Smooth Rides, Fairy Tales and Visions

My journey began in darkness and rain, a taxi ride in the hours before dawn at the intersection of three countries. I was picked up in Colombia, dropped off in Brazil, waiting for a boat to Peru. After refusing the offers of the local drunks to carry my bags, my only company was a couple of grizzled old river porters, their waterfront bungalow adorned with posters and calendars of 80’s-style pin-up girls – one for which I would clearly not be mistaken. It was a moment for waiting. A handful of other respectable-seeming passengers trickled in with the April rains, including a matronly Brazilian woman who reassured me I was in the right place. A water taxi left us in Santa Rosa, Peru. All baggage strapped onto my body, I walked a long muddy plank to a very unofficial-looking door and knocked. One menorah candle burned sheepishly in a refuge camp of immigration paperwork. Documents signed, we set off along the Amazon toward Iquitos, one of the sailors standing statuesque on deck with a light to burrow our way toward the sunrise.

Other passengers carried suitcases, coolers, garbage bags filled with various treasures, plants, animals. . . a man boarded in a small town about two hours into Peru, his leg in a cast and with an i.v. bag in his hand. Twelve remarkably comfortable hours of dozing and daydreaming later, we disembarked in Iquitos, Peru – a city of about a million people in the middle of the Amazon. The price of my mototaxi ride plummeted from 40 soles to 1 sole in the space of about three seconds, which gave me a sense of the inflation rate for the less assertive negotiators.

Amid the decaying grandeur of the rubber boom days – a bit of Spanish colonial architecture, colorful ceramic tiles, the requisite green central plaza – lay a town with an innocence I found exotic and hard to understand. Come to think of it, a lot of the places I’ve visited in Latin America feel that way. I find myself constantly wondering, questioning and marveling at complete strangers who welcome me into their lives, invite me into their homes and families and offer me all sorts of help, assistance and friendship. Something about this embarrassment of generosity makes me slightly uncomfortable – maybe because it makes me see how we operate in such stark contrast. Something – probably a lot of things -- about our way of being has jaded me and us. Latin America itself is full of dramatic contrasts, which is another part of being here that keeps me thinking all the time.

Of course there’s a time for thinking and there’s a time for flinging oneself into experience. I met a curandero through a Colombian friend (not Pablo Escobar) and accepted his invitation to a medicinal healing ceremony at his center in the jungle about an hour’s drive outside of Iquitos. As you probably know, the Amazon is tapped by healers and pharmaceutical companies alike for its wealth of trees and plants with curative properties. In this part of the world, it’s not unusual for shamans work in cooperation with western medical doctors, thus lending the tradition of plant medicine a measure of respect that it doesn’t have in mainstream US culture. I’m far from being an expert on this topic but I hear there’s a writer/anthropologist named Wade Davis who can tell you what it’s all about.

The curandero dropped me on the side of the road with a few essential items – the rest I left back in my hostel, most curiously free of charge -- and one of his workers accompanied me through the moist earthy depths of the high jungle. I talked a bunch with a South African couple that had worked extensively with this curandero; they spent an entire month at his center last year, following this dietary and social regime (lots of solitude) and attending three ceremonies per week (lots of vomiting and visions). They seemed authoritative about the curandero and about the plant medicine, in general, so I felt free to spend the remaining 24 hours leading up to the ceremony in the hammock in my cabin, again alternately daydreaming and napping like an old man. Between the heat and humidity and my body adjusting to a cleansing diet – no salt, no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, no meat, no dairy, no chilis, no oil, -- my usual energy was reduced to a low but steady hum.

While I can’t say that I saw god or discovered the true meaning of life, I did experience something unusual and positive with a cast of international characters, including a lovely French drummer who was also an initiate. For most of the ceremony, I found myself waiting for something to happen, and ultimately it was a gentle and interesting introduction but kind of anti-climatic. I’m glad for having had the experience, even though it will mean a month without eating chilis or pork, including a week I will spend in Mexico. These are the sacrifices we make for purification and vision, I guess. I did break my alcohol fast tonight in the company of my new adoptive family in Lima with my new favorite drink, the Pisco sour – fresh lime juice, Pisco and whipped egg whites.

