September 6 — Belén Market, Pink Dolphins and a Ceiba Tree in Iquitos

Coca tea and a working ATM

I woke up at 7 this morning after setting my alarm for 6:45, and went downstairs for the breakfast buffet that is included with my room at the DoubleTree. I had delicious scrambled eggs, some strawberry yogurt and granola, and a couple of pieces of plantain. My stomach was still feeling sensitive, so I took it easy. I had some coca tea and some herbal-infused water. I felt okay. Segundo was waiting for me at 8.

The first thing we did was go to an ATM so I could try again to get cash. Segundo helped me figure it out and I was finally able to get money, which was such a relief after how overwhelmed I had gotten trying to do it yesterday. Then we went to the Belén Market.

Segundo runs the whole operation

Segundo’s son was driving his car, which I realized made the whole operation much easier because he could drop us off and drive away while Segundo and I walked through the market, and then come pick us up somewhere else. There were so many little logistical things like this throughout the entire day, where Segundo was arranging cars and boats and people who were waiting for us, and I really appreciated the complexity of everything he was managing because there was absolutely no way I could have figured any of it out by myself.

Where the shamans shop

First thing, he helped me find gumboots, a hat, and a fan for the jungle. I decided not to get a poncho because it was so hot and I wanted it off the second I put it on. The next place he took me in the market was the area where he said the shamans shop, where all of the medicinal plants and traditional medicines are sold. It was actually much calmer and less crowded than some of the other parts of the market, and everything was displayed so beautifully. There were piles and bundles of different kinds of bark and roots and herbs, and bottles and bottles of medicines. There was ayahuasca, San Pedro, Agua de Florida, and so many things I had no idea how to identify. I was fascinated by the fact that so much of the medicine was just stored in ordinary plastic bottles. It wasn’t presented preciously or ceremonially. It was just medicine being sold in the market.

Worms on skewers and turtle soup in the shell

Then we moved into the food sections, which were much more intense. There was fish everywhere, so many different kinds, being cut and cleaned right there, people cooking food, people wrapping things in banana leaves. I love seeing all the banana leaves. Segundo kept trying to get me to taste things and I was absolutely not going to eat anything from the market with my stomach already feeling questionable, although there was one thing wrapped in a banana leaf that looked really good. It seemed to be rice and egg and maybe something else, and under different circumstances I probably would have tried it.

There were worms on skewers. There were pig feet. There was an alligator. There was turtle meat and turtle eggs everywhere, and people cooking what looked like turtle soup inside the shell over fire. There were roosters and enormous quantities of fish. There was a woman rolling mapacho cigarettes. It was just so much life and food and medicine and activity all piled on top of each other in this enormous market.

The things I bought and the things I didn’t

Segundo also took me to a shop filled with ceremonial and handmade things. There were tapestries and drums and rattles and embroidered pieces and so many beautiful things. There were hummingbird drums that I loved. I almost bought a rattle. Raul showed me around and explained the meanings behind different things to me, and I bought a weaving honoring the tobacco and a tepi for Medicine Path ceremonies.

I kind of can’t believe I didn’t buy more. I wish I had bought more tapestries, and I wish I had gotten a chacapa. At the time I was just overwhelmed and taking in so much, and I think I was trying not to buy everything I saw, but in retrospect there were things I would have liked to bring home. Oh well. I did what I did. What will be, will be.

Mystery School: the illusion of separation

After the market I had Mystery School, and this morning’s conversation was about developing a foundational philosophy—something stable enough to orient your life around—and a lot of it was about God, connection, and the nature of separation.

Some of the notes I wrote were: Do it with God. Do what seems impossible with God. Address massive problems with God. God is within, through and all around. We are co-creators. What am I? Divine, infinite, eternal love.

We talked about God or spirit not necessarily as something you have to believe in, but as this fundamental energy of the cosmos—the whole incomprehensible fact of life and existence, something you can approach through both the telescope and the microscope. The cosmos itself is the miracle. Life, God, the whole thing.

And then Maestro Hamilton started talking about connection and the illusion of separation, and something about that really landed for me.

The truth is that we are connected. We are never not connected. Even the space between my hand and my face is part of the connection. Space and time connect everything, even though our perception makes things seem separate. And of course biologically and practically we have to be able to perceive separation. I need to know that the food is not the plate and that the fish is not the water. Our brains have to isolate objects in order to function. But then that ability to distinguish things can become this psychological experience of believing that we ourselves are fundamentally separate.

