 
A Journey of Coincidence

By

Tom Reissmann

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Tom Reissmann

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A Journey of Coincidence
Prologue

Everyone around me was murmuring in prayer. I assumed it to be the Lord's Prayer, but really I had no idea because they were speaking Portuguese. But even if they had been speaking German, English or Spanish, I would not have known the words. Where I grew up I had always been told that religion is opiate for the people and thus hadn't really spent much time in prayer school. Did I believe in God at the time? Well let's just say that I didn't exclude the possibility and I did believe Alanis Morissette, who incidentally played God in the movie _Dogma_ , when she sang that life is ironic. Because wasn't it ironic that I was now here in Northern Bolivia, with a group of Christians, about to take their own sacred opiate, which supposedly would unlock the door to the kingdom of God.

They stopped praying, passed Santa Maria, neatly packed into a joint, and began serving the reddish liquid from a corked wine bottle, in total silence. The surrounding jungle was anything but silent as an array of noises poured into the open windows of the small wooden church, which was only slightly lit by several candles on the table in front of us.

"Like someone playing a synthesizer in the jungle," Andrew the German had said. Funny how we Westerners compare nature to electronic gadgets, given that he jungle had certainly been there before the synthesizer, or it wouldn't have had anything to synthesize. And wasn't that the same fallacious argument science made when it explained everything through chemicals and formulas, which supposedly proved the non-existence of God, when obviously something a bit bigger than ourselves had created nature that we were now explaining through numbers and concepts, using a brain that we had also been given by nature. It's not like we created it, we're only explaining it and just because there is evolution does not negate a higher power, because that higher power had designed that process of evolution - we certainly haven't. It had been done for us, we're only sitting here all smug and self-satisfied, explaining how it works, but not why it works the way it does.

"The Daime is Jesus Christ liquefied," Andrew had said. I was about to find out what that meant. One by one the twelve women and men were given their holy sacrament. When it was my turn finally, I walked up to Jose to get my serving of Daime from one of their self-made pottery cups. This was my last chance to bail out. 'But it's kind of too late now. I can hardly run out of the church now.' My heart was pounding as I traced the cross over my chest, holding a cup full of liquid, red Jesus.

'This is the point of no return; there's no going back after that,' I realized and poured the sour-tasting liquid down my throat. I could almost hear the eerie metallic sound of my liquefied mirror image disappearing inside, just like in _The Matrix_ , as Neo starts to feel the effect of the red pill. The voice of Morpheus was ringing in my ear: "Have you ever had a dream that was so real, that you could not tell the difference to the real world? What if you were unable to wake from that dream?"

I walked back to the table and they began singing. Someone had lit a stick of _Palo Santo_ , and the sweet-smelling scent gave the atmosphere an almost holy air. Once we were all served, we sat down again — woman on one side of the table and men on the other. Someone pointed to the book in front of me, indicating the verse they were about to sing.

"Dai-me forna e Dai-me amor para eu poder trabalhar."

As I became engaged in the lyrics I somehow lost my grasp of time. The concept suddenly appeared strange, because it presupposed change, while I had the distinct feeling that nothing was actually changing. I looked at my body and to my surprise I could not fully identify with it; in fact it felt rather alien. A thought entered my mind: 'That's not me, but then who or what am I?' The question is usually purely intellectual in nature but in this state it became almost existential and I felt like if I really wanted to know then this was the time to find out, thus I gave it my fullest attention. I could not concentrate on the lyrics anymore and my head became heavy, so heavy in fact that I had to lay it down on the table in front of me, while my arms were dangling loosely beside me. Not exactly standard etiquette in those sort of circumstances, but then I had just lost sense of time and self, so social etiquette was certainly not on the forefront of my mind either. In fact there wasn't anything on the forefront or back of my mind, thoughts were simply running amok in there. 'What was I doing here with this crazy sect?' 'What would my dad have to say about all this, about his son getting fucked up with Christians?' 'Oh great, he's completely lost it now.' Something along those lines probably. I remembered the words of my girlfriend: 'I have learned so much from you already. You have given me so much optimism.' That thought made me smile. Someone tapped me on my shoulder.

"You have to do some more work my friend," a voice said to me in Spanish, though I wasn't sure who that voice belonged to. 'Oh, that's why you call it work,' I thought. 'This stuff ain't easy.' At that very instant a fluorescent green grasshopper landed on the table right in front of me, which startled me in a very nice way. I felt like I had just received a message from the forest creatures. 'Just hang on in there buddy,' the little fella said and hopped on off the table. I slowly sat up straight again and then someone started playing the flute. I had always liked the flute, but on that occasion I was literally in love with the sound of the flute. I could feel it inside my body. The sound seemed to wander up my spine and I was suddenly filled with energy again. I managed to stand up, along with everyone else. I heard the American vomiting noisily out the window and, I know this sounds bad, but it actually made me smile, not only because vomiting out of a church window is funny, but also because I knew I was not alone in my weakness. I began formulating the words I read in the book I held in my hands, after my eyes had slowly adjusted to the letters.

"Eu canto aqui na terra. Oh amor que Deus nos da.

Para sempre. Para Sempre

Ah minha ma que vem com migo

Para sempre. Para sempre."

I closed my eyes and let the sound of _sempre_ reverberate within me. It found its way into my head first and then began moving down my spine, somehow filling my entire body with the vibration of eternity and then I lost any sense of reality. Every sensation; touch, smell, balance, taste and vision melted into one: a bright white light of eternal, I suppose you could call it; bliss. An immense electric current of peace and joy overcame me and I knew without thinking that this is where we came from and where we will return to. Well, eventually.

# Chapter 1

Behind the Wall

Growing up in East Germany was like living in The Truman Show. We didn't have to worry about putting food on the table and having a roof over our heads, all that was provided by the State, but they also planned out our lives as they saw fit for and someone was always watching us, including our neighbours, our teachers, the Stasi and even our relatives, just to make sure we didn't misbehave. But above all we lived in a restricted area and going beyond it meant danger, both real and psychological. The psychological danger was maintained by State television that reported on such topics as unemployment in the West, drug abuse, homelessness and poverty, all of which didn't exist under socialism. In addition there were the real dangers like land mines and snipers to ensure we stayed within the predetermined parameters. Meanwhile we were made to believe that in fact we owned all of the factories and were essentially in charge, and that it was all for our own good, that it was safe here in East and that our party would always provide for us. It was an illusion of course, and when that illusion fell away, some people couldn't deal with it and actually committed suicide others never fully adjusted to capitalism, always suffering from Ostalgie, the notion that under socialism everything was somehow better, while some people, like myself, began to see any society, media, culture and the world in general as an illusion.

For the most part life was surprisingly bearable in East Germany. People always ask me what it was like growing up under socialism, and they frequently have this genuine look of pity in their eyes. I always feel like I should indulge their preconceived notions of socialism and tell tales of rationing and scarcity, marching in line ahead of tanks and rocket launchers and being moulded into athletes at the tender age of five, but it wasn't like that at all. In fact food was dirty cheap and plentiful and the state provided free child-care, after-school-care and even holiday camps, because two of the main tenants of socialism were equal rights for women and supporting families. Women were encouraged to find jobs and leave the raising of children in the hands of the state, though I imagine that there was an ulterior motive involved because that much of a cliché is true; we were quietly being brainwashed into loving our party leaders, the socialist revolution and our friends in the Soviet Union, while fearing the imperialistic endeavours of capitalist society. We were constantly surrounded by propaganda, billboards, people, television, books and radio announcing how great the SED (Socialist Union Party) is, how grateful we should be to our Soviet friends for liberating us from the Nazis and most of all how we should despise the evil Imperialist Empire of America and its affiliates, like West Germany. But you could ignore all that if you wanted, what was more difficult to ignore was the constant imperative to participate in activities that somehow contributed to the advancement of the Socialist State.

But as kids we were blissfully oblivious of all that, it was natural and just the way things were, and at the time we also didn't know that other children played with Legos, Nintendos and Fisher Price. So we really didn't miss any of it, because how can you miss something you don't even know exists? There were always ample amounts of food and a good number of days set aside for holidays, thus we had plenty of time to spend with our parents. My parents were very young, twenty-one to be precise, because my mom was really keen on having babies. My dad was less inclined to raise children, after all he had only just started university and felt like living it up, but was forced to change diapers instead. Two more boys followed in a neat succession of three years, which makes three boys separated by three years. My parents seemed to have developed a liking for threes and given that we all had biblical names, Thomas, Andreas and Martin, I wonder if there was some kind of subconscious religiosity at play, even though they were, like most people in East Germany, atheists.

My dad had a healthy dislike for authority and expressed that by letting his hair grow long and sporting a fuzzy, Fidel-Castro-style beard, which was almost unseen in East Germany at the time and even more frowned upon. He had cut his long hair by the time we were born, but the beard remained and it was curiously entertaining to us kids, because it was big enough to hide things in there and when you pulled on it you'd get varying reactions depending on the mood he was in. It was like a mood ring of sorts. You just pulled on it and knew if he'd had a good day or a bad day. He also liked listening to Jazz and not really going along with the whole party dogma and he passed that on to us as we grew older and was probably a bad influence on my mom as well. He wanted to become a schoolteacher when he was young but wasn't really considered a good role model by the state, so getting a teaching degree was not an option for him, he simply wasn't allowed to. The way it worked in East Germany was that everyone had a so-called Kaderakte, a personal file that essentially determined your life in the GDR, because it was consulted before any decision was made for you, including choosing a course of study, and given his rebellious character becoming a teacher was not an option. He studied maths instead, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because he became a software engineer, which later secured him a good job in West Germany. Without knowing he had paved a way to living very comfortably once the Wall came down, simply by being contrarian. So there you have it, a healthy disrespect for authority can go a long way. The disrespect probably stemmed from growing up under an overbearing mother and episodes like tying his left hand down to force him to learn how to write with his right hand, because being left-handed was simply being way too different and in East Germany everyone was supposed to be the same. His father sat in a wheelchair after having lost his right leg in the battle of Leningrad. I remember that the task of strapping on his 'fake' leg sometimes fell on us, and that wobbly stump of flesh really freaked me out, plus Grandpa Otto had a bit of a short temper, so if we didn't get that damn thing on there fast enough he'd get a bit annoyed and shout at us. But he was a lovely old man otherwise and he'd lost the habit of throwing things at people, when he got mad. My dad once had the pleasure of dodging a deodorant can during one of his fits, and according to him it left a considerable dent in the wall. I suppose sitting in a wheelchair does fill you with impotent rage at times. But he was also extremely intelligent and loved playing chess. Even in his late years when he started falling asleep in the middle of conversations, he'd still be alert during a game of chess. The only game of chess I ever won against him was also the last one I ever played with him. I should have been elated but I was really sad instead, because I knew that it was the beginning of the end, and indeed he passed away the next day. I haven't played chess since.

The East German authorities never gave up their attempts to mould my dad's character and shape him into a more obedient citizen of the GDR. Trying to persuade him to become a reservist sub-officer in the NVA, the East German Army, was one of their more serious attempts. Every male had to serve in the army but my dad just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible and with as little hassle as possible, so becoming a sub-officer was the last thing on his mind. But when he thankfully declined the offer, he was asked to write a Stellungsnahme, a justification for his decision. My dad felt like he didn't have to justify his decision, it was his to make, after all. But the relevant person in charge of his particular case insisted. Not complying would have serious consequences for his future, such as never being given a job of any relevance, which was any job that required a look at the Kaderakte, and excluded only positions like mortician, grave digger, or assistant to the old and the insane. Naturally the old, insane and dead were the only ones spared from socialist indoctrination. It was this style of Bevormundung, the constant attempt at controlling your behaviour and the decisions in life so as to fall in line with what the state considered to be best for your character development, that was the most suffocating aspect of living in East Germany. And there was a completely arbitrary nature to how every case was handled, if your case was in the hands of someone who was merely an opportunist and who really couldn't care less about what you dit and what you thought, then you got lucky, but if you're assigned to some, bleary-eyed idealist, who has bought into the socialist idea lock, stock and Stasi file, then your life could become extremely miserable, unless you obliged. So even though my dad was a rebel he was not a revolutionary, and he wrote his Stellungnahme, which was based mainly on the fact that the army did not agree with his character and general aspirations in life, and from there on did his best to fly below the radar and not upset any of the Stasi officials, which unfortunately he didn't always succeed in doing.

My mom was probably the complete opposite to my dad in many ways, because she was quite well behaved, and liked to please the people around her and she even believed in the benevolent nature of the socialist regime to some degree. For example she refused to believe until the end that the Stasi would be willing to hurt people if they had the audacity to protest in the streets. Her dad had pursued a decent enough career in the East German army and was completely sold on the socialist experiment, which was a smart move, because he came from a modest background and had four children to feed, so being active in the party considerably increased his chances of doing well under the current system. But he also had a bit of a temper and a violent streak so it was best not to cross him. My mom did become a schoolteacher but as time progressed she found it increasingly difficult to stick to the prescribed curriculum and participate in extra-curricular activities because there was a considerable amount of brainwashing to be done. Every work of literature she discussed came with a socialist message she was urged to drill into her students, but she simply did not believe it herself and thus found it hard to convince her students. She tried to wiggle her way through but she was continuously asked to participate in activities like 1st of May demonstrations. She tried to use her role as a mother of three to get out of these obligations, or opted to tend to the school vegetable garden because at least vegetables did not require brainwashing. She continuously felt like a pawn of the system and eventually resigned on the grounds of being a busy mother. What she had not anticipated was the fact that from now on she had a serious blemish on her file and found it impossible to find a job of any relevance. She was finally reassigned to senior care, because they were seen as somewhat less valuable assets to society than children. First of all bed-ridden seniors don't start revolutions and secondly they don't produce much in terms of benefits to society, they were more like the old work horse in The Animal Farm, all useless and worn out. I've always had my reservations about George Orwells' books, because it seemed to me like those in power just used his books as instruction manuals. I imagine there was a bunch of fat Party Bonzen, sitting in the politburo, reading his book, banning it for the general public, of course, and then writing a nice little internal memo, that went something like this: 'All Peasants and Workers of the German Democratic Republic are equal, but we the party functionaries are more equal because we have to run this great socialist state of ours. So we shall build ourselves our own little community in the woods and drive shiny Western Cars, because we all know that Trabants and Wartburgs are a very sorry excuse for a car. We shall also stock only Western goods in our shops, because they do make groceries that tend to be quite pleasing to the palate over there, even if they are exceedingly capitalistic and imperialist in their convictions, not too mention exploitative and oppressive of the working class.' And that's exactly what they did, they built their own gated community in the woods and consumed only Western products. Of course we didn't know that at the time, it was all very secret and well guarded, but when the Wall finally came down, all the secrets came down with it, and a few people's illusions as well. Some were so disillusioned and they ended their lives voluntarily.

So my mom was in charge of allocating nurses to old people from now on but also began to look after the needs of old people, even though she wasn't a nurse as such, more like an assistant and someone to talk to. Naturally seeing people deteriorate, and slowly lose all of their bodily functions, is somewhat less inspiring than helping to raise bleary-eyed youngsters, which meant she regarded her job mainly as a punishment. But again it was a blessing in disguise because it became one of the main reasons she encouraged my dad to get a job in the West once the Wall came down, because she just wanted to get away from it all and start a new life in the West. She had nothing to lose anymore, and as Janis Joplin once said: freedom is another word for nothing left to lose. So again a negative experience in my parents' lives had extremely positive repercussions for the rest of us.

But generally I think we were all pretty happy and we got along quite well, my brother was even one of my best friends back then. I really liked him and I thought the little one was really cute when he was a toddler, all tubby and giggly. Though like most brothers we could be real arseholes at times, we once made him urinate on my parent's pillow and eat paper soup, yeah that's right soup, made out of pieces of paper floating on water. Terrible I know, but then you got to entertain yourself when you don't have Fisher Price and Legos, plus my parents really shouldn't have left us on our own without a babysitter. Come to think of it, they really must have trusted us, and specifically me to just go out and leave us without supervision. I think they didn't do that again, after the pillow incident. Eventually we did get Legos too, because my mom started taking care of an old woman who had relatives in the West, and because she wanted to do something nice for my mom, the old lady ordered Legos and Nutella from her relatives. I loved Legos and Nutella, I still do, that stuff is ingenious, and it represented a more plentiful existence in the West and was probably the first seed that was sown for my desire to live in that magic world of toys and spreadable chocolates. I do have quite a few fond memories of holidays spent together at lakes and the North Sea, playing with my brothers, going on holidays camps with friends and watching Charlie Chaplin on TV, acting out the various characters with my brothers afterwards. Yeah he was a funny chap my brother, and that Charlie Chaplin too. I loved watching his crazy antics. Evidently East German Television did too, he was on prime time television all the time. They probably liked how he poked fun at the letdowns of capitalism. He was quite socio-critical, I suppose, but I just liked the way he moved, and I suspect if it hadn't been for the jerky, black and white film, used in the 1920s, it wouldn't have been half as funny.

While my dad had a really long fuzzy beard, my mom wore a boy's haircut because she allowed my dad to cut her hair, not sure if that was to save money or to make her less attractive to other suitors, but probably the former because my mom only ever had one boyfriend, and that was my dad. They met at school, and they're still together, quite romantic in that way, I guess. Of course they went through some rough patches but at least I'm not all cynical about marriage and relationships. But I am shopping around for a wife a bit more than my dad, in fact I'm still shopping and I'm putting off the whole baby-thing for little while, because I think my dad wasn't ready for it, and I kind of picked up on that a bit. I mean they really loved us and they always made great efforts to make us happy, like building a whole model railroad from scratch, with mountains and trees and everything, but I sensed that it was just way too early for him, he didn't like the responsibility of looking after three rug rats, and who can blame him, I wouldn't either. It was sort of thrust upon him because my mom really wanted babies. And when they would argued about that, it sometimes didn't make me feel too fuzzy about life, because even as a kid you know that they are arguing about whether you ought to have been born or not. I remember once being accused of being a parasite, when I was a teenager, and responding that I didn't ask to be born, that they had made that decision without my input. And maybe that's where my general low self-esteem came from, I kind of felt not all that welcome here in life, at times. But it was only at times and at others they really loved us, so maybe that explains my split personality too. East Germany also had a perpetually depressing vibe to it, because we were surrounded by very old buildings in various states of disrepair, cobble stones streets that shook your car like a paint-shaker, smouldering old factories and in some cases piles of rubble, like the ruins of the Frauenkirche, intentionally left unmoved to provide a reminder of the atrocities of the allies. In case you've never heard of Slaughterhouse Five, a book by Kurt Vonnegut, later turned into a movie, Dresden was firebombed by the British in 1945. My grandparents still recall the attack, which was visible even in Radebeul, a town 10 Kilometres North-West of Dresden. The sky reddened into a sunset glow that lasted for days, people were burned alive as firestorms ravaged the city, and about 20,000 to 40,000 people lost their lives, in some cases reducing people to the size of children as they were cremated by incendiaries packed into the bombs. It was a very controversial attack, because much of Dresden's infrastructure like bridges and railroads were left intact and extensive industrial complexes outside the city were left standing, implying that they simply wanted to destroy an historic and cultural landmark known as The Florence of the Elbe, as an act of revenge for flattening Coventry. But it should also be noted that 60 bombers mistakenly dropped their load on Prague, so the argument of not destroying it all stands on shaky ground. Dresden still is a beautiful city and many historical buildings like the Zwinger and the Semperoper as well as the newly rebuilt Frauenkirche, sitting next to the Elbe river, give it the feeling of a city rich in cultural heritage and architectural and natural beauty. The trouble was when I was young the Elbe was a stinking flow of industrial refuge, the ruins of the Frauenkirche gave the city a sense of having just emerged from a devastating war and the architectural aspirations of Russian-style high rise buildings were purely functional in nature, to say the least. But on a sunny day with the wind moving in the opposite direction and an ice-cream in my hand, Dresden could be quite attractive, even back then.

We lived in Radebeul, once the domain of the rich and famous, with grandiose villas, grape-vine covered hills and massive oak trees lining the streets. It was once the home of Karl May, a fantasy-novel writer, who is to blame for my liking of Native American culture. Karl May wrote fictional stories about North America in the 1800s as well as adventure stories set in the Orient. He claimed at the time that they were non-fiction, even though he had not set foot on American soil until later in his life. But he did read anthropological reports about Apache customs and ritual, when he sat in jail for fraud, as a way to escape the tedium, I suppose. And since he had a knack for making up stories, which is what had landed him in jail in the first place, it was a natural progression to invent grand tales of courage and adventure set in far-away lands. And if you've watched Inglourious Basterds by Quention Tarantino then you might have even heard of him and his most famous character, Winnetou, the Apache chief, because they mention it in the basement scene – remember when they play a guessing game with cards stuck to their foreheads and later someone gets his balls shot off – that's the one. Otherwise you've most likely never heard of him because while Karl May was extremely popular in continental Europe he never became widely known elsewhere, probably because it's children's literature and his stories bear no relevance to real life in the Wild West of the United States. In Germany he remains incredibly popular to this day and every young kid reads at least one of his books. Indeed his works had an influence on Albert Einstein, who evidently spent his entire childhood under his spell, and even Hermann Hesse who considered his work as wish-fulfilment. It is also widely known that Hitler was an admirer of Karl May and that he was obsessed with his works, to the extent that it caused a notable decline in his grades, when he was a young pupil in Austria. Hitler even attended a lecture by Karl May in Vienna, and defended the author against critics in the hostel he was staying in, when it became apparent that Karl May had not in fact experienced the adventures that he claimed were non-fiction, and it came to light that he had spent time in jail and never set foot on American soil until years after writing his books. In Hitlers's view this only made him a better writer and there are even historical accounts of Hitler drawing strength from the works of Karl May during his more insane years of attempted world-domination, like others would from the bible. Just like Nietzsche, Karl May was exploited heavily by the Nazis, who used it as examples of what can be achieved even by the average man. The East German government initially discouraged people from reading his books, and officially considered him a chauvinist, but because it didn't break his popularity, they eventually published his books freely and even opened their own Karl May museum, located in his villa.

The reason I had a particular connection with May's stories was that his villa was situated only a couple of houses from our apartment block, which was located right next to the Karl May park. He was essentially a neighbour, although he was dead by the time I was alive, of course. The Karl May museum was filled with life-sized Apache mannequins -- face paint, tepees, weapons and all -- even a giant painting of the battle at Little Big Horn. But the museum wasn't so much an anthropological attempt at displaying customs and dresses, but rather enveloping his fictional characters in a sense of authenticity and romanticism. I spent a quite a bit of time running around in there as a kid and I actually wanted to be like Winnetou, who just travelled around on a horse and had a couple of white blood-brothers, named Old Shatterhand and Old Surehand. All of them got themselves into all sorts of sticky situations but naturally always emerged victoriously. I guess if I had a role model at the time it was Winnetou. I wanted to be a Native American, and when I later read about how badly they were really treated I got pretty upset and sort of rethought the entire idea, because they really did get a rough deal. About 25 years later when I was in one of the countries with the largest Native American population in the world, and with the worst modern-day abuses against indigenous people, namely Guatemala, where I attended a meditation camp at Lake Atitlan, and engaged in so-called past life regressions, I would learn that whatever we want to be when we are really young, is an indication of our past lives, because we still remember. Whereas when we get older we generally think that's a load bullocks and want to be the CEOs of a Fortune 500 company and make a six-figure salary. Well, I never really forgot, although my future aspirations aren't necessarily that of being a noble savage on a horse with a silver-studded rifle, but I still want to be just as free and live into the day. I also felt an affinity for Karl May, and once, in fact in Guatemala, while writing the first version of this book, I even dreamt that I was him in a former life, so perhaps the memory was not that of being a Native American but being Karl May. Karl May was an interesting character, in that he was diagnosed with dissociate identity disorder, which was brought on by the experience of having lost his teaching degree, because he was accused of having stolen his roommates' pocket watch, although he always maintained that he had been lent the watch with prior consent. Once he could not teach anymore he started inventing alternate identities, such as that of a doctor, and as was custom at the time, doctors were often given food and drink for free and even received generous gifts and clothing, as a form of gratitude towards the profession. It was these bouts of fraud that landed him in jail where he began reading about reports from travellers to North America and started writing his fantastical stories. But because he still suffered from the same disorder he wrote in the first person and claimed that these stories were in fact true accounts of his adventures in America, while assuming the character of Old Shatterhand, who meets the noble Savage in the form of the Apache chief, Winnetou. The interesting part about his history is that having lost his teaching license eventually led him to become a writer and as you know, if you've been paying attention, both of my parents had their lives irrevocably altered by not being able to teach and it is most likely that because of that sequence of events I ended up in West Germany and also started travelling and eventually writing. Let us assume that I share some kind of karmic connection with Karl May, then it would seem almost like I'm making up for the untruthful nature of his character as well as his stories by truly travelling all over the place and only writing about actual accounts, while trying to uncover an authentic sense of adventure and mystery in the real world.

I also loved Mark Twain's stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, so travelling to the US was always very high on my list and being an adventurer was definitely an aspiration very dear. But even as a kid I also had this split personality where I would be pretty courageous, like climbing up into trees or onto old ruins, to the annoyance of my teachers, just to test my character, and show off, but on the other hand I could be really timid and shy and be shitting myself about going down a waterslide or facing up to a big dog and even bees. Well, as far as bees go, I once got stung in my arm pit, but because I was holding a cup of lemonade at the time it was also pretty amusing for the people around me, except those standing right behind me.

I do remember that it would really get to me that my dad would be disappointed and even ashamed of me when I was being a wimp, so that next time around I would show him that in fact I really was a fearless warrior, and that's probably why I still do really stupid things just to prove it to myself and some kind of virtual dad. I was also lucky in that my parents liked to move, and pretty frequently at that, because, mainly my mom, liked moving to bigger and better apartments. That helped me overcome my shyness and introversion to some extent because I had to make new friends all the time and adjust to new and unfamiliar surroundings, and it probably set the stage for me to become a traveller and craving change all the time.

The older I got in East Germany the more I became aware that I lived in a rather large prison with very strict rules and if those rules were not adhered to it would have serious consequences. If for example someone wanted to cross the so-called "Anti-imperialistische Schutzwall" (the anti-imperialistic protection-barrier) to the West, also known as the Wall, they'd be shot, which is why the name is a bit of an Orwellian joke because it didn't protect us from no Imperialists, it protected us from ourselves, because so many of us wanted to run and surrender to the imperialistic powers of the West. Numerous people still tried in all sorts of devices from sail-planes to Hot Air Balloons, canoes and even rafts, and occasionally some of them did make it, from what I could hear on my crackling AM radio, on a day with good reception. My radio was a timber box, the size of suitcase and dials shaped like baby octopus. I think it was an antiquity from the 1920s, but it still worked, and hearing commercials and Western news, was like listening to pirate radio from behind the enemy lines. It was ridiculously exciting and magical.

Of course East German state television wouldn't report such incidents of escape, but terrestrial television from the West would, which served most of Germany, except Dresden and surroundings. The problem with Dresden is that it's a valley and thus terrestrial signal is hard to pick up. The valley of Dresden therefore became known as the valley of the Ahnungslosen (the clueless), which ironically resulted in the highest numbers of emigration applications in the whole of East Germany. You see, while you might get shot while trying to cross the border, or even step on a mine, you could apply for emigration, if you had relatives in the West. Emigration for Easterners had become available in the early eighties, after some negotiation with the West, who had given generous loans to the East, without which East Germany would have most likely collapsed even earlier. The first wave of emigration was in fact forced immigration of infamous figures that had become embarrassing and uncomfortable for the politburo, such as the folk singer Wolfgang Biermann and later the actor Manfred Krug. These people had become famous but were also non-conformist and caused embarrassment for those in power, so they were forced to leave the country, other less famous artists were forced to stop creating, through _Arbeitsverbot_ , which is discussed in detail in the movie _The Lives of Others_. Thus instead of listening to the legitimate complaints from people the state reacted with a self-protective defensiveness that only alienated people even more. And upon the urgings of the West German government there was a second wave of emigration that allowed families to reunite. Many families had been separated during the division of Germany, which came about because of the bad timing of the allies, who had occupied only half of Germany, while the other half had gone to the Russian troops.

