I had just booked a hostel in Popoyan, when I got a message from a recruiter in China, wondering if I was available for a Voov meeting.  Voov is the Chinese equivalent of Zoom.  I’d downloaded it, at her request, but had never used it.  Now she wanted to do a test run, making sure there were no kinks before scheduling an interview with a principal in Beijing.  I told her just a minute, and ran to put on a dress shirt. 

After a few minutes her face appeared, mostly hidden behind a COVID mask.  There I was, on a smaller screen, looking like a hermit in reading glasses.  Things seemed to be working OK.  We scheduled the interview for two days later.  Hopefully, the internet would be working in Popoyan.

Popoyan was only a few hours away, so the next day I slept in and checked out as late as possible.  In a moment of weakness, perhaps, I went ahead and posted a link on Facebook to the sample song and poem galleries I’d recently created on my website.  I always say if Facebook is your only platform, then you don’t have a platform.  I don’t have a platform.  Within five minutes I had about eight heart emojis.  This from people who could never be bothered to visit my site.  I was sorry that I’d posted the link, and considered taking it down, but decided to hold off and see what happened.  It wound up bothering me all day.  All my dreams are golden until I release them.  Then comes the taint.

When I got to the bus station, I discovered how huge it was.  There were too many bus companies to choose from, so I just went with the one with the biggest sign.  Apparently, what they had going to Popoyan was a minibus that was leaving in five minutes.  As I was considering it, a dwarf appeared beside me, ready to be of assistance.  Once I had my ticket in hand, he raced ahead of me, beckoning for me to follow, as if our real destination was Oz.  He seemed to know everyone who worked at the terminal and shouted out greetings to one and all.

The bus was blue on the outside, and all blue vinyl on the inside.  There was no legroom, so I took a seat in the corner of the back bench.  It was too high to see out the windows.  I felt trapped up there.  Along the way we stopped to pick up anyone by the side of the road who wanted to get on.  Before long the bus was packed, with most of the passengers standing.  A mother and three of her daughters were crammed in next to me.  By the time we arrived, my left hip was seriously distressed.

Popayan is known as the White City because of all of the whitewashed colonial buildings in the historic center.  I’d written out directions once again, thinking I might walk to the hostel, but was glad I didn’t when I saw how long it took the taxi to get there from the station.  I’d booked a private for two nights, this time getting a whole dorm to myself.  There were six beds to choose from and a balcony that overlooked the street.

Right away I went out walking, finding I was only a few blocks from the Parque Caldas.  I knew it wasn’t a big city and had the whole next day to explore, so started walking towards a church on a hill that appeared to be just outside the city limits.  The Iglesia de Belen didn’t look hard to get to, but there was no direct path to it.  I had to follow a road that wound through the hills behind it. 

Near the top, a man on a motorcycle, with a woman behind him, pulled over to warn me that some of the people in the area were not good people.  I should be careful where I walked.  Now I was paranoid.  A group of young people were sitting on a car that was parked between the church and where I was, smoking and having noisy fun.  I decided to chance it and walked past them with my eyes on the ground.  They left me alone.  Service was in session when I got to the church, so I took off my hat and stood in the back, taking pictures when no one was looking.

Out front of the church there was a walking trail with a series of statues depicting Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.  It looked like it could be a shortcut back to town.  After a few hundred yards I saw a gang of young guys making their way uphill.  When they noticed me, a few of them seemed to speed up, so I turned and quickly walked back to the church.  They didn’t follow me, and may have been up to nothing, but now I felt anxious and just wanted to get back to my room.

When I did, I saw that my Facebook post about the sample song and poem galleries had gotten only fifteen likes and two comments, one from my mother, and another from a guy seeking attention for his own agenda.  That made my stomach hurt.  I’d come to Colombia with this big project in mind, hoping perhaps that completing it might lead to a change in my fortune.  Now it was clear that no one had the interest or attention span to read even one of my lyrics or poems.  How would making five hundred of them available online ever change anything?