One of the things I wrote was: I’m always connected. It is impossible to not be connected, but it is very possible to see the illusion of separation and act from that illusion.

I know what connection feels like

That really hit me because I definitely know what it feels like to be connected. I think I am actually very sensitive to connection. What I struggle with is staying connected to myself inside of it.

I have gotten lost so many times thinking that the fact of connection means something more than it does. If I feel deeply connected to somebody, I can start thinking that it must mean we are supposed to connect our lives, or that we are supposed to be together, or that something has to happen because the connection exists. And maybe the connection doesn’t mean everything and it doesn’t mean nothing. It just is.

There is something really painful about feeling connected to somebody when they are denying the connection, or when the form of the relationship doesn’t match the depth of what I feel. But maybe acknowledging that connection doesn’t require me to orient my whole life around it.

I feel pretty resolved with Julian. I feel like there is just nothing left for us to do or discover together.

With Andrew, I think about how much of my actual experience I hid from him. I wasn’t really honest with him because I kept hoping somehow he would want to be with me and would eventually treat me the way I wanted to be treated. I don’t think that means he did everything right, or that I need to let him off the hook for anything, but I do think that in a lot of ways he was being his full self and I was not being my full self. Whatever connection we have or had, it isn’t a connection where we are going to see each other anymore. And I am still learning from it.

And with Micah, I don’t really know what his internal experience was or is. I know that I feel connected to him, and I also know that I made too much out of that connection because I wanted more than what was actually being offered.

Becoming your own loving teacher

Another thing from Mystery School that stayed with me was a story about realizing that learning only happened when the teacher was loving and compassionate, and that when an external teacher wasn’t loving, the answer had to be becoming your own loving teacher. There was something about that I really liked: learning to sit lovingly with yourself instead of using separation or criticism as the mechanism for growth.

There was also this exercise of recognizing the difference between yourself and your thoughts: I am the one thinking this thought. This is my thought. The fact that I can think about my thought means that the thought itself cannot be the entirety of who I am. I am the one who is aware of it.

There was a lot more, and I’m still digesting it.

Powered by Honda

At 1:30 pm, I met Segundo again for our afternoon adventure, and this time he picked me up in what I now know is called a motocarro or mototaxi. It is basically the Iquitos version of a tuk-tuk: three wheels, a motorcycle in the front, a covered open-air seat in the back. There are millions of them. Or at least it feels like millions. They are everywhere.

It is funny because I kept noticing that they all seemed to say “Powered by Honda” on them. There are also regular two-wheel motorcycles everywhere, often with multiple people on them, sometimes what looks like an entire family, and there are surprisingly few actual cars. When it rained later, I noticed that the motocarros all have these little plastic rain shields they pull down.

Motocross under the Nanay Bridge

We drove through Iquitos to the Nanay Bridge, and when we got there, there was some kind of motocross event happening down below on land that Segundo explained is underwater during the wet season. Now it was dry enough for motorcycles to race across it, and the bridge was lined with people standing there watching.

We got out and watched for a while. There were several things Segundo took me to today that I probably wouldn’t personally have chosen to visit, and the motocross race was one of them, but it was interesting to see how many people had gathered along the bridge for it.

Then we drove across the bridge and went underneath it, where there were people making and selling food and hanging out. Segundo told me that eventually the bridge and road are supposed to continue all the way toward Colombia, although he said nobody really knows when that will happen.

Fast boat

Then we went back across to where the boats leave and got into one of these long, narrow boats. Segundo had kept asking whether I wanted a fast boat or a slow boat. At first I said slow, and then I thought, wait, why do I want to make this take longer? So I changed my mind and said fast.

We stopped to get gas and then headed out onto the water.

Pink dolphins and Happy Birthday in September

At one point Segundo had the driver stop the boat because he was trying to find the pink Amazon river dolphins. He started whistling into the air and said he was calling them. I saw one briefly but we weren’t seeing any more, so eventually we kept going.

Later I was the one who noticed them and we stopped again, and this time there were a bunch of them. They were surfacing and circling around the boat, these little glimpses of their pink backs coming out of the brown water and disappearing again.

And Segundo started singing “Happy Birthday” to me.

My birthday is not until April, which somehow made it even sweeter and funnier, and he told me it was my lucky day. I really love the way people here say my name, Abigail. There is something about the pronunciation that I find so endearing.

