens and cows (the people here are farmers and sell there meat ad fruit in the market in Iquitos for a living), we got to play soccer with the little children!  It was absolutely wonderful.  I can't even think of a single moment in my life where I felt happier.  A light rain began to fall but we played on, the children laughing a smiling and high-fiving us the whole time.  It's amazing how we couldn't communicate through words but we all fell completely in love.  When we were getting back on the boat to leave, the children ran down and jumped in the water next to us.  Dr. O was the first one back out of the bost and into the river.  Many of us followed suit and frolicked about in the Napo River with the village children.  They were climbing onto my shoulders and jumping off and we all just had a wonderful time splashing around in the water.  It was the most fun I have had in a very long time.  When we finally did have to leave, the children called out to us.,"Don't go!  Don't go!"

I know that some of you may be horrified at the thought of me swimming a river that is teeming with parasites and other unpleasant organisms.  I have heard that the water makes you very sick.  But I have decided that getting sick with diarrhea or a bellyache or vomitting or even malaria would not be the worst thing that could happen to me.  What would be the worst thing, I have decided, the absolute worst thing I could do, is to come here and not take advantage of every single opportunity I am given.  That is why I eat grubs and walk barefoot and pet snakes and swim in the river.  I want to experience all of it, everything, so that I may begin to understand a culture so different from my own.  I want to live in the moment, each moment, and experience it so fully that if I died right then and there it would hardly be a tragedy.  Nobody knows how many moments I have left, nobody knows how many moments you have left.  The world is at our fingertips, we can change it, make it better, love and preserve it.