Upon stepping outside the airport in Iquitos, you immediately get swarmed by all sorts of taxi drivers offering you a ride to your accommodation. Out of all the guys that came up to me, the one that offered the most reasonable price was this dude who had these watery, flaming red eyes. I figured he smoked a joint not too long beforehand, but he didn’t seem impaired or anything so I followed behind him and got into the back of his mototaxi pictured above. Not long after we were out of the airport parking lot and onto the main road that leads into town, it became clear to me that my driver was not a marijuana aficionado…errr maybe he was – who knows? – but that wasn’t the reason why his eyes had been all fucked up. Without a windshield, there was no protection from all the pebbles, dust and exhaust spewed right in our faces by passing trucks. To protect my own eyes, I reached into my bag to pull out my sunglasses. While doing this, I discovered that I’d inadvertently packed two pairs. That never happens. It was strange. It felt like the universe was testing me. It showed me a man suffering right in front of me whom I had the opportunity to help. But of course it wouldn’t be so easy, there’re always games of mental tug-of-war to be played. “What if this guy is a shitty father that gambles a lot or a drunk that beats his wife or something like that? I wouldn’t wanna give my glasses that I paid for with my hard-earned money to some asshole. But who am I to judge what this man may be like in his personal life, to make assumptions about whether or not he’s deserving of my help?” I was at an impasse. At the next red light, while he was wiping tears away, in Spanish I asked him why he doesn’t have any sunglasses the way the rest of the mototaxi drivers do. He said they’d fallen off his face while driving and got ran over. I handed him my second pair and told him to try them on. They were a perfect fit. And they now have a new home somewhere in Iquitos, Peru.
Iquitos is surrounded by the Amazon rainforest and is not connected to the rest of Peru by road. You either gotta come in by boat or by air. I flew in from Lima. The idea was to spend two nights here before heading to a more remote location in the Amazon for a week and then returning for one more night before flying back home. Because of terrible storms that’d been pounding the city of Atlanta where I ended up missing my connecting flight between Chicago and Lima and had to spend an extra 24 hours, I only spent one night in Iquitos at the beginning of the trip.
On a Sunday morning I met up with a group of 13 other foreigners to first take a bus ride a couple hours south to the town of Nauta before getting on this here boat en route to a place called Arkana Spiritual Center where we’d be doing a weeklong ayahuasca retreat.
Loved this dude’s hat
A glimpse of the center. In the language of the local Shipibo tribe, the word “arkana” means “protection.” The structure with the big triangular roof on the far left of the photo is the “maloca” which I’ll be showing more of in just a bit.
Outside cigarettes were not allowed in Arkana, but all around the center had been little offerings like this of a local tobacco called “mapacho” that’s said to have ten times as much nicotine as commercial cigarettes. You’re not supposed to inhale mapacho but only puff it in and out of your mouth a little bit. I’m not sure EXACTLY what it’s used for, but I’m pretty sure it’s to ward off evil spirits and bad energy and to help with your prayers and intentions during ceremonies. I actually haven’t smoked tobacco in a long time and don’t plan on going back, so I didn’t try any the whole time I was there.
Shamans are people that act as a bridge between the physical and the spiritual world. The shamans that work at Arkana Spiritual Center are from the Shipibo tribe. And here at this area of the center is where they brew their ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic beverage made from plants/vines found in the Amazon rainforest. In the local languages, “aya” means “spirit, soul” and “waska” means “woody vine,” and the words were put together to describe this potion that allows the spirit to wander away from the body it is traditionally housed in and to enter a dimension otherwise inaccessible to the living. While at the center I asked how they got the idea to mix these plants together and prepare them the way they do – like, how did they know that doing so would have such an effect? No one had a specific answer for me as this tradition has been ongoing for thousands of years, but as the story goes it was the plants themselves that spoke to the shamans and told them what to do.
Artwork at Arkana. From what I gathered during my week down there, snakes – the anaconda in particular – are representative of ayahuasca and the protection they provide. Many people are said to see the snake while under the influence of what’s often referred to as “the medicine,” but I was not one of them.
Artwork inside the aforementioned maloca where ayahuasca ceremonies are held. The flags there were said to represent the countries of all the guests present, but I noticed a few flags had been missing – particularly Kenya, the UK and Turkey. We had a pretty diverse group, I was probably most surprised that one couple had come all the way from Mongolia to do the retreat. And the two guys from Mexico actually ended up leaving the same day they arrived because one of them had been having really bad anxiety about trying ayahuasca. Ironically, the anxious guy who wanted to leave was actually the one who had the idea to go there in the first place and had dragged his friend along, a friend who had next to no interest in trying this stuff at all.
In addition to the professional artwork found around the complex, there was a blackboard on which participants were encouraged to create their own artwork during the course of the week. Don’t know who drew this one, but it was my favorite.
