Author Archives: greatgeology

Excess Baggage 

Posted on by under CaminodeSantiago

There’s nothing like hiking every day for 2 months to make you realise how much every little thing you are carrying in your bag can weigh you down. Something on its own may feel like it won’t make a difference, but out a few of these things together and it quickly starts to add up! Over long distances these little items can have a huge impact, slowing you down significantly during the day and taking a physical toll on your body. It only took a few days into my hike to start to question the nessecisity of every item in my bag. In reality, I could get rid of all my clothes and hike the Camino as a nudist! Well, let’s just say thankfully for all the other pilgrims on the trail I never got to that extreme. 

On my fifth day of hiking I hobbled into the hostel to be greeted by a group of 3 other pilgrims, one person with an insanely large and very heavy 85L backpack (this actually was the person I had met before briefly at the train station), and two other people who had somehow ended up with the task of sorting through his backpack and getting rid of what he didn’t need. This was the motivation I needed to sit down and take a good look and what I had in my backpack and make some hard cuts. After some intense internal debates, I managed to cut out over 2kg, which included some items near and dear to me, my flat iron (no one should see me without this!) and one of my two non-guidebooks, The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coehlo. My cuts were not nearly as entertaining as the stuff that ended up being cut from the other guys 85L bag, which to name a couple items included a Pilates ball and a dictaphone. He ended up shipping ahead over 7kg of stuff, though still seemed adamant that he needed two iPhones and an iPad!

The more I walked the more I realised how not only did excess physical baggage significantly impede the process, but excess emotional baggage did as well. It is easy when you are walking all day to get caught up in your thoughts. Sometimes this can be positive; maybe having insights into an aspect of your life, or remembering important things like the fact that Mother’s Day is coming up and you need to remember to call home. At other times though, these thoughts can be negative and downright draining. For myself, and probably the majority of the population of the world, I seemed to love bringing up past memories and situations that had upset me and would end up stewing and rehashing them over and over in my head when there was nothing on the trail to distract me.

 I remember one day when I struggled to walk 16 km! There was no physical excuse why it took me all day to walk such a short distance, the path was flat on dirt pathways, and on other days I had easily covered 20+ km. The only difference was my emotional state, I had chose that day to rehash a confusing and challenging relationship in my life that I knew had far outrun its course, yet a large and loud part of me was not ready to admit defeat and move on. Also, trying to admit defeat and move on was made even harder by the fact that the other person refused to acknowledge my feelings that things had changed for the worse, instead playing the victim and making me feel guilty that I should feel the way I felt at all. I spent the majority of my walking time that day stuck in the past, replaying things I said or did, what things they said or did, and wondering what might be if I had done certain things differently. It was amazing to find that I was putting so much mental energy into the situation that it was draining my physical energy. As soon as I recognised that, I recognised that I needed to change it, I could not be wasting so much mental energy on rehashing the past when I was over halfway through my year off and still hadn’t made much headway with my intentions. With all the brain power that was going to waste, if I had used it more effectively I could probably have come up with a solution for world hunger in a matter of days. 

As I was cleaning out my bag, I came across the book “The Pilgrimage” by Paulo Coehlo, and though I ended up leaving this book at the hostel to reduce my pack weight, I had a quick skim through first. In this book the author describes their own Pilgrimage 30 years ago that they did, including descriptions of mental exercises for self improvement done while walking the Camino. I had been doing a couple of the exercises as a went along in order, and funnily enough just as I realised I had this negative thought process that needed to be changed, the next exercise was one designed to curb exactly that. Described as the “cruelty exercise,” it was the practice of once noticing yourself having a negative or detrimental thought digging your fingernail into your nail bed to cause pain, continuing to do so until the thought passed. The pain was meant to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual harm you were doing to yourself with these negative thoughts. Or as pshycologists would call it, using negative reinforcement to change an undesired behaviour.

While this exercise didn’t stop negative thoughts from coming, it did help me to distance myself from them and not get myself caught up in thoughts that were just rehashing the past. With this, I was able to see the situation as it existed currently; not seeing it through the lenses of the good times of the past, or rehashing the past wondering if I had said this or done this differently things would be different. As I began to see the relationship for what it was at the present time, I realised it was dying and there was nothing I could say or do to change that, especially when the other person was either in denial about the situation or was of the personality type that avoided conflict, and would rather ignore the situation until it eventually disappeared on its own than have a honest conversation.  

Growing up on a farm I had to learn the hard way, that sometimes no matter how much you love something the humane thing to do is to put it out of its suffering, rather than prolong the inevitable. I could finally see clearly the inevitable in this situation, and to put an end to my suffering I had to pull the trigger and completely cut this person out of my life. The day after I finally made this decision, I walked close to 30 km and felt like I could have kept going.

I Have No Idea What I Am Doing

Posted on by under CaminodeSantiago

Three days before my planned start date, I figured it was as good of time as any to crack open the guidebook I had carried with me for the past three months to see what this Camino business was all about. I was lucky, had I opened the guidebook any sooner than 3 days before starting, I probably would’ve talked myself out of going.

Now I am not much of a hiker to begin with, and can actually count the number of true hikes I have been on with one hand. I prefer a bit faster method of transportation, either horseback or cycling, and though I had a fairly good idea of how many kilometres I could cycle a day, I had no idea how what was a doable daily walking distance with a large backpack. The first leg of my Camino from Lisbon to Santiago in total would be just over 600km, which the guidebook had divided into 23 days of walking, around 25 km each day. The first few days of walking were close to or over 30 km in length. Taking into consideration that I knew I could cycle 30 km in a couple hours, it seemed reasonable that I could hike 30 km in 8+ hours, and I even began to plan a little bit how I could get to Santiago in 21 days instead of the guidebook recommended 23.

The guidebook also recommended to carry about 10% of your body weight, with an aboslute maximum of 10 kg. I had dumped a fair bit of stuff with my sister when we met up in Spain, and when I had my final bag weigh at the airport to fly to Lisbon it was 13 kg. Really, how much could 3 kg (closer to 5 with food and water) matter I thought, dismissing my knowledge that in horse racing every pound can slow down a horse significantly, and that’s over a distance that is 1/30th of what I would be walking. As I was sitting contemplating the weight of my pack, a flash of brilliance came to my mind. The guidebook said 10% of your body weight… Soooo, if I just gained some weight in the coming days it could be within the recommendation value. Though I quickly dismissed this flash of “brilliance” as idiotic when some quick mental math revealed I would need to double my body weight for my pack to be close to 10% (not to mention the fact that the additional body weight would only add to the problem). Regardless, I went to McDonalds that night and bought a McFlurry.