If I could live on one compliment a year, there were still many years I would’ve starved.  I knew better but couldn’t help myself.  At the end of the day, I still wanted to be accepted, and feel like I’d done something of value with my life.  Most of the time, however, I felt like a failure, not just at art, but at everything else, as well.  I couldn’t go on.  I needed help.  What I wouldn’t give for one enthusiastic person in my life, outside of my mother, but there were times when even that seemed to be asking too much. 

The closer I got to Ecuador, the more the influence of the music and culture came from the Andes, as opposed to the Caribbean.  When I went down to Parque Caldes that evening there was a group dancing in a circle to music that fused folk rhythms and pan flute with a modern techno beat.  There were also three smaller groups of friends, in different corners of the park, playing drums, guitar, and flute, singing melodies I hadn’t been exposed to on the north coast of Colombia, but recognized from Peru.

The next day I visited some of the many churches and cathedrals in Popayan, and had just made it to the top of El Morro de Tulcan, an ancient burial mound on the east side of the city, when dark clouds moved in and it started to rain.  I needed a down day, so didn’t mind much returning to the hostel and getting back in bed, spending the afternoon listening to the thunder and rain.

That night I had an interview with a principal in Beijing, for a job I was going to have a hard time pretending I really wanted.  Still, I needed to do something fast, so had agreed to it and laid out my one dress shirt the previous night, hoping to straighten out the wrinkles.  They wouldn’t be able to see that I was wearing it with a pair of shorts.  The approach was similar to a mullet, which is business up front, party in the back, except this was work on top, vacation on the bottom.  Five minutes before the interview was to take place, I logged onto Voov, and sat there dreading what was about to happen next.

It was the recruiter who came on first.  She then put me through to the principal, who was a young Chinese guy who spoke English without much of an accent.  The first thing he wanted was to get to know me, so asked me to share a little about myself.  I was in the middle of giving him the educator version of my life, when the connection dropped out.  It wasn’t going well.  I felt like an actor who hadn’t bothered to learn his lines before a big performance, and was just up there trying to wing it.  I was only able to reconnect for a few minutes, but it was clear to all of us by then it wasn’t working.   

A few minutes later the recruiter contacted me by email about rescheduling, and I was relieved.  What you need to do to get a work permit in China is a big hassle.  I also had come to understand from a previous interview that working there required a daily COVID test.  That sounded like a nightmare.  It would be a lot of work just to get my hands on a little bit of money, because that’s all it was, barely enough to live on.

The plan was to travel to San Agustin the next day, so I went ahead and booked a hostel for two days.  From there, it was onto Mocoa, in Putumayo, which I had a strange feeling was going to work out just the way it should.  It was like I was being drawn there.  Whatever happened when I got there I was prepared to accept, one way or the other.

It was much colder than it had been the previous night.  I went back to the Parque Caldas to find something to eat, and found that it was all taped off, with police stationed at every corner.  What was this?  A return of the pandemic?  A renewed threat from leftist rebels?  No.  In fact, what they were preparing for was a marathon.  It was unclear if the race was taking place that night, but whenever the runners came through, they’d be ready for them.

After arriving in Popayan, a woman had approached me at the bus station and sold me a ticket to San Agustin.  I wasn’t sure what to make of it until she led me over to a ticketing window that appeared to be legitimate.  Figuring it would be good to have my ride confirmed, I’d gone ahead and bought a ticket from her, leaving in two days, at eleven-thirty in the morning.  When I got to the station, however, the bus was delayed.  I waited for an hour before the same woman appeared, apologizing, and saying that now the bus wasn’t leaving until three.  That news didn’t make me happy.  She did some searching around and found another company that was willing to drop me off.  I walked over with her and gave my bag to the driver.

