MY TRIPS TO PERU

The animations below are Midjourney art by Ba Adonai ))

This is a very long, pretty unstructured story of all my travels to Peru ))

I would definitely need to travel back to Canada occasionally to renew my ID and ground in on some levels, but it's true if that was my living situation, I could definitely stay with family during that time. I don't really know how long I'd be able to tolerate living there, because my body seems so acclimatized to Western humidity and dryness, as well as of course some ammenities. But actually, I love recognizing the reasons why not having any rush when I'm there would be so helpful to my flow. I suppose realistically just going for as long as I want once a year would really do it. I mean in an ultimate dream, I can't even see myself there half the year (lol). But many months feels like a meaningful dream right now. 

Because one or two months there (as I've had before) really does feel rushed to me now. With tons of cash, it would be so incredible to stay there for several months, just with no agenda of how long it will be, and just follow my bliss. 

And I've been feeling down lately, so I thought writing a short story about how it went for me when I travelled there before might lighten my spirits, and I know some people would enjoy hearing it. 

Also in Peru at one point, we did take a small airplane to travel to a jungle camp in Iquitos. This was a beautiful camp of very impoverished famliies living in huts, but graciously facilitating guests. They benefitted a lot from our visit and we also did a ceremony of gift giving from our extra expenses, donating things like good soccer balls for the children and a number of useful things for thier lives. It was designed totally as an experience of learning what an impoverished jungle community can be like, rather than just having the touristy and fancy camp life for the whole time. We were mainly at kingly fancy big camps with lots of ammenities, other than this. And the Native families were so gracious, and they taught me that they are immune to mosquito bites.

And we did Ayahuasca there one night. And that was some of the most memorable Ayahuasca visions of my entire life, because it was the medicine's first welcome to me to their homeland of Peru. The visions included huge mantas or tapestries throughout the sky of incredible geometric layout (as if it was the full open sky with this), with all these divine faces of God in each part of the layout, each as Peruvian native people's faces or as ancestors and the medicine with each having teachings. They cried beautiful cyrstalline tears, showed their hands, and taught of the pain and the love and wisdom of the land, as the medicine teaching itself, with many effects, constantly transforming and showing more information. It was so beautiful in every way. The medicine welcomed me with the greatest love to Peru, showing me that all the people there welcome me as what the land is, truly is one with the medicine and all its people. It goes down in history as one of the most important teachings of my life to realize why it is so different to do Ayahuasca in Peru than in any other place. 

I returned to Peru only twice more. I think one of the times was for a month and another time was for 2 months, if I remember correctly. Yes, yes, it's coming back to me. It was 2 months the first time and just over a month the second time. The first time I went, I went alone. It was by far the most wonderful travel experience of my life, and I only got sick temporarily in such a way which could be remedied by rushing to the medical clinic quickly. I was just violently vomiting, but that's known as pretty common. The whole trip was supported and heftily facilitated (by some magical luck which I must say I have speculated on often throughout my life) by none other than the infamous Alan Shoemaker who is very well known in the global Ayahuasca community. Sae's a known fugitive from USA who escaped to Peru to live there forever, and orchestrated the famous Ayahuasca conferences there, where incredible speakers on psychedelics from all over the world travelled to speak on symposium at a long gathering of at least a week. 

Alan Shoemaker met with me for quite some time in Iquitos where sae dwells. During that time I was staying at hotels for $5 a night while visiting daily at Alan's house. There, Alan took me under sae's wing to the fullest possible extent, teaching me indepth how to make Ayahuasca myself. And this was the first time (and the last) that I ever made an Ayahuasca brew, although the brew came out very well for a beginner's first time, and it truly worked just as well as I'd hoped. Alan had professional cooking basins with a tap on the bottom to support straining. I sat for a long several days to a week with Alan and sae's dear native friend and Alan's secretary. While Alan's secretary (the sweetest beautiful young woman who was so cute and cool, came in occasionally in balancing computer work with chats, I mainly hung with Alan's Peruvian friend. Alan's friend was not an Ayahuasqero, but sae was well versed and adapted to brewing and had quite a bit of knowledge. It was such an honour that Alan belted to the world, to everyone sae knows, just what an incredible Vegetalista I was and Ayahuasqera to be, and so impressive. I sang my Ayahuasca songs to them as we sat nursing over the brew for a week, singing mainly to the plants being brewed. Alan and sae's friend just couldn't say enough about the quality of my icaros. 