The first day I began my Camino was with a 28 km leg, with literally no places between to stop and sleep if I so desired, unless I was willing to spend my first night stealth camping in the industrial o and somewhat sketchy outskirts of Lisbon. With my previously mentioned estimation of my hiking ability and speed, I didn’t see the need to start off from the Lisbon Cathedral until around 10AM. Walking the Camino was part of my “holiday,” and I have a thing about not setting an alarm or getting up before I want to when I am on holiday. Just before stopping for lunch I caught a glimpse of another pilgrim, and the Camino app I had downloaded had kilometre tracking which said I had walked about 14km so I figured I was making really good time! I would soon realise that the app had a major bug, that resulted in its tracking overestimating the traveled distance by almost double! By the time 6PM rolled around I was sore and exhausted, and google maps indicated I still had 5km to go! Those last 5 km might as well have been 100 km for as long as it felt it took me to finish them. It was getting dark as I neared the hostel, two cars stopped to ask if I needed a ride, but I was determined to finish the day. I rolled into the hostel at 8:30PM, just as the other pilgrim I glimpsed earlier in the day was checking in. We both had severely underestimated how long that day was going to take.. She was a bit better off though, as her backpack was only 9 kg!

The next day was another 28 km day, and seeing as I clearly did not learn any lessons on my first day, I started out only marginally earlier at 9:30AM (to my defence I did beat the other pilgrim out)! The day would prove even more challenging than the previous day as a) I had a lot less energy and my muscles were a lot more sore than my first day, and b)it decided to pour rain the entire day. I quickly found out that my “waterproof” hiking boots were not waterproof at all, and should have been labelled as water absorbent for how wet my feet were in a matter of minutes. This slowed down my walking considerably. It seemed that the day was taking a toll on other pilgrims as well, in the afternoon at a remote train station, as I searched for a bathroom I crossed paths with an Australian pilgrim who was calling it quits for the day and taking a train to the next town. I was determined to walk the whole thing and could not be swayed into hopping on the train, though if it had been a few hours later in the day I probably would have! Funnily I would run into this pilgrim a few days later and end up hiking almost the entire way to Santiago (at times unwillingly) with them.

 At 6PM I arrived into a small town 6km before the next hostel in the guidebook. Soaked, exhausted and starving, I stopped at the first restaurant. Knowing that another 6 km would take at least two hours, before I decided to order I asked in my broken Spanish (close enough to Portuguese right?) if there was a hostel in the town as the guidebook did not have one listed. They pointed across the street and from what I could understand, told me the third building down had rooms. With that knowledge I settled in for a meal and a hot tea. After an hour I had built up enough energy to walk to the other side of the road and find the hostel, but to my dismay it didn’t exist!! In hindsight I realised that they may have been giving me directions to the other restaurant not a hostel, but why they would tell me where their competitors were I don’t quite understand. Getting a bit desperate as at that point there was no way I would be walking another 6 km, I began to ask people on the street if there was somewhere to stay in the town. I would finally have a bit of luck on my side that day, as one person I asked ended up having keys to the community hall. Though it didn’t have a bed or shower it was shelter, and I got to test out my immensely heavy -7 sleeping bag and thermarest ground mat that were taking up most of the space and weight in my bag! I had quickly learned two important things in my first two days on the Camino, 1) there was no way I would be hiking 30 km every day, and 2) only stop in towns that have at least two hostels listed in the guidebook! I quickly changed my attitude about getting to Santiago in 21 days, and in the end it would actually end up taking me 27 days!

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Age is Just a Number

Posted on by under Adventure Travel, camino de santiago, CaminodeSantiago, Hiking, spain, travel

When I was planning on taking this year off to travel the world, a few things indicated to me that I needed to do it sooner or later if I was to accomplish anything in my life. Albert Einstein had achieved his greatest discoveries at the age of 24, I remembered reading an article stating that if people that were more successful in their lives had achieved this success early on, that neurologically ones brain decreased it’s overall capacity as one left their twenties, and then there was the astrological “return of Saturn” that happens around when someone turns 28 which is supposed to be when they can make great changes in their lives.  Now I can’t attest that these were reliable sources that I obtained this information from, regardless I felt since I had yet to accomplish anything at 27, I was most definitely headed for a life of mediocrity if I didn’t make a big change soon.

Just before I left for Spain, I decided to do alittle more digging into the person that inspired this stop: Paulo Coehlo. I knew that he had hiked the Camino and that while walking it he had a spiritual awakening, which would lead him to his career in writing writing the worldwide bestselling book The Alchemist just two years after walking the Camino. What I didn’t know was that he had hiked the Camino at age 39! It wasn’t until he was 41 that he even published a book, then becoming a best selling author. Turns out my idea that anyone over 30 that hadn’t found their dream was destined for mediocrity was very, very incorrect. It was something I needed to believe at the time to make me push forward and actually follow through with this trip. In reality age is just a number, anyone at any time in their life can make a big change, chasing their dreams, searching for passion and meaning in their life. Recently I saw a video on Facebook outlining the lives of some well known celebrities like Oprah and Morgan Freeman, and how they failed numerous times before achieving success in their fields later in life.

Now, as I say that age is just a number and anyone at any time in their life can decide to go off in search of their passion and dreams, there will always be those who argue the opposite. This happens a lot of times when I describe my trip to people, they say “Oh I wish I was young and I could do something like that, but I can’t because of this, this, this,  and this…” or “do it now, as you won’t be able to later.” In the words of Henry Ford, “If you think you can or you can’t, either way you are correct.” Going off in search of passion and dreams is not easy for anyone at any age, it just may require a different set of sacrifices for a 27 vs 40 year old, and it won’t necessarily involve a year off like mine. I do think with age is does become harder mentally to seek this change, as by then the brain is comfortable in more routines and structures. I’ve heard people use the excuse that they can’t change now as they’ve spent the last 15 or so years working the same job, it would be a waste of that time they have invested. What’s more of a waste, is wasting any more time on it if it is not something you love to do. Then comes the excuse of kids… I’m of the opinion that a kid will grow up a more successful and functioning adult being raised by parents who are happy and fulfilled, rather than if they are sent to private schools, expensive sports training and classes while the parents sacrifice their happiness and wellbeing to pay for these things. I was lucky to be raised by parents that loved what they did for work. As kids we never got the latest and greatest of anything; younger me probably saw this as a huge travesty, but as an adult I’m glad my parents raised us this way. For every excuse someone gives me that they think “stops” them from being able to pursue their passion, I’m certain I can find someone with the same limitation who made it work. I remember reading something a long time ago that stuck with me, saying that if you were given the opportunity to switch lives with anyone in the world, no matter how rich, successful, or happy you may think them to be, if you actually knew about all the challenges people faced in their life, you would never choose to switch lives, and would choose to keep your own life with its difficulties and challenges. The moral of the story, everyone has to face their own challenges, and you can either play victim thinking how you can’t accomplish anything as everyone else somehow has it easier than your situation, or you can take control and realise that you have the power to face your challenges and achieve anything. But one has to have courage to do so, it is easier for people to play the victum and give up on their dreams before even starting, as it means they will never face the risk of failure and heartbreak. Deciding to go on a quest to change ones life is a scary business, what is even scarier is the potential of putting all the effort and sacrifice into that quest and having nothing change. One has to be willing to take that risk, or spend their lives talking about what could have been…

As I hiked the Camino, it further installed this knowledge that anyone at any age at any time can seek to change their lives. I was mildly surprised to find that the majority of the walkers were middle aged or older (and frankly, they were able to well out-walk me by miles!). Wikipedia describes a pilgrimage such as the Camino as “a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance,” and whether it was their prime intention or not, those that had sacrificed a month of their time and home comforts to hike hundreds of miles on the Camino were on a pilgrimage to change some aspect of their lives. On my way I met a few people who were hiking the Camino for a second or third time. When I asked why, some told me that walking the the Camino before had significantly changed their lives, and while others were less sure how it impacted them, they found themselves drawn back to hike it yet again.

