“Curls your hair, cleans your teeth and makes childbirth a pleasure…”

 

Visiting the Shaman:  Miracle Drugs from the Heart of the Jungle

 

“Curls your hair, cleans your teeth and makes childbirth a pleasure…” 

 

I didn’t discover any jungle drugs that did all that, but I did enjoy learning about the medicinal heritage we have from the Amazon Rain Forest.

 

Movies have been made and books have been written about the as-yet-undiscovered miracle cures waiting to be found in the Amazon Rain Forest (Sean Connery in Medicine Man is an example). 

 

For non-fiction, read One River, written by Wade Davis, who tells of the discovery of hidden tribes and hidden cures deep in the jungles of South America, remedies first encountered by North Americans during the 1930’s through the 1950’s.  One River is the fascinating biography of a Harvard ethno-botanist, Richard Evans Shultes.  No fiction in this volume.  Shultes was the real “medicine man.”  But, before him…

 

“Shamanism is arguably the oldest of spiritual endeavors, born as it was at the dawn of human awareness.”

 

We spent one of our most interesting afternoons in the Amazon Rain Forest with a shaman (Onorato Matshaka) who introduced us to various vines, herbs, flowers and leaves which have medicinal powers.  For anyone who thinks this approach to medicine is hocus-pocus, I suggest you chew a small portion of Cordoncillo leaf and feel how quickly it numbs your tongue, teeth and lips!  When you are in the middle of a South American jungle, there is no better therapy for a toothache.

 

Impotence?  The Para Para plant is just what the shaman ordered.  Who knew a shaman has a sense of humor?  At the end of the tour, we “tourists” were given a sample of this potent potion, but not too much.  Apparently, there was no emergency phone number to call if four hours later the men were still having…  Well, you know the drill.

 

I will leave it to the scientists to decide what medicinal magic is contained in the various concoctions the shaman uses to cure everything from fever to arthritis to cancer.  At the psycho-social-emotional level, he had brews that help with vision for people who are confused and need clarification about some life crisis.  He even offered a love potion (number nine?).

 

In for a dime, in for a dollar.  Sally and I drank chewed, smelled and drank everything we were offered.  Best I can tell, it did us no harm, and might have done us some good.

Grit Your Teeth and Bear It: The Amazon Rain Forest

Most long trips have a “Grit your teeth and bear it” component, sometime after the initial joy and rush of travel has worn off and before the home stretch. 

 

For Sally and me, the grit-our-teeth portion of Peru was when we entered the Amazon Rain Forest.  The un-air-conditioned Amazon Rain Forest!  The no-wall-between-us-and-the-jungle Amazon Rain Forest.  The no-doors-on-our-room (just a curtain) part of our trip.  The Amazon Rain Forest where a tarantula (yes, a real tarantula) was outside our room when we came back from supper one night. 

 

Of course, this was our grandson Lake’s favorite part of the trip.  He loved it.  From our rooms, we could see monkeys playing in the trees just a few feet away.  We could watch huge macaws flying through the forest canopy.

 

Our lodge was near the Tambopata River.  It was very warm (even though it is winter in Peru right now) and the heat was without relief.  We were without electricity or creature comforts for three nights and four days.  No wonder sloths (and we saw one) move so slowly.  It’s hot and humid and buggy down there!  We slept under a mosquito net, which kept not only the mosquitos off our bodies, but also kept the tarantulas and the small rodents that scurried through our rooms in the night at a safe distance. 

 

Speaking of rodents, we saw a pig-sized animal on the riverbank during our 45-minute boat trip to the Posada Amazonas Lodge.  It was a capybara, the world’s largest rodent, the size of a pig! 

 

We had a 4 a.m. wake up call for the first morning, and we were on our way to see the rare Giant River Otter.   Jenna, our oldest daughter (Lake’s mom) brought her sophisticated camera with her and took some incredible pictures of the Amazon wildlife.  My pictures are good enough for this blog, but that is about the limit of my ability. 