Berlin had somehow been partly occupied by the allies and partly by the Russians, which created the rather silly set-up of an area within a country belonging to another, which also happened to be ideologically opposed. The Americans and the Russians were united only briefly by a common enemy, but remained ideologically opposed, because American industrialists, who incidentally did extremely well out of World War II, had witnessed the nationalization of factories in Russia and considered socialism as clear threat to their survival, so the American government, which is essentially in the pockets of corporations, decided to build an economically strong West Germany as a buffer zone against Eastern Europe, now controlled by the Russians. They poured billions of dollars into West Germany, despite the protest of their European allies, who would have much rather seen Germany turn into a purely agricultural zone, because quite frankly they were getting fed up with Germany's expansionist tendencies, while the Russians, on the other side, couldn't give a damn about the East German economy and disassembled factories and even railroads, to use the scrap metal to rebuild a devastated Russia. It was for those reasons that East Germany was in a rather miserable state, compared to its Western counterpart, and it had not changed much over forty years because the Socialist planned economy simply didn't work all that well. Thus, understandably so, families from the West had no inclination whatsoever to move to the East and live with their relatives in the Russian-occupied zone, except for some socialist dreamers perhaps, so that Eastern families were finally allowed to rejoin with their relatives in the West at the end of the eighties. But the conditions were tough — and the application process could take years, with endless papers to complete, frequent interrogations of relatives and friends, and even secret monitoring as well as _Arbeitsverbot_ , which basically meant that one could not pursue any occupation that required a viewing of the _Kaderakte_. Also there was never any guarantee that emigration would be granted, because processing was completely arbitrary and not covered by any rule of law, it simply depended on the mentality and mood of the person who was in charge of looking at your application. And if they felt that someone harbored resentment towards the Socialist State there was a good chance that those people would end up as a political prisoner in Bautzen. And even though the movie _The_ _Lives of Others_ \- which is historically quite accurate – made interrogations look all cute and cuddly; they weren't always that subtle, from what I heard. But none of us knew exactly what happened to political prisoners, and none of us wanted to find out either. Even though we did manage to appear on the Stasi's radar, at least that's what we assume, because we once came home and found the front door to our apartment had been forced opened while no valuables had been taken. So we assumed that they had installed bugs to listen in to our conversations, which was standard practice with people who were seen as contrarian. I suppose it all was a bit too obvious, because if they really wanted to listen in they would have found a more subtle way to install them rather than to force the door open and take nothing, so I think it might have been a warning, because unlike people with influence or real activism they knew that we were never the revolutionary kind. There were plenty of people who ended up in prison or had their lives irrevocably changed but we weren't willing to suffer such harassment and essentially abided. We never found out what information they had compiled on us, although we could have by viewing our Stasi files, after the system collapsed, but my parents were of the opinion that it's best not to, because it might only creates conflict and resentment towards family members, since relatives were often used to provide information to the Stasi.

Having read Jules Verne as passionately as Karl May, I decided that a Balloon would be the best way to escape -- and that I wanted to escape was pretty clear to me – because they were very classy and not detectable by radar. The only problem was that a Balloon is sort of big and glows in the dark, because of the rather large flame, but that could be remedied by flying during a clear day and painting it sky-blue, I thought. I did have a pretty vivid imagination and liked reading and by now I had developed a healthy disregard for socialist party rule. Which I felt compelled to express in class, even though I didn't really get too much backup from my friends, except that half-Hungarian dude, who knew he was going to be in the West soon anyways. I sort of went a bit too far during a 1st of May Labour Day demonstration when all the party functionaries sat on stage and waved to us like benevolent royals, and we waved back with our red flags and red tulips and appreciative Arbeiter und Bauern hands to show our gratitude for running the country into the ground. Being the idiotic clown that I was, I decided to wave with my hand turned backwards, which pretty much means: you're all a bunch of morons. When my friend nudged me and pointed out that these Stasi-looking guys were watching me, I made the mistake of looking back so they could get a really nice shot of my face. Bloody stupid really.

The next day I had chat with my red-haired, head-teacher, who could be a really nice person when she was not in a bad mood and had a headache, trouble was that she suffered from chronic migraines and was very quite indoctrinated in the ways of socialism plus she had a highly developed authoritarian streak. But then again she had to be; she was our head indoctrinator. She sat me down and looked at me sadly, massaged her forehead and then asked me politely if I could keep my political opinions to myself in the future. I mentioned that I hadn't said anything at the May demonstration, I had merely waved at the party functionaries in an unorthodox way because I am a bit uncoordinated. I thought I was being clever but then I realised that I was just being an idiot because I had just confessed. "Thomas, I would like you to join the Army," she suggested calmly. I was a bit gobsmacked by her suggestion to say the least. I couldn't imagine a greater indignity than to take orders all day while crawling through the dirt and defending our great socialist state by shooting at people trying to get out. Plus I wasn't sure whether she could make me go or whether I had to volunteer. As usually fear turned to into anger and I said: "I'm not going to join the Army so that you can kiss ass with the Stasi." She didn't respond well to that at all. In fact she dragged me out of the room by my ears, like a naughty toddler, and into the hall, shouting at the top of her lungs that they would teach me in the army and I would learn how to keep my big mouth shut. She then dragged me into the principal's office and explained what an arrogant little shit I was. The principal seemed somewhat less perturbed and mentioned that he would deal with it shortly. And then I just sat there for an hour. I think he was busy and had better things to do, but eventually he explained that at the next school meeting I would be publically reprimanded, but that joining the army would be my decision. Oh, public humiliation, the crown jewel in every child's education. The problem was that even though I was an introverted kid, I did love getting into trouble and I was proud of it, so to be reprimanded in front of the entire school meant everyone would know that I'm a bad ass. Well that's how I felt anyways, because the other part of me felt like I was a wimp of course, nicely reinforced by my dad who did like putting us down a bit, when he got a chance. My teacher decided to change strategy and keep my occupied with various projects, like organising the recycling days. You see, because resources were scarce in East Germany, we were encouraged to recycle, and even had a recycling day every month, when we would bring all our recyclables from home to school. It sounds quite progressive and I suppose it was, but it had nothing to do with environmentalism, as evidenced by the stinking Elbe river and smokestacks surrounding Dresden, leaving the valley in a perpetual cloud of smog. I also became responsible for organising school discos and even liked to play the host with a microphone, announcing songs in a Barry-White-voice, to the grin of my fellow pupils. We did enjoy the whole dancing with the opposite scenario though and started having our own discos, in someone's basement with a tiny stereo from West Germany playing Michael Jackson, Die Ärzte, Wham, George Michael and all the other 80s music. I kissed a girl, who was a year older than me, for the first time during one of those slow-dance numbers and even though I found poking my tongue into someone's mouth a bit odd to begin with I soon got the hang of it and even enjoyed the ritual to some degree. She decided that I would be her boyfriend and then we just started hanging out and walking around holding hands, since she was quite attractive, the older guys from her class really didn't appreciate me pissing in their territory and shoved me around a bit on various occasions, since I simply started acting like a demented clown in such situation, they figured that I was a nutcase and stopped feeling threatened by me, and just accepted the fact that I was now going out with one of "their" girls, who had a liking for nut-jobs. We also started to enjoy hanging out at the local lake, not least because it was a nudist beach. The East German government sought to differentiate itself from the West by being more open-minded and less puritanical about sex and FKK (Freikörperkultur – which literally means Free body culture) was one way of showing it. Naturally we enjoyed going there because we got to see girls from school in their full naked splendour. The only trouble was that you are also very excitable as a teenager and that could mean sudden and prolonged swims in the lake to cool down from all the visual stimulation, or shivering girls of the shy persuasion being taunted to exit the waters by classmates. All in all it was good times, we certainly made the most of what we had and just as I realised that there was also a whole wide world I would never get to see, the wind of change was in the air and I could smell the freedom.

When the whole absurd house of cards finally collapsed in the late 80s I could not have been happier, not only because the system was very dictatorial and limited our ability to travel, but also because I was proved right. All of my friends who had kept their mouths shut all those years while I complained bitterly about all the things that were wrong with the system now came to look at me as a bit of a prophet. And all of a sudden my head teacher had to explain herself to us. Of course she tried pretty hard to cut the corner and say that she had had a problem with so many things in our great socialist state for a long time. We called these people red socks, because if you tied a red sock to a pole and stuck it in the wind it would turn wherever the wind would blow, but it would still be red.

Naturally there are a number of reasons for the collapse of socialism, one of the most important being the fact that Gorbachev made it possible and we really don't express enough gratitude for what he did, and of course the lack of freedom and being manipulated all the time and pressured to conform in all areas of your life. But I also think that it simply came down to consumerism and lack thereof in East Germany. Because apart from having to stand in line for hours, and products being very rudimentary in nature and design, there was also a constant shortage of materials and products. More than anywhere else in the world, cronyism was a necessity, even for the most basic materials like timber for construction, or a radiator for your car, paint or even something as simple as oranges, which had to imported from partner countries in Mozambique or Cuba. For example we had one of those Russian cars, called Moskvitch, with black leather seats covered in sheep-skin and painted in merlot-red. We loved that car, it was big and spacious and you felt like a dignitary from an African nation in the 1960s, when driving around city and waving to hapless bystanders. We had a minor problem with the clutch once and sent it to a workshop, it was in there for 6 weeks and when we got it back they had taken out the entire engine and replaced it with a much older, worn-out version. It never worked the same way again and even though we complained their answer was like: Ok so we replaced your engine, what you're gonna do about it?

Most likely the mechanic had a relative who had a Moskvich with a very old and worn-out engine. And that's how it went in East Germany, but unless you were active in the party and knew influential people with the right contacts there wasn't much you could do about it. But as I said before, when the status quo is all you know, you simply accept it as the way the world works. However once they began to introduce Western television, even in the Valley of the Ahnunglosen, via satellite TV, which carried private channels that constantly aired commercials and less socio-critical commentary than public TV channels like ZDF and ARD, all of that changed. I'm not sure why they suddenly allowed satellite TV, I think their reasoning was twofold, first of all as emigration numbers showed, people who watched Western Television had a more realistic view of the West, and secondly I think they believed that when people are busy watching TV they don't start political movements for change. What they hadn't thought about of course was the power of advertising, probably because they never had to use it. Take the Trabant for example, which was the only East German-made car, and except for a metal skeleton was made from Duroplast, a resin plastic, reinforced with fibres like wool and cotton, because of a shortage of materials. It also ran on a sputtering and smoky two-stroke engine, and felt more like a soapbox, made in Dad's garage, than a mass-produced car. But despite other cars being available from Russia, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the Trabant literally sold itself, in fact one had to wait for years to get a new one; in some cases 10-15 years and receiving the notification that one would soon be given a brand-new Trabant was often akin to winning the lottery in East Germany. So my point is marketing was not needed and thus a foreign concept, so they didn't realise that when people watch commercials and they are constantly told about the new Lego models, and the latest VW, microwaves and coffee brands, people really end up wanting those things. Of course many had relatives in the West who would send care packages, but that made the situation only worse because we would get a bit of an appetizer without getting a full meal. We were literally starving for Western goods, and being a teenager at the time I wanted Levi's jeans, Bravo magazines and Playboys. And people like us who did not have relatives in the West got really frustrated because we had to buy our cloths at Jugendmode, while our friends walked around in Levi's, read Bravo and jerked off to Playboy. Though if you were really nice to your friends you would be able to borrow their comic books and nudie mags. So creating the desire to purchase without giving the opportunity to finalise the deal was very frustrating. After all, the role of marketing is to stimulate a need, and then to offer a way to satisfy the need with a want, and often they will really get to you by creating an ideal version of you in your head, and what you're left with is a less than ideal, inadequate you, and that's exactly how East Germans felt - like second-class citizens of Germany. Naturally they wanted to change that status and be part of the wealthy West. So they began travelling to Hungary after the Hungarian government opened its borders to Austria. Once the East German government complained bitterly about the situation the Hungarians closed the border to East Germans, who then began occupying the West German embassies in Budapest and Prague, which was on the way to Hungary, and refused to return to East Germany. That situation set of a chain of events that culminated in people taken to the streets of East Germany and demanding wir wollen raus (we want out). As more people escaped to the West the saying: der letzte macht das Licht aus (the last one turns the lights off) became quite a popular slogan, symbolizing the end of the socialist experiment. The poetic irony was that the demonstrations, demanding change, coincided with the 40-year celebrations of our beloved GDR, and then it all turned pear-shaped because people really weren't all that grateful for the last 40 years of Planwirtschaft. It must be said that apart from an initial violent reaction to demonstrations, the order to shoot was never given, probably because the Russians weren't going to lend their tanks again the way they had in 1953. The Chinese took a different approach in 1989, they knew it was all about consumption and only secondly about freedom, so they let the tanks roll and crushed the people and their dissent and then said: we're not going anywhere but we will let you make some money now. They recently commissioned a study of the views of young Chinese during the 20-year anniversary of Tian'anamen Square, and they found that most young Chinese were not aware of what happened 20 years ago. They also found that they were completely apolitical, materialistic and self-oriented. Pretty much diametrically opposed to the idea of communism. And if you do get a chance do ask a Chinese person what they think of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans and you will soon get an idea of just how brainwashed many of them are. I suppose it is a lot easier when there isn't a capitalist country with the same language next door and you control the media, even the Internet.

The East German government initially used water canons and riot police to disperse demonstrators, especially in Dresden where the situation turned violent for a brief period. One of the main reasons was that people wanted to get on the trains, which were going to transport people who had been occupying the West German embassies in Prague and Budapest to freedom in West Germany, because for some reason the East German government had agreed to allow those refugees to leave under the condition that they were being transported from Czechoslovakia and Hungary via East Germany. So people blocked the railroad tracks and were being forcibly removed, which caused a near riot, there were even cars burning in the streets of Dresden. My parents told me how they saw riot police march in, while plain-clothed Stasi officers picking people from the crowd and just proceeding to beat and kick the shit out of them. But to no avail, it only galvanized people even more and eventually they relented and let them march for freedom. But during the days following the first demonstrations we could see plenty of people with bandages around their heads, which I knew were from violent encounters with baton-wielding riot police. It was during those days that many, including my mom, realised that the East German government was indeed willing to injure people to protect its own interests. Our head teacher held an orientation meeting in school during one of those early days and told us how the demonstrator beat a dog to death. But she neglected to mention that the dog had been set on demonstrators and had probably bitten a couple of them before finding its own demise. But as more and more people dared to take to the streets, the crackdown of the demonstrators pretty much disappeared and thousands of people suddenly demanded regime change and more freedoms. Honecker, who was the leader of the SED, the state party, soon resigned and was replaced by Egon Krenz. And on the 9th of November 1989 one of the most symbolic feats of history was accomplished through a misunderstanding. Because people had now also started to escape to the West via Czechoslovakia, the East German government decided that it would be less complicated to simply allow refugees to exit through the border crossings between East and West Germany, and that was also to include private travel, but it would require a visa and the new regulations were to take effect on the 17th of November. Günter Schabowski, a spokesperson from the Politburo was then given a note to announce the developments at a press conference, but because he was given incomplete information he was under the impression that this was to take effect immediately. The ARD then ran with the story, and East Germans turned up in the thousands at different border crossings in Berlin, and because nobody wanted to give the order to shoot, the soldiers were quite simply overwhelmed by numbers and finally gave in, allowing people to exit with minimal formalities, although in some cases people's East German passports were voided, so that they could not return. West Germans then greeted the Ossis on the other side with champagne bottles and hugs and the rest is history. A number of pubs gave out free beer, strangers were hugging in the streets and West German began to climb the Wall and that very night the mayor of West Berlin decided to give every East German 100 Deutschmark Begr _ü_ ssungsgeld (welcome money), and once all the other border crossings were opened over the following days, East Germans who went over to West Germany all received 100 Deutschmark, because what were they going to do with hordes of East Germans who didn't have any money? I still remember watching the news on television and feeling the hairs stand up on my back, it was that incredible feeling of experiencing true change, being part of an epiphany of history. In fact the feeling was so profound that I still crave a repeat of that sensation, the longing for an experience that signifies true change, be that on a personal level or a global level. I experienced it on a personal level on several occasions and you will soon read about it in the is book but on a global lever I only ever felt close to that feeling of elevation and witnessing history in the making, when Obama became the first black president of the United States and I saw people celebrating and crying across the world. I had tears in my eyes again on that day, just like the day they tore down the Wall in Berlin. We had never seen traffic jams in East Germany, because there weren't that many cars in the GDR, but on that weekend even the Autobahn was clogged with Trabants, Ladas and Wartburgs, rushing to the borders with West Germany and West Berlin. The actual passage through the Wall was rather anticlimactic, we were shuffled through in modern Buses from West Germany and it all just occurred outside a window, as if seeing the past fade away through the plexiglass of change. Walking through the streets of West Berlin was like a visit to the promised land, especially since only a year ago I had looked over onto West Berlin from a high-rise building in East Germany and had seen all the shiny cars and a modern buildings, but had also known that there is no way of getting there. It was so close and yet so far away, like a world of wonders that was beyond my reach. But now I was standing here in the same place that had seemed like the forbidden land with a 100 Deutschmark in my hand. Phil Collins with Another Day in Paradise, was on the radio everywhere, and for the first time in my life I saw bums on the pavement, weird street artists, and beggars wanting your change. I felt like helping them, but then I thought: 'Hey I just got this I'm not going to give it to you now, why don't you get on a bus to East Germany, get a passport over there and then come back and they will give you 100 DM, plus you probably get a job in East Germany and subsidized housing and food, you wouldn't have to live in the streets anymore.' But I was too busy trying to find a stereo to tell the bum about my grand plan and besides East German socialism was soon a thing the past as well.

After that everything happened pretty fast and pretty soon the ones protesting the Socialist party, were replaced by those praising the Christian Democrat Party and reunification, which happened on the 3rd of October in 1990. Even before that we received the West German Mark at the incredible exchange rate of 2:1, although it probably should have been 50:1 and we could soon buy all the stuff they showed us on TV and for the first few weeks that was pretty amazing until we realized that the packaging was often better than the content. My Dad soon went over to Munich, got a job because luckily he had been a software engineer in East Germany and a couple years later we followed. I wasn't all that thrilled at the time because all my friends were in Dresden and I had to learn French and catch up on English and Maths. Also given that thousands of East Germans were coming over in search of work and the fact that the government had just increased taxes to pay for reconstruction of the East, I wasn't made to feel terribly welcome. In fact my bench had the following note scribbled on it one day: Honecker's biggest mistake was to open the Wall. Besides the fact that it wasn't Honecker who opened the wall but his successor Egon Krenz, it really pissed me off. They were treating me like a refugee, when I was German after all. But as opposed to a real refugee I was pretty indistinguishable apart from my thick Saxon accent, so I tried to lose that one pretty quickly and it was probably then that I started to develop my habit of changing accents, depending where I lived and who I talked to and I've become a bit of linguistic schizophrenic in the process. Of course there are always people who accept you before everyone else does and once they realize you're not as dumb as you sound, and admittedly that Saxon accent does sound a bit dumb (no offence to any Saxons), they begin to respect you eventually.

# Chapter 2

Going West

Now that I was 'out', I thought I really want see America, which probably had something to do with Karl May and Mark Twain. Granted they were fictional and quite fantastical stories about Cowboys, Indians and escaped slaves set in the 1800s, but somehow those nights spent below the covers with a torch, reading about the Wild West and adventures on the Mississippi had left an impression on me. Of course I didn't just want to go anywhere, I wanted to go to California, my parents even paid extra to send me there, because I really didn't fancy ending up in the Mid-West on a donkey farm with a bunch of hillbillies. Little did I know that I was going to live with a bunch of Hillbillies near San Francisco, their last name even meant Hillbilly, though I'm not going to mention it, they'd probably sue me. They were all nice to me to begin with, they even came to the airport with three Helium Balloons in their hand and like a silly fat kid at a country fair I had to walk through the airport with three floating blue balloons in my head, that read: Welcome to the USA.

They were a short, tubby bunch; your perfect American middleclass family, it seemed. They went to church on Sunday, had a designated fast-food day, watched the shopping channel three hours a day and hated MTV and Bill Clinton. But as it turned out they were not all that perfect. He had been a Hippy in the sixties, sporting a fuzzy long beard, as I gathered from the photos, and had probably done a load of drugs, too. This I assumed only because sometimes he seemed to still have flashbacks and I would talk to him and he would not respond. Then Jennifer, his wife, would stomp out of the kitchen and yell at him, "Hey Joe, he's talking to you," which would usually regain his attention after a couple of shouts or so. She kind of made a bit of a habit of screaming though, she always seemed to be upset about something, or maybe just trying not to let him drift off — I wasn't sure. He was certainly not a Hippy anymore, serving in Vietnam and losing his wife in a drunk-driving accident, in which a drunken priest had crashed into them, had made him a little paranoid. And who could blame him. He still liked religion though, oddly enough. But he now stacked guns in his bedroom just in case God wasn't looking out for him. "Those sons of bitches will know they got the wrong house when they come walking through that door," he would say. Just to preempt the Communists invading or the government fucking with his 2nd amendment right, he had bought some property in Southern Oregon, guarded by a bearded hermit, whom we paid a visit once. It was like a veritable Hillbilly theme park up there, we got to shoot shot-guns at water cans, rant about the government, go off-roading, clear brush and shoot down a couple of squirrels with a BB-gun -- alright the latter was my host-brother's idea of fun. He was a rebellious, skater-dude with an attitude, who liked listening to Bad Relgion and destroy things.

My host-dad had met his wife during a self-help group for drunk-driving victims and one of their kids was a real straight Hick, probably his favorite son, while the other was the aforementioned, pot-smoking, skater-boy. They didn't know he smoked pot until he got caught, which was when I was there, so logically it had to have been me who got him started, although ironically it was actually the other way around. I got caught myself one day and was asked to go to a drug rehab programme, called "New Connections," where I met lots of other pot smokers and small-time dealers, who gave me their pager numbers. My local coordinator also arranged for me to join a group of Christians, who made a habit of ripping up the Yellow Pages on stage, because this supposedly proved the power of faith or something along those line. Because who needs the Yellow Pages when you can just call God, right? But they also had pizza nights and lots of cute girls, though if you asked one of them out on date they'd blackmail you with conversion to the Chrisitan Faith. I though about it, but they weren't that cute and how far are you going to get with a Christian goody-girl? Plus being a foreigner always increases interest and populatrity, plus for some reason those Americans all thought I look like Tom Cruise, who was still popular at that time. I always thought he was a twit but girls seemed to like him so I usually kept my opinions about that Scientology freak to myself. But since I was essentially a shy guy with limited English skill, my confidence wasn't as high as it should have been, so that my romantic endeavours were mostly kept in check by a resurgance of my insecurities. But I began to assimilate the way people spoke and acted around me, in order to fit in and sort of lost myself in the process. Add copious amounts of marijuana to the mix and you end up with right twerp. I started hanging out with potsmoking losers, the rebels and and skaters and even kids much younger than myself, on account of my host brother. I also sneaked out of the house on a regular basis, because I found it hard to deal with my host family's rather stringent rules. It was almost like they were treating me like a child so I started acting like one again, it was quite embaressing really. Unfortunately I was caught once after a rather noisy entrance, because I had walked into the birdcage, which upset the little bugger terribly. The bird got really noisy and started fluttering about in there. Who would have thought that a bird in a cage would be much of a guard? My host dad emerged with his gun drawn and when I rather hastily explained that it was his exchange student, he just turned on the light, looked at me with great disappointment and said:

"I might as well still shoot ya."

I don't know if the disappointment was due to the fact that he didn't get to shoot someone or because of my behaviour, but as you can imagine our relationship sort of went downhill after the birdcage incident and I soon changed family. I always wondered why it had gone so wrong, when we had gotten along so well at first and I did like them in their own way, even if they were Fox News Republicans. Years later I realised that the problems had sort of started when I was not allowed to visit a girl, I had had a crush on, because she lived in a dodgy neighbourhood. Yeah love destroys all, doesn't it?

So I started smoking way too much pot instead, and began talking like a Californian dope fiend, in order to fit in with the gang. I became a properly Californicated in the process and started acting like an idiot. But hey we live and learn, don't we?

When I came back to Germany I started rebuilding the world from within because I had seriously lost touch with myself, although I had never really relized that there was a self until I had lost it. I suppose as a result I began to want to believe in something more than what I could see around me. But there was an inherent sense of loss and angst inside, that of not knowing who I was or what I was meant to do here; a feeling that there was something wrong with the world, like a splinter in my mind. Being a proper teeenage I screamed out whatever was on my mind to Nirvana, Green Day and Bad Religion in nightclubs while seriously intoxicated: 'An oriented public whose magnetic forces pull away from the potential of the individual. Against the grain, I remain against the grain.' It was there in the dark and dingy clubs of Munich that I had my first experiences of trance, a total surrender to sound and movement, a total melting into feeling, rather than thinking. But whenever I awoke the next day with a hangover, the world was just as grey as before and occassionally spilling my insides didn't really reveal any great insights either. I soon found a girlfriend as a sort of prop to occupy my time but not my spirit.

I was still fascinated with America, read and watched American news, witnessed how it went crazy over OJ, with all its absurdity, sham interest and mock meaning. I knew that it was only entertainment, 'Superficial urgency and poster-board mentality, I felt that we all practiced a Bad Religion, worshipping the Gods of entertainment with our daily prayer of please entertain me, I'm so stupid, I'm so hollow, please tell me who to follow. I once saw a priest on TV who said: 'The problem with people who do not believe in God is not that they believe in nothing, but that they believe in anything; celebrities, football, money, drugs, whatever.' Of course the problem with the Christians is that they see the devil everywhere but that's another story. I had chosen drugs, books and TV as my distractions and thus spent a considerable amount of time reading, getting stoned and watching MTV.

Nirvana was at the height of its popularity at the time and probably symbolised Generation X better than any other band. A frustrated, anxious man looking for the end of all sorrow, and when he did not find it in drugs, music, stardom or money he just went 'Oh well Nevermind' and blew his head off. Well, I doubt he made it to Nirvana in the afterlife, but a certain part of Generation X began asking Y, because they figured that there must be more to life than being frustrated and endlessly consuming in order to distract themselves from their misery. Some even found some answers, eventually, like Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers who wondered: H _ow long, how long will I slide, separate my sides,_ and decided he's got to take it to the other side, and maybe they ought to be called Generation Zen, which sort of follows on nicely to Generation Y. But that song wasn't out yet and he was still a smack-head and I just wanted to go to the other side of the Atlantic again because I was still suffering from Californication. I went back a year later, for summer holidays. Jerry Garcias of the Grateful Dead had just died. Not sure if he was gratefully dead, but San Francisco was full of hippies; and it felt a bit like time-warp back into the sixties. Gayly costumed hippies were skipping about Height and Ashbury as if it were 1969, blowing smoke rings, bubbles and probably each other. So I joined into the general merriness of things, and tuned in and dropped out, because I didn't just wanna watch from the sidelines or take photos of all the hippies dropping acid, dancing around all weird and colorful. I didn't want to be just a tourist, I wanted to be a traveller and partake in the whole spychedelic parade, in order to know what it was like back in the heady days of love and peace. The first time I took LSD, during the general festivities following the funeral, whereby Jerry was buried with a generous amount of drugs and associated paraphernelia, all sacrificed by his devout followers, I thought I had left Plato's cave and finally realised that I had been looking at the shadows of reality all this time. I most certainly felt that I was now blinded by the light outside the cave because I was at the time floating on a very lovely melody and had lost all reasoning, which was a good thing because it would have been hard to reason with anyone around me. The second time I realised that we all believe whatever we want to believe and that nothing is really real, because they were all solemn and somber around me, to commemorate their spiritual father's passing, while I just didn't comprehend why Jerry was the new Jesus. I had the distinct notion that we all create a story in our heads and then live out that drama as the lead character. 'He doesn't get it,' one of the hippy girls said to her buddy as tried to explain why Jerry was such a prophet. And she was right of course, I didn't get it at all. Even though I really like Ben and Jerry's Ice cream and even the Gratefully Dead music when I was really really high, Jerry didn't seem like a saintly figure to me. For starters he was a drug addict and secondly he died at the age of 53. I kind of like to get a bit older than that and if anything he'd crucified himself. As I pondered my newfound realisation that we just make up reality as we go along, I realised that what they called love and peace was nothing more than self-indulgance and naivity. Sure I'd rather ride on a Harley with a spliff in my mouth than beat up long-haired hippies with a baseball bat and I'd always side with the hippies if it comes down to it, but Love and Peace was like the polar opposite of conservatism and imperialism and thus no more than a reaction, and as such just another form of conformity and an external determination, rather than true introspection and freedom. Of course for some this may have been a stepping stone to just that kind of introspection and they say that most of America's innovation, such silicon valley is based on the psychedelic culture of the sixties, but I could also see how people with long hair and flabby cloths, getting stoned and speaking like drooling trolls, could be seen as a threat to the very foundation of society by the rest of the country. And even though I think that America has been a polarised country from the start, the political polarisation that took place in the sixties is still evident to this day: liberal vs. conservatives, gay vs. straight, religion vs. individual rights, guns vs. regulations and a tight social net vs. small government. Someone recently had the audacity to hope that the time might be right to overcome that division within American society, but unfortunately it may turn out that America will never quite overcome the split between the Puritans and the Golddiggers and always remain the Divided States of America unless some homeless Santa from Afghanistan brings 'em all together again for a couple of months or so, for all the wrong reasons.