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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Posted on by under Peru

In this blog post I will touch on 2 important and often misunderstood topics regarding ayahuasca: integration when you leave the jungle and the growing dangers of working with ayahuasca in South America and the precautions tourists need to be taking. 

A fact of life is that all things, good or bad will come to an end. The same holds true when working with ayahuasca, there comes a point where you have to leave and go back to your home, job, family, etc. If you thought the experiences I had in the Amazon described in my prior posts were hard, they have nothing on the hard work that starts the moment you leave. It’s one thing to be healed and find enlightenment in the Amazon, but it’s useless if a person cannot learn to integrate it into their daily lives. Many people will leave the Amazon healed, but when they return to their daily lives they stumble and fall back into old habits and thought processes, myself included. Cynics will immediately dismiss the healing properties of ayahuasca when this happens, stating if it’s such a miracle cure why do some people have to go back again?

I myself struggled with this, I had worked with ayahuasca since 2012 yet this past year while completing a MSc I developed anxiety and depression. There are many claims and I have met a few people who have had their depression healed with ayahuasca so I was very confused. I never had depression or anxiety before, so how I could develop depression after working with ayahuasca? I became frustrated and started to believe that my trips to the Amazon were a waste of money and time. I was concerned that ayahuasca  was ultimately turning into the same life-prescription pill, treating the symptom but never truly getting rid of the source of the illness for me. Before I left on this trip, I had decided that this was to be my last shot with ayahuasca, if it didn’t work I was moving on. Now looking back, I understand that my idea of what healing for me would be, that it was a black and white process where I was either healed of what I came down to be healed from or I wasn’t, and that there was nothing inbetween was a very incorrect view of how the healing process works.

In western society we hold onto this idea that there is an “optimal” state to reach in life whether it be getting a certain job, getting married or reaching a certain weight, and that once we reach this steady state we will live out the rest of our lives in happiness and peace. Now even looking at this idea of a steady or optimal state with basic chemistry shows how unfeasible it is. We know that a chemical reaction reaches a steady state once it is in equilibrium between its products and reactants, this equilibrium is based on not only the base characteristics of the products and reactants in the equation (equilibrium constants), but also a result of their concentration and the pressure and temperature of the system. A steady state with an unchanging equilibrium can only be reached in a closed system, a system where no change in reactants, temperature, pressure, or concentration occurs. The fact of life is, that unless one runs off into isolation in the Himalayan Mountains, life will never be a closed system and reaching a steady state is an impossibility. Things will constantly be changing in life; relationships, health, careers, family, etc. that will shift the reaction so we constantly have to work towards finding balance. 

I had this steady state ideal regarding my healing, and after my previous trips when after returning home for a few months I would start to see old patterns emerge again I would immediately feel that I had lost everything thing I had worked at in my time in the Amazon. If things weren’t exactly how I wanted them to be, then I had wasted my time. I failed to notice the changes within myself not directly related to my healing intention, that I had transformed from a shy, introverted person, to someone with confidence. I remember being amazed when people at my work who I didn’t have much of a personal relationship with and  didn’t know what I was doing on my trips to South America, would comment on the differences they noticed in my demeanor and working style since returning from the Amazon.  Even though my healing is not the linear progress that I want it to be, it does have an overall upward trend. There are always going to be some points where I take a few step backwards, but that is a function of the constant changes in life. I’m starting to see that it’s not just about reaching some end point, but enjoying the journey that my search for healing has taken me on. I would have never traveled to Peru and done the crazy things I have done or met the amazing people I have if I didn’t have the need to seek out alternative healing. Maybe I will always have to travel back to Peru time after time to get myself re-set, or maybe I will slowly get better at keeping myself balanced on my own and reach a point where ayahuasca is no longer part of my life. Who knows, but I will enjoy the ride and where it takes me while I need to be on it.

Now to my second topic point of this blog: the dangers of ayahuasca and precautions tourists should be taking. In recent years interest in ayahuasca has exploded, tourists from all over the world are flocking to South America to partake in ceremonies, willing to pay the price of a Peruvians average weekly wage to sit in one ceremony with 10-40 other participants. With this tourist influx comes two main problems that are leading to increasing numbers of ayahuasca associated fatalities; 1. Untrained “Shamans” emerging, drawn to host ceremonies to take advantage of tourists and their money and, 2. Differences in culture and expectations resulting in  significant and sometimes dangerous miscommunication between legitimate Shamans and westerners.

The first problem, of untrained shamans emerging solely to take advantage of tourists, is the simpler of the two problems for someone traveling to South America to experience ayahuasca to avoid. The Internet holds a wealth of information, and despite ayahuasca’s questionable legality people are very eager to share their experiences, whether on forums, Facebook groups, or blogs.  Discussions and reviews on the good, the bad, and the downright ugly shamans and retreat centres are only a couple keystrokes and a click away. I will not go into all the details of what to expect with a good shaman vs a bad shaman, but will share three main things to look for that with my experience indicate a quality shaman or retreat center. 1. There should be an importance placed on the diet. They should recommend a pre-diet to follow ranging from anywhere between 1 week to 1 month prior to arrival, and a post-diet period after leaving the center. Details on the diet can be found in my prior blogs. 2. They should be working with other plants on a day to day basis, not just ayahuasca or other hallucinogenic plants such a as San Pedro or Toe. These plants are often referred to as master plants, and are prescribed by the shaman to help you with your intention. Again in my prior blogs I go into more information on the master plants. Finally, 3. There should be a sufficient number of shamans and facilitators in each ceremony for how many people are partaking. Personally I think minimum there should be 1 shaman for every 10 participants, and ceremonies should not have much over 20 people. Other people may be comfortable with less or more people, it is a personal preference that one should keep in mind when deciding where to go.  