I returned to Iquitos on a microbus, which is a minivan utilized in ways that boggle the mind. Just when I thought there was no way we could possibly pick up another passenger, the van would slow down just enough for someone to hop on board with a bundle of wood, a chicken or a large bag of something, thus making us yet more deeply reminded of our respective relationships to the concept of personal space. Sometimes the least pleasant situations make for the most entertaining memories. Carlos Alberto, the interpreter for the ceremony and my companion for the journey back to town, prattled on tirelessly – lifting his shirt and asking me if I thought he was fat, asking me if I could send him a John Denver cd, telling me about his various ex-wives and children and occasionally breaking into “Take Me Home, Country Road.” Also among the passengers was a certain Juan Maldonado, allegedly the oldest jungle guide (ie, an expert in the plants and animals of the jungle) in the Amazon and – so he told me – the guide to Werner Herzog and company during the filming of “Fitzcarraldo.” It was Juan’s 64^th birthday, and he told me about a Facebook-assisted discovery of his long-lost U.S. American daughter who he hadn’t seen since he left New York when she was one year old. She will be coming to visit him in June for their first meeting in 37 years; he has been waiting.

A little relieved to leave the humidity, heat and squalor of the jungle city, I arrived in beautiful, sea-fresh Miraflores (the most touristy and ‘charming’ neighborhood in Lima) on Saturday night to a hostel owned by a Limeño surfer and gastronome who invited me to a parilla (ie, lots of meat) dinner as a way of apologizing for a long wait to get into the room I had reserved. He was injured and unable to surf but on Sunday showed me the famous Herradura (horseshoe) beach, which was completely full of muscled wave-chasers because of the seasonal swell. From there, he dropped me off with yet more friends of friends of friends, who promptly invited me to cancel my hostel reservation and stay with them. One of them, Erika – former Miss and Mrs. Peru, free spirit and lover of life -- whisked me off to witness the famous Peruvian Paso de los Caballos – a competition of saddle horses known for their elegance and smooth ride. Erika and her husband Vito, a well-known Peruvian painter http://www.vitololi.com/index-sp.htm, and I watched one of their favorite movies tonight, “August Rush.” I had never heard of it -- a fairy tale about an orphan child/musical prodigy who reunites with his long-lost musician parents in a concert in Central Park. The three of us sat on their bed and ate popcorn and grapes. They both cried, and I let myself believe the story.

Mañana Gris

Sometimes small steps require Herculean effort – finding foreign language symbols on a US keyboard, for example. Connecting to the Internet is another minor but vexing hurdle almost everywhere I go. Locating supermarkets and drugstores, purchasing minutes for cell phones, finding streets and addresses that aren’t labeled by visible signs. . . these are all the sorts of mundane challenges of living in unfamiliar places, and all which demand the employment of both patience and intuition.

In the last few weeks, I have crossed Colombia from north to south. I have eaten exotic fruits; I have shared beds with cats, dogs and other animals; I have imbibed with Colombia’s second most famous living painter, Jacanamijoy; I have walked barefoot and in wedge heels; I have bathed in private Caribbean beaches; I have dodged errant motorcycles driving through flooded streets in the Amazon; I have been taken repeatedly for being Brazilian and Colombian. Yesterday I did something I thought I would never do but which I’ve been encouraged to do for years: I scaled the face of a rock.

Two of my friends from the yoga retreat spent the last several days entertaining me in Bogota after Pablo Escobar departed for his sister’s wedding in Manizales, leaving me in La Macarena in his hammock-endowed penthouse with panoramic views. Bogota was blissfully tranquil as city dwellers took to the mountains and the sea for Semana Santa, so Natasha, Jaime and I took advantage of the empty streets and made several trips back and forth across the sprawling brick-colored city for various gatherings and activities. Jaime is a painter and a rock climbing enthusiast, among other things, and invited Natasha and me to spend Easter climbing with him at Suezca, just a couple hours’ drive from the center.

Rock climbers, I’m beginning to understand, are a rare breed – they are people who choose to ascend the vertical faces of rocks that reach thousands of meters above the ground using little more than their will and the rubber soles of the binding footwear that make ballet toe shoes look like bedroom slippers. By virtue of this activity, they have to tap into a certain calm and determination and faith.

Jaime patiently explained how our security system would work, and what each of us needed to do to ensure its proper function. He went up first, making a path for our safety rope and setting up a station where the three of us would meet. Natasha followed, making sure the rope was properly threaded for my ascent. I brought up the rear, collecting all the security equipment along the way. The rope is just insurance; it’s something you want to have in place but you never want to actually have to use it. The other thing about the security system is that it linked the three of us together and made our survival dependent on one another. It seems like maybe a good activity for the next United Nations summit.

