We’re in our last week here in Iquitos so the pace of things has really slowed down (and thank god, we love the down time) We’re having more and more lectures here at the hotel and getting more time to read and enjoy ourselves. I’ll leave out the details of the lectures (there’s far too much information to explain anyways). On Monday afternoon, we all went to see another healer, only this time one that specialized in plant roots. I found this experience to be much more enjoyable than the one with the Spiritulista. He did individual session with all of us, just like the Spiritulista did, but used a lot more chanting and song than she did. (just a note for this story: he’s completely blind)When it was my turn to go up to him, before I even got up to him, he asked how old I was. This was a little strange because I’m the youngest of the group by far, and he hadn’t asked anyone else any questions. He did his rituals on me and afterwards singled me out again and said I have a small pulse in my chest beneath my sternum. The professors and I had several conversations with the healer, his wife, and our translator, but still couldn’t figure out exactly what that means. The “cure” for it though is a tea made from a readily available bark, so regardless of whether or not it’s something we would consider real, we’ll make the tea.
On Tuesday we were going to a botanical garden at the edge of Iquitos to have one last outing with our plant expert. No one really wanted to go, but Frank promised we would be back by 11:30-12 at the latest… nothing too extensive. We took a bus out to the garden, and were surprised to see that this was definitely not a garden by our sense. It was typical primary jungle… with a 2’ wide path cut into it…. Great… Not pleased, we took our mud boots out of the bags they went into after Isula, and prepared for a jungle trek. (NOTE: Juan took all of our boots and was supposed to clean them/dry them out… that totally did not happen.) Now wearing wet boots and even less pleased, we head off into the “garden”. The way these walks normally work is Juan leads, and whenever he finds a plant/tree of interest, he will stop, describe it to Kat in Spanish, she translates, and we move on. Today however, Juan would stop, describe it to Kat, Kat would have an extended conversation with Juan about it, and we may/may not get a sentence or two translated for us. Great fun… especially when today of all days the weather decided to warm up again so we’re sweating like mad in our jungle wear and surrounded by mosquitoes. This pattern continues for quite some time, until eventually we get to a fork in the path. Kat tells us that the (short) path we intended to take was really really muddy because of the recent rain, so Juan was going to take us a different (ridiculously fcking long) way, and by different way she meant he was going to cut a new trail with a machete. So now not only do we not want to be here, but we’re wearing wet boots, sweating like crazy, and getting bitten my mosquitoes all while bush whacking our way through the jungle. This continued for the next 3.5 hours…. At least after the two hour mark Kat started to understand that we no longer cared about plants, and we stopped pausing so often. When we finally came out into a field I was so relieved. Seriously for a while in there, I doubted that Juan had any idea where we were going. It was so nice to be back out in the open. We got on the bus and headed back to the hotel, when we finally got there, it was 3:30… FOUR HOURS LATER than we were told. Seriously the only good thing about that trip was that I got some awesome pictures of poison dart frogs.
One more funny story before I go… Dr. Mckenna lectured tonight (Wednesday) and then joined us for dinner afterwards. 10 min or so after we sat down, Frank got a call on his cell phone. He says,”Hey Dennis, Kat’s on the phone wondering where you are. You’re supposed to lecture in 10 minutes.”
Dennis, looking confused, takes the phone and this is what we heard:
“Where is it?”
“Oh, what am I lecturing on?”
“I have to do it in Spanish?!” (His Spanish is horrible)
By this point we’re all laughing too hard to hear anything else. You think our professors would know their schedules, but in Peru, anything can happen.
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