The second problem arising is that even with the best shamans, there is a cultural disconnect that can result in serious repercussions by either 1. The Shaman not understanding or having any way to know what westerners are doing and bringing with them to the Amazon, and 2. Westerners either placing too much or too little power on the Shaman’s recommendations. Westerners fail to realize that things like antidepressants and vitamin pills can cause serious side effects with ayahuasca, and a Shaman may not directly warn against the use of these substances as in their world these things are not very common. Just because something is not on the restricted list does not mean you can take it. Anything beyond the food being served at the center, should discussed with and given the OK by the shaman. The other cultural disconnect comes from the tourist,  where either they give too much or too little power to the recommendations of the shaman. I’ve seen people who will come down and tell the shaman what they want to do rather than heed the advice of the shaman and wonder why they are not getting any results, and then their are the people who will take what the shaman says as gold, which I think is far more dangerous. When I first started working with ayahuasca I was like this, and willing to do whatever if the shaman said it would help (only in regards to plant medicines, that there are shamans out there taking sexual advantage of people on a similar premise is a different topic), which for me usually meant drinking more ayahuasca when I didn’t want to. I had to realize that while sometimes it’s important to listen to the shamans advice, sometimes you have to listen to yourself. I do believe that ayahuasca can affect some people stronger   than others especially westerners, which shamans don’t quite understand as in their culture ayahuasca has been drunk for generations and I think that they have physically adapted over time to drink it. Similar to when alcohol was introduced to the North American natives, they were unable to tolerate drinking it at the same levels as the Europeans. 

A recent ayahuasca related death of a American woman hit close to home for me as it was with the shaman that I first worked with when starting ayahuasca. While people were quick to deem the shaman as malicious, as someone knowing the shaman and the facilitator I think it was more likely a result from the cultural disconnect I described above. The type of ceremony performed by this shaman is a bit different than the average ayahuasca ceremony, where instead of drinking a shot of concentrated ayahuasca, you drink liters of dilute tea made from only the vine component of ayahuasca (it does not include the leaves that contain the hallucinogenic compound in ayahuasca DMT). I remember the first time I partook in this ceremony well, everyone was supposed to drink until they vomited and then drink some more and repeat the process until physically unable to continue. Some people drank 20+ bowls, I however could only get through 2.5 bowls even though the shaman was there telling me to drink more! The little I drank left me unable to walk, very sensitive to sound and sight, with no idea where I was, and vomiting up pure bile for hours. I was lucky as I managed to make it to a bathroom which I refused to leave as it was one place that shut out the sights and sounds and felt somewhat safe. Those who had drunk far more didn’t have near the effects that I suffered. 

When I heard about the recent death in this type of ceremony I had to wonder if the same might have befallen me had I listened to the shaman and kept drinking. Is it possible that me and her are rare cases that are over sensitive to ayahuasca, but unlike my experience did she heed the shamans advice to drink, drink, drink, resulting in her reaching a state where she was forcefully throwing herself on the ground repeatedly resulting in a broken neck? For myself, I have worked with three different shamans, and two out of those three shamans told me to drink more ayahuasca when I was struggling physically and mentally everytime I drank. The third however told me not to drink, that ayahuasca was not helpful for me at that point and my experience with that shaman ended up being the most profound (more on this in in my previous blogs). For anyone considering working with these shamans, it is important to remember that shamans are much like doctors, sometimes their prescriptions that worked for someone else won’t work for the next person.  Just because they work on an energy plane that most people cannot see does not mean that they can see everything that is wrong with you and know exactly what needs to be done, sometimes there is trial and error. You as a patient have to be aware and active in the process.

My final word of advice to anyone considering going to South America for ayahuasca is to take a good hard look and why you are seeking this experience. If you are in anyway looking to “trip balls,” just stay home. These types of ayahuasca tourists make it more dangerous  for those legitimately trying to heal themselves with ayahuasca. It’s becoming a selling point for Shamans to have the “strongest” brews, often mixing in other plants so tourists have the trip they are looking for. A recent death in December showed the results of this quest for a big trip,  ending with  a tourist fatally stabbing their friend who attacked them while under the influence of an ayahuasca brew mixed with leaves of the coca plant. Traditionally shamans were the only ones who drunk ayahuasca in a ceremony and those seeking healing did not, and whether or not you have a big trip has little do do with the healing you recieve. Take it from someone who has never had the big DMT light show or talked with aliens, but still managed to find healing. 

Awakening

Posted on by under Uncategorized

At the center they had a testimonial book that had recently been started. Two out of the five testimonials that had been written so far described that the person had come to take ayahuasca to have some type of spiritual awakening, but they found healing instead. For me, things happened the complete opposite. I came down to the Amazon seeking only healing, and I received a spiritual awakening.

I remember the ceremony when it happened well, it was my first time drinking ayahuasca in over a month as my dieta with Manchinga had closed and the Shaman decided I was physically strong enough now to take ayahuasca. I was over half-way into my stay and getting a bit frustrated with the lack of progress I had made with my intention, I felt at times I was only getting worse. As I sat down in ceremony I decided I was going to focus completely on my intention no matter what happened, even if I was vomiting, shitting my pants, or frothing at the mouth, I was determined not to let my thoughts stray from my intention the whole night.

When it was my turn to go up the the Shaman to drink, I determinedly marched over and without my usual hesitation, gulped the cup down immediately as it was handed to me. For once the brew actually tasted palatable, tasting almost like molasses. I returned to my mat, firmly placing my ass, determined to sit upright for the entire ceremony. I placed the rocks that the Shaman had given me previously beside me within arms reach, and focused on my intention to be healed as I waited for the effects of the ayahuasca to come on.

The effects came on like many of my prior ceremonies, with strong feelings of naseua but no vomiting. I remember thinking, how is this healing me, and for the first time in all of my ayahuasca ceremonies I actually heard the voice of another consciousness than my own replying and it said that I was asking the wrong question. As the ceremony progressed I continued to hold onto my intention, repeating it over and over in my head like a mantra. I could feel something was happening within my brain, though it was at a level beyond the part of my brain focused on my intention, my consciousness had two parts. The part of my consciousness focused on my intention seemed small and incapable, almost like a child compared to this other part. I could sense the presence of the consciousness of ayahuasca as well, it and my larger consciousness were working on something, something that was beyond my linguistic comprehension.

I’m not sure how long this went on for, but all of a sudden I had the feeling that my higher consciousness had just passed some sort of test, a really important test. I was transported to a file room where this important test I had just passed was stored, the file cabinent was massive and only two previous passed tests from this lifetime were there, and I had remembered that I had accessed this room before though at the time was not able to remember it once I left. After this I saw our infinite universe, as well as the infinite number of universes out there. Within the universe I saw everything, and understood everything at the same time. I knew that everything that had happened, was happening, and was going to happen in my life and the collective population was absolutely perfect.

This understanding of life and the universe was so simple and perfect it was laughable. So simple yet impossible to describe as the human vocabulary lacks the words to do so. It’s like trying to explain sight to a blind person or sound to a deaf person. We can describe it using words for lifetimes, and still the person will not fully understand what it is. But having only a moment of experience and they will go, ooooohhhhh that’s sight! Or that’s sound! Then only after experiencing it, will all the descriptions we used finally make sense. The instant I had this experience I knew it was a profound moment in my life, though it would not be until a couple months later in India that I would learn that this state of knowledge that couldn’t be explained or taught, only understood through experiencing it was well documented in yogic philosophy and was called samadhi, though was a state rarely reached even by those who meditated religiously, and required what they described as divine grace, or more simply plain luck.

