The Amazonian Rim via Ecuador

I flew into Quito and stayed at a hotel near Plaza Santo Domingo and spent a few days exploring the old colonial section of town -- considered by many to be the most impressive remnants of colonialism in South America. I then took a bus for a four-hour ride to Banos, an interesting and pleasant town about 100 miles south of Quito with a population of 20,000 sitting on the banks of the Rio Pastaza and nestled in a valley at the foot of the volcano Tungurahua which periodically erupts forcing evacuations. The river Pastaza flows rapidly down the eastern slope of the Andes to eventually join the Amazon. Quito, a city of about two million is the capital of Ecuador at an altitude of about 9,500 feet... high enough to cause mild altitude sickness for some. For me this meant a little difficulty sleeping and early fatigue when climbing stairs or inclines. Banos is at 5,900 feet with minimal altitude effects with a mild tempeate year around climate much like San Francisco.

My goal was to explore some of the small isolated indigenous communities along the Napo River in the Amazonian basin that are in various stages of "development". So after exploring Banos for several days I took a five hour tortuous bus ride to Tena, a quasi fronteir town of 20,000 on the edge of the basin. And then took another bus for an easy one hour ride to the small town of Misahualli on the Napo River at the end of the road. Napo connects with the Amazon a few hundred miles downstream.

The road out of Banos followed the river down a canyon while dropping about 5,000 feet. It is partially paved but has long stretches of rock, gravel, and mud with portions under reconstruction due to ongoing rock and mud-slides and washouts. The canyon below appeared to drop hundreds of feet, and with the tires of the bus sometimes approaching within a couple feet of the road edge I looked for signs of wreckage at the bottom. Seeing none gave me some assurance but the bus was crowded and stuffy and I was crammed standing at the back as it swayed and bumped along while going through maybe a half dozen one lane tunnels. It was one of the worst rides I have experienced.

Misahualli is a quiet town of a few hundred people centered around an unpaved central square surrounded by a few shops and bars. A few beggar monkeys romp in the trees scanning for handouts. By email I had connected with a young woman named Zoraida who managed a small hotel called Alberque Espanol in conjunction with a family owned lodge and cabins and a couple nature preserves located about 30 miles down river.

Z was born and raised in the area and the facilities had been part of her family for many years. Her parents were currently living in Spain and she was assuming hotel/ tour management responsibilities in addition to studying business at a university in Quito. It was my plan to meet her at the hotel and discuss options for visiting the lodge and nearby indigenous communities while trying to get a general feeling for the area and some of the social and ecological problems facing the people and the land in what is claimed to be the most richly bio-diverse ecosystem on the planet. It was my first trip to the Amazon.

Ecuador is one of the poorest and densely populated countries in South America, and has one of the highest birth rates. It is rather intensely Catholic and the church discourages family planning and seems to effectively pressure the government from making such services free and available. So family planning facilities are relatively few and their services cost too much to be affordable for the people who need them most. Also education in Ecuador is not free. Since it takes an education to break the cycle of poverty, many are stuck in a sort of economically stressed "catch 22" without an exit. In 2007 a new national president, Rafael Correa, assumed power and has reportedly professed interest and desire to change some policies. Like many other places vested interests and cultural resistance will make change difficult. And political volatility has given Ecuador something like a dozen presidents in the last decade. So any optimism is tempered with caution.

After negotiating a plan with Z we left early the day after arriving by motorized canoe on a two-hour downriver trip to the lodge. The "we" included Z and a friend of hers from Quito (a young Parisian named Pierre studying labor law in Quito) and an Indian guide named Leonardo. Leonardo could speak Quechua and Spanish and Z and Pierre could speak fairly good English and Spanish and I struggled with my Spanglish. But we were able to communicate pretty well. It was also Pierre's first trip to the eastern Ecuadorean Amazon forest.

As we traveled down river the beauty exceeded expectations. The river broadens and narrows with occasional rapids generating two to three foot waves. Leonardo turned out to be an excellent navigator and managed the rapids and about everything else, including our hikes in the jungle, with a competence and energy that was amazing. He could walk for hours in a steamy jungle over and under fallen trees and other obstacles, clearing bush with a machete and seldom showing signs of fatigue or even perspiration. Pierre (who helped with translation) and I sweated profusely during these hikes and periodically had to take brief rests due to heat exhaustion.

During one rest while hiking I mentioned I was low on water and in what seemed like seconds Leonardo returned with a cut section of vine telling me it contained good water which would restore energy. About a pint of sweet tasting water flowed out of it and it did seem to be energizing. On one hike he accidentally brushed a thorn tree and had a several inch bleeding scratch on his arm. He made a couple small gashes in a nearby tree and applied a few drops of reddish sap to the lesion and announced it would seal, disinfect, and heal the scratch without further attention. Checking it later it seemed to have worked well.

On the first day after arrival at the lodge and after a two-hour jungle hike followed by lunch and a siesta, we took the canoe in mid afternoon five to ten miles further down the river to an indigenous community spread out on the opposite bank. We proceeded up a half-mile path to a traditional looking thatched roof house on stilts occupied by the community doctor or shaman.