Confident that my flexibility, physical proportions and the offering we made to the rock that morning would make climbing easier for me than most, I took my first steps on Mañana Gris, the 5.7 trail we followed (ranging in difficulty from 5.3 - 5.14). Any cockiness I might have had about my physical abilities was quickly done away with as I clung to the face of the rock, breathing and calculating my next steps – how to get from A to B. The scariest moments had little to do with being high above the ground; it was not being able to see where to move or how that left me momentarily paralyzed. Jaime and Natasha waited for me above, and a couple of times Jaime told me where to put a hand or a foot. He helped me see my next steps – and having made even the smallest moves helped me see what the next move could be, and the next. What I realized is that it wasn’t the rock that changed; my feeling of being stuck or knowing where to go had everything to do with my own perspective and self-belief.

We talked about Colombian politics and the upcoming election – Jaime and Natasha are in a burgeoning love but polarized by their political viewpoints – Jaime in favor of the radical/inventive but not very politically experienced Mokus (of Lithuanian descent) and Natasha favors Santos, a professional politician (allegedly corrupt and dishonest, but knows how to play the game). Colombian politics and the social/economic problems Colombia faces make the US look in some ways utopic – which of course it is far from being. In spite criminals who pay off the cops (who are egregiously underpaid) to look the other way while they wreak havoc; dramatic contrasts between rich and poor and all the strange formal and informal institutions in place to maintain this imbalance, Colombians are admirably optimistic, life-loving, warm and generous. One friend explained to me that he feels it’s his duty to have a housekeeper because he is providing a job for someone who might not otherwise be employed.

On the topic of coincidences and rocks (piedra = stone), I met another Pierre last week at Cafe del Mar on my last night in Cartagena – this one was an Italian from Bari, and we were instant friends. This was strange, of course, since it isn’t an Italian name at all. His real name was Pierro-Andre but he went by Pierre for simplicity. He spoke four or five languages and was funny in all of them. We were serenaded by a beautiful Spanish flamenco singer who was part of our group. I also bumped into some friends I met at Yos and Claudia’s finca – a Frenchman and a Colombian woman. First I ran into them at La Cevicherria in Cartagena, a restaurant made famous by being given Anthony Bourdain’s seal of approval in 2008. All I had to do was mention my friend Diane’s name (Bourdain’s producer) and I was treated like a queen. I ran into the Franco-Colombian couple again almost a week later in Bogota, at a concert that was part of the bi-annual Iber-Americano Theater Festival.

Now I am in Leticia, the southernmost town in Colombia, bordering Brazil and Peru – Leticia lies in the middle of the jungle, 500 miles from any major city. I arrived last night to torrential rains that sang through the tin roof of the Hotel Yurupary until late this morning. I have already had my passport stamped to exit Colombia and have a taxi coming to pick me up at 3am for the boat trip along the Amazon to Peru. I am following the Pablo Escobar-guided tour of Colombia and Peru, the next stop of which will leave me in Iquitos, a city which can only be reached by boat or plane and which was made famous by the movie “Fitzcaraldo,” with Klaus Kinsky. There’s something liberating about surrendering and following someone else’s directions – not that I’ve stopped caring or making my own judgments, but letting someone else’s conviction drive things along is refreshing. I will take my next small steps and trust that they will continue to reveal a path for me.

Waters That Carry Me Home

Sometimes it’s difficult to see how everything connects until you pull back, get a bit of distance. I’m sitting here listening to the world from my room in Cartagena with three beds – one for me, one for my clothes (freshly laundered), one for the ants, whose presence I have accepted – trying to synthesize the events of the last 12 days into some kind of coherent narrative, while also allowing my body to recover from whatever invaded its hallowed pathways. Water is not always just water, but a whole universe of life that can carry you off, pull you under, or keep you locked up right where you are. The body is fragile and reveals all truth but the mind finds its subterfuge.

It’s Caribbean-hot but thank god for the breeze and the air conditioning; I have both working for me at the moment but still I feel pressed down by heat. I have a drink in each hand as Carmen -- the housekeeper, laundress, cook and administrator of all things domestic at the Casa del Jardin -- instructed me to drink the guava juice she made for me, and Alka Seltzer.