The bus that agreed to take me on was half-size and green.  There were only about ten of us onboard.  I was way in back, in a seat ahead of the back bench.  In front of me was a man in a poncho and straw hat.  At one point he threw his hat up in the luggage rack, next to my backpack.  Driving through the mountains and jungle the road was rough, but there was about fifty miles of it that was unpaved and just ridiculous.  Sitting right above the rear axle, I was getting catapulted all over the place.  At one point I tried hanging from the luggage rack to save the wear and tear on my already fractured tailbone. 

Once we hit pavement again, we stopped at a restaurant for a twenty-minute break.  I went to retrieve something from my backpack and saw it sitting on the old man’s hat, which was crushed flat.  I didn’t know if I should say something, but he discovered it on his own and somehow restored it to shape with his hands.

When we arrived in San Agustin, I was met by a man who said he had information on getting to Mocoa.  He hustled me into an agency where a woman tried to sell me a tour to the archaeological park, as well as a few side attractions.  When she understood I wasn’t interested in the tour, she offered to sell me a ticket to Pitalito, where I would need to catch the bus to Mocoa from.  I told her I’d be back later.  I needed to find my hostel before I did anything.

The hostel was a long way off, mostly uphill.  I’d booked a single, for a reasonable price, that included a bathroom.  Since it was late in the day, I headed out right away to see what I could of the town before it got too late.  One guy I’d seen in the hostel passed me on the street.  He was sporting a mess of dreads and I figured he might be someone to talk to about ayahuasca.  As it turned out, I didn’t need to wait to run into him again.

There was a small park in front of the Church of Saint Augustine.  In every corner of it were the same crouching stone creatures you find in the archaeological park.  Some looked human.  Some looked like animals.  A few of them sat perched on another one’s shoulders.  Most of them wore a scowl.  I got a few papas from a vendor and a cup of coffee.  Then I went into the cathedral, which was very dark, only lit by a few candles.

When I got back to the hostel, I went up to the top floor, which was an observation deck with a few hammocks strung up.  The sun had set, but the sky was still blue, with purple clouds, lit up by flashes of lightning.  In one corner were three travelers smoking a joint.  I sat watching the sky for a while, before entering the conversation.  There was a Brit attempting to ride a motorcycle to the tip of Argentina.  An Italian who’d been living in Australia had just arrived in Colombia and was looking for ideas.  Then there was the girl, another Brit, who was on her way to Mocoa the next day.  I didn’t need to ask her about ayahuasca ceremonies.  That’s all she talked about.

When I mentioned my interest, telling her I was planning on just showing up and seeing what happened, she assured me I was going to the right place.  Some of her friends had property there and might be having a ceremony later that week.  She took my email, laughing that I was the only person she’d ever met who used Yahoo for email.  I told her I also had a cool Gmail account, but joked I’d have to know her better before divulging that information.

As soon as we were done talking, I ran down and checked hostels in Mocoa.  There didn’t seem to be many options.  The only one I could find was about seven miles out of town, which didn’t excite me.  As I scrolled through the reviews, however, I found one that slammed them with a one-star review, accusing them of using the hostel to try to start an ayahuasca cult.  I went ahead and booked five nights.

When I woke up in the morning, there was no electricity.  It was actually a relief when I discovered that it wasn’t just my equipment failing me, as so often has been the case.  My plan was to head straight to the archaeological park while it was still early.

San Agustin is a large funeral site with a number of burial mounds and tombs.  It hosts the largest collection of megalithic sculptures in South America, many of them gods or mythical animals.  I’d been there fourteen years earlier, and it was the last trip I ever took a 35-millimeter camera on, switching over to digital shortly after.  As it was back in those days, you sometimes thought twice before taking a picture, since you needed to not only pay for the film, but also to have it developed.  I’d get back from a big trip with eight to ten rolls of film I’d shot, and that was the entire documentation. 

It wasn’t until I picked up my pictures at the drugstore, that I even knew what I’d captured on the trip.  Most of the pictures were disappointing.  Animals shot from too far away.  Shots from a moving vehicle that were all blurry.  A huge mountain that only looked like a blip on the horizon.  There was the rare surprise, however, the one masterpiece from the trip that you couldn’t have calculated.  My Haunted Rock logo is an example.  It was taken on a trip to Machu Picchu, on the first roll of film I’d shot in over a decade.  Nowadays, I get some good pictures, but the percentages haven’t improved.  Most of what I shoot on a phone is garbage, and until very recently, often doesn’t even get looked at.