I sat on the Bay Area Rapid Train on my way home and felt like I understood how every person was living a life of their own making, based on their beliefs and experiences, looking at the world through the goggles of personal perception. And because we live in a dynamic universe that responds to our thoughts and expectations, we actually have the power to create our own reality, but we don't know we do, and mostly we just unconsciously accept our beliefs and preconceived notions, and see the results, which confirm those beliefs, as the impermeable nature of the world around us. As I got deeper into this idea I started to get really hot and nervous because it would mean that we create whatever reality we believe in, so that we could make ourselves sick or healthy, become wise or deranged, start war or find peace. In fact all of society is based on beliefs. And if our beliefs become reality, then what exactly is sanity? I guess it is whatever the majority of people around us think is true and real — once it was ferries, spirits, vampires and witches -- and these days it is the stock-market, unemployment figures, terrorism, shopping and entertainment or in the case of hippies, ingesting copious amounts of drugs and finding Jerry Garcias sitting on a cloud and telling us that everything is gonna be alright, when clearly it wasn't, well not for him anyways.

Once I returned home I turned on the TV and watched a bunch of talk shows to distract myself, but I became even more scared. I saw it for what it really was: a hauntingly, creepy freak show. I began switching the channels and just found more absurdity and madness, more weirdos and creeps, frustrated, angry, anxious, attention-sucking, mental torture, twisting my brain with the most bizarre type of entertainment, voyeurism a la control, mental masturbation, and retinal stimulation with waves that really fried my brain. It was terror-vision pure, and I felt like my head was inside the box, being brainwashed into obedient idiocy, keeping me plugged into the system, making sure I would continue feeding myself the same moronic stimulants until the day I die. I had to produce and consume for the economy, whatever the price, chocolate bars, ice-cream, gym equipment, pimple cream, empowerment books, exercise videos, flame-grilled burgers, delicious..., creamy..., sexy..., friendly... it was impertinent. If I were to stop believing, the Gods would stop delivering — comfort, pleasure, wealth, science and advancement would cease and our world would crumble to the ground, society would wither away and we would live like savages again, at the mercy of nature. I suddenly saw how humanity had become an utterly delusional bunch, indulging and entertaining itself with its own mental derangements, or perhaps it had always been that way? Oh God, am I living in a madhouse? It really freaked me out and I began thinking maybe I am the freak; because I remembered that usually all this had seemed rather normal. Maybe I had gone insane, because I was now thinking they were and I had been on acid for 13 hours now. I went down a very dangerous road in my stimulated mind and I can only thank Disney, and chance, for the fact that Alice was wandering through Wonderland on Fox that night. Somehow I very much related to this cartoon character, more than any other living creature at the time, and I followed her all the way down the rabbit hole.

I can't say I liked LSD, sure it made me understand philosophy for the first time, not just as an intellectual concept but as a real and practical way of viewing the world, but I also realised that those chemicals might stimulate the mind out of its normal state of stability, or slumber or whichever way you want to look at it, but it didn't provide any answers. It didn't resolve anything. It was rather nihilistic, which is why Nietzsche and Schopenhauer would have loved LSD. I think I really did feel like everything we perceive was just a filtered reality, a translation of endless stimuli, based on our preconceived notions and beliefs. Of course it had to be that way, because it was hard to function otherwise, since it would have been way too overwhelming and every thought and decision would have had endless meanings and repercussions. I had read in _Girl interrupted_ that this is exactly what insanity feels like. In fact I met a real life example of how that might pan out in Jose Chepito Areas, the former Bongo player for Santana, who he had been declared legally insane by the State of California. He was legal because he was of no harm to anyone, he was just not all that with it anymore and had someone accompanying him just to keep him connected to reality all the time. He also had frequent anxiety attacks, particularly when talking about the fact that California had taken control of his millions. I could sympathise with him, I mean who liked having their money taken away, especially when it's a couple of millions, but then again he had the maturity of a 14 -year old boy on drugs and nobody would entrust a teenage drug fiend with a couple of million bucks. He wasn't with Santana anymore because Carlos had gotten fed up with his antics, and apparently Jose really didn't like the old wind-chime salesman either. Jose now played for the Steve Miller Band, who were all nuts anyways, so he fit right in. They still played some amazing tunes though and I had the joy of listening to them at a local concert one night. I met Jose for the first time in his house, a pretty modest house in a quiet neighborhood, which apparently he had been asked to move out of because his son had discovered a passion of kleptomania and small-time burglary. This in itself would have been fine, because quite a few Californians consider robbery a worthwhile enterprise, but Jose's son lacked the aspirations and motivations of the big-time crooks and decided to rob houses in the immediate vicinity. I suppose it makes sense, you don't need a car and you could just carry the stuff home, but sooner or later someone is going to observe you carrying the neighbors' television into your house. At first people had been understanding and just asked for the stuff back but he just couldn't kick the habit, so eventually they called the cops during one of his nightly overtures. He faced a few years in jail and Jose asked me to come to his trial. His "assistant" was stoned off his face and wasn't much help in explaining what was going on during the trial, so I was in charge of translating the proceedings into Mexican-American. He even asked me to come up to the stand with him, but I was too shy and scared to get up in front of all these people and translate for him, plus I thought it'd be absurd to use a German to explain the legal proceedings to a Mexican. His son received three years on probation and Jose was asked to move out of the neighborhood. Luckily the government was willing to give him the money to buy a decent house in Hollywood, in fact he was in the process of moving out when I first met him. His friends were helping him move but the disloyal twerps brought only half of his stuff to the removal truck, the rest went into their own cars.

He was a short, hyperactive Mexican with lots of hair and a hippy-girl on his couch. He introduced himself and suggested that if I wanted I could sleep with the hippy girl, but I shouldn't go down on her because her pussy smelled like dead dog. Once he found out that I am German he was really keen on showing me his photo album and all the women he'd slept with in Germany. The photo album was not exactly what I expected -- sure there was a photo of each of the girls and underneath he had meticulously recorded the date and location when it was taken – but photos showed only one part of the woman and that was her genitals. It sort of got a bit boring after a couple of pages, because clearly I was not as much of a vagina connoisseur as he was, they all looked pretty much the same to me. But he got really excited about it all and was very enthusiastic about showing me his personal collection of video tapes, but by that time I had seen enough of the vagina photographs and thankfully declined to see the beaver picture. But he insisted and was about to open a bottle of wine, when I really couldn't take the hairy humping on the giant TV-screen anymore and told him that I had to leave.

"Well next time, gringo. Hey you should come to my goodbye party, man. You would enjoy it. And I give you a signed poster too."

"Yeah that sounds good. Count me in," I said. But then his friend pulled me off to one side and explained about the nature of his parties.

"You might be up for this shit but just wanted let you know, you're gonna drop some acid, lose your cloths and start fucking with a bunch of dudes and Hippy girls. Think you can handle it, Hans?"

I think given the Acid casualty I had before me and the hippy girl on his couch it was probably wise to stay away, it's bad enough to trip with a bunch of crazies or to rub skin with a group of aging Hippies, but the combination of the two might prove too much for me. I might never get it up again.

I started to hang out with gang members too, because my friend's sister hated her dad, who was a racist, Mormon sheriff, so she only dated blacks and Mexicans. They sold coke and robbed liquor stores and even bubble gum vans, anything they could get their hands on basically. The cops showed up at the house one day to arrest one of these guys, and even though he was really high and wanted to pop these corrupt cops, he calmed down eventually and they arrested him, which was rather embarrassing for the Dad. But that was exactly what the daughter had in mind, because he'd slept around with every woman in his Mormon church, didn't support his family and drove a convertible Corvette, while the mom did overtime as a nurse to support four kids. It was that way that I got to know Jose Chepito Areas, because the sister was dating Jose's klepto son. She had really good taste in men that woman, every guys was basically revenge for the shortcomings of her dad. The dad was also a diving instructor and I was lucky enough to learn how to dive that way. All in all I enjoyed my time in California but I also saw it more clearly and it sort of lost its shine. I realized that everyone in California is into something and not just half-heartedly but properly. They didn't just smoke pot, they built bongs in their spare time, read magazines and sampled buds 24/7. They didn't just believe in Jesus they lived for Jesus and if they had not owned cars and homes with jobs to got to, they would have been living in the street with signs like: _The rapture is upon us. Repent now._ There was no middle ground, it was like: either you're with us or you're against us. They were all really intense and some partially insane. It might be because they live on a fold and the state could drop into the ocean at any time, and it really did feel the edge of the world and all of Western civilization.

# Chapter 3

Catching the Travel Bug

Once I got back to Germany I actually started taking some interest in philosophy much to the surprise of my teacher, who thought I had become very mature over the summer. Little did he know that I had spent the summer in La La Land, dropping acid and dancing around half-naked, alongside smelly hippies with hairy armpits and glow-in-the-dark hash pipes.

My favorite philosopher was Aristotle, who has been accused of starting the rational age in Europe, but also gave us a formula to deal with every situation in life: his Nicomachian ethics — the philosophy of balance. In a nutshell it means finding the middle way. Of course, I had to study for school, but I also had to take some time off. I would have to think about the future, but I shouldn't worry about it incessantly. I have to eat, but I shouldn't stuff my face until I'm about to burst. It applies to anything really. Take relationships for example: Your partner is really going to like it if you show that you care, but if you start calling 15 times a day, they are going to get fed up pretty quickly. It's also good to go to the gym but you shouldn't obsess about it and become a gym addict. Or take philosophy itself: it's good to ponder some of those questions of where you come from and where you're going and the general state of the universe, but if you keep going on about it you'll lose your friends and your mind very rapidly. Even balance should be done in balance, I mean, you can't always try to find the balance between everything and do everything in moderation, sometimes you just have to let it all out and get on the piss till the early hours of the morning. I'm of the opinion that the immune system requires a bit of a shock once in a while, so it doesn't get too lazy. So I began to view the world with the measuring stick of balance, and everything became quite simple, either balanced or out of balance. The question is of course: where are the extremes and thus the middle? I suppose you kind of have to feel your way around it, but at least it's a formula that's always going to work, except maybe when it comes to heroin or murder or something stupid like that, because that sort of thing can never really be done in moderation since it's pretty extreme in itself. Though I do have to say that former drug addicts write some great autobiographies, Russel Brand and Anthony Kiedis' books are two of my favorite books, for example. I reckon there is something to be said about being an addict and having to go to rehab, which really forces you to look at yourself very honestly and self-analyze why you're an addict and why are the way you are. So I've tried to adopt that self-critical and self-analytical stance a bit in this book. Not sure I succeeded, but hey I'm not going to stick a needle in my arm so I can go to a rehab center. Also murderers and assassins make for good subjects of books, but again not really into that kind of thing, I'm just going to stick to chasing happiness.

Another inspirational philosopher was Epicure, who is probably the most misinterpreted philosopher to this day. Whenever someone thinks of Hedonism they will probably think of a bunch of fornicating Romans, drinking and having a grand old time, when Epicure was saying just the opposite. He explained that there are only two sensations for man — one is pleasure and the other is pain and all of life is about avoiding pain and finding pleasure. Naturally if you maximise one, you inevitably minimise the other. Thus if you maximise pleasure you automatically minimise pain and that is what we do in modern-day society, in fact that is what our economy is based on.

On second thoughts this is what humans have done for a very long time, eat, drink, fornicate, be entertained, laugh and talk and thus forget our worries and pains. And the next day we either go on with our lives or just continue pleasuring ourselves. But there is also another way: if you minimise pain you can automatically increase pleasure; and this was the Epicurian way. If you are happy with water and bread you won't feel pain in times of scarcity, plus you will enjoy a copious meal even more so, because you are not used to the pleasure. If nothing perturbs you, you may never feel pain and thus walk the earth in pleasure, no matter what happens in your life. The philosopher who took this to the extreme was Diogenes, who lived in a barrel, but was greatly admired by Alexander the Great, who visited him and offered to fulfill him any wish he desired, to which Diogenes responded: 'Can you just move out of the sun.'

Since I had swallowed LSD I started taking all of this philosophical talk rather seriously, because I figured that I really had the power to create my own reality, if only I used the right approach. So it became my wish to enjoy the sun and have no great aspirations or material wishes of any kind. I took life as it came, because it was beautiful. Especially after I had finished school and felt a real sense of freedom. Suddenly I was the master of my day, I could decide what to do with my life and I didn't have to spend days locked up in a classroom anymore. To illustrate the point our class actually built a wall across the main entrance of our school the day before graduating, spray-painted it, played Pink Floyd with big loud speakers on the terrace of the school building and smoked carrot-sized spliffs, while teachers and the rest of the pupils looked on. We then proceeded to smash down that wall. It was the second wall I had witnessed being demolished in my life and the feeling of freedom gained from the act was just as profound as the first time. I was finally free to live my dreams. To celebrate my newfound freedom I travelled to Venezuela with a couple of my friends, Stefan and my lady friend Silja. We literally spun a globe and picked the country our finger came to rest on. And we did like the sound of Venezuela, it sounds pretty and exotic, doesn't it? It was one of the best trips of my life to this day, but it's always like that when you do something for the first time, isn't it? Even now whenever I hear Bob Marley I can see myself driving around the Venezuelan Caribbean in a convertible jeep. I love Venezuela and the people are extremely welcoming, although it can happened that they become a bit too friendly and you end up paying the bill for the entire restaurant. Well, we were naïve gringos at the time. The only problems we ever had there were with the military and law-enforcement. On two different occasions we got into trouble with those guys. The first was when we entered a National Park with our rented jeep and my friend, who didn't speak any Spanish, neglected to respect the _Pare_ sign, although he really should have guessed the meaning given that there were speed bumps in front of it and the sign had the characteristic red on white writing. In my friend's defense there was nobody at the control post. The soldier and his machine gun didn't take too lightly to our attempt of simply cruising through the control and came running after us, waving his assault weapon to underscore the urgency, though thankfully he didn't start shooting. We thought it'd be wise to stop at that point. The soldier was clearly pissed off and made a point of searching all, and I mean _all_ of our luggage. When he found my friend's rolling papers he cheered up a little, in fact he thought he'd struck gold, because clearly anyone with rolling papers also possesses drugs. Unfortunately for us my friend's rolling tobacco had long since been used up, so I understand that he was a little skeptical about our explanation, particularly since they don't sell rolling tobacco in Venezuela. He continued his search with increased vigor and went so far as opening our sachets of diarrhea powder and even having a little sniff of it. Trouble was, when he pushed the sachet open to stick his big nose in there he blew it in his face, so that his brown, pissed-off face had now turned a whiter shade of pale. He looked like an actor in a political stage play, with his uniform, assault weapon and white make-up – one that possibly went by the title of 'Drug Lust' where Sergeant Pepe stood for the oppression of poor peasants, growing coca leaves, on behalf of the white elite in the first world, a habit perpetuated by politicians in Washington, who were receiving generous kick-backs from drug cartels to keep the war on drugs alive because everyone knows that the price of drugs goes up when they are short in supply and difficult to obtain. I also heard recently that the concentration of traces of cocaine on dollar bills is the highest in Washington DC, of all the cities in the entire United States. Except of course we weren't peasant and given Pepe's rather aggressive demeanor we thought it wise not to laugh at him either, at least not on the outside. Since Pepe couldn't find any drugs he thought he'd get his kicks some other way, and took my female friend inside his barrack, made her strip and felt her up a little. Now you could say he was just doing his job properly but based on the fact that he, thankfully, didn't give us a rectal exam or a even a good feel, his motivation were most definitely more of a personal nature and my friend was not impressed. The irony of the whole affair was that once in the park we were offered marijuana on quite a regular basis. Perhaps they were just protecting their territory.

The second occasion was on our way to the airport when I tried to make an illegal U-turn. A policeman spotted us and waved at us to exit the traffic. I had not intention of doing so, there were two lanes of traffic to the right of me, but he drew his gun and I didn't want to get shot at on our last day in Venezuela. Perhaps you are beginning to understand why Chavez is spending a considerable amount of oil revenue on weapons, it's the law of the gun in those quarters. Once I had pulled over they asked for my identification and I naturally obliged. The oaf-faced cretin of a police-man didn't say anything but simply walked off with my papers. His entire body language seemed to say: 'I've got you by the cojones now, gringo.' We sat there like idiots on holiday on traffic island for the next 15 minutes, and since we had a plane to catch and a car to drop off, I decided to walk over to where the man with my passport was leisurely chatting away to some locals. I asked him what the deal was. The oaf then explained that I had made a very serious traffic violation and an attempt to escape and that I would go to jail. He mimed handcuffs to underscore the point and then gave me a satisfied smile. I thought I knew where this was going and pulled out a couple of notes to pay the fine for my traffic violation. He then feigned outrage at my disrespect for Venezuelan law-enforcement and explained that in Venezuela policeman do not take bribes. He wasn't a very good actor though and I smiled patiently and added a couple more notes. But the oaf was clearly enjoying this little display, perhaps he was an aspiring actor, or the show was for the locals surrounding us, but he now became very enraged at my continued disregard for Venezuelan law and told me to sit in the car. At this point I was a little confused, was he really serious or did I just not offer enough money? Perhaps all the people around us were the problem? I went back to the car and told my friends about our situation, once they heard the news they became visibly distressed and so we sat there for another 20 minutes fretting about different scenarios that might unfold. All became clear when a tow-away truck appeared, and the policeman explained that we would now be towed to the nearest police station. The truck driver then hooked a crane to the front of our care began to jack up our convertible jeep. We thought this was a joke and actually laughed, because it seemed a better option than shitting ourselves but also because it was all very surreal. We were subsequently pulled out into traffic and up the hill towards the shantytowns of Caracas. At this point I remembered that I had read in my Lonely Planet about fake policeman that tow tourists into the slums and then rob them of everything. My friend on the other hand remembered that he still had some dope from the National Park on him. He began frantically searching his backpack and I decided to keep my mouth shut about the Lonely Planet stories, my friends were stressed out enough as it was. It really would have been comical, sitting in our jeep, being towed through Caracas, while my friend was frantically trying to find his dope and the other was shouting at him to hurry up and find it. Nerves were at a breaking point when we pulled over, or rather were towed over, at a quiet spot beside the road. The truck driver, not the policeman, now walked up to my window and explained that if we paid him the equivalent of $150 we could go. At this point I was so relieved that they didn't plan on robbing us and at the same time so angry at this fucking charade to con us, and this smug little shit of a policeman with his whole theatre of mock outrage, I just said 'No, I'm not paying' -- much to the surprise of my friends and the truck driver. I told him that I wanted to see the _comandante_ , and if he could please get a move on and tow us to the police station. He went back to his truck had a chat with the oaf and returned, offering $100 for our release. I thankfully declined and he offered $50. I kept on insisting that he should drive us to the police station and I believe he understood that I was serious. So they convened once more and then proceeded to tow us up the hill. My friends thought I had lost it and wanted to know if I was insane. I said that I can't abide by this shit and that if I had to I would sit in a jail cell for a day or two. They just shook their heads and wondered if I had been exposed to too much sun. Once we arrived I hastened to find the c _omandante_ and quickly explained our situation; that I had merely tried to make a U-turn. He smiled at me benevolently and scolded his subordinate who was very unhappy that I had found the _comandante_ before he had done. I was free to go.

The trouble was that our jeep was still attached to the tow-away truck and the driver now gave us this whole spiel about how he has to feed his family and how much gasoline and time he'd spent. We finally gave him $15 and drove off. It was this little affair that taught me a valuable lesson about South America. Being white means two things: you're a walking dollar sign and a possible liability, because as long as you don't do anything seriously illegal; fucking with you also means fucking with a major source of income for the country, so the higher up authorities don't like it. Although they still harbour resentment, which is why you better have a lot of money if you screw up big time. Of course I understand the motivation; those guys probably make in a year what I would earn in a month and as poor as we might be, if we can afford a plane ride from Europe we can afford more than they ever will in their entire lives.

"You're really lucky they didn't send you to jail," my friend Silja said to me, "you wouldn't have lasted an hour in there." Of course she was right but at the time I really wasn't thinking about sharing a jail cell with sex-starved brutes, that's just negative thinking and we all we create our own reality.

Minor run-ins with the law aside I loved Venezuela and I thought then, that I wanted to live in the third world, own a small hotel and get high in the sun. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I decided to study Hospitality Management, because quite frankly I didn't know what else to do. I was accepted to six different Universities in the UK and was on the waiting list in Germany. I chose the University of Plymouth, mainly because they've got white houses and palm trees in that area of Britain, plus they call it the English Riviera. I was a bit flabbergasted to find that my campus was in a small agricultural town, named Newton Abbot. See, they are pretty clever with their marketing because I thought I was going to study in Plymouth, but really I ended up on top of a hill next to a large piggy farm. Now I like bacon, especially when it's crispy, and pork chops taste good, but Samuel L. Jackson is right, pigs are filthy animals and they eat and root in shit. So when you're pouring over your essay and you've got that the constant smell of pigs, rooting in their own feces you wonder if you've made the right decision. But to tell you the truth, life has a funny way of showing you the way because I had one of the best years in my life. Seale Hayne Campus was an isolated and small place, which used to just be an agricultural university, but now also gave courses in Tourism and Hospitality, so it had a really tight-nit community of students and one could get pissed in the bar and just about fall over and be in bed, which did occur on several occasions. So when I was also accepted by a University in Munich I thankfully declined. And once I saw Plymouth, I was grateful I didn't end up there either, it's a very dull and ugly industrial town, for which we Germans are partly to blame because we bombed the shit out of it during World War II. I say we, because I was frequently accused of having dropped the bombs myself. If you are German and ever decide to work behind a bar in Britain, try to take the day off on Remberance Day, because that's when they remember all the atrocities you've committed and the mates you've killed and after a few pints that can become a little tedious. But hey I try not to take it personally and quite frankly I was never particularly proud of being German, because first of all I was East German and secondly I never understood how I could be proud of something I didn't do, especially because it would also mean I would have to accept responsibility for the evil shit I didn't do either. It's precisely the same reason I can't get excited about a football team. Whenever I saw these gloating football fans celebrating because they won, I just had to wonder what did you do exactly, apart from shout and drink loads of beer? But grumpy old men and football hooligans aside I did enjoy England, although I have to say that the peasants who studied agriculture were a weird group of lads. They operated something called Fresher's Bunnies, where the rugby team gets together to initiate the Freshmen by publically humiliating them. They do this by sitting in a merry ol' circle with a tarp in the middle; the tarp is there to make cleaning up a bit easier. I won't go into detail but suffice it to say that they got pissed and played drinking games, and whoever lost had to fulfill a task, which consisted of the following: mutual masturbation, drinking vomit out of a glass, sticking carrots up each others arse, singing to the queen and pissing in someone's mouth. I kid you not, and there was usually a considerable crowd to watch the entire weird spectacle, so I'm not making this up, I've got witnesses who would be willing to testify. In fact during student union election there was a photo plastered all over the walls, depicting a man orally receiving a stream of steaming urine, accompanied by the following line: _Vote Alex for Student Union President. He is willing to do anything to make Seale Hayne a better campus._ Now, while I appreciate the effort of taking a golden shower up the throat, I'm not sure it's a good qualification for student union president. I don't know if he authorized the pictures, or whether it was a cunning political ploy by his opponents, but the pictures were there for a number of days, so nobody seemed too bothered about taking them down, which sort of tells you about the staff there too, who had just come to accept that they were surrounded by simple-minded oafs. Did that mean Alex considered receiving golden showers publicly evidence for his extraordinary willingness to go beyond what's required? I don't know, but given the evidence he must have, the other guy probably just wanted to urinate on him, and he went: no let's do this right, give it to me into the mouth. He's probably going to put it on his resume under outstanding academic achievements: had someone urinate in my mouth and became Student President as a result. But the British love these outrageous public rituals. Guy Fawkes day is another good example. Also known as bonfire night, it's a day dedicated to catching a terrorist, who had been sent by the Catholics in the 1600s, with the task of blowing up the parliament in London. He got caught and was subsequently quartered, hung and drawn, though not necessarily in that order. So every 5th of November the British celebrate having spoilt the Catholic plot, and they do this by walking through the street with burning crosses and blowing up effigies of politicians and even the pope. Now, I don't know about you, but seeing people walk around with burning crosses reminds me a bit too much of the movie _Mississippi Burning_ and seeing the heads of politicians and the pope blown off, reminds me of imagery from the Middle East, but it's all in good nature and a merry ol' tradition, I'm being told. There is a even a little town in Devon where they run around with burning barrels on their backs and apparently the team that gets the farthest with the tarred, flaming barrel on their backs win a price. Which is all good and well, but the trouble is that the event is attended by thousands of people and the path of the madman with the barrel is not cordoned off, instead the burning barrel man is preceded by two blokes, who push and even punch people if they don't get out of the way fast enough. It's like the British version of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. But that's the surprising thing about Britain, they appear all uptight and reserved, but actually quite nuts. Take the story of the church of England for example. Henry VIII wanted an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so he could marry his mistress of many years, Ann Boleyn, supposedly in the hope of giving birth to a son who could be the heir of his thrown, but presumably also because she was much younger and prettier than Catherine. Because the Catholic Church wouldn't allow that kind of thing Henry decided to become a Protestant and assumed the position of supreme Head of the Church of England, which is why the Catholics later sent Fawkes to blow up the Parliament. Henry married Ann, but the irony is that he later cheated on her as well and with her sister Mary, of all people. Ann had a daughter but couldn't bear him a son either, and there is some evidence to suggests that when Ann had a miscarriage she asked her brother to help her conceive, so she wouldn't be admonished by Henry VIII, just like the other woman before her who had failed to deliver him a son. But either Henry had already been planning her downfall or they did get caught, because both Ann and her brother George and were convicted of incest and beheaded. However the daughter of Ann Boleyn later became Queen Elizabeth, so unbeknownst to Henry VIII, he did manage to give birth to a future head of state, just not a male one. So there you have it, England is really nutty place and I had a merry ol' time there, even though I had never really had any intention of living in Britain, because the English lessons we received in East Germany really didn't make England sound or look very appealing.