Anyway, so I went from Alan's to Alan's after that (lol). From Alan's house in Iquitos to sae's camp in the jungle. The Ayahuasca brew was not finished yet. It had to just be boiled down to a smaller amount of liquid, and a single Brugmansia flower added at the end. At the camp there was a large maloca, temple hut, where I was allowed to stay for my long month-long Vegetalismo practice planned there. There was a small improverished family of staff there, a father, mother and little girl. And the funny thing is, there was a library there, and I chose a book to read on my dieta since you're not allowed to really talk to anyone or go online at all, and the book was so magical. And completely by wildly magical synchronicity and totally at random, it was Rak Razam's book. Now, Rak Razam is very famous in the Ayahuasca and psychedelic visionary communities because sae is a mindblowing writer who totally excels at describing their visions in words, which is often a struggle for most people. And Rak's book opened with a story of sae having the EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE AS ME with Alan Shoemaker. Working with Alan to prepare a dieta which would take place in the exact same maloca that I was staying in, then the full description of how it all went. So I was in the same place facilitated by the same person as Rak was in that book which is very famous. And obviously, it's an amazing book, and reading it was a mindblowing experience for me there. 

So I was at the camp, and I had days to prepare the Ayahuasca by boiling it. Their kitchen stove consisted of a fire in the kitchen and a metal thing over it, with very blackened pots from fire. I was not very good at making fires, but I sure tell you who was : The little 5 year old girl who lived there :)) This amazing little girl was a wizard at fires, and was well trained at being polite with guests and helping all the time. Sae would always help me make my fire, and I was amazed with sae's skills, and sae was very flattered (lol). Sae was attending grade school to learn English each day, and would have to walk a very long way in the wilderness to get there. It was normal there. At times, I went for waks along those same paths to explore that "neighbourhood" of distant camps held up by extremely impoverished natives who lived on only hand fishing of what they could get from the rivers, and tiny amounts of rice purchased in very occasional missions to Iquitos which they could barely afford. I met several of the natives who lived at those tiny rickity camps, and conversed with them about their lives. I made a huge feast of many large pakoras at the end of my dieta, and made a point of going on the hike to share them out with those neighbours, who all lovingly appreciated the gesture. I'll never forget sitting with one very old man who lived on ae's own hand fishing only mostly, and sharing a pakora and some joyful, relaxed conversation :) 

And the visions were very 3D and high level, especially on the last night which was the best night. The medicine did have a single flower of Brugmansia added from the notion that this would be a 12 ceremony worth batch, and it wound up being more like 6 or 7 ceremonies because I generally require a higher dose myself due to my body's way of processing it. So it's clear that there was a LITTLE too much Brugmansia in it, but not to any dangerous properties. But yeah, when there is a high safe dose of Brugmansia, the VISIONS ARE AMAZING. I mean it was totally high resolution 3D and the colours, just out of this universe. Also the effects. Like I remember on the last night it waas so cool the effect. I was having the experience of being sprayed with water like so realistically that I coudl almost believe it was actually real. Large sprays of water just happening, and I didn't know why. UNTIL !!!! The reveal of why the water had been spraying on me like that. It attracted FROGS !!!! These huge incredible visions of poisonous bright neon frogs started arriving, filling the vision space and making their sounds. Actually maybe they were tree frogs. It was so powerful when they jumped in like jumping so fast onto a leaf and surprising me. 

This was the medicine's way of explaining that the Brugmansia dosage was a little high, to a minor threat of poison almost but not a concern. These wonderful frogs were considered absolutely fantastic and good parts of the normal wildlife of Ayahuasca visions had in the jungle which depict these awesome beings. And all this happened in the hammock the entire time. It was just a hammock in the middle of a huge maloca. And I had my ceremonies in the hammock this time. 

And sae's cancer went into remission as a result of the dieta for almost a year after that, as long as I had managed to keep track of sae on facebook afterwards. And sae just COULDN'T SAY ENOUGH about how much sae loved my traditional medicine icaro singing and the gracious way that I professionally supported sae in sae's first dieta. And after the dieta, we went back to Iquitos together as well. We were wonderful besties after both our dietas had ended, in Iquitos staying at hotels together and dining often at the Ayahuasca restaurant I mentioned earlier, and other places. I loved hearing sae's stories of sae's trips through Brazil and around South America. Sae told me that in some of these places, it's common to eat fried frogs on a stick. And sae joyfully said that sae had such a wonderful time doing the usual, just having a frog and a beer, a frog and a beer, a frog and a beer, throughout the night, like leap frog (lol). 

And actually I just took a break from writing and thought about it, and even though it's a bummer, I could say some of the brujeria that I got from that evil sorcerer during my dieta. There was some brujeria on the mother of the family who was keeping over the land, and one day sae decided to short change me when I sent money to sae's daily mission to the market for daily fish. They didn't have a fridge there of course, and it was considered their normal job to do the trip to town every day for stuff. Well, one day when the lady short changed me, sae decided to buy me some cheaper bottom feeder fish which wasn't on the menu in order to steal some of my money. And what happened is, I accidentally ate a little bit of that fish even though it looked questionable for sure (and I believe it was brujeria to make me eat that at all). 