I could try to describe this state of understanding for paragraphs upon paragraphs, and those reading this will still not have a 1% idea of what experiencing that state is like and why it is so profound. Simply, my perception of everything was completely changed in that instant, even though nothing in my healing situation or in the world had changed, I just understood that everything was and will be exactly as it needs to be, and it is completely my choice to perceive situations as positive or negative. There is an old Buddhist saying, “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water,” which very accurately described the experience. Many people are waiting for their situation to change thinking that then they will be happy and fulfilled, but the universal truth is that you will experience happiness, sadness, anger, joy, etc. throughout life, and being able experience every one of these emotions is a blessing. They are there for us to learn from, not to try to avoid or deny.

After having this profound ceremony, some might think that the rest of my time at the center would be full of flowers, butterflies, rainbows, unicorns, and all fun and enjoyable things and my healing would be complete. It was not, but now I knew that everything that was happening was perfect. It’s one thing to reach this state of universal knowledge, but it’s another thing to be able to use any of that knowledge productively in life, and I knew I faced never ending self work, healing, and learning to be able to do so. I no longer saw my experiences as something just to suffer through to reach my end goal of being healed, but could now see how each experience good or bad was an important opportunity to learn and grow from. Many people put all the importance on reaching an end goal, meanwhile not being present in the process and learning from the experience. These experiences are crucial to reaching that end goal, and if we don’t learn from them ultimately we won’t have the tools to reach our goal. As Steve Jobs said, things aren’t meant to make sense looking forward, but one day looking back all the dots will connect. He had no idea that taking a calligraphy class in college would provide a baseline for Apple’s text design, but  he learned the most he could from the experience while he was doing it regardless of any end goal. Ayahuasca would challenge me right until my last ceremony at the center, with nausea, vomiting, and tears right till the bitter end. Though I couldn’t make sense of how this process helped me towards my healing intention, I knew that the experience somehow, someday would make sense and it was an important process to go through. 

The Characters You’ll Meet

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Not many people have the luxury (or the desire) to stay at a healing center in the Amazon for two and a half months, which provided me a unique opportunity to see numerous people come and go. With my packed daily schedule of eating, contemplating life, swinging in a hammock, and having a bath, I had a fair bit of time to observe and chat with the guests that came through. As a very scientific minded person, I began to observe trends in the personalities and reasons why people had made the trek to experience ayahuasca. Over my two and a half months I determined that 95% of the people could fit into one or more of the following categories, 1. The uber-spiritual, 2. the psychonaut, 3. the curious, 4. the  desperate, and finally 5. the shaman in training.

First the Uber-Spiritual. These you can usually identify before even talking to them, sporting an unkempt look including but not limited to dreadlocks, unshaven for at least a few months (face for men, armpits for women), at least five visible piercings with stretchers of varying sizes. Tattoos of religious or culture symbols will be spread over their body, with seemingly no rhyme or reason (do they know what that Chinese symbol means, or could it very well mean won-ton soup?). They will be sporting a mimum of 10 bracelets, at least half made of hemp and various crystals will adorn their necklaces. When discussing why they have made the journey to Peru, they will rarely use the word ayahuasca, preferring to refer to it as la madre or la medicina and that it has called them to come connect with its spirit. They will often speak elaboratley, using large and vague description words, often taking five minutes to explain something that could be done in thirty seconds. They will often reject mainstream knowledge, believing that it is part of a vast conspiracy network, and “the mans” way of controlling the masses. To hold a conversation with them, it is best to use the words intuition and energy alot, avoiding words that describe anything physical or tangible. For a rather humerous look into the uber-spiritual character, check out this video.

Second type is the psychonaut. Now these are not as easy to spot immediately on sight; usually male, they look like any other person of the street in their respective country. After a few minutes of conversation though, they are easily identifiable. Unlike the uber-spiritual who will refer to ayahusca as la madre or medicina, the psychonaut will often refer to ayahuasca based on its chemical components dimethyltriptamine (DMT) and monoamine oxidase inhibitor  (MAOI). Often well educated, they will have a very scientific understanding of how these components react when ingested and how to extract these components, sometimes having already done so in their own homes. They will have a vast experience and knowledge of other pshycadellics, spouting off the acronyms for various substances that may confuse some into thinking they are just using some new texting abbriviations that haven´t caught on yet (MMDA, LSD, EDMA, MDAT, TCP, PCP…. The list goes on and has a dedicated wikipedia page). For them, ayahuasca is often the next step up in pshycadellics for them, as DMT is considered to have some of the strongest effects (next to iboga).

The third type is the curious. They can be of any age, gender, education, and occupation, but will have one thing in common; they have made the trek into the Amazon because of a friend or a travel forum that told them about ayahuasca. Something someone said to them was intriguing enough to make the trek to check out what the “hype” is all about. They will have watched a couple of the mainstream documentaries and read a couple books on the topic to have a basic knowledge of what it´s all about, though not to the extreme of the pshyconaut. They will usually hold some skeptisim towards the healing capabilities of the shamans and ayahuasca, and because of that not come down with any specific intention other than to see what happens. Unlike the uber-spiritual, they will have a hard time accepting the “energitic” workings of the shamans, and understanding what one´s chakras are and why they need to be cleansed. Many of the youger “curious” types will see partaking in an ayahuasca ceremony as a right of passage for backpacking across South America and Peru.

The fourth type is the desperate. These are the people that are suffering from a serious mental or physical disorder, where western treatment has failed them time and time again. From severe cases of depression to those suffering from incurable diseases such as parkinsons and cancer, these people come to the Amazon at the end of their ropes looking for a miracle. They can often be distinguished as they will keep to themselves the first week at the center, they will be focused on their intention and follow any and all reccomendations given by the shaman. Slowly but surely over their time at the center they will begin to open up, even those with severe social anxiety and depression will end up with a few close friendships by the time they leave. Many will find the healing they seek, but on some occasions they will not (see the Sacred Science). No matter what the outcome, usually the experience will have given them a new outlook and motivation as they continue on their healing journey.

Lastly is the shaman in training. These people are unlike anyone you have met before in your life. Often starting out somwhere on the spectrum of the four previous types, their experience with ayahusca has been so strong that is has led them to forsake the “normal” and commit to years of celibacy, isolation, and stict diet to learn how to become a shaman. To become a shaman is not a quick or easy process (even though it is sometimes marketed as such), sometimes requirng 10+ years of training before being able to heal others.  Often you may not even see them at a center, and when you do they seem to appear from nowhere, blending completely into the jungle surroundings. They can be somewhat of a “unicorn”, often talked about but rarely seen, and when you find yourself in their presence there is often insurmountable wisdom to be had. They can often be coerced into a converstaion through news of current events in the outside world (or football if they are from the UK and a man-united fan).