Segundo also has this ridiculous little jingle-bell ringtone on his cellphone that kept going off throughout the day and made me smile every time.

Where the Nanay meets the Amazon

We continued toward the place where the Nanay River meets the Amazon. Segundo had explained that the Nanay is black water and the Amazon is brown, and I thought there might be some very dramatic line where the two colors came together, but I honestly couldn’t see a strong distinction. Still, we passed from the Nanay out onto the Amazon River, which felt pretty incredible in itself.

Eventually we pulled in at a place called Fundo Pedrito, which is basically a little family-run farm and animal attraction along the river. As we walked in, there were enormous Victoria Regia lily pads growing in the water, with white flowers beginning to come up among them. They were beautiful. It was also incredibly hot and humid and suddenly felt much more like the jungle.

There were people everywhere who I assumed were family, hanging out and working around the property. There were birds in cages, a snake, turtles, and alligators. I don’t really enjoy seeing animals in captivity, so that part wasn’t particularly appealing to me.

But they also had these absolutely enormous native river fish called paiche in the pond, and we got to feed them. I could not get over their mouths. They were gigantic. The fish themselves were dark and huge, but when they moved I could see this bright orange or reddish color toward their tails, almost underneath them. Watching those enormous mouths come up for the food was wild.

Am I going to be the person who breaks this?

From there we got into another motocarro and drove farther into the area. Segundo took me to some kind of lookout tower, and I climbed two flights of the most questionable stairs imaginable. The construction standards I am accustomed to are not universal.

There were so many wobbly railings and wooden planks and stairs today where I kept thinking, Am I going to be the person who breaks this? The stairs up to the lookout were extremely rickety. The view itself wasn’t particularly spectacular, and there were hammocks up there that I absolutely did not trust to hold me. There were some young girls in bikinis taking pictures of themselves, though, and they seemed to be having a great time.

The king of the forest

Then we got back into the motocarro and went to see the ceiba tree. I am so glad we did.

Segundo kept calling the ceiba the king of the forest, and I completely understood why when I saw it. It was enormous. The trunk, the roots, the vines, the height of it, the whole presence of the tree—it felt powerful and completely grounded at the same time. We were standing there in the forest with all of the sounds around us, and I felt an immediate recognition in my body.

I wrote down the message exactly afterward:

“Its message to me was — You are this strong, this tall, this grounded. Your branches go this high and your roots go this deep, your lungs are this expansive, your bones this solid. Be this magnificent and immovable in your love and your intention for your life. Aho!”

It didn’t feel like being magnificent meant being better than anybody else. The tree wasn’t comparing itself to anything. It was just completely being what it was.

That was what I felt from it.

You get to own the enormity of what you are. You get to be rooted that deeply and stand that tall. You are part of God too. You are incredible too. You don’t need to shrink that or apologize for it.

Floating houses and a faint rainbow

Afterward we eventually made our way back down toward the river, and there were more of those stairs and planks and very wobbly railings. Segundo was having a hard time because he had recently been in a motorcycle accident and had injured his elbow, shoulder, and leg. I felt bad watching him struggle because obviously doing this tour while injured wasn’t easy for him. I had originally thought we might do it yesterday, but I simply could not have done this yesterday. I had asked him today whether he was available and he could have said no, so I guess he wanted to work, but I was very aware of the fact that he was working on a Sunday and doing all of this while hurt.

Before we got back into the boat, he showed me some of the houses along the water and explained how they are built on these enormous lightweight logs so that when the river rises during the wet season, the houses rise with it and float. I wish I could remember the name of the wood he gave me.

Then we got back into the boat and headed toward Iquitos.

There was a faint rainbow in the distance as we came back.

By the time we reached the dock, the same motocarro driver who had taken us earlier was there waiting, this time holding a little girl who was his great-niece. On the ride back, Segundo held her and she slowly fell asleep against him while we bounced through Iquitos in this open-air three-wheeled vehicle with no seatbelt and no car seat and apparently no concern whatsoever.

I felt like a toddler

There were so many moments today where I was confronted with how culturally specific my own assumptions about what is normal are.

I kept noticing people cooking outside and hanging around together outside their homes. Girls dressed up in dresses. Pharmacies everywhere—Mifarma and InkaFarma seem to be on every other block. Everybody has a cellphone. There were even little things that surprised me, like seeing the star zit stickers on young girls.

There are these things that feel totally familiar alongside things that feel completely outside anything I know. And Iquitos is so much bigger and more chaotic than I imagined.