A couple of weeks ago, I rose from New York City with the sun and stopped in Panama City and Bogota before reaching the northern coast of Colombia. An hour’s drive at dusk brought me back to the sea, to the lush coastal finca of two glorious human beings, Yos and Claudia. They bought the land in the days when the guerilla activity in Colombia posed a much greater threat than it does today (however controversial the right-wing President Uribe may be, most people credit him with ‘cleaning up’ Colombia) and have been its faithful protectors and shepherds for the last 15 years, creating an oasis of warmth and natural beauty for people who enjoy walking around barefoot, bathing by the light of the moon and living without doors or windows. I was there last March with a group of yogis from New York – and decided to return this year on my own. As it happened, my arrival coincided with another yoga retreat taking place at the finca – an ageless and other-worldly teacher named Diego was its leader, his Pocohontas-beautiful girlfriend Marcela the organizer, and the students flew in from Bogota for a long weekend.

With Diego it felt more like a reunion than a meeting, like we had known each other for years or were hatched from the same egg or something – though you wouldn’t think it from looking at us. Diego is small and lithe with gigantic dreds (channels, as he calls them) and looks almost more Asiatic than Colombian. He was adopted so actually it could be that he emerged from a huge crystal somewhere in Tibet; I wouldn't be surprised. Diego and Yos and I spent my first evening talking about ritualistic drug use while the mosquitos initiated me, and then came the rains – the thunder’s explosive greeting harmonizing with lightning that set the sky ablaze. I got a jump-start on my gringa tan the next day, while the Bogotanos arrived in the evening. It was dark when they began to file in and I was reading in a hammock as they sat down together to eat a late dinner and get to know each other – listening to their voices, their laughter, their questions and answers. It seemed like they knew each other already, but I’m beginning to think this is something different about Latin American culture. I felt a bit shy to meet people in the dark so I kept my distance but attended Diego’s introduction in the open-air yoga room on the beach that night, then retired early to rest for our 6am meditation.

Over the next four days, we burned things, chanted, sweat, stretched, held poses for a long time, breathed, turned ourselves upside down and inside out, laid beneath the stars, sang to each other, played music, bathed ourselves in the ocean, ate incredible costena food and fresh fish almost daily, went hiking in the jungle, making friends with each other’s sweaty limbs as we squeezed together into Yos’ jeep. The group was mostly beginners with a few more experienced yogis. There were three grandmothers (all amazing and hilarious), a hedge fund manager, a famous Colombian painter/film aficionado, several environmental activists, a mathematician, a handful of couples, lots of single women, and a playboy/biologist/businessman from Manizales (coffee country) named Pablo Escobar – no joke. Naturally, he ended up being my best friend.

By the end of the weekend, I had several invitations of places to stay in Bogota, an offer to teach in a yoga school in Bogota, contacts in my next destination, a bunch of phone numbers and email addresses, new fans of The Snow, a record label contact in NYC, a small bag of ashes for my alter, and a reasonably well-balanced tan. I stayed for the rest of the week, met and hung out with some other awesome international visitors to the finca, and then finally – somewhat reluctantly – set off for Cartagena on Friday in a small air-conditioned van, sitting next to a Swiss guy named Pierre who was working as a time keeper for soccer games in Medellin. We cobbled together a conversation in several different languages and I landed in the house (now a hostel) of a famous Colombian painter named Jacanamijoy. In fact, the room I’m sleeping in was his studio when he lived here.

Pablo Escobar sent me here, and also connected me with another friend of his, a photographer named Andres, who is in Cartagena this week for a wedding. Andres is a young guy but seems talented and accomplished, the kind of guy who wakes up and has a margherita when he’s on vacation. After my nine or ten days of clean living, I’m more of a water/coffee drinker in the mornings, moving in a slightly different rhythm. We spent most of the day yesterday having a long lunch and then hanging out in an expensive hotel by the water (where neither of us is a guest) and taking pictures. There was a dinner with other guests who are here for the wedding, for which I was too tired to really make the necessary conversational efforts. The evening ended with some bad vibes between Andres and the waitress and took the wind out of my sails, which were already less than taut. I was happy to come home early, even though it meant I missed a Saturday night of salsa dancing in Cartagena.

In another strange collision of worlds, yesterday there was a wedding here in Cartagena of an old boyfriend of mine – presumably with a Colombian woman but I’m not sure. Turns out that Andres’ friends who are here to get married are also connected to my old friend, who invited us to a party at his father’s house a couple of nights ago. Regrettably, we didn’t end up making it to the party, which might have provided some scintillating storytelling material but who knows.

In any case, our interconnection is undeniable, just as sure as Facebook spins its web across the Earth. I’m not sure it’s a good thing or a bad thing – I suppose it’s just a thing. In any case, el mundo es, indeed, un pañuelo.