And that's how I learned what it's like to practice Vegetalismo without fish — IT SUCKS. So that's how I found out how important water sanitation is in the third world to these traditions, for safe quality fish to get from hand fishing. 

And all those years of nightmare because of one stupid bottom feeder one day. But at least I had a great lesson out of it. 

But there were other issues as well in one other ceremony, and this was such a totally embarrassing rookie mistake (lol). Anyway, I didn't break the traditions but I was dangerously close to it and had no intention of it at all and was very well behaved at least that what I was trying to do was totally honestly for the right reasons and with every beautiful intention, but let's just say a super embarrassing crazy hilarious mishap story totally happened one night which was OBVIOUSLY because of this terrible sorcerer, Miguel Kavlin of course, who has been plaguing me my whole career. But it's actually a really funny story with a rookie mistake in the school of hard knocks early on in my career (lol). LOL I've been through it all (lol). But there was no worries and no need to tell my guide about that one, thank God (lol) or I don't wanna know what would have resulted (lol) hahaha. But sae would have laughed I think eventually (lol). 

Haha well with that painful memory out of the way, on with the rest of the story. Also going back in time again to the boardwalk in Iquitos, I just want to say that the ladies who are there selling their tapestries and beads are so very special. They always wear a special kind of colourful blouse with frills which all the ladies of this kind wear the same. These are the special women who make the shipibo embroideries so central to Ayahuasca culture. The practice is called kené, the Shipibo-Konibo system of intricate geometric designs, and if I'm not mistaken, they take piripiri (Shipibo wáste; particular varieties are associated with kené), a sedge in the Cyperaceae family. But I had heard that it was a berry applies to the eyes as an initiation but I may have heard wrong. Traditionally, preparations of particular piripiri plants, I think, have been ritually applied to the eyes and/or navel of girls and women to cultivate their capacity to perceive and create kené. Peruvian girls learn for years by observing mothers and female relatives, while ritual plant treatments prepare them to visualize kené mentally and reproduce those designs skillfully. 

Now, my boyfriend at the time was in a famous band, and was normally accustomed to travelling to all kinds of countries all over the world, with India as a common destination, but had been to sooooooo many different countries, because sae's band was totally on global tours nonstop. Sae was all done sae's long process of training to play the sitar in India which sae played standing up and amplified like a band (lol), and that was long ago, but now was always travelling the world. Still, though, sae had never been to Peru and had always wanted to go. Considering the fact that I had been there and even knew a little Spanish, sae was confident going on the trip with me as sae's guide. So we did go to Peru with intentions of an Ayahuasca Vegetalismo practice that we'd do together. 

So, in the previous time when I had been at Alan's, Alan had thoroughly recommended a certain Ayahuasqero who had a beautiful camp there with nice cabin malocas and a large maloca for group ceremonies, with a beautiful natural swimming pond (which was large), and often had many people joining there for ceremonies. And I contacted sae. Sae's name was Percy and sae was a very sweet Peruvian native in sae's 30's or so at the time. And sae totally offered to support our dieta, with every respect to the fact that I also had another guide who may be providing other kinds of teachings. And the guidance from my regular guide didn't mix really with Percy's guidance as for what we'd be eating, but we did just fine having a master plant and just eating what Percy serves (lol) which didn't even cause disruption with my guide because I didn't feel the need to let sae know how it went, since technically it was like under Percy. But Percy totally accepted my requests and all that, and was very polite and flexible.

Like Percy did serve oats with a little bit of peanut butter on it, just a small (lol) and I totally objected to that but Percy laughed it off (lol). And now that I found out, I can say that's right, there are definitely version of Vegetalismo that are much less strict that mine with my guide to allow for that !! Now after my graduation I've been so advised to do a less strict version from now on (lol) </3. Only because the strict version was only necessary because of Miguel and that was for my safety at the time. 

In both trips, I happened upon many people who were in Iquitos for the purpose of visiting The Temple of the Way of Light. It's certainly the main mecca I would strongly the most advise to anyone going for Ayahuasca there. And everyone just had the most awesomely fantastic time. And then later I went on YouTube and saw people's accounts of how it was there, including Gabor Mate, and EVERYONE just had the best to say of it. Well, it most certainly looks super totally excellent and fantastic for SURE. But the only reason I didn't go there this time was because they had this strange and unusual practice of serving many, many master plants with each dieta and that would not have seemed safe to my path with my guide. You see, in this strict way with my guide, I believe there may be more dangers to doing things off that path, and this practice of many master plants at once would definitely be the most dangerous one I think (lol). Because I had been very warned by my guide never to do even 2 master plants at once, or else it's quite likely that you'll have a total mental breakdown. And sae has totally seen that happen. But clearly that's not happening to any of the tourists at TOTWOL. 