Even though I was able to decipher the majority of people that came to the center into these five categories, no matter what mindset, intention, background, beliefs, etc. that anyone had at the beginning, by the time they left the center they were a changed person. Changed for the better. For my entire stay, I didn´t meet one person that left the center not feeling that something significant had happened to them and without a more positive outlook on their life.

On a side note: even those who had left prior centers I had stayed at not feeling like any change had occured, had change happen though they didn´t want to or couldn´t admit it. An example of this was when a work collegue of mine with depression, anxiety, and alcholism issues approached me after driving drunk and damaging their car, asking for reccomendations on centers to go to. They ended up traveling to a center I was staying at, but leaving the center early after the shaman reccomended to them an intense cleansing procedure with a plant called Oje, only partaking in two ayahuasca ceremonies. Though they left frustrated and dejected, feeling that they had wasted their time and money, when I crossed paths with them a few months later they were no longer drinking alcohol at all.

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Jungle Prison

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With my dieta on Manchinga, I would not only not be drinking ayahuasca for a month but I was also supposed to spend this month in isolation in a small hut in the middle of the rain forest. I’ve been in tambo before at another center, with the tambo having a floor, mosquito net walls, a roof, a bed, and a desk. Apart from the noises at night from being deeper in the jungle, it wasn’t all that challenging and it was enjoyable to get away from the hustle and bustle of the main center area. The tambos at this center were a bit different though, and a tambo consisted of a thatch roof perched on four sticks with a raised platform with a mattress on it. No floor to walk on, no desk to write at, and no reprieve from the mosquitoes other than under the mosquito net over the mattress (even then, the suckers managed to find a way in!). Describing it as basic is an understatement for a westerners imagination.

I balked for a few days, pushing off the day when I had to move out to tambo with a variety of excuses until the shaman pretty much moved my belongings out there for me. He told me that he did not want to see me on this side of the river until he came and got me in a month. Begrudgingly like a child being sent to their room, that afternoon I made my way out to my tambo and what was supposed to be my home for the next month. I had been given a crash course in tambo life before heading out, make sure to put all your belongings in bags or be prepared to be cleaning cockroaches out of your clothes and have a bucket to use to go to the bathroom so you don’t have to go out in the bush and get mosquito bites on parts of you that can be rather uncomfortable, were the two main take-aways from that. Though I would not heed the bucket advice as I figured a few mosquito bites in the ass were a small trade off for what other creepy crawlies might be attracked towards my tambo with a bucket, all in all I felt that I would have not much problem handling tambo life but I would be sorely mistaken.

Now I’ve never been to prision and I fully admit any idea I have of prision has come from movies and TV shows, but if those are anything close to reality, living in tambo would rank similar to the Mexcian border city prisions. Firstly, the bed. Now the mattress was pretty decent as Amazonian mattress standards go it being over 4 inches thick, but it turns out that the peruvians who had constructed the bed platform had little to no concept of what level was. My first night was spent sliding to the right and the bottom of the bed, waking up the next morning with sore muscles from bracing myself all night. Not to be deterred after one night in tambo I set out to remedy the problem, collecting some spare pieces of board from a nearby tambo under construction. Though leveling the matress proved impossible, I did manage to make the matress into a sort of taco shape so that rather than rolling off I would sink into the middle. Not the most comforable, but it was an improvement.

Next was the so called “toliet,” if you can refer to a shallow hole in the ground with wooden slats on either side to perch on as a toilet. Having grown up on a farm, I was no stranger to using the great outdoors as my bathroom when in a pinch, what I never had to deal with at home though was the vast plethora of Amazonian insects that would set up shop in my “toilet”. I started to understand a bit more why it had been reccomended to me to use a bucket, it was not just the mosquitos that attacked ones bare ass but the locality of ones bare ass to the community of beetles and other creepy crawlies taking up residence in the shallow hole. I still couldn’t bring myself to use the bucke, and just came to terms that the bugs in the hole had no interest in me, only what was coming out of me. I still avoided going to the bathroom the best I could during the night, I never fully trusted those bugs and preferred to be able to keep my eye on them in the daylight.

To make tambo life even more fun, the food served became even more restricted than what I previously described in my blog post “Fun and Games.” Meals were delivered only twice a day and consisted of 2L of white rice and 2 potatos. If you were lucky you might get a piece of fish or a boiled plantain instead of potatos! Prior to leaving the main center to go to tambo I had been buttering up the kitchen staff, resulting in the occasional contraband cucumber included in my tambo breakfast box. Never has cucumber tasted so good!

Now maybe you are reading this thinking, “Come on, the bed, bathroom, and food situtation has nothing on prison!” Maybe so, but combine these factors with the intense heat and bugs associated with residing in a hut in the middle of a dense rainforest and it makes for a very, very uncomfortable day to day life. The mosquitos were relentless, and capabable of biting through the mosquito net if one of your body parts strayed too close. If you decided to go for a stroll in the forest or to bathe in the nearby stream, a black cloud would follow and you would just have to resign yourself to the fact that you were going to loose a pound of blood in the process.

From day one, I started counting down the days I had left in tambo. Breaking the month down into weeks, then down into 3 day blocks somehow made me feel like I could make it until the end. After three days I thought, “Hey! I made it half a week and it wasn’t so bad… Another three days and I’ll almost be at a week, and then its only like 3 more weeks!” Turns out my time in tambo would be cut short (thankfully) after only 10 days. I had a couple physical problems that came to a head while in tambo, including a bout of intense menstration cramps and the pain in my stomach from my surgery continued to get worse. This pain turned out to be an abcess coming to the surface, which two days after returning from tambo would finally pop open (to my horror, the shamans and probably a few of the other guests). I had been harboring fears that some type of amazonian insect had laid eggs and the larvae were now coming to the surface, thankfully it was just alot of puss and dead tissue!

The shaman also told me to come back from tambo early as he could see I was not mentally strong enough to handle the process. Rather than finding the isolation and nature to be calming and healing allowing for self reflection, it was actually causing me to regress significantly. My mind was weak he told me, not to worry though, they had plants that would fix that which I would diet with after I finished Manchinga. They also would give me plants to help heal my stomach and by the end of my stay it would be a joke around the center that I had been given every plant in the rainforest! For the rest of my stay the shaman did not reccomend that I go to tambo again, though I know if I go back it will be something that I should do. Some people at the center were staying in tambo for months at a time, finding the experience healing and transformational. It seemed that nothing during my time in the Amazon was going to be straighforward.

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Palo Fuerte

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At most reputable healing centers, the Shaman will encourage you to take part in a “dieta” to help with your healing or whatever intentions you came down with. A dieta consists of following the typical ayahuasca diet limitations and during the day drinking a brew of specific Amazonian plants that the Shaman feels will help you through observing your energetic body in the first ayahuasca ceremony. Kind of like when a doctor will give you a blood test, and from those results may prescribe you a supplement. The plants used in a dieta are referred to as “master plants”, with each plant having specific healing properties. These master plants are not psychedelic, and are not mixed into the ayahuasca brew, a distinction that has to be made as with the growing ayahuasca tourism popularity some shamans are mixing more potent psychedelic plants into ayahuasca to give some tourists the big “trip” they are seeking (I touch more on this in my blog “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”), which is something very unsafe (even deadly) and completely different to the master plant dietas.