Fortunately the shaman was at home. He has served the people in the area for years making routine visits to houses strung out through the woods by a network of paths. The visits often take a week or two and it was not certain he would be home. With no electricity or phones it was impossible to check in advance. The shaman was a friend of the lodge family and had worked with them in the past offering samples of food and brief tours of his native plant resources in the nearby forest. Although probably in his 60's he seemed much older and younger at the same time. His bare feet were spread wide and looked like shoes even though he had never worn them. The rest of us wore boots extending almost to the knee when hiking in the woods which exacerbated the effects of the heat.

We took a brief tour around his house with the shaman showing us the many plants with reported medicinal qualities seemingly good for about any imaginal ailment. After a while of this he approached a bush with a small stack of short pieces of a vine maybe an inch or two in diameter beneath it. The shaman explained this was ayahuasca and the leaves of the bush were used along with the stalks as part of a two component hallucinogenic and cleansing ceremony. I had read about ayahuasca and had indicated I would be interested in trying it if the shaman would be willing to do a ceremony for me and any interested others. At first he did not reply, so I assumed he had rejected the idea. He then invited us into his house and we sat on stools while he and his wife laid out various samples of food on a palm leaf - various cooked vegetables and some small animals such as grubs and snails. All were samples of stuff readily available from surrounding forest. The water snails are found in abundance after being stranded by changes in the level of the river which fluctuated as much as several feet in less than a day.

His house consisted of a large room with a cooking fire in the middle and a small pot with a smoldering termite nest to the side. The smoke from the nest was used to keep bugs away and maybe other pests as well. The smoke in the house from the two sources was thick and had a unique, fairly pungent odor, but it was not unpleasant. The only tools visible were a collection of about 10 machetes.

We tried maybe ten items his wife was able to readily prepare. The ones I did not find tasty I simply discreetly threw out the open space over my shoulder while expressing approval and showing gratitude for the hospitality. It was getting to be late in the day and when we rose to leave and canoe back to the lodge, the shaman mentioned that he would be willing to accompany us back to the lodge where he would prepare the ayahuasca drink and perform the ceremony.

When we arrived at the lodge the shaman said I should not eat anything that evening but could drink fluids including a beer, and that the preparations would be complete about 9 pm. It is said to be customary for the shaman to provide the necessary ingredients to a woman who then prepares the potion. The method used by his wife was a volume reduction using a vigorous boil over a period of several hours. Maybe this explains why his wife accompanied us to the lodge, prepared the potion, and then seemed to disappear. The central lodge had a spacious kitchen, a serving area with several tables for seating up to 30 or 40 guests, and included a large fireplace at the center with a small bathroom off to the side. The building was elevated about six feet on stilts, the roof was thatched, and the large serving area was open air and the home of numerous bats.

While waiting for the preparation, I decided to walk to my cabin about 100 yards down a path towards the river. When I left the lodge and entered the darkness I was struck by the star lit sky. Other than being on a remote mountaintop, I had never seen such a vivid display. In fact the clarity of the air in the region was one of the many surprises. Even during the day it seemed like you could clearly see the definition of each cloud all the way to the horizon.

Another surprise was the comfortable climate. In the jungle the air was still and stifling with high humidity and temperatures feeling like the high 80's. Along with crawling under and over things and up and down inclines, the effects of the heat seemed at times oppressive and I occasionally felt the dizziness from heat exhaustion while drenched with sweat. But just a short way out into a clearing there would be a breeze and the humidity seemed to drop, and when resting or walking in the plentiful shade, it was comfortable. Also unexpected was the lack of insects. I had brought DEET loaded bug/ mosquito repellant but ended up not using it. I did not notice any insect bites throughout the trip nor recall anyone else mentioning it.

I sat overlooking the river drinking a beer and gazing at the stars and then took an hour nap to awaken naturally just prior to 9 pm. I walked to the lodge and the shaman and others seemed to be ready to start the ceremony. Pierre had decided to join me in the experience. Z, Leonardo, and a couple of Indian helpers stayed to watch - maybe due to the curiosity arising from seeing foreigners partake in one of their ceremonies. There were numerous bats of all sizes circling above us and sometimes close enough to feel the air movement from their wings. (The Amazon is home to hundreds of species of bats and their numbers probably account for the unexpected lack of flying insects.)

Otherwise it was quiet and completely dark. We all sat in a circle around a small lantern while the shaman began a chant describing how he entered into his relationship with the vine. He then poured about an inch of liquid into a glass and drank. He poured a smaller amount and passed it to me and did the same for Pierre. After about 15 minutes of chanting in Quechua he asked that I sit on the floor in front of him. He resumed chanting in while brushing my head with a small clutch of leaves. Occasionally, he would inhale smoke from something resembling a cigar and blow it in bursts onto the top of my head. After a number of repetitions of all this he announced that whatever problems I had were now gone and that I would be cleansed. I said thanks and he repeated the ritual with Pierre.

