Iquitos and the Peruvian Jungle

Iquitos is a bustling and fun city, with the main draw being the Belen market, but our first act is get out of it on a jungle trip. This is, after all, is one of the main reasons for being in the Amazon.


- Fizzing through Iquitos on a mototaxi is a great laugh


- Here's one racing past


- Fags galore!!!


- The closest we get to piranha

We hook up the very next day with a couple of American girls from the Bay, Christina and Daisy, and our guide, Elvis (no he's not hooked on burgers). It's first a mototaxi, then a bus ride (there's always a bus involved somewhere) to the small port of Nauta, 100km South on the Rio Marañon, under cloudy skies. Here we pick up a little river taxi to take us to the village where we'll be based.


- Getting ready for action in Nauta, near the mouth of the Amazon


- Bring me jungle


Up the Marañon a way, then through a little, shallow channel filled with water-lilies and reeds, then across the strong current of the Rio Ucayali (a name immortalised by the crazy-haired Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarraldo), is the tiny pueblo of Nuevo Libertad. The houses perch high up on stilts above rich, succulent mud.


- Our stilt pueblo from the water


- Inside our little stilted complex


- And just outside ... this is too pretty


After a lunch gloriously free of beans, we four gringos, Elvis and his two brothers pick up our hammocks and wellington boots and set off in a dugout canoe up another little channel. Shades of the Amazon Star here as we almost immediately ground on a sandbank, but the difference is Elvis, who leaps out, and with a pelvic thrust sets us moving again. Then, dodging the fishing nets maintained by other villagers, we make a right turn up the Rio Yarapa. It's a black river about 20 yards wide, with jungle overhangs forming the edge. It's fizzing with life under the surface. All kinds of little turbulences come and go, and mysterious strings of bubbles adorn the surface. "Anaconda," explains Elvis with a grin, "maybe". Lucy is happily buzzing with supposed snake-horror.


- Elvis guiding us down a rapidly emptying channel


- More lovely jungle


Another turn-off and we're suddenly shoving our way through stubborn roots and branches, and then we've landed, at the mouth of a muddy path. Wellies on, we splat our way into the rapidly darkening jungle, soon coming upon a group of clearings that will be our camp. By torchlight we (actually, Elvis, with a little clumsy assitance) erect our hammocks, army-issue mosquito nets and bivouac canvasses. Elvis is hyperactive with his machete, fashioning poles and strings from the surrounds at a rate Ray Mears would be proud of.


- A sickly grin as the mosquitos swarm around our half-built camp


- Our lovely camp in the morning light


- Camp toilet: a half-built dugout


- Christina and Daisy enjoying a cuppa in the jungly mud


- Elvis and brothers, essential jungle-buddies


Juan Carlos, Elvis' brother, has meanwhile cooked up spaghetti and sauce over a raging fire, which we eat standing up. It probably smells as good as it tastes, but we all stink of the mosquito repellent we have liberally sprayed over our skin and clothing. We expend much energy swatting and cursing. And still they come, sticking to us like lovers, humming snatches of sweet mozzy-music in our ears and giving us little jungle kisses all over our bodies. As we set out on a night-walk, it becomes obvious that we're going to have to learn to love them back, because we aren't going to shake them off.

The forest is extremely sinister by night, regardless of the moon that means it's "too light" to see caiman in the water. The foliage crowds in on us, mostly palms at ground level, and there are many strange noises away from the path. "Don't touch anything", warns Elvis, invoking tree snakes and spiders to keep us honest. In the event we see lots of little, mainly inocuous things: fungi, frogs, ants, stick insects, orchids, and the glimpse of a crashing monkey. No jaguars, no snakes.

No snakes until back at camp, that is. A swift examination of the toilet area by Elvis reveals a little squiggle of snake, pencil-thin and maybe 50cm long. It is silver. "This is very dangerous", says Elvis, backing away slightly, "one of these bit a guide recently and he died in four hours". The snake is swiftly despatched with the flat of a machete. The girls cross their legs and try to hold on until morning. Noone fancies taking a midnight trip here.