I genuinely don’t think I could have gone to a restaurant by myself here this weekend. Yesterday I felt so overwhelmed by everybody trying to get my attention and by not knowing where I was going or what I was supposed to do, and today, even with Segundo, I was completely out of my element almost the entire time.

I had to be the person being told to hold onto my cellphone. I needed to be shown where to go. I needed someone else to negotiate transportation, navigate the market, find the boats, know who was waiting for us, know where we were going.

I felt like a toddler.

It was really humbling.

I am so competent in my own environment, and here there were all of these things everybody around me automatically understands that I did not understand at all. The transportation, the infrastructure, where it is safe to go, how the market works, who you talk to, where you get a boat, where you stand, what you pay, what you hold onto. I was just completely dependent on somebody else knowing the terrain.

I was incredibly grateful for Segundo.

I also suddenly became much more grateful for the way I chose to stay in Iquitos. I had questioned the DoubleTree so much yesterday and wondered whether I had made a mistake, but now I am really glad I stayed here. I could come back to an air-conditioned hotel room. I could eat breakfast downstairs without figuring anything out. I could eat dinner here. I didn’t have to navigate the city alone at night. This was exactly the kind of base I needed.

One more trip to Belén for somebody I’ve never met

There was still one more adventure, though.

During Mystery School this morning, a man named Nathan, who I haven’t met yet but who is apparently going to be in my Blue Morpho retreat group, asked if I had seen any mambe in the market. I said maybe, and I tried to give him Segundo’s information, but Nathan explained that he was arriving and going directly to the retreat, so he wouldn’t have time to go to the market himself. He asked if I could get some for him.

So I asked Segundo.

And somehow, after this entire day, we went back to Belén Market.

The medicine shop was already closed, but they reopened it just for us. The man I had met earlier wasn’t there. There were two other guys inside, and the whole shop absolutely reeked of hapé. They seemed to me like they might have been high or drunk or otherwise not entirely sober, and it had this very different feeling being there after hours with the market mostly closed.

They were going to sell us a kilo of what I thought was mambe, and then for some reason at the last second I said no and asked for the smaller amount instead. I don’t even know why I did that. Maybe that was a mistake. And now the sticker they put on it says something other than mambe, so I’m not even entirely sure I bought the right thing. But I tried.

I also got Nathan some mapacho cigarettes, so at least I know he has those. Maybe the other thing is what he wanted and maybe it isn’t, and maybe it isn’t as much as he wanted, but at some point I have to recognize that I went back across Iquitos after an entire day of touring around the Amazon, got a closed medicine shop reopened for somebody I have never even met, and did the best I could. So that is enough.

An enormous day

It ended up being a fairly expensive day. I paid Segundo 400 soles and I think about 350 soles for the boat and everything associated with that part of the trip. But considering everything I did and saw and the number of people and vehicles and boats involved, I don’t think it was unreasonable.

It was an enormous day.

When I finally got back to the hotel, I had dinner downstairs. I ordered salmon, which was really good, with potatoes that were also really good, the tiniest little bit of spinach, and some tomatoes that were kind of weird. I don’t know if tomatoes really grow naturally around here or what was going on with them. There were some guys sitting near me talking about college football basically the entire time, which was such a funny soundtrack to the end of this day on the Amazon.

And I think my stomach is finally feeling better. I have still had a couple of pangs, but I never developed diarrhea, just this persistent stomach discomfort, and tonight I finally feel more normal.

Tomorrow everything changes again

Tomorrow everything changes again.

I’m setting my alarm for 6:45 am. I’m going to eat breakfast, finish packing, check out and be downstairs by 8:00 am. Segundo’s friend is going to take me and my suitcase in a motocarro to the Victoria Regia Hotel, where I need to be around 8:15 for the Blue Morpho pickup.

And then I’m going into the jungle.

Today I stood beside the Amazon. I watched pink dolphins rise out of the water. I walked through Belén Market surrounded by medicines, fish, roots, tobacco, banana leaves and things I couldn’t name. I needed another person to show me how to move through almost all of it. I felt strong and completely helpless at different moments, sometimes almost at the same time.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I stood underneath a ceiba tree that seemed to have absolutely no question about what it was.

You are this strong, this tall, this grounded. Your branches go this high and your roots go this deep, your lungs are this expansive, your bones this solid. Be this magnificent and immovable in your love and your intention for your life.

Aho.