So I partied a lot and continued to follow my hobby of creating videos, only this time for a student band, it was like my musical instrument because I was most definitely musically challenged, reading notes is still a mystic art to me and singing, although thoroughly enjoyed in loud clubs or alone in the car, is definitely not a pleasure to be enjoyed by the unsuspecting ear. Singing socialist hymns in school was most certainly not a good foundation for my singing skills. But because grades did not actually count towards my final degree, and because I realized that managing a hotel involved a lot of tedious work, I wasn't all that interested in most subjects. I sort of lost my enthusiasm in the entire mad-cap scheme of running a hotel in Venezuela and eventually switched to Tourism Management, which was much more up my alley because it was a bit more philosophical in nature than counting inventory and managing employees. Naturally talking about travel sort of wet my appetite for some more moving about the planet, so I participated in a student exchange with Australia and did my second year at RMIT in Melbourne. I initially lived on Lygon Street, an up-market area with lots of Italian restaurants and outdoor seating. I took up a meager but expensive lodging right above a Greek restaurant, owned by a bald elephant of a man, who had won the 1953 heavyweight lifting gold medal, and now mainly occupied himself with drinking Ouzo and eating unbelievable amounts of food. Rumours had it that his direct competitor from across the street had been found shot in the head one day, but they originated from Americans and we all know that they have a knack for inventing or at least embellishing stories. Did you know that lying is protected by the 1st amendment as the constitutional right to freedom of speech in the US? Which wouldn't be so bad, except it was Fox News that won the right to lie. And if you don't believe me just Google: _Fox New the right to lie._ Go on do it right now, it's really quite unbelievable. But as Marshall McLuhan had once pointed out in the 60s: _'Both the Americans and the Soviets are slaves to their political systems, the only difference is that the Soviets know it.'_

The rent included food in the restaurant, three times a day, and although I did eat some amazing lamb souvlakis there, Greek food gets a bit tiring after about a week, plus I really needed to find a cheaper apartment. I found one in Brunswick, a busy immigrant area in the north of Melbourne. Sarah, the red-haired tenant, who held the lease, decided she'd let me stay because we had both been reading the same book, Alex Garland's _The Beach_. And I had already visited her favourite night club, _The Island_ , a couple of days ago. Plus her boyfriend, Dylan, who never liked people the first time he met them, had immediately passed me his smoky bong, which was obviously a sign of friendship. Without knowing synchronicity wanted me to live there. Though I should have smelled the roses, or rather the buds, right there and then, because the house was a lunatic asylum, they smoked incredible amounts of weed during the week and dropped acid on the weekend, which meant that weekends became very lively events, including lots of dancing around, tripping out, shouting and the occasional crying. I'm not sure if they managed to resolve any parental issues but they did come up quite frequently and it made me feel real normal by comparison and I most definitely did not drop acid with those lunatics. The bathroom featured various species of fungi and generally the whole house seemed like it was modeled on the book _He died with a Falafel in his hand_ , which is a hilarious collection of shared house stories. The rest of the household included an ex-con from Queensland, who was a fan of Chopper, a criminal from Brunswick. There was also a closeted homosexual, who overcompensated by being almost militarily patriotic, and a nutcase of a girl, who had some father issues and screamed at her boyfriend a lot. Plus an array of acid casualties who visited on a regular basis and went about the house on bycles and helmets on their heads, crashing into walls and talking to imaginary friends. But I got the room for the amazing amount of $40 a week, and once I got a job at an Irish Pub down the road, it was plenty to buy a motorbike and explore Victoria on the weekends. So if it hadn't been for that lunatic asylum I might never have gotten that job or had enough to buy a motorbike, which a year later I shipped back to England and drove around on for another couple of years. So despite the general craziness it was certainly what I needed at the time. And given that I tended to come home at 3 am from working in the pub it was always pleasant to find a few people still out and about and providing for outrageous entertainment. I also cheated on my girlfriend at the time, who was still back in England, saving up money to join me, and then watched _The Devil's Advocate_ after a massive bong of hydroponic weed. I became seriously guilt-ridden after that movie and wondered why my housemates had decided to watch it that night, of all nights. I eventually had to tell my girlfriend, though I was smart enough to leave the news for a couple of weeks after her arrival, she had to come to terms with where we lived first. Though on retrospect maybe I should have told her that I slept with a girl named Angel right after he saw the bathroom for the first time. I think in comparison it might have been a minor detail. We probably stayed together for way longer than was healthy for both of us, because of some prolonged guilt that I owed her somehow, when really I should have just had the courage to break up, but I was way too afraid to be alone at the time. I never cheated again and I still think to this day that it's a form of insecurity, because if you want to sleep with someone else, then you don't love the person you're with, which means you should have split up a long time ago, but you don't because you don't want to be alone, so you seek the approval from another member of the opposite sex, proving to yourself that you're still worth it, without actually daring to be out on your own. Your girlfriend becomes a kind of surrogate mother, the safety of home, with sex being only a chore, because really who wants to sleep with their mother, even if it's a surrogate one? But my girlfriend was equally scared of being alone and we stuck together, although there were a number of complications. The first was that she was French, which wasn't here fault of course and I didn't usually hold it against her, except when we was being needlessly patriotic, but the Australians did, probably because Chirac had decided to blow up an atom bomb in the Mururoa Atoll, which meant they didn't give working holiday visas to French People. So she ended up working illegally for an Egyptian guy in a French bakery on Brunswick Street, which is really ironic when you think about it, because usually it's the North Africans that have to work for the French. She really resented the indignity of working in a café when she had just received a masters in publishing, and she hated that fat Egyptian guy to such a degree she wished him to die a very painful death one day. The French can be quite dramatic like that when they get upset. The scary part is that he did fall from a ladder and into a boiling pot of water, severely burning most of his skin. It's scary because if she could do this a guy who she worked for, what was she going to do to someone who had cheated on her? I sent her to get some spiritual guidance in Fitzroy and I was quite glad when the lady told her that it's never good to cause harm to other people, even if they have harmed you, because it will only come back to you. I could have told her that too, but then I wasn't exactly an impartial judge of such things, so it was definitely worth the 20 Dollars Australian to have some Hippy fairy suck the insight right out of a crystal ball. I also picked up a book on meditation by a Californian Meditation Teacher named Lorin Roche. I liked his approach, which was quite non-dogmatic and practical. He essentially regarded meditation as a mini vacation, which sounds much better than intense concentration, but then you gotta talk to your audience right? He was from California, after all. The trouble was that I still had a hard time to sit still for longer than 5 minutes and listen to my breath, it's not that interesting, although he really made it sound like I could hear the sound of a butterfly flapping its wings in Acapulco and causing an earthquake in Bangladesh inside my breath. When I realized that it wasn't so, I sort of stopped trying, but never really lost interest in the whole notion of a mini-vacation.

I really enjoyed Melbourne though and I think it's one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world and if you ever go there you will find that Melbournians will incessantly tell you that they have won the coveted price of most livable city in the world for several years, although they never know, which year it was. The only trouble with Melbourne is that the beaches are rubbish and the climate is too wet and cold. So if you want beaches and like surfing, you should go to Sydney. As you probably know there is this ridiculous rivalry going on between the two cities, but I can lay that dispute to rest right here and now by telling you that if you stuffed the metropolitan area of Melbourne, minus St. Kilda, into the inner city of Sydney, so that Fitzroy and the CBD are now surrounded by Sydney's beaches, while getting rid of Oxford street and the whole area of Paddington in Sydney, leaving the harbor and the opera house and possibly even The Rocks right next to Melbourne's cosmopolitan restaurants and cafes, it would be the perfect city. So far I must say I haven't found the perfect city, but I'm still looking, maybe I'll find it one day.

As I mentioned my girlfriend wasn't impressed at all with my squalid living conditions, so that we moved into an apartment with an Irish couple, I had met in the pub I was working in. The apartment was right next to the cemetery and right on Lygon Street, both of which made for great places to have a drink. Dave, an Irishman my age, who looked like me with bigger ears, and was like my Nihilistic twin, had studied philosophy, was a fan of Nietzsche and also liked his LSD, which was not a good combination. Once his girlfriend ran out on him, and sort of left us stranded with him, he became increasingly agitated and erratic. It was impossible to have a normal conversation or even watch the Simpsons with him without him going on some kind of tangent about the general non-existence of things. I like a hearty philosophical discussion but I found him a bit taxing and so did a few other people who complained that he was getting a bit aggressive when he was drunk. He was basically of the opinion that nothing makes any sense at all and that it's purely just a self-created reality, which is pretty much the tenant of Nietzsche's philosophy of Nihilism, he told me. I made a real attempt to read Nietzsche years later in its original German, but after reading a couple of his books and rereading pages for 2 or 3 times, I just kept wondering what the fuck Friedrich is on about. It's like reading the ramblings of an old man with too much knowledge, but I'm sure he had a good point, because people seemed to like what he said. And he's probably most famous for his statement that 'God is dead' and that we should all become 'Übermenschen'. Reading Zarathustra's speeches, I'm not at all surprised that some crazed, demagogue used his philosophy to declare Aryans as the superior race and made a pretty serious attempt at wiping out the Jews. I'm not going to blame Nietzsche for it, because any philosopher can be misused, as we've seen with Epicure or Marx, but the superior human race talk lent itself pretty well to being misused. But back to my Irish friend - we woke up one night and he was outside screaming at the top of his lungs, and the day after he had just vanished, leaving behind most of his belongings, including his cloths and a VW van that was all set up for traveling around Australia. We assumed the worst but he reappeared 5 days later in Ireland, where he was shipped off into an intensive care unit because apparently he had freaked out on the flight and was pumped full of drugs - the prescribed kind - because he was experiencing a mental meltdown. He calmed down eventually and went back on a diet of Guinness a few weeks later. But his case illustrated quite well that Nihilism, the idea that there is nothing to believe in, is a bit of a precarious path, particularly when mixed with LSD. Though I had to agree with him that we live in an illusory world, we order and analyze information based on our very limited perception and filter it through personal experience and selective attention, because we are in fact surrounded by nothing but atoms bouncing around at different levels of vibration. I once read that even a diamond, is at a sub-atomic level, 99.9% empty space. Electrons hit our retina and we interpret it as a tree, a house or car, sound waves hit our ear drums and we hear a horn or birds, and atoms hit receptors in our noses and we smell roses, chlorine or perspiration. On a quantum level every particle pops in and out of existence, while our eyes perceive it as continuity, just like the individual frames of a motion picture appear as one continuous movie. Dave once told me that Nietzsche had said that his philosophy, which basically finds no sense and or meaning in the Universe, except by its observer, is a jumping board for another philosophy. I thought about that and decided that the philosophy that would follow on to Nihilism could be idealism. If indeed nothing really exists but representations in our minds, then we could in fact create our own reality, by changing our minds. It would even go along nicely with Heissenberg's uncertainty principle, that once you observe particles you already alter their course. In essence we as the active observer of our own lives, could with our most ideal intentions and expectations shape the way our lives unfold and perceive the world around us in the way we ideally imagine it to be. I just wasn't too sure how to go about it exactly and Dave was quick to point out that if this was the case then why am I not walking on water and turning water into wine, when all I have to do is intend it. I argued out that I could walk on water, when it's frozen over. But he did have a point and I wasn't too sure how to respond.

But then as if I had to only ask the question, my girlfriend gave me the answer in _The Celestine Prophecy._ Which apparently she had carried with her since the time I had met her, which was two years ago, but only now had decided that I it was time for me to read it _. The Celestine Prophecy_ has been called 'stylistic atrocious' by critics, and I'm not disinclined to agree, in fact I would add 'narratively challenged' to the charges, it's like an early Dan Brown, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if Dan Brown is a pseudonym for James Redfield, they both sound like names that were made up by people with a very limited imagination. But while the story is ludicrous, it did contain some very useful information and because I had never really read any of that new agy mumbo jumbo, it was all news to me. I really felt that there is something to the idea of coincidences being a guide to our destiny and that perhaps they are meaningful events meant to move your lives forward and that in this way we may reach our ideal and thus live the philosophy of idealism.

Synchronicity was a concept popularized by Karl Gustav Jung, though he was certainly not the first to talk about it. Also Jung was apparently a bit of an egomaniac and certainly not as chilled out as I would have hoped. But regardless, he argued that when two seemingly unconnected, non-causal events collide it becomes a meaningful event, which opens up an opportunity to consciously evolve and achieve your dreams. This actually made sense to if we considered that life is but a dream and we are confronted with the symbols of our subconscious, who lead us to our own redemption through self-understanding. Then the first and quite powerful synchronistic even took place, just as I was getting into all that spiritual, energetic universe talk. _The Matrix_ was released in cinemas around the world. Incidentally it about the same time my Irish friend went mad as well. He liked the movie, except the cheesy ending, which in my opinion was the main message because love is the energy of the universe. At the time we merely thought it was the madness surrounding the end of the millennium and maybe some kind of new world would establish itself in the process, and perhaps some kind of cataclysmic event like that of the collapse of the Wall as well as the entire socialist bloc would come about, but that sort of thing never really happens, does it? _The Matrix_ did however destroy a Wall inside my mind and was quite cathartic in that way. What I really liked about the _The Matrix_ , was that the fact that it had a few different layers of interpretation, apart from the literal one. And those interpretations are a bit more relevant to the world we live in than the idea that we lie in tanks and feed the machines, while jacked into a neuro-active simulation that makes us believe we are actually living out our lives. Though some people did start believing in this kind of thing literally, as if there was some massive conspiracy that actually had us living in tanks. It always amazed me how people can lack the gift of interpretation and symbolism so thoroughly that they really do take things literally, and it doesn't just happen with movies. It happens quite frequently with mass religion too, they start believing in virgin births and that Jesus really was the son of God, that it took 7 days to make the earth and that the earth is 10,000 years old as well as all the other improbable events of that particular belief system. As for _The Matrix_ , we actually do walk through our lives with mainly one purpose: to feed the machines. IN our case the machines that we have become so utterly dependent upon are our gasoline-guzzling cars, the flat-screen television, the newest Ipod, and the economy in general. As we have seen recently our economy is a very fragile entity and if we don't feed it with more consumption or even a belief in its inflated value, it starts to collapse. We literally have to inject it with more capital to regain consumer confidence so that we can once again achieve market stability and revive stagnant growth-rates. This is our Matrix, this is our economy, this is capitalism - a form of slavery and a type of religion because the stock market and real estate prices are mainly based on perception as well as our hopes and fears. You may have heard of _The Yes Men_ who pretend to represent the WTO to reveal their absurd and inhumane intentions to the world. And once they openly argued at a conference, on behalf of the WTO, that the US could have saved itself the expense of the Civil War because market forces would have rendered slavery obsolete anyways, because it is now much cheaper to have people work in sweat factories in their own countries than shipping them overseas and housing them, feeding them and clothing them in the Western world. People thought they were serious and simply clapped, this is how asleep they are. Marx once said there's nothing more depreciative of human beings than making them do repetitive and mindless work they don't enjoy. Yet they do just that all the time, just to pay the bills. So in a way we are indeed slaves to the machines, we are batteries for the economy. So one could see coincidences as messengers from Zion, just like Morpheus, who happens to be the God of sleep, sent to wake us from our slumber of the daily grind, by telling us that anything is possible. Coincidences are our way out of the Matrix and into a world of wonder and adventure where all our dreams can become reality. Do you remember the scene when Neo is visited at his apartment by a bunch of Goths, who are after some kind of disk? He then walks over and pulls out a floppy disk from inside a book, and if you freeze the picture, you will find that the front of the book says: _Simulacra and Simularcrum_ , which is the title of a book by a French Post-modernist called Jean Beaudrillard. I actually went through the trouble of reading the book and like Nietzsche it isn't a very pleasant read, but it's actually worth the pain, because there are some quite interesting points in there about the nature of our world today. It talks about the fable of Borges in which a king orders a very detailed map of his kingdom, and it becomes so detailed and large that it ends up covering the entire kingdom. Over the centuries the map disintegrates until only fragments of the map are left within the desert. Beaudrillard argues that in our world the exact opposite is true: we live in a map and within that map are fragments of reality. Remember Morpheus sitting in a leather chair surrounded by the remnants of the 'real' world, saying: 'Welcome to the desert of the real itself'? That's a direct quote from the book. My point is this: we live in a hyper-real world, a self-referential mental map, and only fragments of reality are left within. Those fragments are the coincidences that can guide us back to our true nature. What is our true nature \- you ask. A world where we don't see ourselves as separate from our surroundings and other people and we are free from fear and worry, because we realize we are still part of an infinite sea of consciousness, or _the source_ as they call it in _The Matrix_.

On another level we could argue that machines are also a symbol for the material world, and then there is the mental world, which is the Matrix. And finally the world of the spirit or pure consciousness, what Plato described as the world of ideas, where everything is pure potential, before it becomes manifest. Synchronicity is the symbolism that rises from that world, what Jung would call the subconscious of our minds, not the subconscious that contains merely repressed memories as Freud would have us believe, but the subconscious that knows where we came from, that bore witness to millions of years of evolution; the subconscious that knows our purpose and tries to gain our attention. Yeah I know it means there's purpose behind evolution, but that's a topic for another time. For now let's just say that synchronicity is nature's way of showing us the path, because evolution need no longer be an unconscious process. But there are still other ways of explaining synchronicity, which I'm sure we have all experience in one way or another but have mostly just discarded with a shrug and a thoughts like: 'Mmmh, that was weird. Oh well, stranger things have happened both before and after noon.' For example I like the idea that there is a synchronizing force at work in the Universe, a force that brought about the Big Bang and then the creation of this planet, all of which required such a delicate balance of forces so as not to bring about an immediate collapse of the universe because of too much gravity, or a spontaneous combustion of our atmosphere through too much oxygen, that it can only be considered intelligent. It is that same force that still pumps blood through our hearts, takes care of digestion, breaking down proteins, anabolism and muscular control; millions of things that are happening inside of us all the time, without us having to think about it. Consider the fact that our human bodies originate from only one single cell, a cell that keeps on dividing and doubling, until it gets to about 100 billion cells. Quite impressive in itself, but how does each of these cell know how to arrange itself into, let's say, a liver, a brain, an eye, a finger or a pancreas? What takes care of that process, what directs all of these cells to fulfill their tasks? Or think about catching a ball and how complex it would be calculating the movement of that ball using physical laws, such as gravity, and aerodynamics, inertia and friction. Yet we, as well dogs, can do this in an instant and give the right signals to our muscles to catch that ball. That force is the organizing force of the universe, and it is not bound by time or space and we can tap into it by being conscious of coincidences because that force is the intention of the universe and once we are aligned with it, we can consciously evolve.

So when I first heard about these concepts I had never heard about in school before, where it was all cause and effect and linear events, but nothing about some greater intelligence, I got all excited and thought I had found the secret to fulfilling my dreams. So I started practicing meditation to become more conscious of coincidences and of course nothing really notable happened, not even as we were traveling around Australia in a campervan. I decided that our way of traveling was simply too clinical and predictable and made plans to go to South America. I wanted to have my mystical experience and follow synchronicity to my destiny and I thought South America, with Machu Picchu apparently being the world's most energetic spot, was where I needed to go. At this point my girlfriend seriously regretted giving me that book, because she was more interested in finding some stability and security in her life. But I wasn't having any of it, I wanted my adventure and security could wait. I literally took _The Celestine Prophecy_ as a travel guide, even though I was aware of the fact that it wasn't necessarily factually accurate, the Mayans for example never lived in South America, but rather Central America. But I figured that James Redfield had intentionally slotted in a few obvious inaccuracies just to conceal the truth. Yeah I know it's adorable how we have this idealistic and over-enthusiastic notions when we're young and not yet disillusioned, but in my case I actually did find something worth reporting.

# Chapter 4

The Beginning of a String of Coincidences

La Paz, which translates to the peace, and is the name of the capital of Bolivia, is a bit of a misnomer, because it isn't all that peaceful there. When I arrived in La Paz at six in the morning, the streets were already jammed with minivans while _taxistas_ were hanging out the doors and shouting out the names of destinations to prospective passengers. Women were selling bread, shakes, juices and empanadas to workers preparing for a hard day. Shoeshine boys in black masks were polishing shoes for businessmen in grey suits. I walked up the hill, breathing hard, as I was struggling with the thin air of the highest capital in the world, while my two backpacks were weighing me down. Nonetheless, I felt elated; after all I had escaped a noisy office with people talking into headsets, looking forward only to a night out in the pub. I had made good money by selling holidays to France while working for a travel company in London, as part of my work experience for University. When I had announced that I wanted to go South America to volunteer I was met by incomprehensible stares, not because the idea of volunteering was that hard to comprehend, but because _I_ wanted to volunteer. Apparently people had perceived me as really money-oriented yuppie because I was a hard seller. Funny how people can build up these complete misconceptions, based on the little they know about you. But it occurred to me that this should be taken advantage of and in fact that is why I still love traveling, because you can just reinvent yourself, because they don't know you like your family and friends, you can just be who you want to be.

I took a room at a _hospedaje_ named _El Universo_ and slept for the better part of the day until I was woken by a couple of rats that jumped on my chest. But it was time to go and explore the town anyways. La Paz has an interesting energy, there are a lot of indigenous people there, dressed all colorfully and selling you everything under the sun, including really healthy fruit and milk shakes and tasty empanadas. In case you don't know, empanadas are like the Latin American version of dumplings, with pastry on the outside and a filling on the inside, and they come in alls sorts of shapes and varieties. So I had a couple of those with a carrot juice drink and just soaked up the atmosphere. I had always wondered why people in Venezuela loved using their horns so much and had found that that's essentially how they drive, by ear, because there are no traffic rules as such. Even red lights are there more as a guidance rather than a rule, in fact if you stop at a red light in Venezuela and nobody is coming they will honk behind you. You get used to just rolling past red lights, until you get towed away of course. I found that here in La Paz, the same was true about the fondness for horns. It was like they had designed their traffic for the blind. I would even suggest that as a blind person with good hearing you would do just fine driving in South America. Most of these van drivers weren't really watching the traffic anyways, they were just looking out for customers. Now I have always maintained that the public transport system is far superior in the developing world probably because so many people don't have their own cars. I mean consider a public transport system that virtually passes your street all the time and picks you up and drops you off wherever you like, unlike in the developed world where we have to go to a designated bus stop. Real backward that is. I reckon we could learn loads from the so-called third world. Every wonder why it's called he third world? Well presumably the developed, Western World, is the first world, the former socialist countries are the second world and rest are the third world. Which is why they had so many territorial fights in the third world, the first and second world wanted to win them over and then have a good dig around for minerals, and metals and oils and that sort of thing. Ever notice how countries with no resources, like Malawi and Costa Rica, managed to bypass all the action why around them all hell broke lose? It's really troubling to me that what I learned about Imperialism in Socialist East German, which I didn't take all that serious at the time, because quite frankly they lacked credibility and neutrality, given the whole Marxist ideology, actually turned out to be true. And standing in the Bolivian Museum of History I was reminded once again about how Americans really tried their best to fuck up as many people's lives as possible, so they could eat cheap bananas and drive big fuck-off SUVs, that use up the weekly output in crude oil from a minor South American country in a day. I also didn't understand why shoeshine boys had to wear black masks. It makes sense for Anarchists, bank robbers and even skiers but it didn't make sense at 25 degrees Celcius when you're shining some businessmen's shoes, it's not like doing something illegal. When I asked the kids why they wear masks they didn't really want to tell me, until a bystander explained that they wear masks because they are so embarrassed about having to shine shoes. I think if everyone could simply hide their faces when too embarrassed about the job they do, we would have our burgers, burritos and fries served by hordes of hooded teenagers. And that's probably why they never look at you when taking your order, while pulling their caps as low as they can. But I have to say, given the current explosion in unemployment, they sure don't sit at home and mope about in developing countries, while getting all depressed about being unemployed. They just get out there and sell you whatever they can. Sure some need a little guidance with their entrepreneurial skills, walking around with there identical toys or two sets of shoes, isn't going to ensure a very high sales volume, not to mention profit margin, but you got to applaud the effort. Now I'm not suggesting we send all the unemployed into the street to makes juices and empanadas, but maybe relax the rules a bit and let them make a buck, just to keep 'em out of the house? Alright I admit I just like the service and affordability, I mean you're never very far from a snack.

I did like La Paz in it's own exotic way, but I just wanted to get into the jungle and out of the city, so I booked a bus trip up to Cobija, where I was meant to work in a newly established nature reserve. Taken a bus up there was a very silly idea of course, because it was going to take 3 days, while it would have taken 2 hours on a plane, but I was a cheap-skate backpacker, so what you're gonna do? You're gonna sit in a bus for 3 days. And I thought I'd see the country that way and get a bit of a feel for Bolivia.

So the next day I sat in a sturdy four wheel drive bus, headed to Cobija via the most dangerous road in the world, according to my Lonely Planet. And when I noticed the road disappear from view below my window, I could see why it had acquired that rather infamous reputation. In the valley below were at least a dozen bus wrecks, quietly rusting away. I did have a three-day journey in front of me, so I was glad about the initial excitement, after all my bus was blessed by Jesus, so I had nothing to worry about. Well at least that's what the front windscreen window said. I was fascinated how those buses and trucks managed to pass one another, by a measure of centimeters. When our bus scratched along the outside of a vegetable-truck, I realized that we had just gotten lucky so far. But hey nobody cares about a scratch on the most dangerous road in the world. It's like going to fight the Taliban and then write home about how you scratched yourself on some thorny desert brush, it's hardly going to impress your friends is it? Sometimes the road wasn't wide enough for the two vehicles to pass one another and one of them had to reverse, which frequently ended in an argument over who should back up. Often the passengers would get involved as well and everyone became engaged in a shouting-match with the opposing party, until one would give in and reverse. It was hilarious how everyone was getting riled up, from old women in their native dresses, to little children mimicking their parents, and guys who were beating their chests and roared like apes. Ok that last part I made up, but they might as well have, they were such ridiculous machos about it all, like a little monkeys trying to impress mommy. Hey did you know that macho means the male of a species in Spanish - interesting little fact for you there. It was like football match or something, the people in the other bus all became the opposing team and had to be defeated. Victory was glorious of course, everyone sat there all self-satisfied and congratulating themselves, smiling at the passengers in the other bus that had to humiliatingly reverse, kids sticking out their tongue and the driver honking his horn in victory. Homo sapiens are a funny species are they not?

Once we moved out of the mountain and into the prairie, the trip became somewhat less exciting, in fact I began getting a bit bored, because I knew I would still sit in this bus two days later and I thought maybe saving $350 dollars wasn't really worth the effort, but then you could live on $350 for an entire month in Bolivia, and anyways at least I was traveling like the locals do. I was rather admiring of the tranquil nature of Bolivian children, who were perfectly happy playing with plastic bags and their mama's boobies, looking at the landscape and pointing at cows, horses and goats, giving me an opportunity to learn the Spanish words for those animals. Yeah I know my Spanish was a bit rudimentary at the time. I had done a self-teaching course and that was about it. I tried to imagine a Western kid in one of those buses, and I just couldn't picture it. They would most likely get bored out of their minds after playing their Nintendo DS for an hour, watching two DVDs and slapping their sister around a bit; demand a stop at McDonalds and putting their parents in an awkward position because the Bolivian outback had not yet been McDonalised. I actually would not have minded a super-sized cheeseburger meal myself as I thought about it, even though I hate MacDonald's. But eight hours in the heat can do that to you, you start thinking that a cheeseburger with some soda is a really lovely idea for a meal. Luckily we did stop at a restaurant eventually, but the variety of available food options reminded me of East Germany. There was only one choice: fried strips of beef, with beans, rice and platano, also known as plantain, which is a type of boiled banana. I had never tried this kind of banana before and when I picked it up I expected it to be soft and light, not hard and heavy, so shoving that warm, curiously erect and heavy banana in my mouth felt a bit wrong somehow. I'm sure it's all very nutritious and filling but it conjured up all the wrong associations, plus it tasted a bit bland, so I added some salt, which really didn't help either. Based on that first experience I never became a big fan of platano, or plantain or whatever you like to call it.