Although I could’ve walked to the park, I took a taxi, figuring I’d walk back once I had my bearings.  It was a quiet day when I arrived.  Only a few attendants sat at the ticket booth.  The entrance fee was expensive for Colombia, almost ten dollars, but for that they issued me a small passport that was good for a few other sites in the area. 

There is a small museum and exhibit hall you pass through to get into the park, but they didn’t have electricity either, so it was more like a tunnel, the featured statues resembling shadows.   Outside, the tombs and statues are arranged in three groupings, or mesitas.  The first, and longest, heads downhill and loops through the trees.  The statues are interspersed every thirty yards or so.  These are the guardians of the graves; warriors, jaguars, monkeys, musicians, many strange creatures, all frowning, if any of their features remain.  Many of the stones have been so eroded you can’t tell what they’re supposed to be.

The second mesita is probably the most definitive, as there are actual tombs in a clearing.  Some of them are just pits and piled stones.  The most complete of them have columns and roofs, with sculptures standing sentry at the door.

It is a long walk to get to the third mesita.  It is reached by first passing a series of engraved pools called the lavapatas.  From there it is all uphill, up a long flight of many stairs.  At the top there are only a few tombs and figures, but you have a view of the whole valley and the vast jungle below.  The park, like Colombia itself, is something to behold.

As I was leaving, I passed a vendor selling hand-carved sculptures.  I’d just bought a few refrigerator magnets coming down from the third mesita, and wasn’t inclined to spend any more money.  Still, I took the small statue he handed me and inspected it.  He said it was a jaguar.  This piqued my interest.  I’d once been told that my Mayan astrological sign was the jaguar, and had come away flattered, thinking, well yes, I am kind of like that, an elusive creature of great power and stealth.  Still, for some reason I decided not to invest a measly ten dollars in what was a very fine piece of art.

As soon as I got back to the hostel I regretted it, to the point where I considered taking a taxi all the way back just to grab it.  It was too late, however.  The park was closing in a few minutes.  There were many little tourist shops in town.  I figured that my chances of finding a similar piece were very good.  Instead, every piece I looked at was a kitschy replica of one of the statues, with the name of the park printed on the base. 

I’d almost given up, when I happened to pass a shop that only had four or five items sitting on a shelf.  Four men were sitting there chatting.  I asked if I could look at the pieces, and one of them was a hand-carved sculpture, smaller, but still very similar to what the man at the park had been selling.  It looked like it could be a jaguar, with the bared fangs and claws, but I wanted to be sure.  I asked, and a short man with a limp, jumped up and started telling me the whole story behind the statue.  The word he repeated a few times was simian.  Simian, I thought, means monkey, but it wasn’t until after buying it, and then looking it up on Google that I confirmed this. 

That is how I came into possession of the war monkey.  It wasn’t what I was after, but grew on me over time.  It seems to have a fierce power, all its own.  The next time someone tries to rattle me, I’m going to get it out and warn them.

Don’t mess with the war monkey.

The adventure got underway as soon as I left San Agustin for Mocoa.  I got up early and returned to the station where earlier a woman had tried to sell me a tour to the archaeological park.  She’d said there were buses leaving every seven minutes, which didn’t seem possible, but now I saw that what she was referring to was covered pickup trucks, with benches in the back instead of seats. 

As soon as I walked up, someone grabbed my suitcase and began tying it to the roof.  I got in the back across from an old man, and we were off.  Along the way we stopped to pick up a woman, and then another woman and her teenage daughter.  Outside of that, there was probably no time when we were going less than sixty miles an hour, mostly downhill, zigzagging back and forth, passing slower cars and trucks, as if it were a race.

