Departures – Part II

My mind was in the right place and my heart content.

The first destination on my journey was a seven day ayahuasca retreat deep in the Amazon jungle run by Pulse Adventure Tours.  This required me to meet up with the tour group in the jungle city of Iquitos, Peru.

I had done ayahuasca and the other ancient jungle medicines offered by this retreat before, in October 2014, and experienced a massive personal transformation both during the ceremonies and in the months that followed.  I felt a significant mistake I made last time was underestimating the effects the medicine would have on me, and not giving myself the time and space afterwards to process and integrate the experiences into my normal, daily life as I was back to work, and back to the situations and circumstances that led me to seek out the medicine in the first place, two days after I returned home.  This is, of course, understandable as no one can truly understand the legitimacy and magnitude of going to the spirit world for healing of your being until having experienced the medicine.  However, I intended to remedy my prior mistake by starting my open ended journey with this retreat in order to purify myself, with ample time and space on the other side to feel out my path after receiving the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing and lessons of the medicine.

After an hour delay, I boarded the flight for the first leg of my journey to Peru.   I had three flights to get into Iquitos: Chicago to New York (JFK), New York to Lima, and Lima to Iquitos.  I arrived at JFK in about two hours.   I was supposed to have an hour and a half layover, but due to the initial delay, made it to my gate for the flight to Lima just as it was boarding.

As I boarded the LAN 787, I was impressed.  This was by far the nicest plane I had ever been on.  The first class seating was balling out of control.  In the economy section, there were three columns of three seats each.  Each seat had a TV/multimedia station built into the back of the seat in front of it, on which you could watch dozens of newly released movies, listen to thousands of albums worth of music, listen to audio books, or connect to your device, all at no cost.  The seats had more leg room and reclined further than on any plane I had been on, and there was a lot of room in overhead storage for carry-ons.   Then they proceeded to serve us two meals and two other rounds of drink service during the eight hour flight.

I sat in the left seat of the middle column.  I was lucky to be seated next to a lovely, young Peruvian girl, Katherine.  We chatted and had fun practicing Spanish and English with each other.  She had just spent several months in New York and Washington, staying with her aunt and other family, in order to improve her English so she could study for her masters in the US.  She is from Lima, and lives in an area adjacent to the Miraflores area of Lima that I was planning to stay in.  We discussed Lima, and I was able to ask her questions about what to see and do.  She gave me suggestions and her contact info, and agreed to show me around in a couple weeks after returning from the jungle.

I was able to get a few hours of sleep in during the eight hour, overnight flight into Lima.  We arrived about 7am at Chesar Chavez International Airport. Katherine and I made our way to immigration and said goodbye as she went to the line for citizens and I went to the line for extranejos.  I was slightly worried since I had bought a one-way ticket into Peru and immigration could deny me entry for not having proof of my intended departure.  I made it through with no hiccups, retrieved my checked bag, and then went through the check-in process again for my flight into Iquitos.

The flight took off at about 10:30am and landed in Iquitos at about 12pm.  The view from the flight is endless expanses of dense, green Amazon jungle punctuated only by the massive, winding, muddy-brown Amazon River and sad-looking, rectangular clear cut patches.  The single-runway Iquitos Airport appears out of nowhere, and is the smallest airport I’ve ever seen.  The airport crew pushes mobile staircases up to the plane and we disembark.  The hotel I was staying at arranged airport pick up for me, so I gathered my bag and found my driver.  There were two other people, Zola and Zach, being driven to the same hotel.  I introduced myself and learned they were both on the same Pulse ayahuasca adventure tour I was going on.  We would get to know each other well over the coming week.  After making our way through the frenetic streets of Iquitos, we made it to our hotel.