And off we were again, driving past, villages, farm animals and fields and fields of...what was all that? As it turned out it was garbage. Everything that was not needed inside the bus just went out the window; we literally passed entire fields of garbage. If I hadn't known any better I would have thought it was growing there. Perhaps those kids were quiet because they were afraid that they might suffer the same fate as those plastic bags, bottles and candy wrappers, making a nuisance of themselves inside the bus should they start crying or complaining. _'Alright I've had enough of your whining, out the window with you. See you at home in a couple of days, that'll teach you.'_ Thinking such silly thoughts and actually planning to write it down some day, I spent the next few days in a haze just staring out the window, until some drunk decided I needed some distraction and began babbling away in the chair next to me. I tried to pay attention at first, seeing as I did need a distraction and that it might be a good chance to practice my pitiful Spanish, but when he started going on about Hitler and the Third Reich like some kind of Utopian society that was not meant to be, I sort of lost interest and began demonstratively staring out the window again. I don't know what they teach them about the Nazis in South America but there seems to be somewhat of a misconception about the entire nature of their enterprise there. Perhaps it's due to the fact that they didn't suffer all that much during World War II, which makes you think why it's called a World War, when they left out large chunks of the world, and then all these rich Nazis decided to settle in South America, probably because they hadn't exposed themselves as megalomaniac psychopaths in that region just yet and thought they might work on their marketing a bit and present their version of events. Well it seems to have worked. Even though he was a complete idiot and a drunk and the first person I had met who thought Hitler was some kind genius, he certainly was not the last. It also seemed that they were under the illusion that we Germans were somehow proud of having managed to subdue half the world and get everyone to listen to Bavarian "Schunkel Musik," while wearing Lederhosen and yodeling like twits. Well, actually the latter is true every year for two weeks at the Oktoberfest and it seems to have become quite an institution around the world as well.

As he was going on about the virtues of National Socialism, I was thinking about _The Celestine Prophecy_ , and how James Redfield had made up four types of energy suckers. Just to give you a bit of background; it's all about energy apparently. We humans are essentially energy and we argue and shout at each other, because we want more energy and there are various ways of gaining that energy, from the more passive ways such as guilt-tripping someone or playing aloof and getting them to find out what's wrong and why you're so quiet, to the more aggressive ways like criticizing someone all the time and putting them down to physically threatening people and well, using violence. The reason I was thinking about energy suckers was that my friend with the fondness for Nazis and alcohol breath was a category all of its own. He was a shit-talker. And I'm sure you've come across the type, they go on and on about whatever is on their mind and just won't let you go, you can't even get a word in side-ways, not to mention get away from them. You just stare at them and see their mouths moving and wonder how that person can be so blissfully unaware that you're not hearing a single word of whatever they're spouting. It really sucks your energy, I tell you, and at this point I had very little left. It might not sound like it, but sitting in a hot, bouncy bus for hours on end does drain one's energy a bit. So when the man next to me began poking my arm, to regain my attention because he had noticed that I was looking out the window for a rather prolonged period of time now, I really felt the urge to break his fingers, but instead I politely informed him that I would now listen to my music, put on my headphones and turned on my walkman (yes that's right at the time people still used walkman), to illustrate the point. I decided to listen to a German punk band singing A _rschloch_ , since I thought it to be the most appropriate song under the circumstances. The shit-talker seemed completely unperturbed by my apparent lack of interest and continued pestering and poking me, until I snapped and shouted in a voice the whole bus could hear: "No qiero escuchar mas." (I really don't want to listen to you anymore.)

"Bueno si es asi, me voy." (Alright if it's like that, I'm leaving.)

The moral of the story here is, should you ever encounter a shit-talker, just abandon all sense of politeness and social etiquette, because obviously the shit-talker has, and just tell him or her to shut the fuck up. I felt sapped of energy and continued staring out the window again. The German Punks were singing that no matter how far and how long we go to leave ourselves, when we come back it's always the same, always the same channel in our minds and no control to change the show. I knew what they meant, because here I was on a bus in Bolivia, living my dream, when others sat in offices all day and all I could think about was how damn hot and dusty it was, how uncomfortable the seats were, how the shit-talker had annoyed me and how much longer this damn trip would be. That's the trouble with travel you think everything is going to be different because your surroundings are but you always take yourself with you. On the other hand sitting in a bus for hours on end and staring at dusty, barren landscape allowed you to become aware of yourself and realize that this is who you are, and self-recognition is the first step towards change, right?

I finally arrived in Cobija at the ridiculous hour of three in the morning and found all the hotels closed. But fortunately, well, whether it was fortunate is debatable, I met a drunken Brazilian from across the border, who explained that he was a cop and if I followed him I could get a room. We walked to the _Hospedaje Cocodrillo_ and he began shouting in Portuguese, until to my surprise, they did open the doors. The chubby-faced, sleepy woman was visibly annoyed but told me to just take a room upstairs and check in, in the next morning. The drunken cop followed me up to my room, sat down on the bed and opened up two beers. I didn't want to be impolite and began drinking with him. Three beers later I mentioned that I would like to take a shower now, to which he joyfully responded that I should get undressed, because he would like to watch. At this point I really wanted him out of my room and began asking him to leave, but he had no such intentions. Since I really didn't want to meet any of his queer police friends, only too happy to use their handcuffs and Billy Clubs, I entered into negotiations with him and we finally agreed that if I took my shirt and trousers off he would go. I stood there in my underwear ready for a shower and a bed, when my new friend came over and grabbed my groin. At that point I decided to use force and threw the little fucker out the door, made a resolution to stay away from drunks in Latin America, took a much-needed shower and fell into coma-like sleep.

The next day I went to have a chat with the park officials about my volunteer service. I didn't like the young park manager. He was a macho and pretty impatient with my poor Spanish. He told me that I would go on a boat trip to distribute brochures about the park rules and that I would leave the next day. I would have to pay for my own food and we would take public transport, because the rangers had no private transport. Nonetheless, I was excited about going into the jungle and went out for dinner in the market, to eat yucca, rice and chicken with the locals. When I came back to the hotel I met Andrew, a skinny German, with a bony long face, who had come to Bolivia to renew his visa for Brazil.

"So, you live in a village in the jungle?" I asked him quite fascinated by the idea.

"Yeah, two day's boat-ride from the next largest town. It's beautiful, just a little paradise."

"So what do you do there?"

"I help with their horticulture project. They are pretty advanced, they use solar panels and have their own radio station," he said with obvious pride.

"What kind of a community is it?"

"It's a Daime community."

"What's Daime?"

"The Santo Daime is a spiritual medicine."

"What for?"

"The brain."

"Something wrong with your brain?"

He laughed whole-heartedly, and explained:

"Something is wrong with all our brains. We don't appreciate the miracle of life; we just pass through it without joy and full of complaint." Well bugger me, that's exactly what I had thought, when sitting in the bus.

"So, how does the Santo Daime help?"

"It's meditation out of the bottle. It's Jesus Christ liquefied."

When he said that, I actually felt a shiver going through my body. If that was true, it would be less than short of amazing. And could it be true that you could find Jesus Christ in a bottle? Could I have met my messenger who would send me on my mystical journey, only days after my arrival? A part of me was skeptical as usual but currently the part that was shouting hallelujah was a lot louder and I got really excited about it all. In fact I felt like I had just entered a new mysterious world where anything was possible and magical events would occur all the time and I would ultimately find my true destiny.

"Where can I find it?" I said, trying to stay calm and doing my level best not to grin like a demented dolphin.

"There are plenty of Daime communities in Brazil. One is Cinco Mil and that's just outside Rio Branco."

"So, where do you live?" I asked him.

"It's a place called Ceu do Mapia, but it's quite a trip."

I wrote all this down so that I would not forget. Man, things were getting exciting already. I wanted to grab him and give him a good hug, but then he was all very German and probably would have taken it the wrong way. He was sitting in my room and on my bed, after all. We went to an ice-cream shop nearby instead, and talked some more about the Daime.

"Have you ever taken LSD?" he asked. I nodded.

"Certainly have. Purple Haze, in San Francisco," I said.

"At least you sort of know what to expect," he explained.

"Well, because of my LSD experiences I don't really feel like trying another hallucinogenic drug," I said. "It was interesting but rather nihilistic. It just left you in some kind of massive void, with a million pieces of fragmented information."

"The Santo Daime is not a drug — it's different to LSD, it's natural and not man-made first of all and that makes it a spiritual and not a synthetic experience. Secondly, you don't take the Santo Daime for fun, believe me, it is always hard work. Unlike LSD it's an integrating experience and it you shows you something new to believe in. People in Mapia don't need a doctor because if you heal your brain, you heal your body."

"But you have an ear infection you told me earlier," I said skeptically.

"Yeah it's just shit that has to come out," he said dismissively. "It was something locked up in my psyche that had to manifest in the form of a disease and now I can treat it with natural medicines, which they make there in the village. They also use Santa Maria in their rituals."

"Santa Maria? What's that?"

"Marijuana. But they would never call it that, because to them it's sacred. It is the female energy as opposed to the Daime, which is male," he said.

"I think you've just described my mystical destination and you're like my messenger, " I said, while I felt the hairs on my arm stand up.

I went out into the jungle the next day but what followed was all rather unexciting and tedious, because most of the time we just spent sitting around and hitchhiking on dirty trucks and on the back of motorbikes. Even though I did do some menial chores and talk to some people about the new park rules, it was just meant to keep me busy rather than serve any real purpose. In fact a representative from the Dutch government, who was one of the principle sponsors of the Park, pointed out that I was a drag on their resources and that the park had not developed a protocol for volunteers. Bloody Bureaucrats, I thought, but then he did have a point, they didn't really know what to do with me. Sure I did talk to some locals about the controversial park rules, like the fact that they couldn't eat monkeys anymore and I took notes, but then they already knew that the locals didn't like not eating monkeys. You see, the castaneros, who go collecting Brazil Nuts (Yes, Brazil Nuts also grow in Bolivia), because they fetch a good price on the international market, go deep into the Jungle and what are they going to eat there after their lunch packs have run out? Well they eat monkeys. Seems like a ridiculous idea to us, but then it's just meat jumping from tree to tree to them, even if it's endangered meat. I was told they taste pretty good too, especially the young ones. Yeah I know it's terrible, but that's why they started a National Park.

Anyways, so I was sitting there, in that same ice-cream shop in Cobija licking on Vanilla ice. I began chatting to two young Brazilian girls. One had an incredibly cute face and was the more talkative of the two. The other was a bit shy and a chubby but smiley and sweet. I liked them both, but making conversation wasn't easy, because all they could speak was Portuguese, while I had trouble talking to Bolivians with the little Spanish I knew. Yet somehow we managed, because Portuguese and Spanish are phonetically pretty similar and they spoke a bit of Spanish too.

They told me that they knew how to get to Mapia and that I could stay at their house for a couple of days if I wanted, because they were going back to Rio Branco. Well, what are the chances, I thought. Must be meant to be. James Redfield would be proud of me. I was just pondering the velocity of coincidences occurring in these parts of the world, when we were approached by a man, who was shooting a video ad for the disco, situated in the same building; and he wanted us to be part of the shoot. We went into the dance area, where they had set up a table with drinks. I soon realised that there were eight girls present, while I was the only man, apart from the three guys doing the video shoot.

"All you have to do is sit there and take a sip of the Pina Colada for about five seconds, before you kiss one of the girls. And please don't look at the camera," he said. Now if you think I'm making this up then I'm telling you right now, it's all true. But I should point out that the girls weren't models either, if you know what I mean. Still I didn't mind kissing any of them. Sex would have been a different matter, but luckily we didn't go there, it was really just a disco ad. And I don't think I would have been _up_ for it in front of a camera, if you catch my drift. They didn't have Viagra back then, it wasn't yet invented or certified by the FDA, or whatever.

"But I'm not even a Latino," I said, trying to be humble and all.

"No importa, eres el unico hombre aqui y paresces latino." (Doesn't matter you, you're the only guy here and you look Latino.)

They really must have had a very limited budget, but hey, I wasn't complaining. I just wondered why I hadn't tried that traveling with the coincidence thing before. It seemed like I was really on to something here. My shoot with the Brazilian girl took quite a bit longer than with the others, because we were both sincerely enjoying the acting.

"Muy bueno. Mucha emocion," the director said, obviously pleased. We then had to dance around for a little while and finally walk out the disco arm in arm.

"You have to look more macho, hombre," the director now demanded. "Put your shoulders back and hold her with confidence."

Bloody hell, you try to help the guy out and now he's giving you instruction on how to walk. I became all self-conscious now and realized that maybe I should be more macho and walk around a bit more like a bloody rooster, girls probably dig it down here. The rest of the evening we spent in a Karaoke club, and those two Brazilian girls could truly sing. I was honestly awed by their voices. After much convincing and three Cuba Libre I had a go myself, and sang away to Bob Marley's Exodus: _'Open your eyes and look within, are you satisfied with the life you're living? Exodus. Movement of Jah people.'_ That sort of thing. I also sang along to _Hotel California_ and really began to enjoy myself, so I asked for some more English songs, but oddly enough they never played those. I had always been told not to sing in public. I think everybody was glad when I sat myself down again.

The next morning the three of us went to Rio Branco, which was just over the border and about 2 hours North, into Brazil. The border officials on the Brazilian side really weren't very friendly at all and asked me all sorts of questions, including whether I wanted to drink Daime and go to Ceu do Mapia. The way the question was phrased I got the feeling that this was not a motivating factor for giving me a visa, so I said no \-- I just wanted to visit some friends in Mapia and hang out with those cute girls I just met. The cute girls corroborated my story and I got the stamp. I think I began to understand that quite a few foreigners, like Andrew, who live in Mapia come through this border post to extend their visas and the immigration officials don't like that sort of thing, like they ought to care? It's not like people were smuggling drugs into the country or illegally working, no they were just using halucinogens, growing pot and doing volunteer work.

In the evening we visited her college for teachers, where the majority of students were female. At night we were (un)lucky enough to enjoy a theatre performance, followed by a striptease show, featuring males only, from the college. My newfound friends enjoyed the show immensely, cheering and clapping but also booing men off stage, if they were of the opinion that their members were too small. Images of ruthless Amazonian women came to mind and I was later told that the females still outnumber the males by at least ten per cent, though don't take their word for it. But I noticed that there were certainly more women in Brazil than anywhere else in the world. And there seems to be that dominant female Amazonian thing going on, at least I noticed quite often that it's the girls that hit on you in Brazil, which is rather pleasant I must say. It's so tedious to always have to make the first move.

As we walked home I was advised to try a soup made of stingy nettle. I had to try of course, I mean I had been stung by stingy nettle before but I had never thought to take revenge and eat them. Though that was obviously not going to pan out in my favor because by the time we had reached her house my stomach was in uproar. Obviously that battle was won by stingy nettle too, although I do hear it's good for arthritis. Sex was now the last thing on my mind and the expectant Brazilian girl went to bed rather disappointed, well serves her right for making me eat this bloody soup. I spent the better part of the night in an intense conversation with the toilet bowl, alternately conversing with my mouth and my ass. In the morning her boyfriend appeared at the door and kindly offered to take me to the bus station, where I could catch a bus to go to a town that would lead me to Mapia. At this point I was glad I hadn't screwed his girlfriend because she had forgotten to mention that she had a boyfriend and that he had a habit of showing up uninvited. Although I'm not sure he did show uninvited, perhaps she had called him to help me on my way, because clearly I was no use to her in the state I was in. And the noise from the bathroom had probably killed off any sexual desire she might have held for me.

The six-hour bus journey along a muddy road, past rainforest and cattle ranches, was miserable and I really wasn't all that impressed when our bus got stuck in the red mud that posed as a road. For some reason they only carried rope on board that might have been sufficient for hanging your laundry but not for pulling a bus out of the mud. Nevertheless they tried and nobody was all that surprised when the rope snapped once another bus made a brave attempt to pull ours out of road. After three attempts and much pushing from the passengers, including myself, they actually succeeded and I can't say that I felt much better for it; all the excitement and exercise did not really elevate my energy. When we finally arrived I quickly checked into a hotel by the river, had a good night's sleep and felt considerably better the next day. I enquired about boats but apparently there were none scheduled for Mapia, at the time, and I was advised to see an Italian living on the other side of the river and talk to him about the Santo Daime.

The skinny Italian living in a small wooden house spoke a mix of Spanish, Portuguese, English and Italian. He offered to let me try some Daime, in his backyard, among the flowers with some music. I said I would rather try it in a ritual and not alone. He seemed glad and told me about his experiences with the Indians and their vision quest, but they only performed their ceremonies during certain times of the year and he suggested I go back to Cobija, where there was a group of Chileans, who took the Daime frequently.

"The German guy said he would stay with some Chileans in Cobija, but he didn't say they took Daime," I said with some annoyance. After all I had come all this way.

"Andrew verdad? El es muito protectivo of his Daime community," the Italian explained.

# Chapter 5

The Secret of the Amazon

I returned to Cobija the next day and talked to the park manager about another trip into the National Park. I was told that the representative from the Dutch government was going to go into the park for another trip the following week and that I was welcome to come along. So, I began asking around for the community of the Chileans and finally found a taxi driver, who knew where they lived. He took me past the airport on his motorcycle and then into the countryside, deeper into the jungle. He let me off at a wooden gate, bordered by thick vegetation, and told me that they lived in there. Apart from the gate there was no indication that anyone lived there and I just followed the path. I came to a wooden house, set on poles, surrounded by beautiful trees and flowery bushes. I could see some self-made pottery sitting on benches in the patio area. I shouted a couple of times until an elderly woman appeared, she had completely white hair, a scared face with a sheepish smile, and one of her cheeks was filled with coca leafs. Before you get the wrong idea I should mention that coca leafs are completely legal in Bolivia and even though they are the base ingredient for Cocaine, suggesting that it's the same as cocaine is like saying that barley is the same as whiskey. Obviously it's not, coca leafs have been used for medicinal purposes in South America for centuries, if not millennia, it's also great for altitude sickness. Old women sit in the market and sell it from big baskets full of leafs and they are pretty cheap too. I did have the opportunity of trying it once, during a trip into the National Park, which due to the fact that they didn't have their own transport, was on the back of a truck together with a group of young _castaneros_. The truck was dirty and it was raining down, and I was in a bad mood, given that I was getting dirty and wet, not to mention cold, but the kids were nice and offered me some coca leafs. It tasted like tea but the effect was a nice mellow feeling of content. Only a moment ago I had been miserable and had thought what kind of National Park doesn't have transport for its own ranger, and what the fuck was I doing here, this was really not my idea of a volunteer work. Now I sat there, joked around with the _castaneros_ and thought what a great adventure. I don't know if the change of mind was on account of the coca leafs or the simple gesture of sharing it, but the fact is that's all in the mind how we perceive our situation.

"Well come on in," the woman said as if she had been expecting me.

I couldn't shake the notion that all of this felt a bit like I had just entered a Brother's Grimm fairytale, but given that I wasn't a three-foot child I didn't see much of a risk of being cooked alive, although I did notice a large baking oven. But looking at the freshly baked pottery in front of it, I didn't think it was used for baking children, but then that's just what they would want you to believe, isn't it? I sat down on her veranda, looking onto a well tended garden, regardless, and told her my story. The woman named Lara, who had done her own share of travelling around the world, switched to English, which was much better than my Spanish. Soon, a young American with the figure of a construction worker, named Daniel, joined us. He was shirtless and sweaty from working in the garden, in exchange for his accommodation. No wonder they had nice gardens, I thought. Funny how the Latin Americans are now exploiting us gringos, well at least we did it voluntarily and they didn't send armed death squads, like the Americans had.

"Another foreigner," she mumbled through more coca leafs. "I leave you two alone," she said and went into the adjoining kitchen, which was pretty simple and mostly made of wood - as you can imagine - to prepare dinner.

"I see you brought all your stuff," he said in a most uncharacteristic soft voice. Well, uncharacteristic for an American, and one that looked as macho as him.

"Yeah, I was hoping to stay here for a while and participate in a Daime ceremony."

"There should be one in two days. Have you used it before?"

"No, I haven't and I don't know much about it either."

"You know, I have been working with magic mushrooms for a long time. I am a bit of a hermit, you know. I live in a hut in the woods." Bit of a nutcase then, I thought. "But they are child's play compared to the Daime. It's some powerful stuff, but it's a really safe environment here. Just look out for the gnomes some are not very nice." Did he just say 'watch out for the gnomes'? "Why do you want to take it?" he asked me.

"Well I suppose I'd like to experience a higher level of meditation," I said feeling all smug and clever.

"That's a good motivation, because it's a type of meditation for sure — the music, the singing and dancing — only you go so much further."

Lara had overheard us and shouted from the kitchen area, that she had read about meditation from yogis and Buddhists and the experiences they described were just like the Daime trances; only here they were able to experience transcendence without years of strict meditation and dieting.

"If meditation is like going up a mountain in serpentines then Daime is going straight up. It is much harder but you arrive more quickly, you see?" she said with a smile, and coca leafs between her teeth.

"Meditation out of the bottle, eh? Sounds too good to be true," I said, trying to hide my obvious excitement. Shit, it had taken me about two weeks to find the path straight up the mountain to a mystical experience.

"Well, nothing comes without a price; it's hard work," Daniel explained. Damn it, why does everything always have to be hard? And what did that mean exactly, hard work? Are we going to get high and then work the vegetable garden? "But you have to decide whether you want to get their quickly, or if you have the discipline to sit down and meditate for years," Daniel asked. Well, I certainly didn't have much patience, I got bored pretty quickly, that three-day bus ride was a case in point. I definitely couldn't sit around for years with my eyes closed.

He took me around the pretty little village to meet the other families. We were surrounded by lush vegetation and the sound of exotic birds and walked along well tended paths, past, believe it or not, solar panels and water pumps, and across a wooden bridge crossing a small clear creek, where the pipes from the water pumps sucked drinking water into water tanks, sitting on an elevated structure next to the house. We arrived at an open area with cows and a goats grazing leisurely, while a double story house sat on a hill, probably with a really nice view of the jungle.

I was greeted by a lovely old lady with a warm smile and warm hands, she had grey long hair and was probably around sixty or so. She was also chewing coca leafs. Either they had just had a new shipment come in or they were addicted to this stuff here, I thought. But she was a lovely old lady and all, she really didn't look like an addict. Her husband looked much younger and was just as open and friendly and we sat down on the wooden floor in their living room, which felt cosy and warm, and mostly just housed book cabinets; they obviously liked to read. Well not much else to do here I guess, there certainly wasn't a television to be seen. So we had a good chat about Germany and how I found the place and Andrew, the German, who didn't want to tell me about them.

"Yeah, Andrew is a bit nuts, I think," Jose, the husband said, with a casual frankness that was a quite endearing.

"Yeah he is certainly a character," I agreed and remembered accidentally spotting him squatting on a water closet, with his feet on the rim, back at _Hospedaje Cocodrillo_. I had made a point of remembering not to do anything embarrassing in there, given that one could see through the wooden boards of the toilet door, and I wasn't very impressed when his feces were strewn all over the toilet seat. It sure wouldn't have hurt to dump a bucket of water on it, if he really need to defecate all over the toilet like a squatting jungle dweller. Well at least he was house broken I had thought at the time.

"He liked to lie around and stuff herbs into his ears," Jose informed me, and illustrated what he meant by stuffing an imaginary stick into his ear.

"Yeah, he had an ear infection he told me. Something that had to come out of his head, or something like that," I said, laughing about Jose's comments.

"There were certainly some weird things in that boy's head, un tipo raro, es seguro."

"But a nice guy," his wife, Lara, chimed in.

I felt pretty comfortable and happy with these people, I must say and I was glad that I had found them. They also had two teenage kids, a boy who was about 15, who was fixing a motorbike at the time, and a girl who was probably around 13, who was going to be quite pretty when she matures, I thought. At the moment she had braces decorating her smile, but she was cute nonetheless. Including Lara's two sons that made four teenagers in the small community. So it won't be all oldies at the Daime session, I thought. They told me that they had come here five years ago, after living in Brazil, because they had wanted to create their own community. They loved it here, because it was here in the jungle that their sacred Daime grew. They showed me the twisting double vine, hanging from enormous trees, as well as the affectionately named Raina (Queen), which was the second ingredient in the magical potion. The DMT-containing plant was growing on a small patch of land, behind a well-kept preparation area, with tree-stumps for smashing the vine, and cooking holes for boiling the mixture. It was all very Asterix and Obelix, if you happen to know those comics. In case you don't, it's set in village that is the sole bastion of resistance in the Roman empire thanks to a magical potion that makes the villagers incredibly strong, and allows them to just beat the shit out of the Romans, no matter how many there are. It's quite amusing when you're young and I occasionally still like watching an Asterix and Obelix movie. The preparation area for the magical potion looked just like the one I was standing in front of now, a huge round pot hanging on a pole above a hole designed for the burning wood to get the mixture cooking – all very enchanting really.

I was getting more and more fascinated by the Santo Daime - perhaps I had stumbled onto a secret here? I had certainly never heard of Daime or ayahuasca as it was apparently also known. And it was quite synchronistic that it had been right here in this little town near the Amazon, where I had chosen to do my volunteer service. Fuck me, that _Celestine Prophecy_ , new age mumbo jumbo was really true, there really was magic to be discovered in this world, we just had to go and look for it. I mean it's only been a couple of weeks and already I've found a community that might hold the secret to achieving meditation that is usually beholden only to monks sitting cross-legged for years in monasteries in the Himalayas, chanting and hitting bells or whatever they do. I loved all of this, already. Although there was a part of me that was afraid that I might be disappointed, and that thought: 'Hey, wait a minute, none of these people seem particularly enlightened. They are stuffing their cheeks with coca leafs all day and seem pretty normal to me.' But then how would I know if I met an enlightened person I wouldn't, would I?

Daniel and I walked back to Lara's house, where I would sleep that night as the sun was setting over the jungle canopy. "Get this man. The Indians discovered this stuff thousands of years ago. There are millions of plants in the Amazon, but only two make the Daime, how did they know?" Daniel asked with a mysterious grin and gave me goose bumps in the process. But then I remembered that he also lived like a hermit in a hut in the woods and saw goblins, or gnomes or whatever.

That same night they decided to give me a small sample of the Daime, just to see how I would react and whether I would be ready for a bigger dose, which was scheduled for a couple of days later.

We did this at Juan's house, he was the brother of Jose and lived on his own in a nice little hut near the creek. As with the others he also spent a lot of time reading, and smoking pot, probably. He was currently rolling a big spliff, sorry, Santa Maria, as they like to call it. Sure whatever works for you, I thought. It was nighttime and the others surrounded us, passing their sacred Santa Maria in total silence. I had been given a very small drop of Daime. The taste was sour but not repulsive. I felt relaxed and calm.

"The Santo Daime group was founded by a black man, Mestre Irineu, a descendent of the slaves brought to Brazil," Juan said in Spanish. As is the case with loners they really let loose with the talking when they get a chance, and Juan was no different. Perhaps that's why they were alone, nobody can listen quite that much? He wasn't quite a shit-talker though, he did know some very interesting stuff; he was very learned.

"He first took it with the shamans of the Amazon. He really liked it, but wanted to create a more structured ritual. He blended it with old African drumming ceremonies and native beliefs of forest spirits, but it is all bound together by Christianity, because Jesus Christ was the most advanced human being," he went on to explain. I let this all sink in, as I felt a slight effect of the Santo Daime. My mind was quiet and I was able to hear every word he said. I understood most of it as well, which was surprising because with my limited vocabulary I usually understood about sixty percent, on a good day.

"So, he wasn't the son of God?" I asked.

"That's a parable, because he was the archetype of man, the perfected, enlightened being, who saw the world without coloured glasses. He was God and man simultaneously. How do you feel now?" he asked with curiosity.

"I feel very tranquilo," I said, feeling both the Daime and the weed, ah I mean, the Santa Maria.

"Good. Tomorrow will be different; you will drink very strong Daime. The work will be of a special kind; it will be a cura. You might feel disoriented and overwhelmed — that will be the Santo Padre doing his work," Juan explained.