In Pitolito, I had to catch a bus the rest of the way.  The minibus I got on had tinted windows, which made the landscape look reddish-brown, when, in fact, no place on earth could be greener.  It already felt like I was moving through a dream.  Giant ferns grew from the mountains, like survivors of a prehistoric age.  When we got to Mocoa, the bus just pulled over by the side of the road.  There was no sign of a town center.  I asked a taxi driver if he knew the hostel I was staying at, and he said it would be seven dollars to take me there.  When I had him drop me off at a bank first, he raised the price to eight.

We set off down a road, surrounded by mountains and dense jungle.  There were a few restaurants beside the road, but not much of anything else.  We arrived at the hostel.  On the front gate there was painting of a jaguar and two hands offering up a bowl.  The young guy who met me inside was very gentle.  He asked what had brought me to Mocoa.  There was a small poster on the desk that mentioned ayahuasca.  I just picked it up and showed it to him.  He told me they went to meet with a shaman, or taita, twice a week, Tuesday, and Friday.  As it turned out, today was Tuesday, and Friday was my birthday.  He told me they were getting ready to leave in an hour.  I told him to count me in.

The hostel was as basic as could be.  My dorm was a large room with five beds in it.  When I went up to put my stuff away, there was a woman lying in one of the beds, and a young guy in another bed on his phone.  I’d been told to bring water and toilet paper, so I walked up to one of the restaurants, in a state of disbelief.  When I got back, a stout man with bushy hair was getting out of a taxi. 

There were four of us going.  Angelica, who’d been in bed, was a small woman with large glasses who worked as a computer programmer in Houston.  She’d recently gotten on a spiritual path and completed a ten-day meditation retreat.  Her grown kids knew she was doing this, but were apprehensive, for good reason.  Another guy, Rolf, from Germany, had done ayahuasca a number of times and was in the area for a few months.  The guy with the bushy hair was from Spain, and almost impossible to understand.  I only knew him as the Spaniard.

Jose and Jen, the couple who owned the hostel, had their own car but were picking up a few other people along the way, so had arranged for a taxi to take Rolf, the Spaniard, and myself to the ceremony site.  The place where we were going was beyond another town called Villagarzon, and took a half hour to get to.  Just being in the back of the taxi, knowing where I was heading, made me feel like I was already tripping.

Just outside of Villagarzon, we turned down a little dirt road.  At this point, the driver wasn’t sure which house it was.  We pulled into one, but no one was home.  At the next house we came to, a couple were sitting out front.  They waved that this was the right place, and the driver pulled over.  Jose had given us each a hammock and blanket.  We retrieved those from the trunk, and then followed a path that started beside the house and passed a few fish ponds.  In a small stand of trees was a large structure with open sides, a tin roof, and dirt floor.  We were instructed to hang our hammocks from the beams.

A few minutes later, Jose was along to help us with the hammocks.  He and Jen had brought Angelica, as well as a free-lance mystic named Don Diego, and a large dark man with a baseball hat who I was never introduced to.  Don Diego had his own magic kit that he set up in the corner, with candles, his own incense, and a drum.

There was a fire pit with a thatched roof and benches about twenty yards away, and a bathroom at the end of a long stone path.  In one corner of the main structure was the taita’s office, so to speak, a small wooden hut with a jaguar on one side of it, and a pyramid, with a window to receive the medicine, on the other.  There were pictures of both him and his mentor on either side of the jaguar.

After we were all set up, we still had hours to wait.  A few other people showed up during that time.  There were also assistants to the taita who would play a role in the ceremony.  It was hard to know who was who or what their function was, especially after it got dark.  We waited on the benches, attempting to get to know each other, but really only thinking about what was ahead of us. 

Jen came over and gave us instructions, first in Spanish, then in English.  We were going to get sick.  That was a given.  We were asked to pick a tree that was far away from camp.  If we had to use the toilet, there was no running water.  There was a barrel of water with a plastic bucket in it.  We were asked to clean up after ourselves.  If we got into a bad place and needed help, that’s what they were there for.  Were there any questions?