 

Nobody’s photos do justice to the experience, however, the smells of the rain forest, the strangeness of sounds.  With no wall between ourselves and the jungle, we heard bizarre bird calls, whistles, trills, honks, warbles, buzzes and honks I have never heard in South Carolina.

 

There are worlds I know nothing about!

 

More pictures of our Peru trip are on my Facebook page:  

https://www.facebook.com/marion.aldridge.7

Your Opinion Counts! (Or, Does it?)

My friend Fuzzy, a bachelor who sometimes traveled with our family, taught me a lesson about opinions and how to travel when you are with a group.

If you have a strong opinion about where to go, what you want to see, how long to stay somewhere, or where to stay, then state it.  Be prepared to hear other equally strong opinions.  But do not sit humbly and frustratingly by, silent, when the group is skipping something that is important to you.

On the other hand, if you have an opinion about everything, then find the grace to keep some of those opinions to yourself and let others have their way occasionally.  There is a difference in being honest and being high maintenance. 

There are good and decent and smart people who chime in on every decision.  They/we need to learn how to shut up.  Be quiet.  Listen.  Your brilliant ideas, while magnificent, may not be exactly what needs to happen next.  Let someone else have a turn.  Do you have to be the lead decision-maker about every restaurant?  About when to take a potty break?  About what time to wake up in the morning?  

Group travel requires compromise.  My grandson wanted to eat the most popular dish in Peru, Guinea Pig, so we went to a restaurant that served Guinea Pig.  It was fine, kinda like eating quail in South Carolina.  

Serendipity–My favorite travel word (Maybe my favorite life word!)

My experience is that, after a few days, castles, cathedrals and historic sites tend to run together in a blah blah blah repetition–whether you are in Scotland, France or Peru.  Too much.  Overload.  The sites become a blur, no matter how stunning.

Serendipities help.  We had two in the Sacred Valley of Peru.  

1)  We made it to the top of a hill that was, at a minimum, daunting, and, possibly, impossible, for us to climb.  Lake, age 12, ran to the top, the conquering hero.  We weren’t as fast, but we made it.

2) In Pisac, Peru, where our tour group stopped for shopping at an outdoor market, an unscheduled parade of small children was happening.  Pure joy.  Kids being kids. Native Peruvian dress. Dancing. Smiles, which are good in every language.  (I took my first ever iPhone video but I have not yet figured out how to post it.  Maybe soon.  It’s fun to watch.)

The Navel of the World:

There is not nearly enough oxygen in the air in Cusco/Cuzco, Peru, 11,200 feet above sea level.  When I was 19 years old, I climbed a 14,000-foot peak in Colorado.  I am no longer a teenager, but, with our 12-year-old grandson and our old-enough-to-be-his-mom daughter in Cusco, Sally and I climbed almost everything everyone else climbed in this amazingly beautiful part of creation. 

 

The Incas certainly appreciated the beauty of the area, but for them, something more than splendor at stake.  They believed that this was the spiritual junction of heaven and earth, where gods and humans connected most perfectly.  In the Quechuan (Inca) language, Cusco means “Navel of the World.”

 

Who can argue with the value that a tribe, or an entire nation, puts on a sacred place?  You can enter a small cave in Sacsayhuaman, just outside of Cusco, where sacrifices to the deities of the Incas are still made annually.

 

The Irish call these sacred spots “thin places” because heaven and earth seem to have less air separating them.  Somehow, it is easier to connect with God, however God is understood, in these hallowed locations.  The island of Iona in Scotland is my favorite “thin place” in the world.

 

I have traveled to two other “navels of the world.”  Jerusalem, where the Holy of Holies of the Hebrew Bible was located, is one.  Delphi, in Greece, home of the famous Oracle, is another.  I won’t argue with anyone who feels they have experienced the Holy, whether at a summer camp in the North Carolina mountains or as a tourist in a grand cathedral.

 

The older I have gotten, the more I have been forced to remember that God told Moses his name is, “I AM WHO I AM.”

When in Lima…

I am tempted to say, “When in Lima, do what the Lemons do…” but that would be a really bad joke.