"It is like little men working in your body and head," Lara said in English. They shared some coca leafs and played guitar, but it wasn't a jovial party of a group of Hippies; they were pretty serious about their work with Jesus. But I didn't mind, as long as you keep the drugs coming and I might even get to see Jesus, no worries. As you can imagine, growing up in East Germany, I wasn't exactly raised a Christian. My parents are pretty atheist, though they weren't Marxists either, and if I had to chose a paradigm they subscribed to it would have been Nietzsche's Nihilism. Now Siegfried isn't very popular with Christians, given that he announced that God is dead. I don't know if Christians thought that Nietzsche had taken it upon himself to announce God's obituary, but I think he just thought that given the evolution of understanding we really don't need to make up an omnipotent entity that rules over the element, because we know how it works now. I had never really questioned my parent's view on this and had grown up without God in my life quite blissfully unaware that there might be a higher power. Until I had moved to the West, where, especially in Bavaria, they take their religion a bit more seriously. So every year we were sent to so-called 'Besinnungstage,' days of reflection, I suppose, which in our case meant we drank an entire bottle of gin and got terribly wasted and when it was time to meditate fell asleep and snored, much to our pastor's consternation. I was a lost case, it was announced and as I mentioned I took ethics in school rather than religious education. But I always remembered a work group when were meant to discuss the existence of God amongst ourselves. I argued with a Yugoslavian girl, who had seen the slaughter in Serbia and was now a refugee in Germany. If anyone should doubt the existence of God it ought to be her. But she said to me: "If there is no God and you have no soul, how come you are you?"

"What do you mean," I asked, somewhat confused.

"Well why is it you in that body, when your parents had you? Why did you come out, not someone else? Why wasn't it your brother, or someone else entirely?"

That seriously threw me off. Perhaps it was just the Gin that confused me but I didn't really have an answer. I was meant to formulate a rebuttal and instead just said: "I don't know." The Pastor who should have been elated at truly getting to someone was more interested in keeping the conversation going though and interjected that he's sure that Biology had an answer for it. But did it? I mean Biology could map your genome but it doesn't tell why you're you.o

It might seem like a ridiculous questions, but one that is worth entertaining; why is it me inside this body and who is me? This was the first time I seriously thought about the idea of a higher entity and souls and purpose and all those questions that come with it. It was probably just the gin talking, but it stuck with me. And it occurred to me that this is why they pass out wine in church, alcohol does make one somewhat more susceptible to the message of God, on account of one being a bit more confused that usual. Although I still found it hard to digest - no pun intended - that they were eating the body of Christ and drinking Jesus' blood at church. They must have just added this stuff for the Pagans; it sounded really Barbarian to me. I quickly flirted with Rastafarianism at the time, mainly for the ganja component and the reggae lyrics, but Jesus was never really high on my list of people I wanted to meet. But when presented with the opportunity I'm sure not even the most ardent atheist is going to say no. So yeah, I was looking forward to the meeting and a little nervous too, would I throw up like Neo, the first time he was told about the nature of _The Matrix_? Would my brain be flexible enough to handle it? Well only one way to find out. And if you're a smart cookie, or just a cynical atheist, then you're probably thinking if alcohol would confuse me into believing into Jesus, a strong hallucinogen certainly will. Well it had occurred to me too, but like I said, if you're going to meet Jesus, even if drug-induced, you're not going to say 'no thanks, already busy tonight, maybe next time'. Unless you're an idiot or a fanatic, and I have met just as many Jesus freaks as I have met fanatical atheists, both completely convinced that they have found the truth.

Four more foreigners arrived the next day — a young Brazilian and two hyperactive Spanish girls, as well a relative from Chile. They had come into contact with the Daime in Spain, where the Daimistas organised frequent rituals in order to attract more participants. So far they had passed under the radar of the authorities, because the Daime was little known in Europe, but given that it contained DMT it was legally classified as controlled substance. Sessions were held in underground caves and fear was a very real factor during those sessions, I was told. People were freaking out down there and then Jesus was called upon to help. It didn't sound much fun to me regardless, it sounded more like Spain during the time of the Inquisition, but they seemed to have liked it, they were here, after all. But I felt like that the environment was a bit more welcoming than an underground cave. The church we were going to do this in was a sort of Southern Baptist, small country style church, the way the first settlers must have built them, with a triangular roof and a small porch. It held one big table in the middle and a wooden altar with a number of religious instruments, including the Daime cross, which was like a standard cross, only with a second perpendicular branch, and it was made out Yaguve, the vine, which was the main ingredient of the Daime. I liked it. It felt pretty homely and cozy to me. I also felt a sense of anticipation, of something immense approaching that night. I showered to rid myself of the energy of the day and felt energetic and light as we all entered the church together.

We gathered around the table, women on one side and men on the other, many had brought instruments and we all held a _himnario_ in our hands. The little booklet contained all the songs, received by people under the influence of the sacred Daime. Ricardo, a family member visiting from Santiago, took a seat next to me. He was in his thirties and spoke excellent English. I liked him because he seemed somewhat less uptight about the whole thing than the others, and was not a committed Daimista either. I became aware of an unusual sound that for some reason conjured up the image of step-dancing Smurfs.

"What's that clapping sound?" I asked Ricardo.

"Zapos," he said. I quickly wondered whether Zapos was Spanish for Smurfs. Noticing my confusion he added that it meant frogs.

"So you're ready to be beamed up?" he asked.

"I will know when I get there. I guess."

"I never felt anything before, you know. But tonight will be very strong Daime, so hopefully I will get some effect," he said expectantly.

Once everyone had arrived and all the candles were lit they began praying in Portuguese. The Daimistas were a Brazilian group and most of the songs sung that night would be in Portuguese. The Chileans were convinced that Portuguese was a much more melodic language than Spanish. So they had all begun to study and speak Portuguese. The sound of this beautiful, yet to me rather cryptic language, as well as my primitive but well-arranged surroundings — the double cross, the image of Jesus and the Star of David in the middle of the table — gave the impression of performing an ancient, mystic ritual at the time of the dark ages. I felt privileged and grateful to be there.

I was convinced that I was about to enter a world most people would never experience for themselves, and would only be told about in religious texts, simply having to believe the accounts of the author. It was like being told about one of those 3D images, without ever perceiving anything three-dimensional. You know, the ones that you stare at cross-eyed until some kind of dolphin or pyramid or other similarly mystical shapes appear. I heard this discussion about them on the radio recently, they have gone out of fashion a bit since the 90s, but they were talking about how some people lied about being able to see them, because they didn't want to admit to their friends that could see bugger all. Well I feel that way about religion sometimes, everyone goes on about how they feel the power of Jesus in their lives and all that, but then do they? Most people probably just listen to the priest and his stories in the same way they stare at the random dots of the 3D image and they murmur in prayer but and devotion but never perceive anything beyond the surface of the words spoken. The ones that shout the loudest about Jesus and his miracles are probably the ones who are most embarrassed about seeing dots and nothing else. But there was also those that had chosen to discard the idea that there was anything there altogether; they only believed what they saw and they saw dots, so they occupied themselves with studying each individual dot, trying to connect the dots and come up with some kind of alternative big pictures. And that's what science is like a bit, isn't it, just a bunch of random dots of information that taken together don't really amount to anything coherent. It's all random and without purpose and order, it's just pointless. Others were content with being told what there is to see and just believing in it blindly. 'Oh it's a pyramid and a dolphin jumping over it, well that's grand, God is awesome, isn't he?' But then there were also those who wanted to see for themselves. And here I was now in a small church in the Bolivian Amazaon, about to be shown how to look beyond the surface of reality, and meet Jesus, should he be around.

****

As I came out of my trance, I could feel hot tears rolling down my cheeks. Lara, who sat on the other side of the table looked at me and smiled. Normally I would have felt embarrassed for crying, but not this time around. They were tears of joy and there seemed no good reason to hide them. I had just witnessed Nirvana or something like that. I knew now that there was a home in this seemingly vast and nihilistic universe. I had experienced it. I could believe in it and that had cured all of my existential angst— my doubts and fears from previous years. Now I just had to make sure I'd remember it too.

I knew it all to be true because I had seen it, not exactly with my own eyes but with my mind. I had been overcome by an immense wave of energy. The experience had only lasted for a very short time, yet I had experienced eternity and it is not that eternity was infinite; it was just that there was no time — there was no thought, and therefore no concept of time. But at the same time there were infinite ways of seeing eternity and that is probably why we talk about it so much, fight wars over it, torture those who see it differently, get confused by details and words, and believe nothing and anything. Paul Theroux had once written that the problem with the Christians is not that they believe in God, but that they see the devil everywhere.

After we had finished the session I went up to the house where I kept my backpacks, to search for my Amazonian tobacco cigarettes, which the shamans believed to be food for the spirits. I wanted to keep them close to me, celebrate my experience with them. I had seen the younger men smoke cigarettes and we had smoked Santa Maria inside the church, so I thought nothing of lighting my cigarette as I entered the church. The Chileans were now dancing and singing to a slow rhythm and a sombre melody. Their faces looked dark and stern.

"Get out of the church with this stuff," Juan suddenly shouted at me. "We don't want to contaminate this place of holy work."

I apologised and went onto the porch. Juan and his brother physically pushed me off the porch.

"Get away from the church with this stuff," Juan shouted with anger in his face and voice, while Jose shook his head. I thought it was a bit over the top to push me off the porch because of an Amazonian Tobacco cigarette, but it was their church and community so I wasn't going to make a fuss over it, particularly since they looked like they were going to nail me to a tree or something, plus I really did feel way too chilled out to make a fuss now. I did however smoke the rest of that cigarette. Once I had finished it, I returned to the church to join the others in their dance. I moved with the rhythm in a way the others did and felt light and happy, despite the recent display of anger. I did not feel bad or guilty, because I had only made a mistake based on innocent ignorance, I felt. Soon Juan came up and told me that I was dancing incorrectly and that I should do as he did. I followed his instruction and felt stiff and restrained, moving my legs like a wooden puppet. He smiled approvingly and said: "That's better."

I could not understand it: we had just taken the Daime and for me this had been enlightening, yet Juan was being a right bastard, he wasn't anything resembling a forgiving or understanding Christian. It seemed I had overstepped an invisible mental barrier and beyond it lay danger, dark spirits and sorcery. They had all this power at their hands, yet they were afraid of the parameters of the unknown, limited themselves and lived in self-restraint and fear, I thought. They danced as if they were attending a wake, were short-tempered and self-righteous. It seemed they were no different than many other Christians, who would condemn their practices as the devil's work. As I had these thoughts I felt like repenting my arrogance and lowered my head to observe the movement of my feet, yet a force stronger than my mind lifted my head and seemed to say: 'Do not bow to undue authority.' Once we stopped dancing and had closed the session with a prayer, we sat down more casually and I grabbed my bottle of water.

"Is that allowed in here?" I asked with a smile. Juan and Jose nodded their heads, knowing that their authority was indirectly challenged by my slightly provocative question, while their teenage daughter, Milla, sitting next to the older men, tried to hide her grin.

We sat around and had a somber chat about how everyone felt but it seemed like everyone was still digesting the experience and not really in a mood to talk. Daniel, the American, looked downright frightened. I asked him about his experience.

"The evil gnomes wanted to send me underground," he said. I tried very hard to stifling a grin and asked why the mean-spirited gnomes had beef with him.

"They are just like the archangels they want to capture your soul and mould it into one of their own, " he explained.

"Well you resisted, so that's a good thing," I suggested.

"Right, but I was too vulnerable, too weak. I should have been able to send them away," he said.

"Oh well, next time. It's all a journey, right?" Was I lecturing Daniel the Hermit now, after only one cup of Daime? Well I felt good and quite frankly if I had seen any ill-tempered little gnomes I would have kicked their tiny asses back underground and then pissed in the hole they came from. That reminded me that I really needed to relieve myself, I walked as far away from the church as possible and found myself involuntarily whistling. I caught myself and then thought 'why am I censuring myself?' If I feel good then that's certainly not a crime and whistling shouldn't offend anybody, right?

I went to bed feeling content and as I closed my eyes I did feel like little men working away inside of me, hopefully fine-tuning it all and fixing whatever needed fixing in there. I'll just let them do their work and fell into a happy sleep.

I talked to Lara, the next morning, while she was sitting on her porch rummaging through a bag of coca leafs.

"So, did you like the Daime?" she asked, mumbling slightly.

"I loved it," I said euphorically.

"I could feel you and I felt a lot of love."

"I felt incredible," I said. Not sure if I would define it as love, but I guess you could give it than name, if you wanted to.

"Would you like to come to Mapia with us? There they do these rituals with more than a hundred people. They are so much more powerful than here. We're only a small community."

"I can't imagine it to be more powerful than yesterday."

"Just wait till you get there," she said.

# Chapter 6

Mystical Mapia

I returned to the National Park with the Dutch anthropologist to talk to the locals and how they were dealing with the park rules. There was a lot of discontent as they were now restricted in their way of life. _Castaneros_ looking for Brazil nuts had gone into the jungle for days, hunting monkeys and birds for food. Now they were not allowed to enter the park with guns. This created immense resentment and the few park rangers, with too little equipment, no communication and transport, had little chance of protecting almost 400 hectares of the parkland against poachers.

Locals, on the other hand, had no incentive to support rangers, because tourism was not yet a positive re-enforcement. But many had high hopes for tourism to generate income and improve standards of living. Yet, they knew, it was a long way from being a tourist destination, because the poor road created a barrier to tourism and the far-off location made it difficult to compete with areas like Rurenrabaque further south. The day we completed our interviews, the Dutchman discouraged me from staying longer, because the little resources rangers had were better spent on trained men, and personally I was glad to leave.

I returned to the Chilean village and after I had seen all these poorly kept, dirty villages, with dilapidating basic wooden huts, I was once again impressed by their beautiful settlement. Juan and Jose held no crutch against me, although one day Juan asked me not to wear my Bob Marley T-shirt.

"We have had a bit of trouble with the authorities, because we grew here," he said. "We would not like to repeat the experience. So better not to arouse any suspicion and get people talking."

"I will take it off right now," I said understandingly.

"Gracias a dios, que el entiende," he said and raised his hands in prayer.

Later that day Juan told me what happened.

"Someone with a crutch against us, snitched on us and the authorities came and cut down the plants. They took Jose and me to jail. They also knew we used the Santo Daime and confiscated some. They locked us up, but were very respectful. Then they suggested we take some Daime, so they could see how we would react. We meditated and were very calm. We talked to them and explained our reasons for using it. Two hours later they released us and told us not to grow again."

"And you haven't of course."

"We haven't," he said.

I really came to like the group, despite their slight stiffness and two days later I left for Mapia, accompanied by Ricardo, his sister Marta and her daughter Milla. While taking the same bus route through the jungle, as I had two weeks earlier, I looked with sadness upon slashed and burned fields, gradually pushing the jungle line further back. Millions of years of evolution, thousands of species, many we still don't know, some possibly containing the cure for AIDS or cancer, and all of it burned and cut down in a matter of days, just to make room for a herd of grazing cows, so that people could eat steak and hamburgers. It made me want to be a vegetarian, though eating soya beans is now responsible for even more virgin jungle being cut. And evolution had put us into this position — we could still be jumping from tree to tree, munching on leafs, but no, we are here, worrying about our livelihoods, building burger-stalls and running cattle ranches. But somehow I had faith in evolution and nature to guide us to a state of greater harmony and respect for all the other beings sharing this planet with us. It was almost like we were given more power to destroy and create, just so that we could find out what it was that really mattered to us. All that presupposes purpose, of course, a purpose behind evolution, and Darwinian theory certainly isn't too keen on the whole idea of purpose; evolution happened because of chance mutation and we are here for one reason and one reason only: survival. If that is the case then, I guess, we are no different than animals. Most people will then argue that we can make our lives more comfortable and animals can't and that's why were given a mind and the ability to reason and reflect: to live comfortable lives or more generally to avoid suffering and discomfort. I think there is truth to the notion that we have evolved to liver more comfortable lives and experience less suffering. But increasing our physical comforts is certainly not the sole purpose of evolution. I believe the purpose of evolution is to increase our consciousness. And I find it interesting that whenever I talk to people who believe in science and Darwinism they will give me the same homogenous ideas about the purpose of life, it's like the gospel of Charles, or something: we're here to survive and reproduce. Sometimes I hear the argument that we each make up our own purpose in life, which is all good and well, except that when you ask what that purpose is for them, they will say it is to live comfortably and to reproduce. People will always quote the same ideas as the purpose of life as if it were their own ingenious plan, not realizing that they are only regurgitating Darwinian/macro-economic theory. Of course Darwinians will argue that the desire for meaning to existence is so great that I cannot stand the idea that there is no greater meaning to life, so I make up one myself and then create God to go along with it, because somehow meaning always implies God's existence, as if we only have a choice between two dichotomies. Which is a silly argument really because I could just as well say that the desire for life to end after death, and a lack of motivation to find a higher purpose to my life and wanting to simply live hedonistically into the day, is equally and perhaps even more appealing than the idea that there is a purpose, and that I have to look forward to consciousness after death when all I really want is to fall asleep. It's really just a matter of preference it seems. Darwinians then ask where is your proof that God exists, because we've got proof for evolution. First of all where is the proof for the non-existence of God, because as far as I know science has not found any evidence to suggest that there is no God, and yes I believe in evolution but that's no proof for the lack of a higher intelligence, if anything it is proof that there is a purpose to life. I think that we certainly have evolved from other species but how and why we have evolved is up for debate, there is no proof for chance mutation. That's just a theory that has become widely accepted, as opposed to Lamarck, who says that we have consciously evolved. Either way there is no way to prove it - it's just a belief. And as far as I'm concerned both possibilities are equally as likely and possibly even true, sure there is pure chance mutation and pure coincidence, but does that mean that we as human beings, the biological, computing machines that we are, are the result of coincidence and pure chance? For me none of these arguments are any more convincing than those of religious believers, all of whom do nothing more than regurgitate the answers they have been spoon-fed during Sunday mass by telling me what I have heard a thousand times before, about Jesus and God and intelligent design and all the other jibber jabber that comes with their relevant belief system. You hardly hear anyone thinking for themselves. The most original answer I have ever received for the purpose of life was the following: "We're here for the sake of experience - life is about experience itself." I think there might be some truth to that idea and it was certainly more appealing than the notion that we're here solely to reproduce or because God has sent us to spread the message about his glory, as if he were some kind megalomaniac narcissist. In he final analysis we have to admit that whether we believe in God or not, we have no way to be sure whether we are right or not, it's simply a belief one way or another, and ultimately we don't know.

As I sat there pondering the nature of the universe in that bouncy bus headed for the jungle I was hoping to find some answers right here in the Amazon by continuing to travel within, using the Daime as a guide. I had begun to read about the Daime on the Internet. Its active ingredient is DMT, a class A drug, which is broken down by enzymes in the stomach if ingested orally, yet in conjunction with the _Yaguve_ vine, which is no more than an enzyme inhibitor, the effect can be appreciated for three to five hours, unlike the very short and intense intoxication one experiences when smoking the substance. At that point I had to take their word for it because I had not tried to smoke it but now that I have I can say it's not for the faint-hearted, but then neither is Daime. So much for the theory, the practice and mythology surrounding the ancient visionary drink, was much more enchanting than its chemistry. I read that the name Daime means 'give me' in Portuguese, but it is also known under the qechua name, ayahuasca, meaning the vine of death, or the vine of the soul. Shamans use it extensively in northern Peru, but also Ecuador, Columbia and Venezuela. They have healed people of cancer and drug addiction, found lost objects and put spells on lovers and enemies, apparently the possibilities were endless. The questions was why did it work, or was it just an illusion?

I took a slow motorised canoe into the jungle the next day, while the other three were travelling on a faster but more expensive _lancha_. I had negotiated hard with the boat operator because the canoe, loaded with groceries, had to go back to Mapia with or without me. The driver, a toothless toad-faced man in his twenties, did not particularly appreciate my presence and while starting the noisy engine with a rope, he managed to whip my face twice, leaving two red marks across my cheek. Unable to move my seating position, I decided to keep an eye on my attacker and wondered whether he was just very clumsy or slightly vicious.

He soon managed to dowse my leg in gasoline and drop the canister on my foot, soliciting a happy toothless grin, which led me to the conclusion that indeed he was of the viscous breed. When I saw him lighting a cigarette, I quickly poured some water on my leg and moved the bags in front of me to make room, so that I could move away from the sadistic little bastard. I remembered Marta's words that there would be little challenges waiting for me, and everyone who visits Mapia would have to go through them. According to her it was the Daime testing us. I struggled with that idea a bit, because I found it hard to believe that a hallucinogenic substance could create obstacles in the real world. But on some symbolic level it made sense, if we wanted to really break through the clutter to our own inner core, where we possibly find a connection back to the source, we'd have to move the clutter out of the way first. Some people can't take the challenges she said and leave, while most people grow and learn to respect others and themselves because there was a toothless viscous bastard in all of us. So, I tried hard not to dislike my attacker and even passed him a couple of biscuits, as a token of peace, but he only shook his head. It was then that I realised that he may have seen the offer as a provocation, because he might have trouble eating a biscuit, given that he might have some issues chewing through it. I wondered whether he had had his teeth knocked out by someone, who had become fed up with his clumsiness, but I later found that most of the locals in the jungle lost their teeth at the age of thirty, probably because of a lack of dental hygiene, which also meant that people from the city were obsessed with brushing and flossing their teeth. Nothing better than seeing some thirty-year old without teeth to get you to care about your dentures, 'Look little one, this is what you're going to look like if you don't brush your teeth.' 'Oh no Mommy, make him stop smiling. I'll brush my teeth, just make him stop.'

We spent the night at someone's house, well, hut is probably more fitting a description. In the Western world we would have parked a lawnmower in there but they had a family of 5 living in it. But they were lovely, warm and welcoming people and they shared their food freely and didn't ask for a single Reais, which is the currency of Brazil. I arrived in Mapia early the next day and soon found Maria, Ricardo and Marta, who had settled into a pleasant house with a beautiful view of the surrounding fields, bordered by lush jungle vegetation. On my way I had passed an impressive wooden structure, which I later realised was the church, shaped like the Star of David. Like I said they were an eclectic bunch, borrowing from whatever belief system they could get their hands on. But I liked it; it had a nice organic feel to it. That night I was going to see it from the inside during a spirit healing ceremony.

The church was immense and entirely made of wood. The doors alone were about four meters high and featured intricate carvings of the moon, the sun, the yaguve vine and la Raina, hummingbirds and marijuana plants. The ceiling was even higher and was sustained by a tree-like pole in the centre, which was surrounded by a table at the bottom and decorated with flowers and Christian artifacts. Electric lights, powered by solar-charged batteries, illuminated a large circle for dancing, while each of the triangles outside the circle held several rooms for resting, the local radio station, the toilets and balconies overlooking the village.

There were approximately eighty people inside the church that night; women were on one side, men on the other — even the Daime was served separately. I had been told that the majority of the people living in Mapia were Brazilians, but they were from the cities and not from the forest. The other part of the population was foreigners, from Latin America and Europe mostly. The minority of people were locals. I could see this interesting mix of people gathered around the pole now and I was quietly fascinated by the opportunity to participate in something that magical. We sat down on wooden benches and once everyone had arrived, we prayed to open the session.

As soon as we had finished we cued in front of a small window and were given the cup of magic by a bearded man, sitting in a triangle-shaped room containing hundreds of liters of Daime in twenty-liter plastic bottles. I imagined this sort of thing happening in a church in Europe or America and assumed that attendance by young people might increase dramatically. We sat down again and smoked Santa Maria in silence. I began feeling the effect of both the calming smoke and the animating drink only ten minutes after having ingested it. We removed the benches and were assigned a specific spot for dancing, by the so-called _fiscaoes,_ there to help and maintain order. A more or less monotonous song was sung and our feet began to describe a figure eight, the symbol of infinity, our minds focused on the letters in our _himnarios_ , and our spirits were free to rise.

Soon people around us began screaming and shouting in anger and fear, as they were channeling obviously upset spirits. There was an enormous Japanese woman, yelling and stomping her foot in apparent anger, making her look like a Sumo wrestler on a steroid fit. I realised none of them shouted in Portuguese, but some other, perhaps native Amazonian language. One woman was giving off gut-twisting, bird-like yelps and soon went completely out of control, twirling around madly and starting a bit of a commotion in her ranks. I curiously witnessed my first real-life exorcism, as the poor woman was held down by two _fiscaoes_ , while another drilled her thumb into her forehead. As far as entertainment goes it doesn't get much better than this. I couldn't believe what I was seeing - this was obviously not staged. That woman was truly in another world. It took perhaps five minutes to calm her down, after which she was dragged to the bathroom, where she vomited noisily, interrupted by occasional screams. She returned twenty minutes later as placid as a Hindu-cow and danced her life away. But she had started somewhat of a trend and other madmen and women began moving about in bizarre movements — some spinning, others apparently flying, some people appeared to be shivering and twitching, while the rest of us continued dancing and singing, hopefully helping some of these lost souls to move towards the light, which was the purpose of this particular session. I wondered how much of that was simply self-suggestion and if there really were spirits out and about, that wanted to be saved, and if there were, how do they decided which body to chose? 'Oooh I like the big one over there, she looks strong. She might carry me to the light.' 'Hah too late, she's mine.' Swoosh. 'Oh you sneaky little bastard.' Then I saw Andrew, my German messenger, again, as he was gliding through the church in Thai Chi-like moves. The place was a madhouse and I liked it, there seemed an unrestrained freedom in what they did. Like an insane asylum that allows you to be completely uninhibited and free and played some interesting tunes. This was merely my first night in Ceu do Mapia and God only knew what was to come. But at this stage I felt like I was merely an observer, unlike in Cobija where I had become part of the show. I guess a part of me wanted to lose control and give it over to some other entity but the other part of me thought these souls are obviously nuts and I'm not sure I want them in my space. Charity for lost souls is a really worthwhile cause, even though I doubted it would attract many donations, but I'd rather keep those spirits out of my system. I didn't want to get stuck with one of them and become some kind of deranged host - but good on 'em for trying. One has to applaud the effort.

# Chapter 7

Losing it Completely

We had all gathered around a tree, at four in the morning, and ingested a small dose of Daime. Everyone was dressed in white, except for me. I hadn't packed any white cloths; they were rather inconveniently bright, for being out in nature and all. Soon, we listened to the healing team from the Casa Santa about God knows what, because I didn't understand. They came around and pressed their hands on our hearts. I suppose it was some kind of Reiki, but that's just a guess, I had no idea.

The sun was rising and we stood there listening to the team going on and on about, whatever it was, when a dog joined us and began running around people. I liked the dog; he was cute and provided some entertainment in an otherwise boring session. But then people got annoyed with him and started shouting and throwing rocks to chase the poor mutt off into the forest. One of the rocks hit him; he yelped in pain and ran away. I was rather upset by that. I mean here they were trying to heal people, while hurting the dog. Bloody hypocrites, I thought, and walked off.

On my way home, I marveled at the beauty of nature. I was mesmerised by spider nets and insects that seemed to wear armour, some of which featured crosses. Bees went about their business sucking nectar from colourful flowers in all sizes and shapes. Fish were moving through the creek at an amazing speed. Brightly coloured birds built their nests and chirped happily into the fresh morning as the dew glittered under a new sun. I felt a connection with nature that I had never perceived like that before. It felt as if I was for the first time a part of it, and realized that usually I saw myself as separate – a subject observing an object, like a proper scientist. And then I remembered, when I was young, I had seen the world the way I was viewing it now - with curious and inquisitive eyes, but also with a sense of wonder rather than as a categorizing and codifying observer. It felt really peaceful like I had reconnected with a good friend again. I had the feeling nature had a character and on some level it spoke to me, not so much in words but more like a silent invitation to come and play and marvel, and that's just what I did. I began to feel incredibly energized by the experience and felt really happy – a feeling that I had not felt for a long time – a very simple non-demanding happiness, with nothing on my mind and no need to feed the happiness. I just ran around and looked - that was all.

