Peruvian tales 33 1/3

Right then…before we continue, a side story, or adventure. Just getting from Aguano Muyuna to Tarapoto meant driving along a road at the bottom of a mountain, beside a massive river. It happened to be raining slightly. The thing I have learned here is that you don’t want to be driving by cliffs and in mountainous terrain in rain. The soil becomes a slip n slide. Picture if you will, me in the back seat, driver and mad scientist up front. We see a motorcycle coming toward us(most people cannot afford cars here, it is mainly motorcycles), a girl on the back is looking up and screaming. The driver slams on the brakes and quickly shifts into reverse. What falls in front of us is a rock the size of the car itself…

This driver starts driving us back the way we came, he is driving like a fucking rally car driver, I am in the back seat watching debris falling as we are going and laughing my head off. Driver man is weaving and dodging trees, boulders and slick muddy debris. Here I be thinking, holy shit this is straight out of a movie! I had no fear, I felt strongly I am guided, no harm will come. We ended up chilling out by the road side with others as the rain subsided. These pictures are from the first experience of Peruvian rain and roads as an example, I never got pictures of that day, too much happening in a short time.

Eventually we drove on after about 30 minutes wait. Weaving in and around fallen trees, boulders as big as a house, we eventually come to a large tree blocking the road..so we paid the man and began to walk through the mud barefoot; slick mud and shoes don’t mix.

We flagged down a random motokar(example picture, this photo was taken in Banda de Shilcayo, a district of Tarapoto, or whatever you call an outer-lying area, more on that later).
Motokars are monstrosities, some kind of rickshaw dreamed up in some 3rd world nation, as variations of these fuckers exist throughout the world. A motorcycle cut in half and welded to a frame et voila! Vroom vroom! I have ridden standing on the back of one of these down a mountain road, another adventure story for another day. The day of the shrooms….

So here we are riding in one of these open air things in wet conditions for about a 40 minute ride, as looking at it you can guess they don’t go very fast. Lawn mower go karts can go faster…Maybe an exaggeration, but damn being in one of these with that engine full tilt for 40 minutes is like banging my own head against a wall a few times. It gets annoying.

We get to our destination! El Achual, a hostel at the time run by a french couple. Beautiful scenery, along the Rio Shilcayo(river). Walk up to the desk, guy is moping behind the counter, not really paying attention. We explain we were recommended the place by so and so and what we are doing in Peru. Frenchman gets it and is open to our cause and gives us a room and some liberties i.e. setting up a workstation etc.

Four of us sharing this room, toilet/shower in that corner behind the partial wall. Three of us were there full time. A wandering Ayahuasca brewing/drinking visionary part time. It was a full on experience that shaped me to who I be in this moment.

This is the end of the side adventure and the opening to a few of my finer moments during this time period of my life. The El Achual days.