 

Our first two days in Peru were spent in Lima, population, about 8 million people, a World Class City!   We were not walking off the airplane into an American city.  No need to travel if you want to repeat your experiences of life in America.

 

South America is happening!  The new Pope is from South America.  In fact, he is there this week.  The Olympics are scheduled for South America for the first time ever.  Next year’s World Cup will be in South America.

 

Most of us are ignorant of South American history.  I was.  Still am.  North Americans are proud of the first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, being established in 1607.  Maybe you will be as surprised as I was to discover that Juan Pizarro founded Lima, which is on the Pacific West Coast of South America, in 1535, almost 100 years before Jamestown on the East Coast of North America.  That was startling to me.

 

Though I love the familiar tastes, smells, and habits of home, when I travel, I believe in experiencing the flavors, aromas, and customs of my host country.  So, on our first day in Lima, we ate ceviche (raw fish marinated in lime juice with some South American spices) as well as alpaca burgers.  Don’t tell my Baptist friends, but I also drank a Pisco sour. I bought an appropriate hat.  A fine start to a great trip!

A Tribute to the Service Industry

There is nothing very sexy about infrastructure.

 

Americans are an opinionated group.  All of us enjoy the benefits of living in a rich, secure, free, amazing country.  Yet, I’ve noticed that some of us complain at the smallest inconvenience.  “High maintenance” is an accurate description for some folks.  Cluelessness may be cute on a first date when you are age 17, but it is ugly when you are a fifty-year-old adult!

 

Get a grip!  Life has inconveniences.  Extended adolescence is not pretty in mature adults.

 

Whenever good things happen, someone is usually behind the scenes working hard to create the environment that allows us to live (and travel) as we do.  Wherever there is an organization of any kind, a school, scientific society, church, community, government, museum, airline, hotel, or restaurant, someone has invested time, money and energy to make it happen.

 

On our trip to Peru, at the airport and on the airplane, I paid attention to and took a few pictures of what we call “service industry” employees, including the highly unpopular TSA screeners and the ever-accommodating flight attendants.  There they were, doing their jobs.  No tips.  Few thanks.  But showing up for work on time and making our lives easier.

 

Tour Guides.  Travel agents.  Waitresses.  Maids.  Mechanics.  Bus drivers.  Clerks. The list is too long. 

 

Thank you.  I am grateful. 

The Gift

For the past 15 years, I worked for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of South Carolina.  It was the best job in the world.  I will write about that another day. 

 

Knowing how much I love to travel, CBFSC gave me enough money for a retirement trip to just about anywhere in the world.  There was even enough money for Sally to come back to South Carolina!  (Just kidding…  The gift was very generous!  There was enough for us both to return to South Carolina.  Thank you, CBFSC!)

 

I have never had a “Bucket List,” but tend to go where opportunity allows.  There is something in the Bible about the Spirit blowing in unexpected directions, so, without really trying, I have travelled to Mauritania, Morocco, Bali, Thailand, Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil and a dozen other faraway places. 

 

I have also ridden the buses on the backroads of South Carolina, but that also is a tale for another day.

 

On this Gift Trip, I wanted to go somewhere I had never been.  In addition to my wife, Sally, I wanted to take my 12-year-old grandson, Lake, who is at the perfect age to marvel at the wonders of this world.  Jenna, his mom, my oldest daughter, decided to go with us.  We ended up with a party of four.

 

I let Lake choose the place (which is consistent with my theme of going where the wind blows).  He had a geography teacher this year (a young man formerly in the Peace Corps) that Lake really liked. Lake asked him to suggest five South Americancountries that would be fun to visit.  PERU came out on top.  The Amazon Rain Forest fascinated Lake, and Machu Picchu is one of the 10 outstanding Wonders of the World, however you configure your list.  Lima has a soccer (football) team, and Lake is nuts about soccer/football these days.

 

We paid our money, and set off on July 9, 2013, for Lima, Peru, South America. 

 

This story will take 10-15 days to tell, so, hang in there.