- Ribbit


- The toilet-snake: deadly, and dead


The following morning, after a surprisingly good night's sleep in the hammock, and fried bread and papaya courtesy of Juan Carlos, we set off into the jungle again. Elvis gives us chapter and verse on the medicinal qualities of this and that tree, and we drink sweet water from the liana vine.


- Elvis gets busy with the palm fronds


- More Lucy's style than mine


- Just don't say anything...


- Elvis drinking of the liana. Apparently, if you boil it up it cures everything


- We'll never go thirsty in the jungle ... providing we have a guide and a machete


- Jungle Oli shows the girls how to weave palm leaves for a roof. Easy!


Again, we see no big snakes, but rounding a very muddy patch of path, Elvis pulls up sharply and points to a nondescript puddle. The worm-like swarm in the puddle are baby anaconda. The mother would have left when she heard us coming and is only "seconds away", hiding in the undergrowth. Bah!


- Swarming with baby Anacondas. Mummy's around here somewhere. Time to leave...


Our next butt-crunching boat ride, for these dugouts are short on comfort, is to a small lake to swim with the dolphins. But they are AWOL, so we make do with feeding the woolly monkeys on a nearby tree. They seem to be particularly interested in boobs for some reason...


- Woolly-monkey-business


- All aboard! Now, where's that bread?


- Oh God, please don't turn that tap on!


- Lucy's got a paddle, so she's happy.


- Directing progress from the rear


The final, distinctive part of our jungle adventure is an internal one, as we embark on a ritual cleansing of body and mind.

It's 9pm. In a candle-lit corner of our stilt-complex, Lucy, me and the two girls sit, backs to the wall. We are with a local shaman, who, incongruously, wears a red football tee-shirt and a baseball cap. He pours each of us a cup of red, opaque liquid from a plastic bottle. It is foul, thick and bitter and immediately feels wrong. He explains that the drink we just taken, ayahuasca, will cleanse us. We are likely to vomit and, if we are lucky, have diarrohea. We may experience visions. He tells us to smoke the cigarette he hands us which is a vital part of the process, although he doesn't say why. Pretty soon, I'm having a serious headspin and sweating heavily.

Then the shaman starts waving his fan, a handmade palm-frond affair, which makes such a buzzing, humming noise that I am convinced that I'm being asaulted by crazy insects. Then the hallucinations come: a stream of junky cultural references that have been lurking around in the quiet recesses of my brain for some time. As they reach their peak my stomach kicks in, and before I'm anywhere near a bathroom, I decorate the mud with lunch. After composing myself a little, which isn't easy, I go back and sit down. Everyone else is having the same problem. Lucy finds herself a convenient corner and heaves repeatedly.

The shaman keeps his fan working and sings little tunes. He checks in with us after we've all been assailed by the heaves to see if we would like some more of the terrible brew. None of us want, or need it. I'm fairly sure he repeats these conversations back to his fan, but noone else thinks so. I'm probably dreaming that. The pattern of visions and vomit continues for some time. Eventually, the shaman decides that we are not about to fly from the roof and calms us down with a different tune. Then we are sent to bed.

The following morning we have a debrief. All four of us hallucinated heavily and we have laugh running through the sillier ones. None of us feel really bad. I am a bit tender in the stomach, but very clear-headed, as though I have got rid of a lot of mental rubbish. Feed me some new information!!! To complete the ritual we drink lemonade and eat a vegetable soup, then take a long shower.

You'll be pleased to hear that we have no photos of this disgusting process, but...


- ...the ayahuasca ceremony might have looked like this on a different day


- This is certainly how we felt (actually a shrunken head)


And that's it for the jungle. Last word goes to the mosquitos:


- Yeah, but you should have seen the mosquito afterwards...