I forgot the names of the plants used in these here “plant baths” that’d been prepared by the shamans, but we were given them about three hours before the ayahuasca ceremonies and we were supposed to use them to focus on what we wanted to gain from that night’s ceremony while scrubbing away shitty habits and mental patterns and anything else that no longer serves us. It smelled kinda like washing yourself in a bucket of green tea, and you weren’t supposed to take a shower or go in the pool until after the ceremony or else you’d lose your plant bath benefits.
Here’s the way the main maloca was set up on nights of ceremonies. The group of shamans would sit in the center circle and all the guests would sit or lay on the mattresses along the outer edge of the room. During each ceremony there was also a group of 3-4 “facilitators” that keep an eye on everyone and help people out who are vomiting a lot or shit their pants or are having a difficult trip they need assistance with. Most facilitators are people that’d originally came to Arkana as guests but wanted more time at the center to take more ayahuasca and continue to explore themselves.
The ceiling of the main maloca. So, during my week there, ceremonies were scheduled for the nights of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. They start at 9pm. You don’t eat dinner on the nights of ceremonies and you are supposed to stop drinking water by 6pm. People start showing up to the maloca around 8:30 or so and you take your place and wait for the shamans to arrive. Once the shamans get there, candles are lit and all artificial light is turned off. The shamans then blaze up some mapacho and a couple of them start blowing it onto the ayahuasca they’re about to serve while another one comes around and blows it onto the hands and the crown of each participant’s head. After that, the facilitators call us up one by one to kneel before the shaman to think about our intention (whatever way we’d like to improve ourselves during that particular ceremony) and take that night’s dose of ayahuasca. Once all guests and shamans have taken their shot of medicine, the shamans use a hand fan to blow out the candles. At this point you sit there in total darkness waiting for the aya to start taking effect. You’ll know when it starts hitting you by the way you feel, you’ll know it’s starting to hit other guests when the sound of violent retching fills the air, and you know it’s hitting the shamans when they start singing their “icaros.” An icaro is like a magic chant that shamans do during ceremonies that is supposed to keep negative energy at bay and guide your experience in a positive way. The ceremonies usually ended around 1 or 2 in the morning and at that time I would stagger back to my room where I’d lay there still tripping and unable to sleep until about 4. Then sometime the next morning everybody would gather back in the main maloca for a “group share” during which you go around the circle and talk about what you experienced the night before and decide whether or not you’d like to increase your dose for the following ceremony.
There’s a good quote out there by a dude named Alan Watts. He says, “Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. When you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope; he goes away and works on what he has seen.” So…I ended up taking ayahuasca during three out of the four ceremonies. By the fourth night, I’d had enough. I was tired of not getting adequate sleep and of feeling hungover for half the next day and all that shit. While I’m super grateful to have had the opportunity to have this experience, I don’t feel like the medicine provided that much useful insight for me. After experimenting with a wide range of psychedelics for a couple years, I actually decided to quit them in 2017 after every trip started being the exact same. Unlike at the start when psychs offered a fresh perspective on things and allowed me to see life through the eyes of my inner child, eventually every time I entered into psychedelic headspace it became a nightmare in which I and/or my family members would die and I’d have to experience on a visceral level all the grief and sadness of losing all the people I care about. So, as you might imagine, in my real life back home I’d had no desire to get back into mushrooms or acid or peyote or anything else, but at the same time my curiosity about ayahuasca always remained. It was an itch that’d eventually need to be scratched – and scratch it I did – but unfortunately, this experience was not all that different from the ones that prompted me to “hang up the phone” in the first place.
During the ceremony on Monday night, I saw a lot of patterns that were floating upward. The different voices of the shamans singing their icaros caused the patterns to change colors. In the middle of the patterns appeared the faces of family and friends that I’d lost over the years. I cried a pretty good amount during this trip and it actually felt good. It felt like a release of pent-up emotions that I’m too busy in my daily life to stop and deal with. So, it actually felt like a relief. If I’d have left my ayahuasca experience with this one trip, I think I would’ve been satisfied, but I decided to stick with the program and see what else the drink wanted to show me. The second night I took a higher dose and it was not a visual experience at all. It started out mild and pleasant, but then an intense storm of negative energy came over my body and mind and I spent the next five hours trying to fend it off while intermittently reflecting on the sacredness of life, how my mother carried me and my beating heart inside her body and how it’d be nice to one day find a partner with whom I could pair up to pass this gift of life on to another generation. Since I hadn’t thrown up the first two nights, I figured maybe I wasn’t taking enough medicine to have the full effect, so on Thursday night I opted for an even larger dose (which I also did not throw up). About half an hour into the trip, all I could see was neon green floral patterns over a pitch black background, not too different from the above piece of art I ended up buying from one of the shamans on my last day at Arkana. I don’t know how I knew this, but I was in the presence of death. It was absolutely horrifying. I didn’t want to see the things I was seeing. I closed my eyes, I opened them, I looked to the left and to the right and I couldn’t escape it. Death was everywhere. And it was coming for me and my family. I was so scared that at one point it occurred to me to shout for help from one of the facilitators to save me from what I was experiencing, but after further consideration I decided against it. No matter how good their intentions may be, there’s nothing any one of them could’ve done or said to improve the situation. After all, death is something that each of us must face on our own. So, I decided to fight it. I said, “You’re not going to take me and my family. We’re going to stay here amongst the living.” And it responded, “What kind of arrogant creature are you? It is I who decides who I’m going to take and when I’m going to take them. You have no say in the matter.” I replied that, “I respect you. I cannot deny your power. But still, I won’t let you take them.” And instead of dignifying what I’d said with a verbal response, death proceeded to punish me. After watching my dad dragged away into infinite nothingness while looking back at us with his fingertips dug into the ground trying to resist, I suffered at the hands of horrible creatures for the next couple hours as I cried and grieved over the hypothetical loss of my still-living loved ones. So, in conclusion…I mean, death is a part of life and I know it’s on me to accept that. But at the same time, I don’t really see the benefit of experiencing it over and over each time I take psychedelics. Really, what more can I do in life than appreciate the time I have with the people I care about while I still have it?
