>Back in Estonia.

Smiling blond sales agents.  Fathers of young families with dull eyes. Nervous guys wearing baseball hat and huge jacket.

And friends, my dear friends, dears.
After a break of five months it is pretty hard to understand why the mobile phone should always be swiched on and why your computer is like the second part of yourself. Where should I bury chewed coca leaves, when the whole surface is poured over the asphalt? In which direction is the soul of the mountain (apu) closest me, where I could ask a favor? All life is suddenly concentrated indoors. My skin grows older in two days as if two  years have passed. I can’t stand the hangover that three glasses of cider can cause.

About a month I was still heavily tripping. It took some time to re-learn to read newspapers. It took some time to understand that in two days I dont have to pack my bag again to migrate to a new city, but my life started to get back in the routine of gray Estonia.

Fortunately, however, it never happened.
My space has changed, though – im back in Europe, in the land of rationality – but i’m still tripping, in a shifting way. And I never come back down again. I have changed.

Nonetheless, it was time to find a home – to make my own corner in  the heart of Tartu. I put a picture of  mother on the wall  (actually this is the repro of Guyasamin’s work entitled “Mother”) and gave it some blessings with my friend Anz.
Soon I found an enormous closet with a real wolf man living inseide of it. My life has now some extra dimensions I never imagined to dream about before.

Already at the very first night I was pulled to the rehearsing studio in Tartu for music making. I had missed that feeling when your fingers are touching the keys and some newly found music is born. Or noise. I dissapear in the synthesis of sounding visions. Our improvisation does not respect borders. This is how Voog was born. The spirit of the music is floating as a sweet aroma around the room.

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On the way to the airport in Lima we stopped at Huacachina for another day. This is  where it once all started. In front of the village the seven dogs were waiting for us, as well as blinding brightness, sand, and our good old friends Patrick and Julio Cesar. After a few hours hanginf out by the pool we went up to the desert with Patrick. We climbed over a huge sand interval, and found ourselves in eternal infinity, in which every point can feel as at home. We were lying  down there on the sand in silence and I could not imagine a time when I no longer have the chance to experience this silence. It feels eternal. I’m overwhelmed.

In the  solitude of the vast desert all the senses are exacerbated and suddenly there is too much of everything. Every sound seems stronger after two days of silence, each piece of green seems more alive after infinite emptiness.

There are yellow, orange and purple lines running over the sky, and golden radiance of the sand walls will soon become only black surface variations.
My hands have been desiring the silky surface of the sand. I touch it with tender as if this was my darling’s chest, as we lay down in the bottom of the valley  and open a bottle of Peruvian sweet wine, which they call here semi-seco.
Patrick talks on his soft voice. He speaks of religion, freedom, soul, and Pachamama when we suddenly notice a bright star in the sky. Or – it moves very slowly along the fragile clouds of heaven, until it reaches the moon, and then it disappears. What is it?
This is not a satellite, the star or an airplane. Is this some signal from another world?

After seven hours in a turbulating bus going along the sides of steep hills I no longer felt alive. Somebody was constantly beating my head, I felt sick and my legs were no longer mine. I was like an over-ripe tomato and as such I was lying down on the bed in a tiny mountain village of Santa Maria in a cheap hotel room, could not move the hands nor the feet.

Then I realized that this must be the height disease – Altitude sickness. Fortunately we knew what to do – for already 6000 years in Andes they have known the secrtes of the magical plants – coca.
Also the next morning we filled our cheeks with coca leaves, and we went on the road. Going along the trail of Incas, up and down, trying to ignore the murderous flies, who suck the blood out of skin in an instant, and leave red spot for days to remember their passionate thirst for blood. Local village people taught to use soap and it helped though. At least in the evening I could not count no more than 98 bites on one leg and 138 on the other. I better don’t tell how they were itching, something so horrible I have not experienced for long.

In just a few hours after I got to sleep somebody’s steps on the wooden floor woke me up from the exciting world of dreams. The vibrations were passing on to me clearly, while lying down there on the towel I had stolen from the hostel.
A tiny gnome, something like 50 cm tall, was standing in front of me. She threw me a bit startled glance, then ran away and landed on the lap of man swinging in hammock. Through almost non-existent walls the light of dawn was dimming into the room.

A semi-naked little boy was toddling across the floor. He stood up against the wall that would be more likely a balcony in terms of the jungle village architecture, got his pants down and let go a gorgeous golden yellow arc jet flow.

Finally I was sure that the man in the hammock is Maoro – a well respected shaman located about 15 km from Iquitos in Pelianegra village. The dwarf is her one-year-old daughter, who already walks for the second month. Maoro cooks his ayahuasca medicine together with as much as 15 different plants, to further improve its properties.