There were probably a million questions, but nobody asked any.  Everyone there seemed to accept that this was their fate, and was determined to see it through.  If this was the calm before the storm, it wouldn’t last.  In a few hours, no one there would ever look at things the same way again.  Some of us were lucky just to survive.

After a long while, there was finally some light coming out of the taita’s headquarters, and soon after that, chanting began to fill the air.  It sounded like there were many voices coming out of the one man.  I thought I heard elements of Mongolian throat-singing weaving through it.

When he was done blessing the medicine, we were called over to stand in line and wait for our turn to receive it.  The ayahuasca, or yage, was served in a cup not bigger than a shot glass.  Before handing it over, he blew hard across the surface of it.

I’d heard it would be bitter, almost impossible to swallow, but it wasn’t much worse than a shot of strong liquor.  Once I drank it and handed back the cup, I didn’t know what to do next.  Jose told us to return to our hammocks and wait for it to kick in.  I did, but for a long time it seemed like there was nothing happening.  Some people claimed that there’d been no effect after taking it.  On the flipside, others spoke of doing permanent damage to their psyche.  I shut my eyes and wondered if the faint geometric shapes beginning to appear were just figments of my imagination.  After a while, I was seeing a candy land of pastel colors, where women sat in candy houses, with signs out, like invitations.  I still felt OK, and thought, at that point, that I probably wouldn’t get sick.

Things began to change when the Spaniard, two hammocks away, gave a frightened shout and fell out of his hammock.  He grabbed it with both hands and used it to pull himself to his feet.  His face had changed into that of an old man with a white beard.  He walked stiffly to the edge of the camp and began to violently puke.  Someone had to help him into the trees where he remained, bellowing like a beast, and crying for help.  At the same time the large, dark man in the hammock next to me, sat up with a groan, like a mountain gorilla, and then dropped to the dirt floor and began writhing around, evidently in the full-throes of some kind of demon possession.  He was to remain there half the night, shouting, cursing, crying, asking over and over, Are you Serious?

I closed my eyes and when I opened them, the bad dream had invaded the world.  I heard Angelica fall to the ground, desperately sick, moaning like she was dying, begging for someone to come and help her.  Just then, I got sick myself.  I jumped up and barely made it to the edge of camp.  Jose came over and helped me to a tree.  I clung to it and retched up everything in my stomach.  Even when it was empty, I couldn’t stop puking. 

Now the woods we were in had become an enchanted forest.  The bathrooms, lit up by a red candle, had become a witch’s hut.  I had to shit, so went back and sat on the toilet, now seeing the faces of women, like an intricate, throbbing mosaic.  They wanted to take me into their world and I didn’t want to go.  The bitter smell of the ayahuasca in my nose was nauseating.  There was a vomit bucket next to me that I couldn’t stop reaching for.

When I finally felt well enough to return to the camp I went over to the fire.  I couldn’t go back to my hammock as the dark man on the ground was still wrestling for his soul and wouldn’t stop shouting.  At the fire, I met Don Diego, tightening the head of his drum over the fire.  He was wearing some sort of ceremonial clothing, but resembled a large clown, and was making the sort of sounds usually reserved for the sea.

After, about a half hour a harmonica started playing, calling us back, and I realized that the worst of it was over.  There’d been a brief period where it had gotten so intense, I’d sworn never to do ayahuasca again.  Then someone started playing the guitar and singing.  There was some Spanish influence to it, but I’d never heard songs like that before.  The Spaniard was back in his hammock by now.  The dark man was still struggling in the dirt, but his cries were becoming fewer and further between.  Somewhere in the darkness, Angelica was moaning.  I was really afraid she wasn’t going to be OK.