One other ceremony offered at Arkana was a “bufo” ceremony. Unlike ayahuasca which is native to the Amazon, bufo actually comes from the venom of a toad that’s native to the Sonoran Desert. It contains the compound 5-MeO-DMT which, when smoked, can send you to another planet. In the past, I’d smoked powdered DMT a few times before and that was probably the most similar thing to this that I’d experienced. Unlike with an ayahuasca trip where you’re seeing patterns and experiencing things and thinking thoughts, with bufo…it’s hard to describe. You as an individual are gone. It’s like nothing and everything all at once. Everything is white. It feels like pure bliss in body and mind. And it only lasts somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes and you feel great afterwards and aren’t up all night losing sleep and all that sorta shit. If ayahuasca dragged me through the depths of hell, bufo brought me to heaven.
The food at Arkana was really good – all healthy, mostly fruits and veg, but with some eggs in the morning and fish or chicken at lunch/dinner. Like this avocado that I wasn’t able to take a photo of before someone got to it, I was also super impressed with the presentation of a lot of the stuff
Fresh juice made from a variety of local fruits served at every meal
Some sources claim that the name of this classic Peruvian dish “causa” is derived from the Quechua word “kausay” meaning “life” or “sustenance.” It’s made from layers of mashed potato at the top and bottom with chicken or tuna in the middle with avocado. Good shit
Some peppers laid out near Arkana’s kitchen on a corrugated tin roof to dry in the sun
In addition to tripping on drugs, several excursions are offered to guests at Arkana to get out and experience more of the surrounding jungle
Our excursion guide Falcon showing off the scar from where a piranha took a chunk out of his arm when he was a kid
Wooly monkey that’d jumped onto our boat during one of the excursions
Hanging from this tree are a bunch of nests belonging to a type of bird called an oropendola which, in addition to building interesting nests, also make some pretty fascinating sounds
During the excursion when we went out looking for sloths, we ended up getting caught in a storm. It was pretty miserable for a while but this incredibly vibrant rainbow spanning the entire sky made it all worthwhile. It was actually a double rainbow. If you look above the main one, you can see a second more faded one there above it. This was actually the last excursion I went on. There was one more that went out at night to look for caimans that I opted out of and good thing I did. During that one, the boat ended up brushing up against some bushes and everybody was instantly covered in red ants that bit the shit out of em
The nearby village of Libertad where most of the employees at Arkana (security, kitchen crew, housekeeping) were all from. I visited in April which is at the height of the rainy season and everything is completely flooded. During the dry season you can walk from one of these houses to another, but this time of year you gotta take a canoe. Believe it or not, where I’ve taken this photo from is the middle of the town soccer field. You can see the top of the goal post poking out of the water in the bottom center of the photo
Some cute handicrafts I bought from Libertad for my people back home
Big F’n tarantula just outside one of the rooms at Arkana. Could you imagine one of those things crawling across your face during an ayahuasca ceremony? Probably wouldn’t know if it was real or part of the trip.
I arrived in Iquitos on a Saturday and this Michael Jackson impersonator was dancing there for hours in the town square known as Plaza de Armas. And here he is again the following Saturday, the day I got back to Iquitos after my time at Arkana. I’ve seen a lot of these guys over the years all around the world and some are actually pretty good. But this guy…I dunno. This guy kinda sucked. His dance moves were stupid and uncoordinated and…I dunno. Ya know, good for him. He’s out there doing what he loves every weekend even if he doesn’t draw a crowd or make any money. I respect that.
Getting ready to fly out of Colonel Fap (wink wink nudge nudge) airport on Sunday morning