After about a half hour I began to have vivid visions and a detached feeling and then a dizziness accompanied by nausea. The nausea soon became intense and I made repeated visits to an adjoining bathroom. It is common to experience nausea when first drinking ayahuasca so I was not surprised. But the repeated bouts were unexpected. I felt at once dizzy and weak and shaky while sweating profusely all interspersed with repeating intense visions and bouts of nausea. I was sicker than I can ever recall experiencing. Pierre vomited once about an hour after ingesting and felt a bit dizzy with some unexceptional reoccurring visions for several hours.

The visions I saw were vivid and popped up without warning. Although none were threatening or frightening, they seemed meaningless and without any connection to anything I could imagine. In one that kept appearing there were middle aged men wearing only something like loin cloths and hats that looked ceremonial. They were marching single file down an incline into a misty chamber, which I could not see. There seemed to be some rhythmic chanting or music accompanying their descent. I wanted to see where they were going but could not. Other visions were of naked and expressionless people groping each other and faces popping out of random patterns. I could make no sense of any of them. The visions or hallucinations I remember occurring with the use of other psychedelics like peyote or mushrooms were more like distortions of things in my immediate presence such as plants or animals. These visions seemed totally disconnected to anything around me or in my past. Why I had such an intense nausea experience with this stuff I will never know.

The cyclical periods of nausea were interspersed with the visions continued until a little after midnight after a brief bout of diarrhea as a finale I slowly began to feel life returning to my body. In another half hour I did my daily dental rituals and slept soundly. The next day my clothes reeked of sweat and smoke but I felt sort of serene or blissful. I was a bit washed out from the convulsions of the night before but I had a good appetite for a big breakfast and enough energy for a challenging jungle hike and later another visit to an indigenous community.

This village had more of the trappings of modernity. A dirt road followed by electricity had recently been extended to their community of maybe a couple hundred and it was interesting to see the changes these simple amenities had brought. Some basic commercial items such as canned foods and bottled beverages were available in a couple of small stores, the government had subsidized construction of a small school, a community recreation center, a small health facility, and electronic music could be heard pulsing from a couple of the houses. Of course the road would also eventually enable entry for other things like logging equipment, pumps for gold mining of the river banks, and the inevitable slash and burn agriculture.

A day later my strength had completely returned and I felt a continuing sense of serenity and clarity... like I had been completely disassembled and put back together without some of the garbage. I have long suffered from occasional sinus problems most pronounced in the mornings and evenings. I noticed these effects were lessened. A couple of weeks later I still felt the reduced presence of the allergies and the feeling of a mild serenity. If I were asked whether I would repeat the experience I would say that I currently have no plans to do so.

But if the question were whether I was glad I did it, I would reply positively. It was something I wanted to do and seemed to be headed toward... and, on some level, something I felt I wanted to experience for my journey in life. In addition it seemed like I was being guided in that direction by an alignment of events and circumstances. In the relatively distant past I had previous experiences with psychedelics such as LSD, mushrooms, and peyote. But the vine is in a world of its own and the lingering after effects are unique... not only unique for what they are, but that they even exist. I do not recall any significant after-affects stemming from the use of any other psychedelic drug. There is much information available regarding ayahuasca, and anyone interested in the experience should certainly educate themselves as completely as possible and make the effort to arrange for the proper setting with the guidance of someone knowledgeable in the collection and preparation of the ingredients.

Ecuador is a beautiful country and one of the few places I have visited where when leaving I knew I would likely return. There are more diverse peoples, cultures, ecological zones, and types of beauty in relatively close proximity (the country is just slightly larger than New Zealand or Colorado) than anywhere else in the world. When we returned to Misahualli, I spent one night in the hotel and took a bus back to Tena, a town about the same size as Banos but with a shabbier appearance. But it was a very comfortable and mellow place to enjoy for a few days before busing to Quito via Baeza and the hot springs at Pappallacta.

All in all, the Ecuadorean people seemed more helpful and friendly than about any other place I have visited. Maybe it is inherent in the culture, or maybe because international tourism is just beginning to come to the country and they are not yet jaded by the impacts. Fewer people seem to speak English than in most other Latino countries but that also seems to be changing. English is being promoted in the schools and people who desire to reap the benefits of tourism are making the effort to learn.

Ecuador will no doubt see increasing tourism - particularly if the politics stabilize in a way that enhances road and social safety and facilitates access. The development pressures in the country will also become more intense. Of course it all begins with a road which opens the door for some comfort amenities but also the trucks and bulldozers of the extraction industries. Sluice mining for gold using pumps and front-end loaders will increasingly replace the traditional swirling wooden pan. There will be more oil drilling, logging, agricultural land clearing, and the taking of rare flora and fauna for export. The roads to support all these activities and to provide the services to the communities that will want them will irreversibly change the indigenous ways of life. And, of course, population pressures in the country will no doubt continue fueling the fires of development. But for now it is still a beautiful and interesting place to visit and one of the more rewarding trips I have taken.

5.10.13a

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