Yurimaguas and the Ayahuasca experience

Yurimaguas is a pretty, little city. Smaller, greener and less noisy than Iquitos. And cheaper.

We found a double room for 8$ per night, left our luggage and headed out to explore the village. Again, Plaza de Armas was probably the main attraction…

…until we discovered the riverside. And a cozy, little eco-guesthouse, where its friendly owner offered us a unique Ayahuasca experience. We accepted.

Ayahuasca is a plant, traditionally used by indigenous shaman people to cure various ill- and sicknesses. Our Lonely Planet states, that it can also cause hallucinations of about three to four hours. Sounded like an interesting thing. We agreed.

We returned to our hostel, packed a little bag full of essentials and paid a tuk-tuk-driver to bring us out to the shaman’s farm.

Upon arrival we found a beautiful property of about 25 acres, which was actually inhabited by more dogs (18, five pure-bred German shepherds amongst them) than human beings at that point of time. The shaman told us, at times they cure up to 33 guests simultaneously with their natural herbs and essences, but currently there were only around six other guests, mainly of Russian derivation.

We sat around the rest of the afternoon, waiting for the ritual to begin. We hadn’t expected to wait that long, so all we found to entertain us were some pieces of paper and a pen. Enough to play “Käsekästchen”. ;)

After the sun had set, we were finally called in for what we hoped to be a massage, some therapeutic body treatment to later on allow the positive energies to flow easier through all of your body, as we were told. The “massage” turned out to be pretty painful, as Julez and I obviously both have a lot of negative energy floating through our bodies. Could be a result of (excessive) red meat consumption, as the shaman explained.

Somehow we survived the treatment, to then sit down on a table with three other patients to begin the ceremony: We all had a bucket standing on the ground in front of us, where our reliefs from the interior should go in. We all had a bowl of hot water on the table in front of us, as drinking as much as possible is absolutely essential to prevent that really painful “dry-vomiting”. And we all had nothing else to do on a mild Sunday night, than sit in a round together and vomit our guts out.

The first two began to throw up right after having drunk the first portion of Ayahuasca. It tasted disgusting. I was tempted to throw up right away as well. But I resisted.

Around 20 minutes later, Julez was the next one to start filling up his bucket. A Russian guy and I hold on to it for another 10 minutes, in which I desperately wished I would start emptying my stomach out – the pain and the feeling were way worse than the actual relief of getting everything out.

We hadn’t eaten dinner that night. Julez and I had had lunch, as that was before we decided to opt for the Ayahuasca trip. It is recommended to not eat anything all day long, as food only further contaminates your body – and the original sense of Ayahuasca was/is to clean your body from any negative energy by simply emptying it totally out and therefore not leaving any negative stains behind. In fact, leaving nothing behind. Not inside your body. That’s what it felt like.

The shaman explained that human beings should throw up every now and then anyway, as cats for example eat their own fur to then vomit it out once a month or so. I guess, the cleverness of evolution had a deeper insight into the matter before stopping human beings of throwing up naturally every once in a while. It’s no fun. But we couldn’t go back.

Julez and I were the only One-Night-Stands, everyone else was around for between two weeks and three months, some of them came repeatedly. We were told that Ayahuasca had already cured prostate cancer and made a disabled guy walk again. I am not too sure, how much we should believe the tales of those people, but on the other hand, the shaman made a really professional impression on us, so I guess trying to cure an illness modern medicine can’t handle is always worth a try.

So, there we sat. Six persons around a table, small-talking about heritage, purpose of the cure and anything else that came into our minds, approximately every half an hour breaking the conversation for some ten minutes to lustfully throw up into our buckets. The shaman kept the conversation going and encouraged the excessive consumption of water, which I found to be at least a little helpful to lower the pain.

Julez lay down after having eaten backwards the first time; a Russian guy ordered a second and a third Ayahuasca treat. After the second throw-up, I felt as weak as rarely before, but forced myself to stay seated, keep drinking and making up topics which to discuss.

The ceremony lasted about three hours. We did not hallucinate, but after having thrown up four (!!!) times I barely found the power to make my way to the toilet, where I emptied out my almost overflowing bucket, before heading to bed. I was incredibly happy to finally lie down and let the sleep overcome the pain I felt in my stomach. My bed was out on the veranda, but neither mosquitos nor pouring tropical rains nor screaming cocks the next morning could disturb my sleep…

It was still raining when we finally awoke the next morning. The breakfast was not my favorite, but supposed to be healthy, and after feeling turned inside out I would have eaten almost anything to just restore a little energy.

The tuk-tuk-driver answered our call, but ignored our pledge to pick us up from the farm. We finally flagged down a colectivo (shared taxi) to get back to Yurimaguas. The trip had, indeed, been unforgettable. But by far not the way we had imagined it to be…