—<\/p>\n
I was shaken up by his voice while I was lying and looking through the doors of our cabin. A new morning and a new place on a movement. River, trees, a couple of canoes.<\/p>\n
I was gathering the forces for getting up and getting my ass to the floor below. I had to pass through a couple of hundred hammocks filled by sleeping Peruvians. If they weren\u2019t sleeping, they were reading, eating, talking among themselves, or staring at a blank point. Or at me. Gringa<\/em>. I had some trouble of getting used to that nickname. Up to recently I thought that they only called Americans that way, but I was wrong. All strangers were gringos<\/em>. I didn\u2019t like that.<\/p>\n While I was washing my teeth, my eyes were fixed on a chicken bone and a small head of an onion. Still, it didn\u2019t repulse me, I got used to it. I was aware that sinks were used nearly for everything: for washing your teeth, washing baby\u2019s tushies and bowls. Later on, accompanied by a couple of women, even I scrubbed our dirty clothes. They would always look at me funnily and laugh at me. Maybe we were breaking their prejudices. I liked that.<\/p>\n Apart from the bathroom the most interesting place on the boat was the kitchen which was just next to the bathroom. The kitchen and lady\u2019s toilet. For ladies and anyone who felt like a lady. And there were many of those on our boat. A lot of womanized men. All of them worked in the kitchen. Their eyebrows were plucked out, their nails painted and they had very stylish haircuts. I should look up to them. They took care of themselves. They were nice and sociable. I noticed they were doing the prep for the lunch. Since I had plenty of time I washed my hands and helped them clean the platanos<\/em>.<\/p>\n The platanos were bananas. There were at least twenty kinds of bananas there. Each of them had a special name: platano manzana, isla, seda, capirona<\/em>…banana this, banana that. Some of them could be eaten as we usually do \u2013 fresh. Some of them were used in fruit juices. Some of them were meant to be cooked and they tasted similarly to the potatoes. Some of them could be grilled like sausages and then smashed and mixed with chopped bacon and eggs. Then they formed balls out of it and wrap them in a banana leaf. Some of them were sliced like zucchinis and fried. Those were used as a dessert. Also, you could make banana chips. Bananas were very common there and they could be prepared in all sorts of ways. They were cheap and multifunctional.<\/p>\n We peeled the green bananas and threw the remains in the river. There is something about the waste there. A waste bin wasn\u2019t a common sight. Nobody would give you a strange look if you peeled an orange and threw the remains on the ground; or if I ate a watermelon and spat the pits on the ground, and the remains threw wherever there were no people. They threw everything everywhere. And that was gross. But it was also liberating.<\/p>\n Time passes slowly while you are on a boat and when your area of movement is quite restricted; when you are waiting for an arrival to a certain destination. Nobody likes to wait for anything: a salary, a vacation, a return of a dear person, an e-mail, wait in a queue, or the arrival in a port. We can always count minutes, but it doesn\u2019t help, I\u2019ve checked it. What does help is fill your time with doing something and forget that we\u2019re actually waiting for something.<\/p>\n What I did was: write, re-do a shirt I\u2019d bought the previous day for 50 cents, make a necklace with a girl from the next cabin \u2013 one for me and one for her. She gave me a bracelet as a gift and taught me a few Spanish words. I ran in spot. I read, at least I tried to.<\/p>\n Usually you\u2019re not able to concentrate from all the noise of different Peruvian melodies. People around there, especially the younger ones, had an annoying habit of listening the music straight of their phones and not using the headphones. Apparently, they hadn\u2019t arrived in that part of the world yet.<\/p>\n At first Iquitos was a bit disappointing. It was a big noisy town with a bunch of tourists looking for something and full of local people, of course, always offering something, trying to sell you something in a very irritating way. Maybe we were the ones to blame. We obviously arrived there with some kinds of expectations that once again confirmed the rule \u2013 don\u2019t expect, just be open to everything.