The guitar music was coming from one corner of the camp.  I went over and found the taita presiding over it with his wife.  In addition to being a powerful medicine man, he was also a master musician.  He sang songs that I could barely understand, but the themes seemed to be of victory and redemption.  Every once in a while, he sang the name of Jesus Christ, and I realized they were spirituals in their own way.  The assistants accompanied him on rattles, and then took turns playing their own versions of his repertoire.  Someone asked me if I wanted another shot, and emboldened by my recovery and the validation of the music, I asked for a small one.

Immediately, I was terribly sick again, and had to run towards the bathroom.  On the way a wet fart went streaking down my leg.  I collapsed on the toilet, as sick as I’d ever been in my life, and sat there for hours.  Mostly, I just stared out at the darkness and vomited.  Then I saw some small lights flickering in the trees, and realized it was fireflies.  I got up, cleaned myself off, and walked to a clearing, where every star was pulsating in the sky as the fireflies continued to flicker in the trees.  It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.

In the morning, the camp looked like a battlefield, but it appeared everyone had survived.  At one point the dark man next to me had climbed back into his hammock, but didn’t get up as the rest of us were taking ours down.  There was one last rite the tatia performed to wrap up the ceremony, having us take off our shirts and then whipping our backs with a thorny, medicinal plant.  I saw him later talking to the Spaniard, who sat there, his back covered with red welts, looking as if he’d barely survived the Inquisition.

Strangely enough, everyone reported having a positive experience.  The allure of ayahuasca is that it is supposed to help you solve problems you are having in your life.  I have to admit that in my darkest hour, I’d done some soul-searching, and realized I was doing the right thing to go back to California for Christmas and reconnect with my family.  I’d also received a strong affirmation that I was a folk artist, not a pop artist or entertainer, and that the path I’d taken in life was the right one for me, even if I hadn’t attracted much attention or support.

Once the taxi arrived and we were driving back to the hostel, I recounted to the Spaniard how he’d fallen out of his hammock and gone bellowing into the forest like an ox driven mad by terror.  This made him laugh out loud.  He began to blather on about his experience, but I only understood one thing he said.  He claimed that he’d been in another world.

That Friday was my birthday, and Jose and Jen had another yage session planned with the taita.  As far as I was concerned, I’d had enough and thought I probably understood the gist of the experience.  At the same time, there wasn’t much going on in Mocoa, so I considered returning, just because I’d enjoyed the ambience and the music.  Angelica told me she’d been to hell, but even she was thinking about going back.  Her son urged her not to, telling her she’d had a bad trip.  Rolf had remained in his hammock the whole night.  I’d almost forgotten he was there.  As far as the Spaniard was concerned, he was through with yage, but felt like he’d gotten something out of the experience.

There was an Irishman named John who was in the bed next to me.  He’d been there when I arrived, and was in the middle of a cleanse, so hadn’t joined us, but planned on going out on Friday.  He’d done it before, and for those of us who’d been through it, it was all we wanted to talk about. 

You might’ve heard about the Japanese soldier who’d refused to surrender at the end of World War 2, and had spent the next 29 years hiding on an island in the Philippines.  It had been like that for me.  I’d been out there fighting in the jungle of my mind for years, refusing to admit that the war was over.  I would never surrender either, but instead dreamed of one day breaking through a clearing and finding a whole platoon of soldiers, fighting the same fight as me.  That’s how it felt with the group of travelers I met in Mococa.  We grew instantly close, not just because of the ayahuasca, but also because we’d been out defying the odds in our own way most of our lives.

The day of the second ceremony, my plan had been to hike to a waterfall called End of the World, but when I woke up it was pouring rain and the attendant at the front gate told me the river was too high to cross.  I gave it a few for more hours, until after the rain had tapered off a little, but he said there was still a group that had been waiting two hours for the river to go down.  He suggested I visit a nearby animal park instead. 

On paper it sounded like a good idea, since it featured animals native to the Amazon; tapirs, capybaras, monkeys, crocodiles, parrots, and even a black jaguar.  It ended up being the last week of school, however, so the park was packed with kids and their teachers.  The only way to get in was to take a tour with a guide.  By late afternoon we were only half-way through the tour and I was practically convulsing with impatience.  That state of mind was not going to be conducive to a good ayahuasca experience, and I knew it, yet I’d determined to take the medicine once more. 