After my exorcisms of the bad spirits and devils was complete, the shaman told me that I was too weak to take more ayahuasca and should not drink for a month. During that month the shaman recommended that I start a dieta with a tree called Manchinga. The sap from this tree would help build my strength up slowly that had been worn away over the past year from the bad spirits and remove any remaining negative energies that may still be lingering after the exorcism. This was not a typical master plant dieta, as Manchinga was considered a “Palo Fuerte” or strong wood and the shaman rarely gave tourists the option to diet with it due to it being a very powerful energetic plant, which would require more strict food restrictions than the average ayahuasca diet and also time in isolation. At the time I felt special that I was being prescribed this tree, but in a few days time when I started my diet I would get a better understanding of what a dieta with a Palo Fuerte entailed and would no longer feel special.

The day I started my diet I was awoke around 6AM by the shaman to take my very first dose of Manchinga. You may feel some pain in your legs and shoulders he said as he poured a teaspoon of the cream colored sap into a glass and mixed it with water (this teaspoon would later come back to haunt me as a nickname). No big deal I thought as I gulped it down, for once it was something whose taste didn’t make me want to gag. A couple hours later I was feeling good and also a bit cocky, maybe with all the crap ayahuasca had put me through Manchinga was going to be nice to me. Later that morning the shaman took me and the other guests at the center for a hike into the Amazon to see all the healing plants. I was uber-excited to see the Manchinga tree, and I was not disappointed when I did.  Towering over all the other trees in the Amazon, the Manchinga tree resembled that of the sacred tree in the Avatar movie. A large trunk with a hollow big enough to fit three people rose up covered with vines, and way up high you could see its branches spreading out over the canopy. I took some photos, but they didn’t do justice to the enormity of the tree and the power you could feel standing in its presence. Needless to say, as we walked back to the center I was even more excited to be dieting with this tree.

Approximately 2 hours later, I would eat my all my good words/thoughts I had about dieting with Manchinga. It started out subtle enough, I was chilling in a hammock talking to another guest at the center when my shoulder started to feel really sore. Thinking it was just from lying in a funny position in the hammock for too long, I decided to go lie down on my bed for a bit. A few minutes later I started to feel short of breath, like my ribs had contracted and filling my lungs with air was painful. I hobbled slowly down to the main house to check to see if what was going on was normal, because it did definitely not feel normal. I said this morning that you that you would feel pain, he told me and then recommended I go take a cold shower for half an hour, that would help.

Half an hour later, and feeling no better I slowly made my way back to my room. The pain was growing with every breath, all I could do was sit on my bed as lying down made the pain worse. I started to almost hyperventilate in a way as I couldn’t take a full breath, my ribs felt like they were on fire and when my lungs even slightly expanded the pain tripled. The intensity had to start coming down soon I kept telling myself, trying to maintain calmness while unable to take a deep breath. I started talking out loud to try to keep myself calm which after a fifteen minutes or so turned into calling for the shaman to come help as the pain continued to intensify to a level which I hope is 100 time worse than child birth (or I’m not having kids!). By then it felt like all the bones in my torso had fire scorching them from the inside, every movement brought on a fresh wave of torture, and I was starting to loose my head. I was lucky during this time that I never had to cough or sneeze, as I would have blacked out from the pain.

The shaman came to my room with a mixture of some plants in hand and told me to lie down. I looked him in the eye and told him; I can’t lie down or I will die. Though I spoke it in English, I think he got my message. It seems a bit mellow dramatic looking back, but at the time I seriously thought something internally was shutting down and this must be how dying feels. It was different than the times I had thought I was going to die in an ayahuasca ceremony as I never had full cognitive awareness then. Now my brain was fully functioning and was certain that this pain was only going to continue to escalate until my untimely death. Somehow he was able to get me to lie down and started working on me with the plants he had brought as well as using soplaring (energetic cleansing with tobacco smoke) and a basalt rock to draw the pain out. As he was working the pain didn’t immediately reduce in intensity, though I could feel it slowly moving out of my rib cage and shoulders, concentrating into my spine. I kicked and thrashed as the pain continued with no reprieve, the pain from kicking the wall was somewhat soothing as it ever so slightly distracted from the gnawing pain within every bone in my torso.

They kept asking me if I had taken any pills, as taking any chemical substance could explain the almost allergic reaction to Manchinga I was having. No I hadn’t! But now that they had mentioned it, my mind went to the pack of oxycodine I had hidden away in my bag for emergencies and I wished I had thought to down the whole pack. The only anti-dieta thing I had done was use shampoo the previous day, but that one slip up couldn’t be the reason I was in so much pain. After what might have been an hour with the shaman working on me, the pain slowly started to ebb in waves. I had to try to lie completely still as any movement would invoke the intensity to increase to full power again. After a few hours, and a couple more soplars later I was able to slowly hobble around like a 90 year old. Until the next afternoon I would still feel pain if I was not careful and took a slightly deep breath. Manchinga had made its introduction, and the story of this introduction would be a standing joke and told to many for the rest of my stay (and probably is still told now). After a few weeks when the memory of the pain had faded, I was able to laugh and joke about the whole ordeal as well. At least I would not be forgotten anytime soon at the center!

Note: As I was writing this blog in India, I would meet someone who would indirectly explain exactly why I had this experience my first time taking Manchinga. While discussing reiki (an energetic healing technique) and pranayama (breathing techniques to clear and increase ones energetic body), she mentioned how people could often start to feel physically ill, nauseous, and start to hyperventilate. She had read a book by a stem cell biologist named Bruce Lipton, explaining that with these techniques you are working at a cellular level to bring the energetic frequency of each cell to a higher state (I will not cite the book here yet until I have read it which is hard to do whilst traveling the world!). If the frequency is increased to a higher level rapidly, the cells can essentially experience a power surge and short circuit as they have yet to build up their capability to operate at this higher energetic state resulting in physical symptoms. As Manchinga was such a strong plant energetically, the first time I took it was a complete shock to my system. In the subsequent times I would take it I would never have any  more symptoms most likely as my cells were now used to being at that higher frequency state.

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Lost in Translation

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Though I have traveled to Spanish speaking countries five times prior to this trip, I’ll admit my Spanish speaking skills are terrible. On previous trips I had never really pushed myself to learn as there had always been a translator on staff. This time I was either going to have to fend for myself or rely on other bilingual travelers to translate for me, and as there were no other travelers at the center when I first arrived it seemed the universe had decided I would be fending for myself.