<\/p>\n We spent a few days \u2013 two \u2013 to be more precise, wandering around the town. We got to know its streets, local traders and, of course, two markets that were a non-stop inspiration for me.<\/p>\n Markets were the place to eat, sleep, bargain, steel \u2013 live.<\/p>\n Luckily, and the luck was obviously our fellow companion on the journey, we bumped into a couple of Croatians. Those were the first we met since we arrived to Peru. A drink, a story and we soon found out that those people had an estate in a small place \u2013 Tamshiyacu.<\/p>\n Maybe you could go with us?<\/em><\/p>\n Maybe we could!<\/em><\/p>\n So, now it\u2019s time for something that may people have heard of, and many, on the other hand, haven\u2019t \u2013 ayahuasca.<\/p>\n Ayahuasca \u2013 a healing plant, a teacher plant. You can hear and read about it all sorts of things. You can read that it\u2019s been in use for more than thousand years in the tribes in the Amazon forest, mostly for medical purposes, you can read about the hallucinations, about broadening your perception and consciousness under the influence of DMT, an active substance which is apparently released by the human epiphysis. Since everything, in a way, always repeats like in a circle, from the seasons to the fashion, in the same way the ancient knowledge and practices have become interesting and very appealing. The Western culture finds the inspiration in the East (or, in this case, in the South), while the Eastern world is aspiring to become more like the West and to adopt the Western lifestyle. Lately, many westerns have been coming to these parts of the world to ask the Plant<\/em> for the answers, ask her to heal them so they could be re-born.<\/p>\n Heh, I would always snigger at them \u2013 I didn\u2019t want to be judgmental and a sceptic, but hello? Can a plant give us the answers if you don\u2019t have them already somewhere deep within yourselves? My critical mind refused to succumb to other people\u2019s fascinations. There was also a certain amount of fear. Why, fear of what? I tried to understand it. Maybe it was the fear of the unknown \u2013 even though I like living without knowing what will happen next. However, this was different. Was it fear or maybe awe?<\/p>\n Whatever it was, my interest kept on growing bigger and bigger and it finally beat the fear. Before I could do anything we were on a peer from which the boat for Tamshiyacu was leaving.<\/p>\n Are we late?<\/em><\/p>\n No<\/em> \u2013 Tamara and \u017dac, the owners of the estate, said. They had fallen in love in this part of the world many years before. You\u2019re just in time. We\u2019re only waiting for the shaman<\/em>.<\/p>\n We exchanged looks waiting for that man.<\/p>\n I already created an image of that man in my thoughts: a man with a lot of jewellery, unusual and a bit scary. Naturally, the reality was completely different. The man who approached us was short, a bit older with a gentle expression on his face, wearing a shirt and a cap. He walked slowly, but proudly. He won our sympathies straight away. Everything is going to be okay.<\/p>\n After only an hour on the river we arrived to Tamshiyacu. The look on the huge estate of ten acres and a streak running through it and creating a small lake assured us that we were in the right place: that was what we were looking for, even though we didn\u2019t know what we were looking for. It happens quite often \u2013 even if you don\u2019t know you get to know it once you\u2019re there.<\/p>\n That streak and the lake would be our favourite place during the following few days. It was surrounded by palm trees and a lot of greenery, and there were the caba\u00f1as<\/em> \u2013 small houses with straw roofs. There were no windows, but they were replaced by nets as the first line of defence from the biggest parasites in the jungle \u2013 mosquitoes. There were a few trunks that were used as chairs; instead of a couch there was a wooden bench; there was a big sponge in the middle of the room that served as a bed and above everything there was the second line of the defence: a mosquito net. There was no electricity, no water, no network, no internet. Still, we didn\u2019t feel as we were missing something.<\/p>\n It would be a true paradise on earth, only if it wasn\u2019t hot as hell.<\/p>\n![\"174\"](\"https:\/\/tomislavperko.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/174.jpg\")
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