The first thing that hits you in Iquitos is the smell: a mixture of human faeces, stale water, sweat, and motorbike fumes. The river is a sinister colour, and I mutter allowed that I won't be eating fish while I'm here.
The town lies on the bank of the River Amazon, and is one the biggest cities in the world that you can't get to by road. It's a boat or plane.
A long time bolthole for hippies, ex-pat fisherman, and about a million people trying to sell you a jungle tour. Imagine 100 of those charity people you see on the high street, being paid 10 pounds an hour to get you to give 10 pounds a month to charity, well imagine that on every corner of every street, and you have a small idea about jungle tour people. And they're all called Carlos, or have a Uncle called Carlos, who's brother Carlos has a jungle lodge.
I am here to get into Peru, but to also try the jungle brew ayahuasca, a collection of different plants and shrubs mixed together to make a drink that people use to seek answers, cure illness, and find enlightment. It's also been used more commanly as a hallucinogenic trip for people to see inside themselves, to gain a better understanding of themselves.
I find a tour operator (called Carlos) who will take me to his lodge in the jungle, where I will take the ceremony with his local Shaman, stay overnight, and return to Iquitos.
We leave and take a 1hr boat ride, then a 40 minute walk, then another 30 minute canoe ride, finally ending at a lodge in the jungle.
All you can hear are the cries of birds, the whistling of trees, and the occasional animal sound that I don't recognise. I eat a very light meal and wait for the Shaman.
At around 9pm he arrives, it's pitch black by now and we all sit around candle light or torch light. The shaman reminds me of a Peruvian version of the little old Chinese man with the shop in Gremlins. He doesn't speak much, and will only look at me in quick motions, but we shake hands and sit down.
He starts chanting and we imbibe the brown liquid, it tastes woody but is not unpleasant. We sit and the Shaman chants continuiously, and then it begins.
Now a girl once told me, not any girl actually, an amazing girl. A girl who I'd always hoped that when we grew older she would choose to start a life with me. Well, we grew up and she didn't, then moved abroad, and I moved on. Anyway, she once said to me,
"Gareth, nobody wants to hear about other peoples dreams, and I don't want to hear about yours"
I know I've made her sound like a right bitch there, but she wasn't, she was incredible.
And because my trip was a very dream like thing for me, if you want to know more you'll have to ask me in person.
I awake the next morning and make my way back to Iquitos, on the way I take a service ferry, carrying chickens, pigs, fruit, veg, and people. The people on their way to sell their goods in the city. I get talking to the boatman, who incredibly can understand my shitty Spanish enough for us to converse. I ask about the river, and all the waste that seems to pour out of 3 giant pipes from Iquitos into the Amazon, his reply is quick,
"That part of the river is dead. and there is a law prohibiting people from fishing there"
"A law! everything's dead! why bother with the law?"
He gets my drift and we sail slowly on in a subdued silence. I find it hard to understand the mindset of the people especially as I watch a girl throw her empty bottle and plastic wrappers overboard. I know that we have had 20 or so years to move towards a recycling society but surely the people and their goverment here must know enough by now to try to slow down the pollution?
Back in the town I'm surrounded by hippies, seemingly all living here and 'being at one with themselves and nature'. I am acutely aware that we are the main reason for the majority of the pollution and waste in this town and it's river, but these people walk around in their sandels and baggy trousers, acting as if they are doing good being there. My already very negatvie opinion of hippies takes a violent jump up a few levels, and I vow to get the fuck out of here as quickly as a plane can.
I leave the next day but not before I give away some 'summer clothes' to a homeless guy. 2 tee's and a pair of trainers are in a carrier bag, and I take a walk to find someone to give them to. I wander into the central Plaza and a man beckons me for my bag, I give it to him. He's really grateful, I wander away feeling all good about myself and wallowing in how amazing and different I am to all the other gringo hippy traveler dicks round here.
But there's a problem.
He saw me leave a restaraunt with the bag, he actually thinks the bag is left over food from my meal. I turn to see the guy hungerly wrestle the back open, he pauses, and slowly pulls out two white sunblocked stained tee shirts, and a pair of battered white trainers. He looks at them, then around, then shakes his head, and puts them all back in the bag, and starts looking for someone who can actually help him.
At the airport I get a very clear example of why the country isn't so bothered about recycling.
A small boy drinks Inca Kola from a normal sized bottle (like a plastic coke bottle at home, bigger than a can, smaller than the litre ones) he lifts the bottle over his head, and slowly pours all of it out onto the floor in front of me, he has no grasp of what he's doing, but as the bottle gets lighter he works it out.
I move my bag, the Mum, sitting opposite me, finally notices the sticky green puddle her offspring has made, and in a swift movement, slaps him round the face. The kid erupts into screams, she then cuddles him, and he calms down and all is forgotten.
The puddle turns into a river, a river that snakes through the departure lounge, all the way to the desk at the gate.
The mum doesn't bat an eyelid. She doesn't even get out of her seat. Now I know that my mum would have got up, tried to clean it herself, then found an orderly, told them the problem, borrowed their mop, and mopped it up. And if I was old enough, made me do it.
And that's the problem.
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