I had been learning a little bit of Spanish over the past year through an app on my iPhone, which resulted in me having a solid base of Spanish vocabulary but having no idea how to use these words to form sentences. My first few weeks at the center were spent just pointing at things and saying the word if I knew it or “Como se dice?” (how do you say?) if I didn’t know. I managed to get around OK, but if I wanted to have a conversation beyond asking for mas arroz (more rice), I needed to start speaking beyond one or two word sentences. I had always struggled to learn other languages, in Canada it was a requirement to take a year of French and the only reason I got through it with decent grades was that I somehow got a copy of the final exam the day before I had to write it. There was no reason I shouldn’t be able to pick up a second language, I was naturally above average in the intellect department (or so I like to think!) and had no issues memorizing the Latin names of hundreds of plants during my Environmental Science BSc.

Finally one day at the center, after bumbling my way through trying to explain to the assistant shaman that I had a pain in my stomach that was getting worse and was probably from my low-grade infection flaring up again, I realized what was mentally blocking me from learning a second language beyond just knowing a few words. I had no problem learning words of another language as there was a clear right and wrong answer which suited the perfectionist side of me, but when it came to forming sentences I had to realize that there was no one right or wrong way to do it. I was holding myself back from fully trying to converse in Spanish thinking that I would sound stupid, that I had to know exactly what order to put the conjugations and verbs in before I would even attempt to say something. Which was ridiculous when I realized why I was doing it, in the English language I could convey the same idea in about 1000 different ways, it was absurd that I held onto a belief that the Spanish language would only have one proper way to converse.

As soon as I recognized this belief in myself and how silly and detrimental it was, I began to become more open with just trying to speak in sentences (even if I did sound like a two year old) and my learning rate increased two-fold. I knew I was making progress when one day I held a five minute conversation with the assistant shaman at the center. I’m about 70% sure we were talking about the same thing, he seemed to laugh at the correct time when I made an attempted joke. But when I look back I think there’s a chance we could have easily been talking about two completely different things. Day by day I would continue to chat in Spanish to the shamans and the other staff, and my Spanish got better and better. I would be amazed when I could ask something random, like can you show me this tree and they would actually understand and take me to the tree. By a month and a half into my trip, I was actually helping translate (albeit poorly) for other travelers!

Not that my learning curve was a straight upward slope. I remember once one of the kids had brought their pet rabbit out to show us. As I was holding the rabbit, I made an attempt to ask the girl “What does your rabbit eat?” She gave me an odd look, and quickly took the rabbit away from me. I would later realize that instead of asking her “what does your rabbit eat?” I may have actually asked “do you eat your rabbit?”, which made sense of why she had so quickly removed the rabbit from my possession. If the worst thing to come from my failed attempts at speaking Spanish was a child a bit more wary of handing tourists her pets, I figured I was doing alright.

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Lost in the Jungle

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A week into my stay, I thought I would make the trek up the hill to an area that was supposed to get cell service to send a message to my mother that I had made it to the center. As I was still un-acclimatized to the heat and humidity of the Amazon, I waited until late afternoon on an overcast day to make the hike. As I was the only guest at the center at the time, and spoke really poor Spanish I didn’t bother to tell anyone where I was off to, I expected to be there and back within the hour.

The hike up went rather uneventfully, and a quick check of my cell phone at the end of the trail revealed that it had no service. Beyond the end of the path from what I could see through the dense flora, the hill seemed to rise a bit more so I decided to go in a bit further to see if I could get service. I walked about 15 m off the path into the forest only to find there still wasn’t any service. I realized that going deeper in a densely treed forest was not going to help with cell service so I turned around to head back to the path. I walked back in what I thought was the direction of the path, only instead of finding the path I found the landscape to begin to head steeply downhill. The path had ended pretty much at the crest of the hill, so I knew that the direction I was going was not going to take me back to the path. So where was the path? I quickly retraced my steps back to where I thought I had turned around and altered my course slightly and tried to find the path again. I couldn’t find it.

A few more minutes of searching and continually coming to a dead end with the landscape steeply dropping off, panic started to set in. The Amazon flora started to all look the same, and I was no longer even certain where I had stopped to turn around. The storm was fast approaching with clouds blotting out the little sunlight that reached through the canopy, the wind was picking up increasing the noise of the jungle with leaves and branches snapping and falling to the ground. During my MSc program the past year I had developed anxiety attacks, but now they paled in comparison to the feeling of terror that was building inside me. I yelled for help though I knew deep down no one would hear me, on a good day noise barely travels through the jungle, with the noise of the storm I would be lucky if someone was 10m away and could hear me. Plus, I had no idea what the Spanish word for help was. I started to push my way through the bush in a more frantic manner in hopes of finding the path, sharp branches grabbed at me and my clothes cutting my face and arms. I saw something that resembled a path, clinging to the hope that it would lead me to some sort of civilization I started to follow it. How uninhabited could the Amazon really be? The “path” came to a sharp decline and I decided to continue to follow it though it was no longer existent, all downhill slopes would lead me to the river I rationalized in my head.

About 20m down the hill following what no longer resembled a path, a logical part of my brain started to come through the fog of anxiety. OK self, lets take a time out and think about this rationally. I sat down and fully let myself feel the terror of my current situation, later the moment would remind me of a scene from the first season of the TV show lost where for five seconds they let the feeling take over and then after are able to do what they need to do. The worst case scenario, I don’t find my way back and end up dying in the jungle. Something about accepting that death was a very real possibility allowed me to think more rationally about the situation. I had a few days before I would actually die if worse came to worse, so I had some time to sit down and come up with a logical plan of attack.

I had a quick pep-talk with myself, “Dear self, you are a complete idiot to get yourself into this mess, and now you have to get yourself out of it. At least you can’t get any stupider.” Then I took stock of my situation, 1. from my initial hike into the center I knew that the terrain was rugged, and going downhill would not necessarily lead me to the river, 2. if I didn’t show up for dinner at the center they may come looking for me, and it was probably best to stay in the general area of the end of the path, and 3. I was near the top of the hill and had been hiking up a north facing slope, that should narrow my search area down. I decided my best route was to continue to search for the original path, rather than run aimlessly down a hill. I couldn’t see the sun to determine a direction, but remembered the fancy compass feature in my iPhone. I wasn’t sure if the compass would work without service, but I figured it was better than nothing. A check of the compass revealed that the direction I thought was north was actually a bit more of a northwest direction, and my search for the path had taken me further and further west when I needed to go east. With more focus and determination rather than panic and frenzy, I resumed my search.

Within 15 minutes, I found the path. The sense of relief I felt was beyond anything I had experienced before. I thanked god, promised to keep my end on the bargains I had made with him while searching for the path, and ran as quickly as I could back to the center. I had only been gone for a total of 3 hours, and apart from the cuts on my face and arms there was little sign of the ordeal I had just been through though mentally the experience had left a mark. In that moment of facing my own impending doom completely due to my own stupidity, the part of my brain that had decided anxiety and panic attacks were a proper way to respond to stressful situations in the past year switched off. That response was completely detrimental when I was actually faced with a physical life or death situation and if I hadn’t overcome it I might not have died, but I very well could have spent an uncomfortable few nights in the rainforest.

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