Twice a week some people of his village are attending the sessions, with or without drinking ayahuasca. The ceremony is held very simply in the hut with earthy floor with some pigs just a few step further and rats laughing their fizzling laughter in the corner.  The whole procedure seems to be an everyday practice, in the similar way as we are used to go to the dentist. And just like dentist do not put on any particular clothing or paint the walls of the cabinet to make his treatment, so the shaman in the midst of jungle. Yesterday he was giving his treatment for four patients with the help of the palm trees, icaro songs, tobacco smoke, and agua florida steam.

Ayahuasca-connoisseur
How white man has the White Man inside of him after having attended his seventy-fourth session of ayahuasca yesterday? Or  how much light he has on him?
The French boy, who’s here presents himself as Juan, has come to South America this time only for ayahuasca. He has kept himself deep in the jungle for three months, the days filled with literature and meditation, and eating only cooked green bananas, and fish, without salt or anything else, trying to get closer to your true nature. Twice a week, he drove 50 miles towards the civilization, and drank ayahuasca underc guidance of his master. Ayahuasca-connoisseur.

In our after-session freshness we drove directly to Belen market – the most wonderful spot of Iquitos, and the poorest section of the city. To start we grabbed a couple of glasses maca and dived into turbulence of the narrow streets of the market.

Mornings in Amazon are wonderful. The time was not yet even half ten when we were sailing along the river and had a look at the most interesting face of Iquitos. On the floating cabins washing laundry and herself. A child of chocolate disappeared into the depths of the brown water, and appeared again some 10 meters away. Suddenly we were hit by another boat, which on closer inspection turned out to be a floating shop – bread, cookies, lemonade, anything for your appetite on the river.
Cinnamon tobacco between my fingers, we walked around endless sales counters. After the smoked fish, dried fish, salted fish, tobacco, fruit flies buzzing from the fresh meat counter, we found an aunt who was cooking taste of exotic – the worms. Exotic stuff from the expanse of the jungle – the suri. Sinister.
And the ayahuasca -connoisseur told me to eat it. Oh my!
And I had this awkward creature between my fingers now, waiting for its logical continuation of my mouth. No, the challenge became more complex every moment.

I breathed in and out three times, put a hand on my friend’s shoulder, closed my eyes and gently opened my mouth and took it in. I opened my eyes, and I was still alive. Nothing which kills you, nothing too bad.
Suri’s skin is quite soggy, the inside is juicy, salty filling, the head makes crimpsy voice when crunched under teeth. I can honestly confess, it’s a little obscene worm is quite tasty.

A few moments later, Juan got me into another dirty business – the turtle eggs. This time it was not much of a challenge,  as I have already eaten turtle’s meat with Nora. The egg itself is uniformly yellow, and it seems like cheese under teeth.

Tips for travellers:
- A trustworthy shaman – Mauro Francisco Paredes Pinedo (Maestro Ayahuaskero), Pelianegra village smth like 15 km from Iquitos.
- The best of the noisy jungle village – the Belen market.  Ask a boat for 10  solsi and enjoy colourful life in the dirty river.

Together with Shipibo ayahuasca shamans Herlinda and Enrique

Shipibo community in the Peruvian Amazon consists of about hundred villages around Ucayali River. We were living with their largest community in the village of San Fransisco de Yarinacoche – it is a village on the islands of the lake, which is also called the lake of the snake.
Shipibos believe that for all the bad things there is a cure from the other side – the invisible spiritual world. This is achieved through shamanistic rituals, which normally go along with icaros and which have its sacrament – the drink of ayahuasca.

Herlinda’s mother

I did not even know what to expect – should it be the moment when I start vomiting, or a vision from the other side – but those minutes seemed eternal. Complete silence was interrupted only by Enrique’s croaking, Herlinda’s yawning and exotic voices from surrounding jungle outside.

About 20 minutes later, the shamans started singing icaros. These are the songs that are brought to the shaman in forms of visions. The same songs are also embroided to the skirts and doylies made by Shipibo women. The background pattern that some people think reminds DNA forms denotes the cosmic singular, and the geometric pattern on top is the melody and rhythm of the song sent to  the shamans by the plant. In theory the more icaros shaman receives from the magical plant, the stronger are the powers of the shaman. Nõõska nõõska shamanee … Põvva põvva shamanee … They sing in high falsetto voice and the song consists a lot of chords and sounds deriving from pentatonic.