We sat around playing cards that night when we were joined by one of the Spanish girls I had met in Cobija.

"How do like Mapia so far?" she asked me.

"It's a mystical place," I said with a happy smile.

"It's the greatest place of learning. I have learned so much already."

"What have you learned?" I asked curiously.

"I have learned that I don't want to think anymore, but just follow my heart."

"I know what you mean I just observed nature today and I felt kind of liberated from my usual thoughts. My only worry is that I felt that way because of the Daime, so it was induced rather than natural, I guess," I said

"The Daime is a teacher and we all need a teacher," she suggested.

"But for how long do we need that teacher, that's what I'm worried about. I mean I might learn a lot while with that teacher but then will I be able to take that away with me and appreciate nature in the same way I did today?"

"I think it's like learning how to ride a bicycle, at the beginning you need extra wheels to stabilize you," she explained, "but then when you're confident enough you take 'em off and ride on your own."

"I like that analogy. But it seems there are a lot of people who never take the wheels off, they use the Daime all their lives."

"Well, maybe they are trying to learn how to ride the bicycle on a very narrow path up the mountain," she suggested.

"I don't know, perhaps there is a certain danger in becoming dependent on the wheels or the teacher," I said.

Ricardo looked at me and said: "You know who Thomas was in the Bible?"

"No, who was he?"

"He was the incredulous one, always in doubt, even when Jesus came back from the dead and stood before him. Jesus let him touch his wound so that he would believe that he was flesh and blood."

"It's good to retain a sense of skepticism, isn't it? Otherwise you could be pulled into believing anything, or become dependent on gurus and magical drinks."

"So, you have to question everything?" he asked, with a bit of an edge to his voice

"I do," I said, "I'm Thomas the doubtful one," I said with a forced smile.

"You know you are pissing off people, right?"

"That is their problem, not mine," I said defensively.

"It could become your problem - you're living in their community. I'm just warning you. That's all."

"I just think that they are not exactly enlightened either, but some of them act that way," I said, getting more and more defensive.

"They just have their ideas about how you should behave in their community."

"Oh, you mean I have to stay until the end of a session?"

"Yes, that's one of the rules. You can't just run away, just because you get upset when they throw rocks at a dog."

"It just wasn't justified."

"It was totally justified. I would have done exactly the same."

"So they sing about universal love, but there's none for the dog?"

"This was a session for people, not dogs. He had no business there," his sister, Lara, said in a more conciliatory tone, as she noticed our voices rising.

"It just did not feel right to me, so I left," I said more calmly.

"You should go by the rules. It was the same in Cobija. You can't just light a cigarette in the church."

"They smoked joints in there. How was I supposed to know you can't smoke tobacco?"

"It is Santa Maria, Thomas," Maria reminded me.

I knew they had a point. I am a guest in their community and I have to follow certain rules and be courteous to my hosts, that's fair enough. But do I have to stand there and be bored, and watch them abuse animals, because obviously they have a different perception of dogs, than I do, when I could just walk around and feel connected to nature? I suppose people telling me what to do and how to behave reminded me a little too much of East Germany and I didn't care much for it, particularly when I didn't share their point of view. I remembered Aristotle and his Nikomachian ethics. I just have to try to find a happy middle. But it also raised another issue, if the Daime really was such a magical drink that could bring about a greater level of understanding then why were these guys, who obviously use this stuff on a regular basis, acting like brutes? When I asked Ricardo that questions he pointed out that they are just simple people, they didn't go to university, travel around and watch the discovery channel – they have a limited set of experience – so the level of understanding they gain from the Daime would be limited to the knowledge they had beforehand. That kind of made sense to me and also made me think that perhaps the next time around I would try the Daime on my own.

So during the next session I decided to take Daime and leave the church. I was going to lie in my hammock and just listen to my music.

"Do you have positive music?" Frederico, the Brazilian caretaker of the house, asked me.

"Yes, esoteric kind of music."

"Good, you will be fine and the church is not too far away," he said passing the Santa Maria joint. I had taken the Daime ten minutes ago inside the church and participated in the opening prayer. I now began to feel the effect. As soon as every one had left the house I lay down in my hammock and turned on my walkman. I began listening to Enigma and Manu Chao. The next hour or so was a musical journey, independent of my body as my consciousness travelled into harmonies and chords, on waves of sound, materialising as lights and lucid shapes in my mind. As I listened to Mano Chao, I literally rocked back and forth in my hammock, animated by waves of pleasure. 'Nobody wants to be in my pleasant state of me. King of the bongo. King of the bongo.'

I was the king of my own kingdom and laughed at everyone around me for their silly self-punishing harshness, dancing their feet off, in the hope of finding a way into heaven. Man, I'm already there — and it's so simple.

"Das is ja total genial," I shouted to myself, in German even though I usually thought in English, because I felt I was holding the key to the simplicity of life. But suddenly I became self-aware again and thought: 'What would they think if they saw me like that?' Probably that I'm nuts or some kind of hedonistic druggy, who's come to take advantage of their generosity and just got stoned without doing any spiritual work. I realized how easy it was for my thoughts to bring me down again and thought that if I could simply not care, or maybe become a hermit, I'd be free.

I had _Die Toten Hosen,_ the German punks _,_ on the same tape and they began singing: 'There is no today and no tomorrow, because it's all just an illusion. What exactly do we live for again?'

That was the point when my reality collapsed. I fell out of my hammock and knew with certainty that every single detail in this world was a creation of my mind. There was nothing to hold onto anymore. I started panicking. I needed stability and I ran as fast as I could, back into the church. I began to calm down once I started dancing and knew I was back in the illusion. But at least it was stable here, with my Christian brothers and sisters, inside the star of David.

Two nights later I partook in another session and this time the Daime was served was much stronger than what I had tried before. So as a result I vomited with such force I thought my guts were going to turn inside out. I had been standing on one of the balconies with my knees inside the carved stars of the veranda. I could hear them singing from afar, but this time I was the vagrant spirit shunning the light. I thought it was going to feel better after vomiting with such conviction, there seemed to be no volition of my own left inside my body - but it only got worse. I could not for the life of me remember where up and down was. I had no idea. I had absolutely no orientation. I was hanging onto the balcony for fear of falling into some indefinable emptiness and was breathing hard and irregularly, when a man appeared beside me, who had seemingly come out of nowhere. I had never seen him before, and I had difficulty focusing at first, but his face was angular, well formed and kind. His dark skin and the shape of his nose made him look like a native American, and he somehow managed to captured my attention.

"Breathe in slowly and attentively through your right nostril and then breathe out through your left nostril. Do this at least five times and you will feel better," he said to me in Spanish.

It was so good to hear a language that I could understand. But it took a superhuman effort to follow his instruction. I managed eventually and indeed gravity regained its grasp upon my mind. I looked around but the Indian was gone. I dragged myself into the rest area and lay down, while my mind was floating loosely above my body.

Soon the Indian reappeared and asked me to stand up and rejoin the group. As I entered the centre of the church, the light was dazzling and the sound seemed close to bursting my eardrums. I began dancing and involuntarily stretched out my hands to receive the warmth of light that seemed to be emanating from an unidentifiable source in the centre of the temple. I had been purified and allowed into heaven. I was floating on air, and this was bliss. Of course my mind interpreted the experience as a religious experience, more precisely a Christian experience, where I had sensed a source of love emanating from the center of the church where Jesus and the Virgin Mary were placed and somehow represented a connection to the divine. I once read in an article in the New York Times that scientists found that a non-sensical experience, one that throws out our feeling of coherence, a Kafkaesque anecdote, like I had just experienced, actually helps people to notice patterns that were previously hidden. They have done studies where they let people read _The Country Doctor_ , by Kafka and afterwards people were better able to identify patterns during psychometric testing. Apparently our brains so crave coherence that the feeling of non-coherence brings about such a strong motivation to find patterns and order that we actually do. And this is what happened to me, I suddenly realized that the town was divided into the two factions, those who wanted to express themselves freely and let go of all rules and limitation the way they had done during the exorcism of the ghost, and on the other hand those who attempted to regulate everything and gain a certain sense of control of the experience but also the jungle and the town - the bureaucrats vs. the artists. I realized that this pattern existed everywhere in the world; the conservatives vs. the liberals, the idealist vs. the pragmatist and rules vs. liberty. The pattern even existed within ourselves and the key was of course to find the balance because both were necessary and essential to being an harmonious person and a harmonious society and perhaps that's why we dreamt every night because that's how our brains are wired – in opposites, noticing patterns and Gestalten everywhere and going absurd and non-sensical every night in our sleep. The problem arises when one force fights for dominance because then friction occurs and as I would find out; authoritarianism was certainly fighting for dominance in Mapia, dong its level best to stifle the element of pure self-expression, which of course goes back to the same issue of non-coherence creating a desire for rules and patterns because humans are afraid of what they don't understand and the Daime certainly pushed people towards areas they did not understand, although religious explanations were always handy. I think harmony and happiness may lie in occasionally losing control, doing something completely silly and irrational, or simply not understanding and being swept away by experience, which is why laughing is so therapeutic and why people take drugs and get drunk. I realized then that this is what had brought me here. When I had wanted to find a mystical experience I had simply wanted to encounter a sensation of pure feeling and no thought. I had wanted to stop thinking all the time and attempting to rationalize and control my environment. And I certainly had found that a loss of understanding and an overwhelming experience of being.

My Chilean housemates had left and the caretaker began complaining to his girlfriend about lack of privacy. I felt the same way and moved to a house where I would live with a young, single mother.

"Many people who come here have no consciousness; they slowly have to develop it. We are here to help," the young Brazilian woman said, while feeding her child.

"You can start by brushing the leaves outside and in the afternoon you can look after Rene here."

Although I sincerely appreciated her efforts to raise my consciousness, I desired a place of my own. I had a tent and pictured a somewhat remote, cleared area, where I could live away from the expectations of people. Mapia's main activity revolved around the church and a square with a few shops that ran on noisy generators to keep the freezers and fridges going. There were a number of houses around this main area too, but once I went into the surrounding jungle I noticed that people's homes were more spaced out and numerous trails went off into different directions, most of them ending in another cleared area and often luxuriously large houses — some of them with verandas and tiled floors. I started hanging out with a young, skinny Brazilian who was building a hut and needed some help, I was happy to help but the guy was a chatter-box and a major pot head, which only made him more hyper. He was constantly jumping around like Goofy on coke and it drove me nuts. I guess it helped that I didn't understand most of what he said, because I really didn't speak much Portuguese, in fact I spoke none, merely a softer version of Spanish to make it sound like Portuguese. After spending a couple of days with him I had had enough and went on a search for a space for my tent.

Mapia is an extensive settlement, mostly hidden away in the surrounding jungle, I realised. I had been looking for a private spot for two days now, and was about to give up when I got stuck in a swamp. The mud reached up to my knees and I cursed the forest and myself for thinking that I would find a cleared area, which had not been occupied yet. I pulled myself out and tried to find my way back to the path, but I became completely lost instead. Just after I had worked my way through some underbrush did I arrive at a cleared area. I smelled marijuana and saw three beautiful plants. Soon I came to a hut – well it wasn't much of a hut yet, so far only the roof had been built -- when it occurred to me how perfect it was for my purposes. In fact it was just what I had imagined. I could place my tent right underneath it and it would be protected from the rain, but above all I had my privacy and nobody to get on my nerves, who'd expect me to babysit and be the gardener or complained about not being able to fornicate because I was around. I followed a trail leading away from the hut and arrived at a creek, which was about four meters wide, the water was crystal clear and there were trees lining the creek, which made for perfect of launching points.

It was then that I knew that I had just found my own private paradise. I erected my tent the same day, without telling anyone about it. Because of my heightened perception I took every experience to be a life lesson and I thought that it really is possible I visualize what I wanted and if I searched for I would eventually find, and probably just about the time I'm ready to give up. Whether the visual of what I was looking for was there as an intuition about the future; as an inkling of what my destiny, or whether I had a vision based on my desires and then found something that corresponded to that vision, wasn't entirely clear to me. In fact I decided that based on Aristotle's happy middle it was probably a bit of both.

In any case I was overjoyed and began cooking on a self-made fire, when a bony, short Native came skipping up the path. He was about thirty and like so many other true locals had already lost some of his front teeth. I invited him for lunch, consisting of rice and sardines, and he invited me for a joint.

His Santa Maria had a wonderful effect on me, really uplifting, getting me high rather than stoned. He told me how he came to check on his plants every day and I began to understand why his Santa Maria made me feel so good. He loved his plants and really cared for them personally. It also occurred to me why we usually don't feel that way after smoking cannabis in the West. After all we buy it from a dealer most of the time and that stuff is grown for a profit, probably under artificial lights and with plenty of fertilizer to increase its THC content or maybe even guarded by men with machine guns. This could not possibly have a positive influence on the spirit of the plant, nor its consumer. I could understand the Verve now, when they were singing that home grown is the only way to go.

My new native friend and I had trouble communicating at first, but his plants seemed to help, and my Portugnol was improving gradually. We managed to clear up the main points. His name was Jumo and he was the owner of the marijuana plants, but someone else was the owner of the hut. She lived in Italy and hadn't been here for some time. No one owned the land, it was all government owned, and I should come to eat at his house. I took the offer gratefully, because making a fire was a nuisance - there wasn't much dry firewood around.

Later that night I wandered over to his house — a primitive hut, close to the village, but on the edge of the jungle nonetheless. His attractive but equally toothless wife had cooked rice with beans and wild pig. He had just hunted it down and re-enacted the spearing of the swine together with a friend of his. It was undoubtedly very delicious meat and great company. It's funny how very simple people are often the most hospitable and most enjoyable people to be with.

"Tenhe Santa Maria?" he asked. I explained that I didn't have any. So he gave me about a quarter ounce of his home grown and told me to bring some every time I would come to his house.

"Forma de hospidalidade," he explained.

He also invited me to live in his house but I politely declined. I was very happy in my tent, I explained. All of her kids came to eat, too, about 4 of them, but none of them were his, so he didn't particularly care about them. He spoiled his own four-year-old though, who had turned into a tubby, little brat. He would hit his father with a stick just to amuse himself, granted there wasn't much in terms of entertainment in the hut, given that there was no electricity, but surely there were other forms of entertainment besides hitting your dad with a stick. His father would tell him not to do it again and a second later he was whipping his dad with even more vigor and excitement, squealing with delight like a little piglet in the mud. It went on endlessly, and drove me crazy just watching it. But, hey, he was getting whipped and it was his brat, not mine.

I enjoyed the meal immensely and poured large amounts of dried yucca and chilly onto the rice and beans, all of which was plentiful and cheap in Mapia, because it grew in the village. After a couple more joints I thanked my hosts and moved on to the village. The centre was a square with the registration office, recycling bins and a couple of shops, which used generators for their freezers and fridges, so it was a little noisy. I began talking to a Spaniard, who had been there for a few days.

"I don't know about those people. They are dancing on a low star, I think. I will go to Iquitos soon and take ayahuasca with the shamans there. They fast and follow specific rituals in order to achieve visions," he explained.

"Where's Iquitos exactly? I read about it but still I don't know where it is," I told him.

"It is in the north of Peru, in the Peruvian Amazon. Have you ever read Carlos Castaneda?" he enquired.

"No, I haven't. Never even heard of him," I admitted.

"He is the apprentice of a sorcerer in Mexico and the type of experiences, he describes, a friend of mine had as well when he took ayahuasca with the shamans in Peru. But you know there is a trabalho in the jungle tonight, which might be interesting."

"Oh, really! I didn't know that."

"Yeah, it's in a ritual area in the jungle, done by the brother of the mayor of Mapia. I think that is the group over there," he said pointing toward a groupd of about twenty, young and middle-aged people moving towards the jungle.

We joined the group after asking if we could participate, to which we were more than welcome, and walked to small round _palapa_ in the jungle. We sat down and began the ritual without further ado. I was more than glad I had talked to the Spaniard, the atmosphere here in the jungle was very different to that in the church. It was less formal and more spontaneous, the drumming was more joyful and faces were more cheerful somehow. I felt an incredible force moving through my body, animating and shaking it, to the rhythm of the drums. I closed my eyes and saw myself inside a dark medieval labyrinth trying to find a key of some sort. I searched in vain for some time and finally gave up. I simply decided that life was more fun without worrying about keys, and that simple decision made the labyrinth disappear and I was standing on a field surrounded by flowers and trees, birds and the warmth of the sun.

I danced and sang in joy, free from obligations and questions, which were only driving me deeper into a labyrinth of thoughts and ideas. I was happy and grateful for the gift of life, without wanting to know where it came from and where it would lead us. I had come home to my self and my own nature. With my eyes open, I could see the smiles on people's faces and their immediate joy moving through their bodies, I could hear birds and crickets, smelled the sweetness of the air and felt the softness of the wind on my skin. I was deeply aware of my surroundings and present in that very moment. It was quite simply beautiful.

I knew nothing of the future and the past and understood that this was the illusion, the simple fact that the future was but a dream and the past but a memory, that I could only ever live in the moment, an endless string of fleeting moments of awareness, each with no beginning or end, no purpose or reason, except existence and experience. I was innocent and child-like, blissful and happy. I had asked for love as I drank the magic cup and I was given just that. Was that the key? Simply simplicity?

I woke up early the next morning full of energy and zest, got out of my tent naked, looking at a brilliant blue sky and walked over to the water. I had heard about painful encounters with rays, and sand fish, and had no desire to have one myself. I looked around and didn't see anything. Nonetheless, I couldn't make myself jump in. It was then that I invented my counting trick, as this would stop the debate. I would simply count to three and on three I would have to jump, without any more thoughts spent on whether this was the right spot or a good idea. I dove in and felt the fresh, smooth water, gliding over my skin, invigorating my senses and waking my mind.

I came up and involuntarily smiled. I had found paradise right here on earth. A feeling of gratitude overcame me as I stood there staring at the flow of the water, and the intricate, distinct designs of each individual tree. I was truly awed by nature and life. I felt free right here in the jungle, just nature and I — we were great friends it seemed, we shared an understanding beyond words, there were no expectations no standards, just being. I started splashing the water around, like a child, let myself fall back in and allowed myself to go with the flow of the creek, my head submerged in the water, seemingly purifying my mind. I had found a home here in the jungle of the Amazon, surely not permanently but at that point it really didn't matter all there was; was the moment.

For the next couple of weeks I always began my mornings jumping into the creek, running around naked for a while and then lighting a large-sized joint, while lying in my hammock, listening to Santana's _Supernatural_ or The Red Hot Chilli Peppers' _Californication_. I really felt like I had finally broken through to the other side and become quite zen. I could still see the well-built, attractive CD sales man in Rio Branco, standing in front of me and playing the air guitar to _Other Side_ , while making a copy of the CD on tape. That's what I liked about the Third World — they still do this sort of thing for you, if you ask. Just imagine walking into a Western CD shop and asking the clerk to copy a CD onto tape for you. They might enact air-masturbation for you, but that's as far as you'd get. I don't know whether it was the quality of the seeds or the love with which Jumo cared for his three babies but they always made me cry with joy. Whether I was dancing with my then girl-friend to _Ella baila la Portugesa_ or breaking through to the _Other Side_ \- because for too long I had been slitting my own throat - I was always in deep meditation, finding all my dreams and fantasies in my own imagination.

I was in love with the jungle; the moment; my life and myself. I would eat at Jumo's house, play with his little brat of a child, watch his wife breastfeed her latest arrival, smoke more of Jumo's magic buds and walk through the village singing along to Santana's _La Nueva Era_. I chatted happily with the baker, admired his baby and commented on the taste of his bread. I haggled with shopkeepers and walked out of the store leaving a smile on everyone's face, thinking 'Damn, it's so easy when you're happy. It's truly contagious.' I walked up to a hill and sat on a tree-stump overlooking the village and followed the flight of birds, which seemed to be performing just for me. Cows appeared to be literally grinning in my direction and people waved, kids listened to my walkman, laughed at my dance moves and ran off to tell their parents about the loopy blanco and I could not remember a day that I had been so damn happy. In fact to this day this was probably the happiest I have been for a prolonged period of time. I still often remember the kind of joy and happiness I had felt in the Amazon and I realize that it was not completely without external influences, like the self-grown weed and the fact that I had nothing to worry about. But I there are things that I can replicate anywhere, such as simply allowing myself to be enraptured by the beauty of nature and walk through my day without hurry and true awareness, which of course was helped by the fact that I took the time to do short meditations, which was no more than being aware of my breath for longer than ten seconds. And whenever I do these short meditations and remember the freedom and feeling being worry-free nowadays, I begin to feel that same sense of ease about life and that the key to happiness really is just simplicity and that whatever life throws our way, nature and our breath will always be there and thus that same sense of ease would be available to us any time, regardless of where we are, even if we are sitting in a jail cell. From what I understand Rubin Carter, also known as the Hurricane for whom the song _Hurricane_ , by Bob Dylan was written, found enlightenment in solitary confinement. Where most find madness, he found happiness.

On my way back to the village, I went into an empty church to refill my water bottle from one of the canisters providing filtered water. I noticed I wasn't completely alone when I heard someone walking through the centre of the Star of David. The man, who I assumed to be in his forties, was still sitting there and apparently waiting for me when I moved towards the entrance of the Daime Temple. He was well built but his arms were shaking like those of an old man with Parkinsons. He looked somewhat agitated and was very eager to talk to me. We introduced each other and I told him where I was from.

"What do they say about the Daime in Europe? I heard that they are doing studies on it now," he asked with a sense of urgency in Portuguese.

"I really don't know. I only found out about the Daime here in Brazil."

"What do you personally think about it? Do you think it's dangerous?"

"I don't think so. It had a good effect on me so far, although I did have some taxing experiences, of course. But I guess everyone does," I said, though his line of questioning was beginning to put me on edge.

"Do you think that they are a dangerous sect?" he asked me.

"Not really, nobody is really trying to indoctrinate me in a serious way. I can leave whenever I want."

"So, why are you here?"

"Because it is beautiful here and I do feel great," I said with a big smile, but his presence was now seriously beginning to make me feel nervous.

"Can I tell you about my experience?" he asked.

"Of course, I would like to hear," I said, relieved that he was not a government official or something similar.

"One night we had a _trabalho de concentracao_ with very strong Daime, and I just left my body. I was flying with the angels up there," he explained pointing towards the sky. "I was so happy and I was crying with joy, but then I fell and went to hell. There were people screaming and in pain. It was hot and I became really scared. The _fiscaoes_ later told me that I was screaming and kicking and they tried to calm me down but I was in my own world. I thought they were demons. It was horrible. I have never taken the Daime again and I have to take sleeping pill and anti-depressants now. I also have this shiver and he showed me how his arms were shaking. So, better be careful with the Daime," he advised, while grabbing my arm.

"I have had terrible experiences, too, but one has to go through hell to arrive in heaven sometimes," I said with a smile that was slightly forced.

"You really believe that?" he asked as if he would love to think that, too.

"I really do, there is no hell, just negative thoughts and dense energy, but if we think positively we can even get out of hell. You should try the Daime again. I'm sure it would cure you this time."

"I think I am too afraid."

"Just face your fear and you will see there was no reason to be afraid. There are no solutions to our problems, just dissolutions because it turns out there was no problem," I suggested because that's what I had read recently in some kind of self-help book.

I shook his hand and said goodbye, while he looked at me with a faint smile.

That night I participated in a nightly prayer and singing session that was broadcast on the local radio station. It was all quite light and informal and it was there that I met Klaus, the heavy-set Austrian and self-proclaimed student of Buddhism.

"You are standing on the surface of a planet and you are already in outer space," the well-fed Austrian, named Klaus, said to me in a penetrating voice. I could still feel the Santa Maria from the nightly singing in the church, which was always broadcast on the local radio. I had just met Klaus and I had liked his sense of humor, plus it was strangely comforting to hear a German voice, a familiar sound in very unfamiliar environs, it was like two worlds colliding. I grinned as I looked up into the night sky, filled with thousands of stars; glimmering lights from the past, when suddenly I could perceive precisely what he meant with standing on the surface of a planet. It was endless out there and we stared right into emptiness. In fact, we stood in empty space on a lonely planet circling the sun like a spaceship and my head was in outer space already.

"That is what I like out here; the clarity of the stars. You can see the milky way so clearly here," he said.

We stood staring at the sky for some time and I marvelled at the emptiness and silence of my mind as I did.

"So what is it that you do?" he finally asked, motioning me to move, as his daughter caught up with us.

"I'm a student of tourism and I'm doing my industrial placement here."

"Interesting place to do your work placement," he said and laughed. "So, you are going to be a tourist with a diploma?"

"Pretty much."

"I am a student also," he said with some pride, hoping I would enquire further. It was hard to imagine the heavy-set Austrian from the mountains, with a thick, almost Bavarian accent, sitting inside a university.

"I study Buddhism," he finally said when had tired of waiting for me to ask.

"So have you found nirvana yet?" I asked.

"Nirvana, that's a punk band from Seattle, right?" he said and laughed again.

I liked him he didn't take himself too seriously, like some of the other folks I had met in town, who thought they were in some kind of Indian Ashram and needed to focus on the path of their enlightenment.

"So, how did you find the Daime?" I asked him.

"It found me. I run a centre in the Alps and they had been coming there for some time. Those Daimistas were always a bit of a nuisance actually, they always complained about the food and the rooms and how dirty it was, which was funny, I thought, considering they live in the jungle. Anyway, once I was asked if I wanted to try. So I said 'Ja sowieso', and took it. I liked the stuff."

"So you've taken it many times?"

"Hundreds of times at least," he said proudly.

"Ever with a shaman?" I enquired.

"Yes, there are so many shamans travelling around in Europe these days, one came by our centre frequently and yes once I took it with him. He had all sorts of stuff in there, including LSD. And I've taken a lot of Acid when I was young — so many Hippies coming through our little mountain town. The locals hated them, but I hung around them all the time."

"So, how was the experience with the shaman?" I asked as we left the village and entered the forest. Klaus used a self-made lantern, which was no more than a milk can with a candle in the middle, to illuminate the path and continued talking, his daughter, Stefanie, following behind us.

"I tell you, it was the last time I did it with a shaman. The Daime just seems a lot purer."

"What happened?"

"He said it would be like a symbolic death and I had to say goodbye to all my friends and relatives. Then I kind of died. Well, we all have to die, so at least I don't try to fool myself anymore, but it was not a pleasant experience, I tell you. It left more confusion than clarity."

"But you regard your family and friends differently now?"

"I do. But, hey, my wife still wanted me to leave and I still can't stand her - constantly nagging that woman."

"Because you are a nuisance," his teenage daughter shouted from behind us.

"See what I mean? Two of those around you all the times will drive you nuts." We arrived at the house, a double-storey wooden structure. He flicked on the light.

"There was no light when we came, but I fixed it all. All the stuff was still here, the battery and the solar panel. I fixed the sink and the water too, and repaired a bunch of other things. Pretty comfortable now, eh?"

It was comfortable indeed. There was a couch and a bookshelf as well as an eating table with a small but well-stocked kitchen behind it. Stefanie started making chai and I took a look through the books.

"Woah, I don't believe it," I said once again baffled by synchronicity.

"What is it? Did you see a ghost?" he joked.

"No, I found Carlos Castaneda on your bookshelf."

"So, what does the guy look like? Apparently no one knows."

I gave him a whole-hearted laugh and said: "I didn't even know he existed until yesterday. I met this Spanish guy and he told me about him. Can I borrow this one?" I said holding up the German version of _The Power of Silence_.

"Yeah sure, I read them some years ago, but I thought the guy is wimp, he's constantly shitting his pants."

"I'd love to read it though, just seems coincidental that someone told me about it yesterday."

"I love Mapia," he said considering the subject closed. "I was here before, for a short period. But this time I will stay for at least six months. Get away from my wife mainly. But then I still have this one to look after," he said pointing at his teenage daughter.

