I heard many amazing things about the ayahuasca and one day, during my meditation back at home, I got the strong impulse of flying to Peru and do many things, including ayahuasca. I stood up from my meditation and booked the flights. Afterwards I googled about ayahuasca.
I saw the prices in the internet for the #ceremonies in Iquitos and I was shocked. It sounded so terribly touristic that it pushed me off. I came to know somebody in the internet, a gringo, "X", who told me he has the place but he is not doing the ceremonies himself, he has his own ayahuasquero to do them, and the groups of people are a maximum of 8, but normally are around 3. So, it didn´t sound too bad because I didn´t want to be in a room with 40 people all vomiting.
The gringo (X) told me that I should go to him directly from the airport, just to get some information. I thought it was going to be about ayahuasca and things I should and should not do, but he kept in talking about himself, the wonders he does (or did in the far away past) and about the things he is selling. Then he told me that the ayahuasquero is another gringo… my god, I didn´t come all the way to here just to have a gringo doing the ceremonies, I expected him to be a Peruvian. That was my first disappointment.
The house of "X" was full of chaos and dirt, and my belief is that if you want to know how a person is, visit his/her house. In the way the house is, so is his/her mind. And in this case is totally true.
At certain point a Peruvian came and they were talking but I didn´t understand "X", I thought he was speaking in some indigenous tongue. Then I understood one word and made huge effort to try to understand, which I didn´t, but he was speaking what he believes to be Spanish. The Peruvians just understand him because they are used to him after 27 years living here.
After one hour listening to him, I left because he was not giving me any useful information. We met 2 days later again, so that I go afterwards with the gringo ayahuasquero, "Z", to the Casa de la Ayahuasca. I was the only one going to participate in the ceremonies.
We drove one hour with a motocarro to the Casa and I got the next disappointment. The house was not deep in the jungle, was next to the road, meaning, it was very loud. The house, like the house of "X", was dirty. I had to clean it first just to be able to be around. Alan made me believe that the Maloca, where the ceremonies are held, is apart from the house, but it is in the house, so being loud with the traffic.
"Z" gave me a lot to think about. He is terribly moody, he explains himself non-sense and when asking about what he said he gets upset and he talks to you as if you are an idiot who doesn´t understand anything. He talks loud alone, he is dirty and sleeps most of the time. When he is awake, he talks and talks as if he is drunk, making not really sense of what he is saying or talking some not interesting bullsh… He lives here since 10 years, but speaks no Spanish. Just a little bit, but not even to get about. He says "X" speaks fluently Spanish, of course, for someone who can barely say “Buenos días”, then someone who can say “¿Cómo estás?” is someone who speaks fluently Spanish.
What he gave me to think about, is if really the ayahuasca helps to the ayahuasqueros or makes them to become non-sense. Both "X" and "Z" look and speak as if they are “off”. Repeating the same things all over again and when you tell them something, they can´t remember it for half an hour later. Maybe "Z" was already like that before. He was a bricklayer before he started with the ayahuasca 10 years ago and now he is in his sixties.
Finally we started with the ceremony around 9pm. He gave me a cup, he sang some icaros and after 45 minutes still I felt nothing. He asked me if I wanted more and I took another cup. He was singing icaros which sounded like songs for little children, but it was even worse when he was singing them in Spanish because he sounded totally gringo and the pronunciation was so bad, that I focussed in trying to understand what he was saying. In any case, the ayahuasca was not kicking in.
At certain moment I felt a bit of “something” and I decided to meditate, just to do something with the time. "Z" came and wanted me to put my hands in the praying position, but I was in trance in my meditation and didn´t feel like moving. He got scared and started shouting at me thinking I was dead. Dead? I´m sitting in meditation. How can a dead person keep straight sitting?. He wanted me to open my eyes and tell him his name. So ridiculous!. Then he blew some tobacco on me and the “whatever little bit of something” I might have felt, it disappeared.
Then he left at 12 and said it was it. I lied down and tried to keep in contact with Madre Ayahuasca. I don´t know what the people call “visions” but whatever I saw were nothing important and only lasting for few seconds before changing to the next image with no meaning for me.
I felt no any desire of vomiting and I was feeling alright. I read before that sometimes, just by vomiting, the ayahuasca kicks in. I asked then to Madre to help me to vomit and “she said” (I didn´t hear any voice, it was my internal voice) to sit up. I did and at that moment I vomited in a bucket which was next to me. It was already 3am. "Z" came and he was happy that I vomited. He started talking and talking non-sense. I asked him a couple of times to leave but he didn´t. After half an hour he left, but by that time the “whatever” just disappeared and I felt nothing.
The #psychedelic colours and shapes came to me only 2-3 times during the session, but nothing similar to what I saw last year with the magic mushrooms. In any case, that is not what I wanted to see, I was expecting something more meaningful.
Next day when I woke up at 7 I had breakfast ("X" says that the diet which is supposed to be for the ceremonies, even since one week before to one week later, is not true. One needs to eat). "Z" asked me how it was and I said that I felt nothing and my meditations are more powerful than this experience. He got upset with me and said that when he tried to blow the tobacco in me, I was not reacting. I told him that it´s normal in me when I meditate as I´m in trance. He was getting more and more upset, so I decided not to say anything.
Sadly, I already paid for 3 ceremonies, and it was expensive at least for me (350 $). I was doubting about doing it again but I said to myself that I will give it another chance.
Luckily for me, the next day came an American woman who already did ayahuasca several times in other places. She has some business with “alternative stuff” and she was planning to do some business with "X", and as "X" saw business, he accepted any demand she was doing and she was demanding to do the ceremonies with a woman ayahuasquera and she came to the Casa with a Shipibo Shaman woman and her 24 years old son, who is getting trained to be an ayahuasquero also.
Then, the second time I did ayahuasca, was with this shaman also. Different.
Here you can see a video I made about this first experience in YouTube.