Rainbow colored sun rays are flying over my mental visual view, once like foamy waves of ocean, once spotted like Spanish fans or feathers of peacock tail. Between all that there are glimmering cat heads, smiles of Marilyn Monroe, Batman masks and lush fake lashes. Blank space of darkness behind my closed eye is no longer blank-black. This whole unknown world, the perception of another dimension vibrates in turbulent neon colors. Vivid shades formed some ancient Indian patterns.
I wambel my body in tune with crazy icaros, which tell me stories of Indian temples in Peru. I was humming along with it and it seemed I have already been through it all. Everything stands really close to me, everything is understandable, clearly perceptible. Herlinda then asked his brother Juan who is also a shaman that we also sing something, our icaros.

Somewhere inside of me emerged a melody, I had never heard of before. But surprisingly it seemed so familiar, as if I had sung it before. Could it be that I have lived through the ceremony before, just in another body? Could it be a revelation from some of my past lives? With that strange voice inside of me I gave my contribution to the world of visions and energies surrounding us, the only world possible now, the only world that seems to be the totality of the whole universe, which is completely perceptible for me now.

Alvaro started puking.

Enrique then stopped singing and started to tell prayers in mixture of Shipibo and Spanish language. I was able to distinguish only a few words – the cleansing, spirit, intelligence, God, energy, soul…
Yet it seemed that some inner meta-level inside of me understood him completely. I fell into complete trance, feeling spirit of ayahuasca in every cell of my body. The revel of colors was so powerful that soon I no longer understood that these were just visuals in my head – it seemed all too real.

Herlinda

At one point I am walking in a huge cave with a tragic view over kilometers of stoned icicles. Its wet and heavy silence is cut by a powerful voice of a woman that echoes back from rusty walls. I go along with the woman’s Björk-like voice and I feel beautiful.
I can sense there is still some bad air in my body. It wants to penetrate, it wants to leave me, it wants to get out and I release all the bad energy into the bowl in front of me. Colorful visuals start vibrating even more intensively to honor this special moment. The vomiting feels emancipating, makes my body easy, free.

Officially the ceremony has ended, but I’m still totally in trance with signals from the other side. Suddenly I see Enrique’s soul hovering above and moving closer to me. I get the feeling that in the energetic world of ayahuasca you can accomplish so much more, regardless of space and time. So I focus on my dear mother, the best mother in the world, who I love the most. I beg from the spirit of ayahuasca to send her strength and good energy. And it seems entirely possible.

I swim around in the inner sea of Earth. A giant snake joins me. I grab her thick huge body and ride with her in a blue-pink-like colorful magma of the sea, my legs around her, feeling sexual urge. I smile as I remember what Herlinda had told me before – snake represents the soul of ayahuasca.

So that is what Jim Morrison used to sing about. Ride the snake, the snake is long seven miles…

The world next morning is no longer the same.

When we bought the bus tickets from Lima down to the jungle, we had no idea how hard the forest will be to get through. What should have been a night, turned out to be 31 hours-
After watching a few films, almost giving up for the death in the aromas of the puke by the girl next to us, spinning our head on the curvy Andes mountain roads, they told us that we can’t get any further. Lights were turned off and the whole crowed was waiting in the bus the rain to end. For the next seven hours.

Gone through next awful bench, we found ourselves on the edge of the hill covered by 30 tons of slippery mud. The buses almost wanted to fall down.  There were lots of people from nearby villages who had come up here to help the buses and trucks. We decided to go through the mud on foot interval, which was also quite an adventure – for example, Berit accidentally stepped half of her leg into deep mud and consequently lost one of her flip flop. There were many more of the dark maneuvers that came across every hour, so soon we renamed the route the death road.

Pucallpa is hot and noisy city in the middle of the wild jungle. For an hour we were wondering along the harbor, which could be best characterized by the word – chaos. We were clambering around a pile of green bananas, I almost stepped on a poor little duck that was sitting between them and slipped down the wall of mud on my flip flops, heavy backpack pushing hard. There were  some shaved legs of a dozen dead chicken stretching out to the sky, I bumped my head against some square baskets, that a guy with dirty shirt was carrying. Mud flew around into two folds, slippery, smelling as shit. The life was turbulating in million colors. Finally, we found the boat to the island of San Fransisco.So this is San Francisco? Yeah it is. We were wondering around for hours, terrible heat and hungry mosquitos, but our travelmate Alvaro, who had been here before, didn’t seem to recognize anything at all. Finally we were not particularly surprised when it turned out that we were caught on the wrong island!There are apparently three islands in the Amazon, which are named San Fransisco. Our legs were already itchy, we were hungry, but there was nothing else than cookies that you could find on this tiny 40-household jungle island. We waited for another two hours in the hot sun for the next boat to pick us back to Pucallpa.
Through the adventures and hassles, however, late night we arrived on the island of San Fransisco, where Herlinda and Enrique – a couple of great shamans were waiting for us. And this was the beginning of a trip to the other side.