When I got back, after walking briskly two miles, mostly uphill, afraid that I was going to miss my ride to the ceremony, I found the others still in bed, resting up.  Only John and Angelica were going, as well as a young guy, Miguel who’d just shown up from Cali.  Jose and Jen were picking up people again, so Angelica went with them, and John, Miguel, and I took the taxi.

The energy was totally different from the first night.  It was darker.  The clouds were smothering the sky.  The energy felt tense and somber.  I saw that Don Diego was back, laying out his magic kit and drum, making strange sounds, smelling like a putrid sea.  We sat around the fire, but no one talked.  Angelica looked worried.

It was well after nine when the taita finally got around to his chanting.  There were many assistants there that night, apprentices of the well-respected shaman.  It seemed they made up a majority of the people in line for the medicine, yet it was so dark it was hard to tell who was there or what was going on.  I drank my shot and went and sat beside the fire.  It was so quiet.  A long time passed and I only heard one person get up to vomit.  I wondered if they were serving a less potent brew.  Jose and Jen had conceded that the last batch had been very strong.  Almost everyone had had an extreme reaction.

I was just starting to think the medicine wasn’t working, when my stomach suddenly turned, not wildly, but enough to make me get up and walk over to a tree.  I puked a few times, then took hold of the tree, and puked a little more.  I started rocking back and forth and realized I was about to get really sick.  My goal was to make it to the bathroom, which by now looked miles away, lit only by a small, dim candle.  I wouldn’t make it that far.  All of a sudden, I was tripping harder than I’d ever tripped before.  I was back in the pixelated world of beckoning women and didn’t want to be there.  The buzzing of all the insects in the jungle took on a frightening intensity.

I staggered from tree to tree, falling to my knees, savagely retching.  At the base of each tree, demonic green women were motioning to me, needing to feed on my vomit, wanting me to come and stay with them forever.  I didn’t want to go with them.  They were from a world I didn’t belong to.  If I went with them, I could never return.  I knew that I was on the brink of losing my mind.

When I got up, the green women stood between the trees, blocking the way to the bathroom.  I tried to start back to the camp, but fell on all fours, puking so hard, it was like I was being turned inside out.  A woman with a long green tongue lapped up every drop of it.  I flipped over, and started crab-walking in the direction of the camp, only reaching the perimeter of it, before I had to sit up and puke between my knees.  What a memorable birthday.  I was sure that I would never recover.  One of the assistants came over, looking like a black angel, asking if I was OK.  I wanted to cry out, but found I couldn’t speak.

After he left, I began to pray.  I prayed to Jesus Christ, the son of God, with all my heart and soul and might.  I’d been raised to worship Jesus, been baptized twice, and given my heart to him at least half a dozen times, always taking it back eventually.  Usually when I uttered his name, I was taking it in vain.  Now I cried out loud and prayed that he would save me, forgive me, and deliver me from the hell I was in. 

I also prayed to my father, the preacher, who’d passed away seven years earlier in a sudden and unexpected way.  I prayed to him to intercede for me, to speak up on my behalf.  Why did I think he might have any sway?  Because my father had loved Jesus and followed him through thick and thin.  For much my life I’d considered him the biggest wet blanket in the world, but in this fateful hour, saw clearly that he’d been doing the most important job there is, standing at the crossroads between life and death, helping those about to cross over prepare for the transition. 

Three weeks earlier, on All Saint’s Day, in Santa Marta, I’d had a strange experience, where I’d momentarily felt possessed by my father.  He’d had a difficult, often disappointing ministry, but had stayed the course.  I now saw that he’d been a saint in his own way, caring about others, particularly the homeless, until his dying day.  If he’d been trying to get my attention, now he had it in full.  I sat with my head between my legs, unable to stop puking, knowing that I’d lost my mind, begging him to save me.