Well over the years I thought about that and talked to the medicine about that, and I realized TOTWOL is more for tourists who may very likely never do Ayahuasca again in their lives and could really use this kind of a way to go in if that's their only chance in a lifetime. And it is safe at TOTWOL to do that. But it is true it's the normal tradition not to (lol). And of course as the ancient practices go, it does make sense in a lot of ways to just focus on one master plant at a time, in order to support yourself to connect personally and mentally with each plant individually in such a way so that you can totally feel the distinct characteristics of that teacher without too much to sort through for recognition. But now that I've graduated at the place where I'm at, I wouldn't even mind trying TOTWOL just to bathe in luxury and be taken care of and watch how it's done there. And sometimes I got intuitions that Kurt Cobain might have something to do with TOTWOL, so that would be a great place to go on a spiritual wild goose chase searching for Kurt Cobain in Peru. 

But the most extremely key story was so much more than I can probably properly tell here. But I've always wanted to tell the story and I think it would make a tremendous UNITY LIFE Archive. Because this was also my other friend's first time ever doing Ayahuasca, and although the visions were not that strong, there was one very powerful and prominent vision one night which struck sae as most interesting. In this vision, sae saw an image of a fetus in utero. Sae asked described the vision to me and asked if I might know what it means, and I said that I'm not sure. Well, as soon as sae got back from the trip sae discovered that SAE WAS PREGNANT !!!!!!! And there's just so much I'd like to explain about that story, because I think that would be a mindblowing example to use to explain vision interpretation and how the path of Vegetalismo serves to produce visions that not only hint at things like that, but FULLY EXPLAIN IT SO THAT YOU ENTIRELY KNOW WHAT IT MEANS RIGHT THEN.

It's that sae's story is the story of normally how a vision might go on the first time doing Ayahuasca, but long story short, after quite a bit of Vegetalismo, sae would have known right then that sae is pregnant and had the most incredible learning about what to keep in mind for the pregnancy and mothering too. 

And as for my experience, I did have some problems unfortunately which affected the quality of my ceremonies, but the dieta was a success overall. The problem was, around the time I arrived in Peru I got giardia which is a common parasite in Peru. And at first, this was causing me some ongoing diarrhea and cramping, but it wasn't really that bad. And during the ceremonies the medicine totally said that it's a digestive parasite and gave some teachings about just how rude and terrible and offensive these are. And I wound up having one of the most confronting and challenging ceremonies of my whole life on the last night at Percy's :( I received a teaching then which was very important to my safety but it's just a tragic story that the medicine had to kick me around like that in order to keep me safe and protected in my life :( So I had alot to unpack from that as it was life changing and very intense. 

I mean, getting there and having a guy get me my master plants, and having a dedicated maloca I can always count on in the jungle to do my dietas alone in peace without guides or anything to feel the need to help, would be perfect. And if that's very far out, having someone who can go in and out for me for fish on the daily would also be needed. And of course my own method of transport to go in and out at will, but it normally can be arranged to hire a boat somehow or whatever. But I'd also like my guide to help me in and out of the jungle and be there incase anything crazy happens in the jungle too. So if I owned something there, it seems to make sense to have it co-operatively, and perhaps share land with someone who's already into things like that. But I don't want to just merge with another Ayahuasqero at a retreat centre. And at my place, it would be so nice to have a great body of water where I can swim, because just like at Percy's it's part of tradition to swim in a natural body of water at least once each dieta. 

Oh and this reminds me, I never described the jungle. Well, the jungle there is well known as being an incredible pharmacopea of rich diversity, but i'm sure people from other parts of the world have never even remotely imagined just how true that is. Everywhere you look something amazing and incredible that you've NEVER seen before or EVER dreamed of in your WHOLE LIFE is fully going on as hte most incredible thing (lol). And there are many dangers. I remember once being bitten by a poisonous spider at Percy's. I shoudl have removed it from the cabin the second I saw it because it had a bright red abdomen which is a sign of poison. But I forgot, and it bit my butt, and there was an itchy bruise on my butt, and that bruise kept on expanding and expanding so fast the second I scratched it until it took up much of my butt. But I just left it and thankfully my body healed on its own (lol) (sweat). But yeah haha, all kinds of things are hazards, but you'll see so many beauitufl things that are so amazing and beyond dreams. And it's so hot and humid, it would blow you away. In the jungle it's so much more humid than the city. Things get mould instantly and that's why they only have hammocks normally there. 

Well I think I'll end it off here with my favourite memory of the jungle. At least at this moment. Right now I'm remembering the bats. At night the bats would SWARM the sky, and it was always just so many bats, it was absolutely a fest. Bat paradise parade. They were all over the place. They sounded so awesome.