"I can look after myself," she said with obvious annoyance. I could see now that her nose was slightly deformed and her face appeared somewhat flatter than average; she still had a strong spirit, but her nature was timid and shy.

"So, why did you come here?" I asked her.

"I love the Daime. I used to be really depressed - always wore black and listed to depressed music..." she explained.

_"Smashing Potatoes_ all day long. Can you imagine listening to this crap for hours on end?" Klaus interjected, leaving me slightly confused.

"It's called _The Smashing Pumpkins_ , du Blödmann - but anyways with the Daime I started singing again and I felt much happier with myself."

"You didn't sing today," her dad complained.

"Because I didn't feel like it," she said.

"Yeah, because you are afraid to sing with all those people, that's why," he turned to me and added: "She can sing pretty well if she wants to."

"No pressure dad," I said with sarcastic smile.

"Yeah, always pressuring me," she shouted from the kitchen.

"Like her mother constantly bitching. This is such a beautiful place and all day she is complaining," he complained.

"It's one of the most beautiful place I have ever visited," I said. "The shapes and sizes of insects alone are mind-boggling, they look like designer insects," I suggested, hoping to break up the domestic dispute.

"You are beginning to sound like Andrew," Klaus said, referring to my German messenger.

"How so?"

"He always says things like 'Was fuer eine Goettlichkeit' (what holiness!). He surely has got a few screws loose that bloke."

"I saw him doing Thai Chi moves through the church the other night. He was cool about it though, he just said 'Some shit that had to get out of my head.' The Chileans thought he was a bit bizarre, too. He constantly lay about stuffing plants into his ears, apparently to heal his ear infection."

"You've heard his story, right?" Klaus asked me.

"What story?"

"When he jumped out of a building."

"No I haven't heard that one," I said and twisted my face in disbelief.

"Everyone in Mapia knows the story. They had a session in Hamburg in some high-rise building..." he began to explain.

"I was there, too," Stefanie said. "You know how it is here during a session: pretty intense. Now imagine the atmosphere in a big city; cars, sirens, horns and everything," she added.

"Anyways, in the middle of the session he opens up the window and jumps out. This was the eight floor of a building with a paved road below. The session stopped immediately. We called the ambulance; everyone thought he had just committed suicide."

"It was total chaos - people were totally freaking out. We thought we would all have to go jail," Stefanie said excitedly, now standing in front of the table with a pot full of sweetly smelling Chai.

"Yeah, the Daime is not exactly legal in Germany," her dad explained.

"So what happened to him?" I asked, while Stefanie poured us some Chai.

"The ambulance arrived but he just stood there on the pavement and told them that it was a false alarm. He was totally fine, not a scratch. So they left again."

"That's a miracle, that's crazy. I'm not sure I can believe it," I said.

"We were both there. That's what happened," Klaus said.

"It's a true story," Stefanie confirmed.

"That's pretty insane. I've got to ask him about it," I said and began sipping on my Chai, which was a wonderful combination of cinnamon, milk, black tea, cloves and a number of other spices I couldn't identify.

"He really doesn't like to talk much about it," Klaus said, and in his apparently characteristic way, just moved on to the next topic: "So how did you find the Daime?"

"It found me as well, and through Andrew actually."

I told him about my encounter with him and recounted my first experience with the Daime in Cobija.

"You know what the Daimista say about your first time with the Daime, right?"

"No, what do they say?"

"The experience you have the first time you take it is an indication of your destiny in this life."

"The problem is that I've never had this kind of experience again."

"The Buddhists say you should never try to replicate an experience; you should always maintain a beginner's mind," Klaus said, falling into lecture mode again.

"An empty mind, right. You know yesterday I met this guy in the church and he told me that he went to Hell with the Daime and now he has to take sleeping pills at night; his arms were shaking all the time."

"I'm sure he's done something in his past that would make him go to hell in his own mind," Klaus suggested.

"What you mean like karma?"

"Yep, either he did something terrible in his last life or in this."

"So, how is he going to get out?"

"Make up for it or repent," Klaus said nonchalantly and sipped his tea.

"How about forgive himself?"

"It's not that easy, even the Buddha had to suffer for all his misdeeds. There is a story where he was in hell and had to pull a cart with another guy, while someone was whipping both of them. But the Buddha told the other man to leave and pulled the cart himself, that's how he made up for his karma and became free."

"Maybe it would have been easier if the Buddha had realised that the man whipping him is himself," I suggested.

Klaus looked at me with an amused expression and we quietly drank our Chai. He promised to make one of his ingenious lamps for me the next day. I went home using my torch that night, lay in my tent by candlelight and started reading my new found treasure: _The Power of Silence_.

Carlos Castaneda is an anthropologist, who became the apprentice of a sorcerer, named Don Juan. Carlos had no intention whatsoever to learn sorcery, in fact all he wanted was to study the medicinal use of plants for his thesis in anthropology — but his benefactor slowly drew him into the world of Toltec sorcery. Toltec sorcery can be understood as a form of ancient science where sorcerers studied their world in order to gain freedom. They found that we live in an infinite sea of consciousness and that our bodies are surrounded by a luminous egg of energy, which is connected to the sear of consciousness by an assemblage point, located behind our left shoulder. That assemblage point is static in most people and determines our perception of reality, but through certain techniques and the use of hallucinogenic substances like peyote, daitura and other substances we can move this point and perceive and experience everything that exists within this universe, including animals and stones or appearing in different geographical locations across the planet. Carlos was being taught in two ways: one was his first attention, in which he was asking one silly question after another, and the other was his second attention, which was purely experiential and brought about by hallucinogens, causing most of the silly questions in his first attention.

In the prologue Castaneda explains that he really has not yet understood what was happening in his second attention. Don Juan explains that we once used to experience only primordial consciousness and slowly built a one-way bridge into modern consciousness — his job is to build a bridge back to primordial consciousness. The reader and Castaneda are told one strange story after another, about how Don Juan's line of _naguals_ joined the path of the Warrior. While these stories were incredible and entertaining, Don Juan once pointed out that it is not the story that matters but its abstract core.

# Chapter 8

Miracles abound

We had gathered around the pole inside the wooden Star of David, surrounded by the jungle and its mind-boggling sounds. I could hear every single sound with an unusual intensity, because this was a _trabalho de concentracao_ \- a work of concentration - and not only was the Daime very concentrated, but also our job was to concentrate. It was done in complete silence, interrupted only by short intervals of singing. My mind began venturing into a space it had not traversed before, images and ideas began rising into my consciousness, slowly building a reality that looked like this: I am the protagonist of my own personal Truman Show, everything around me and every experience in my life has been created for me and only me. I am alone in my world. Every other person I encounter lives in his own Truman Show, and thus they carry their own monitor in front their eyes. We all have our heads in a box and watch an image of the world, which is merely a self-created program, reflecting reality. We communicate to others what we see, but we can never truly know what they see, because we have never watched their channel. And Schopenhauer as well as behavioural psychologist would agree with this assessment. We don't see a one-to-one translation of reality but a version that has been tainted by our experiences, our upbringing; our culture, genetic disposition and even our language. So just like during my first LSD experience, I realized that we merely see the shadows of reality but never reality itself. In fact we codify reality in neat little categories or so-called Gestalten, so that we can walk through our lives without having to perceive an endless array of stimuli all the time. And it seemed to me hallucinogenic experiences strip away that codifying mechanism, which is somewhat enlightening, but also frightening and certainly not practical in every day life. As I said before, I read in _Girl Interrupted_ , that this is exactly how insane people perceive the world and why we have trouble dealing with the world in that state of overwhelming stimuli and possibilities, but it's also a bridge back to primordial consciousness if we can focus our minds on silence and that was precisely the point of the today's exercise. At this stage I was receiving a signal that was not normally part of the broadcast.

'Do you remember _The Game_?' this strangely alien yet familiar voice in my head asked me.

'Of course I do, one of my favourite movies with Michael Douglas in the lead role. He unwittingly becomes the central character in a massive game to set him free....'

'Yeah, Yeah, you know the movie. So let us play _The Game_ ,' the voice in my head said. Now when I say voice, it wasn't really a voice, it was more like, verbalized thoughts, so it was still me speaking in my head, not some creepy alien or anything like that. But still I did not like where this was going. I sensed some danger but also the need for courage. My mind jumped from thought to thought, like a person crossing a creek, jumping from stone to stone, the danger of falling in and being swept away, always imminent.

'You now know the nature of your own reality. But what is it that truly matters to us all?' the voice asked me.

'How would I know? Am I Jesus? Do I walk on water?' Silence - seemingly endless silence. Suddenly it occurred to me: 'Love and joy.'

'That's it. Now say it out loud,' the voice said authoritatively.

'What? I'm not crazy,' I protested, although at this stage I wasn't totally sure that I wasn't at least temporarily crazy.

'There will be silence forever, ' the voice said menacingly.

'Ok, so be it,' I said.

The atmosphere was oppressing, laden with heavy thoughts, there was certainly no love or joy in this church, I thought. They always sang of alegria and amor, but they did not convey the feeling. My heart was pounding, I had been given a task and I had to fulfill it.

'No that's stupid, it's only in my head. A voice in my head, for god's sake. I am completely off my head - been given too much Daime.' I had never heard voices before, not like this. I had always wanted to, someone who tells me what to do in this life, and now that I did, I did not want to listen.

'Goddamn it, I will bloody do it then,' I said to myself, but in my mind – I wasn't that nuts yet. I thought of the creek and jumping in first thing in the morning, using the counting trick.

'Oh, man, I hate those bloody self-dares. There is never a way out of it except doing it.' I began counting, not even wanting to think about the consequences of shouting into the silence of two hundred devout Daimistas. One, two, three... I jumped up and shouted: "Com alegria, e com amor," my sandal slapped the floor with a whip-like sound that truly surprised me.

But what surprised me even more was the fact that almost immediately after I decided to jump up and shout, like a deranged idiot, they began singing again. People, who had been in the rest area, came rushing towards the centre. The vibration in the church was suddenly joyful and happy. People smiled and it seemed that a load had been lifted. But not off me - I did not want to believe what had just happened. I did not want to believe that I lived in my own world, my own reality in my mind - all these people were just in my mind? Existential angst was all I could feel at the depth of my soul. 'Why do you feel that way? You just connected with the reality of every single person around you. You just jacked yourself into their matrix and changed it,' the voice suggested.

'I still live in a world of illusion. I don't want to remember that. I want to forget that, just let me sleep,' I suggested and moved toward the rest area. Naturally I couldn't sleep. I stared out the window and thought I would leave the following day, because it seemed too much for my mind to handle. But as I came down off my experience and readjusted to my normal reality, I began to see it more clearly, than before, it seemed. As if I was now receiving my own channel with a better signal, as if I had fine-tuned the broadcast.

"Nice show, Tom." Klaus said as we were leaving the church after the session had ended.

"So it did happen, huh? I tried telling myself that it was just in my head," and noticed a couple of girls looking my way and smiling.

"Well, I saw it. People liked it - they said the stretch of silence was very long and the energy very dense."

"I'm glad," I said, feeling sincerely relieved. I had feared people would be upset or think I had interfered with their ceremony.

We walked out of the main part of the village in silence, a delicious silence of vivid perception, smells, sounds and sights. My sensory perception seemed clear and undistorted by mental interference. I felt intellectually and spiritually cleansed.

"So what is the illusion they always want to get rid off," I asked the student of Buddhism.

"Ja, that is the big question. The world we live in is Sangsara, so is the world you dream in, and even the world you go to when you die — only the pure light you find with a balanced mind is real."

"What is that world?"

"It is the formless world, the unbecome, unmade world — it is liberation, the end of the cycle of rebirths."

"Nirvana," I suggested and he nodded. "So, how do we get there?"

"Meditation, so we can attain a balanced mind. Imagine a needle moving forward on a thread. That is the kind of balance you need to find your way to nirvana."

"Yeah, right, maybe in the next life."

"You should use your favourable rebirth and the opportunity to practice the path of enlightenment in this life, to be given that opportunity is as rare, as a turtle in the ocean sticking its head out of the water and finding itself inside a tyre."

"With all the garbage swimming in the ocean that is more and more likely," I suggested.

The following day I sat in front of a pile of mud and pulled out worms with my hands, placing them on a grid to transfer them to another pile, consisting of cow shit. Such was the joyful process of helping to make compost. I had to admire those alchemic little buggers though, they ate themselves through shit, turning it to fertilizer, with no chemicals involved.

"This is his work placement for University," Andrew told the rest of the group in Portuguese, who had a hearty laugh and wished me luck with my tourism studies.

"Did you ever think of Asterix and Obelix, while living in this crazy place? I mean they've got the magic drink, and they live in a little village hidden in the forest. They've got the bearded guy leading the work and Stefan is not unlike Obelix. If it were up to me, he wouldn't get any more hallucinogens either." Andreas gave a full display of his large teeth, as he laughed whole-heartedly, to the amazement of the group, who probably only knew the controlled and quiet workhorse.

"Man, that's so true," he said, still laughing. "I haven't thought about those comics for a long time."

"Yesterday, I even saw this buff guy riding around the village, with his shirt off, while sitting on an ox. It's a great place, I can see why you would want to live here," I said. At that point I thought I had warmed him up sufficiently, to ask the question I had been dying to ask.

"Can you tell me about your jump?" I asked him cautiously.

"It's a long time ago," he said brusquely.

"How long ago?"

"About two years ago," he said, obviously tired of talking about it already.

"So tell me what happened," I said curiously.

"I had to test my faith. I wouldn't do it again," was all he said.

"Because you have faith now?"

"Yes, I can work with the _hymnarios_ now. You know, just singing is a brave act — that alone takes a lot of courage."

"I think when I sing; people have to be brave to listen. But tell me, how did you manage to land without a scratch?"

"There was a voice in my head telling me to jump, and that I would be ok. So I opened the window and did it. Just as I was about to hit the pavement, angels came and caught me. That's all I can say."

"That's incredible. I mean that's a miracle, maybe you should explore that side of you."

"My work is with the _himnarios_ , and the Daime now. I have made my leap of faith."

That night I walked back home to my tent, after another intense Daime session. I was using Klaus's ingenious construction of a lamp. Imagine a tin can, with a reflective interior, held by a wire, which is insulated with plastic against the heat. The bottom of the can has a hole, with triangular cutouts pointing inwards and thus holding the candle in place. It worked brilliantly - literally. The circle of illumination was much wider and brighter than that of a flashlight and candles are quite a bit cheaper than batteries, not to mention much more environmentally friendly. But I was still a greenhorn, when it came to the ways of the jungle, as I would have to find out soon. I knew my way home, quite well now and listening to Santana gave me enough courage to walk the jungle at night, while under the influence of the Daime.

I sang along to the lyrics, knowing there would be no one around to hear me sing: 'There is a darkness living deep in my soul, so let your light shine deep into my hole.'

I came to the most critical part of my journey, when I arrived in front of a swamp, which I had to cross via a fallen tree. I used a stick for additional balance initially, but at some point the swamp became too deep for the stick to reach the ground and I had to rely entirely on my balance. This was unfortunately also the point where I lost my candle. The tin must have been too hot and melted the candle, which had just slipped out and I stood on the tree trunk in pitch-black darkness, unable to see even my hands in front of my eyes. This was when _Everlast_ began singing the chorus, with _Santana's_ penetrating guitar riff in the background: 'Oh God, please don't let me lose my nerve.'

I just stood there, the hairs standing up on my neck.

'Hey now, all your sinners, put you lights on. Hey now all your children, leave your lights on, because there is a monster living under my bed. But there is an angel with a hand on my head. She's saying I've got nothing to fear. Laaaaaa laaaaaa hey laaaaa laaaaaa let your light shine.' Now if you're tempted to think that I am making this bit up for literary purpose, I can assure you that this is exactly how it happened. Being able to listen to _Everlast_ was probably the only reason I maintained my calm and balance.

'Con calma se baila esta danca y con amor canto esta cancion. Oye eso te vas a sentir feliz,' was the next song on the album. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dark and I began to make out shapes and different shades of black. I looked around me, trying not to lose my balance, when just below I could see a lighter object, in the shape of a candle. I went to my knees slowly, my heart pounding, trying hard not to even think of this black mass of deadly swamp surrounding me. I managed to pick up the candle, found my lighter and pushed the candle back into the tin can, moving the triangularly shaped bits of tin deeper into the candle this time. I had been saved by _Santana_ and _Everlast_ and it was then that I began believing in the synchronicity of music and why not, why should synchronicity be exclusive to events and people, right? It's all just energy anyways, or some kind of long dream that we make up as we go along. I mean, if it's all an illusion, just like our dreams, maybe the difference between dream and waking is really not that distinct, but more like a continuum. Some dreams are more surreal than others, it seems the closer we come to waking up the more sense they make, whereas when we enjoy really deep sleep we are off in a completely different world of pure thought or symbolism and perhaps it is like this with our waking life. Some aspects are pretty unmovable but others are like water and we can direct the stream towards where we want to go. Carlos Castaneda apparently learned how to manipulate matter to such a degree he could jump from one geographic location to another or turn into an animal. Although when he asked Don Juan if an observer would have perceived it that way too, he shook his head and said that others would not be able to perceive his experience. If Andrew's story was really true and I still have my doubts, although it was independently verified by various people – mind you all of the time frequent users of strong hallucinogenic substances – then perhaps we don't realize that we can indeed manipulate our experience in more ways than we think and perhaps that is the path of evolution. Perhaps as we gain more consciousness we can manipulate our environs more and more and isn't that the case already? We can dive, fly, drive, move mountains and communicate throughout the world. Perhaps one day we can do all this without the help of devices? But more importantly perhaps we should realize that we create our own experience by the thoughts and expectations that we project into the world. We create our own reality based on our beliefs.

The next day, I sat down next to Klaus, who was sitting on the second level of his house in a room he had turned into a meditation chamber, complete with Golden Buddha, incense and meditation cushion. He was chanting a deep reverberating Ohm, his large body resonating with the vibration of the mantra, and not looking unlike that fat, golden Buddha in front of him. He even had peaceful smile on his face. I began Ohming as well and the vibration felt wonderfully luxurious, like a massage for each individual cell of my body. I actually felt high and alert, once we got up from our cushions and went downstairs to make Chai.

"That was nice - it's always more interesting with another person," he said visibly relaxed.

"You know, I wanted to ask if you could teach me a form of meditation you practice." I had wanted to make him feel a little better, since we had had some heated discussions because I thought Buddhism was a little too harsh on people. I was convinced that there was an easier way — the way of total acceptance — rather than self-denial. But also I had read in Carlos Castaneda's books that silence is the ultimate way to power and in order to achieve it we would have to practice meditation. I had read about meditation before but somehow I had never stuck with it because I had never felt that I received enough of an effect from it.

"Sure, I think you would like Za-Zen. All you have to do in this meditation is sit in a certain posture and breath in a particular way. You don't have to try and concentrate on your thoughts; just hold your posture, it's very simple."

"Sounds good to me. I like simplicity."

"Simplicity is the key, the Buddhists say. But for us it is the hardest thing to do."

"Why?"

"Because we have forgotten how to be simple, and we always think that things are complicated. But you know I found that the Daime really helps to remember that simplicity."

"Why do you think that is?" I wondered.

"It brings us back to our instinctive nature and the feelings it creates are so overwhelming, that eventually we give in to them and relax."

"Yeah, I heard today that Brazil is the only country so far that has made Daime officially a religious sacrament and therefore legal."

"That's how it should be. In Europe there is a huge scandal now, since some Spanish guy took the Daimistas to court, because his wife left him after she tried the Daime. Just couldn't get over it this guy. There are four Brazilians sitting in jail now in Spain, because of this idiot." I noticed that he began to lose his ease and sense of calm.

"Yeah, you know they told me that Mestre Ireneu was a cop and he knew quite a few influential people in the government so he managed to legalise it."

"Rubbish, he wasn't a cop. I never heard that. You shouldn't believe everything you hear."

"I was told by several people, the Chileans said so, too." I said defensively.

"I don't believe it until I read it."

"It's got to be written in black and white, right?" I said not wanting to pursue the issue.

"That's right," he said mocking himself. "So if you are really interested in Za-Zen, I have a book with me that I could lend you."

"Can you show me the posture though?"

"Sure, but let me finish my tea."

We sat down on a cushion and he explained that the cushion was very important. It had to be the right height, because if one gets uncomfortable one loses all his concentration. He then lay his left hand over his right, palms facing upwards, and emphasised that the space between the two hands should be no more than finger width, but that the hands should not touch and that they should be just below the navel.

"Your arms should be spread, as if you were holding two eggs under your armpits. Now breathing in is done through the nose and breathing out through the mouth, while your tongue rests on your gums, and that's it."

I sat down and tried it. It was a little awkward at first, but then I relaxed and noticed that it was fairly easy to maintain focused, because it required a certain effort to hold the posture, but the effort was directed towards the body and not the mind. Yet the silences at the end of each exhalation became longer and longer and I relaxed more and more into my posture and into each individual breath as I paid attention to the intricacies of breathing. The simple fact of paying attention seemed to fill me with energy so that I had the feeling that my body was being pulled up by a string and my spine became more erect with less and less effort of having to maintain the position. I also began to feel a sensation of warmth emanating from the center of my body as well as a feeling of energy flowing between my palms. I seriously liked this meditation. In fact, it was to become my preferred meditation for months to come. I would sit on my favourite tree stump, looking out over the village and hold this posture for an hour. My mind would not exactly cease to think, but I was less engaged in my thoughts and sometimes I would notice that while the mind was contemplating a certain question or problem, suddenly there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation, which would somehow harmonise both sides of the argument. I would just sit there and think, 'Wow, why didn't I think of that before?' And there would be an answer right after:

'Because you were not in equilibrium'.

'How come I wasn't?'

'Because you were not focused upon your centre.'

'Now I am?'

'Of course, you are sitting straight now and all of your body is in a balanced position, that is why you are sitting up without effort. Thus your body has become a receptacle of energy. You are moved by this energy all the time, but you are not really using much of it.'

Just knowing this my perception of colour, light, smells and sounds increased dramatically.

'Wow this is nice,' I thought. I had the feeling I was now an extension of that tree stump I was sitting on, perhaps even a tree myself. 'Is that how they feel?' God knows, but it felt good, though surely I wasn't going to sit for a couple of hundred years, growing branches and leaves, those trees were amazingly patient, and then some idiot comes and cuts them down.

'Well, they don't mind if there is a few of them sacrificed for the greater good. They don't mind living on in the houses of people. But it becomes a bit of a pain, when they are chopped down by the hundreds and burned to make room for a bunch of cows to be slaughtered in factories. It's just a waste of resources, plain and simple.'

'I can see that.'

The following days my energy seemed to increase every day. I began seeing people not as separate from me but almost as an extension of me, so whenever they did or said things that annoyed me I realized I'm being confronted with an aspect of myself. Understanding and even feeling that made me completely accept whatever was annoying me, and feel what I can only describe as love for them. I began realising that the secret was flexibility; a flexibility that was like water, always moving forward strongly but smoothly; moving around obstacles with ease and perfect flow. It was like mental Kung Fu; always using the strength of the opponent by giving in to his force and directing it — one never even had to hurt one's opponent if one were good. If he pushes you pull; if he pulls you push; and if the way is free you move forward, right from your centre. In this way I was sparring with my dark twin, my negative, who was me, as I saw him in myself and others. We became good friends and I listened to his wishes and directed his force into a direction that was less damaging. If he did not want to do anything I meditated and listened to music in my hammock. If he wanted to be alone, I hid in the forest. If he wanted a distraction, I turned on my music and talked to people. If he wanted some exercise, I worked for people and did push ups. If he wanted to think, I contemplated a problem in Za-Zen. And even though I had not seen it at the time, I experienced on a personal level what the second and third part of _The Matrix_ , which people still erroneously consider the inferior and needless extension of the first Matrix, were all about, in that I knew I had a dark twin within me; a split personality, which I had experienced for a long time in my life. And as I chose to stop fighting my other me, I suddenly made peace with myself. Sure we sparred but with ease and without forcing it. I understood then that people continuously struggle with themselves and the conflicting urges and desires within them, which is why we have politicians that will toughen penalties on soliciting sex in public places and then get caught offering blow-jobs to black undercover cops. This also why conservatives will preach morality and then get caught having extramarital affairs, why environmentalists and animal rights activists are so confrontational with other people. Why models binge eat and practice bulimia why priests are pedophiles or monks rape women. The more we fight our dark twin the more it will fight back and the more unstable and unbalanced we become, but as we accept our dark side and instead of fighting it direct it, we suddenly find harmony within.

And so it was for me, for the first time in my life I felt complete and at peace within myself. That harmony extended to other people, as I could always see the best in them and knew they were just like me — two parts — slightly out of sync. It was beautiful and I received a smile wherever I went. I still ate at Jumo's, who was always happy about the company and the little treats from the store that they couldn't afford, like Guarana lemonade, and biscuits. Though I think retrospectively I might have started some bad habits. That's always the trouble with those shiny, sweet and colourful things by the Coca-Cola and Nestle companies and their effective marketing strategies. Personally I was much more of a fan of acai, a local, cherry-shaped fruit, which is made into a deliciously energising drink and of which there was plenty to be found in massive trees all around us in the jungle. In fact I watched people smoke pure Santa Maria joints and then using a rope around their ankles and hands to climb up twenty to thirty meter high trees. I could hardly get over a fence after the amounts they smoked but they just ran up those tree. It sure was fascinating to watch though. Once collected we extracted the large seed on the inside, smashed the rest and turned it into a juice by adding water. Why people wanted to add sugar to it was a mystery to me though, especially since their teeth had a habit of falling out, because it just had this amazing strong flavor that really didn't require any sugar. The temptations of civilization, I supposed, but then I couldn't blame them, the stuff had had the same effect on me once it had all become available with the downfall of the Wall. Acai has also become a bit of an over-hyped fitness drink that supposedly produces a ripped body and a six-pack. I can only say that I did become quite skinny but I certainly didn't become ripped, even though I did do push up and pull ups on trees.

# Chapter 9

Jungle-style Bureaucracy

There was plenty of work to be done in Mapia all the time. In fact, sometimes, it was broadcast on loudspeakers into the jungle, like in a socialist work-camp, which really conjured up all the wrong images for me, but I didn't participate in various activities, although never the same ones. I found myself clubbering Daime vines until my hands were covered in blisters, collecting leaves that would fall again the next day, shoveling compost into bags and sorting medicinal herbs into neat little pigeonholes. In this way weeks flew by and it was soon time for the Daime festival of June.

The temple was being decorated, and a large bonfire was being erected, while more and more tourists arrived from all over the world. Several times I had been asked to go to the registration office and sign in — this had always seemed like one of those bureaucratic nuisances the Brazilians so delighted in. But finally I went and as I stood there, in what was nothing but a wooden shack, waiting for two Dutch women to sign in, an impressively large man walked in the door. His stature reminded me of a bear and I was most surprised, when he started talking to me in German with a French accent, after we hade gone through a short introduction. As it turned out he had had a girlfriend from Bavaria, who lived just around the corner from my parents' house. He himself was now living in Canada, where he worked with local shamans. He quickly signed in and paid a somewhat obligatory donation for the time he would spend there. Now it was my turn and I quickly explained that I did not have the money to pay for the time I had been in the village, which after all had been two months already.

"You live in a tent in the forest, right?" A rather obese, white-faced woman said in an authoritarian tone. Word had gotten around, I thought.

"I do and I really love it - it's a beautiful place -very tranquil," I said flashing my most charming smile that had made me so many friends in the village.

"Well, you can't live there. You have to move into someone's house. That's the way it works in this community," she explained to me. She was obviously from the city and she liked her rules.

"Why? I really like where I am."

"Yes, but it's dangerous in the forest — there are many snakes there."

"I have lived there for two months now and I haven't seen one."

"You were lucky; your luck will run out eventually," she said almost threateningly. I could not believe what she was saying, but tried to remember to see the best in her and understand the way she thinks.

"I think it is not a matter of luck. God does not mind me living in there by myself or else he would have sent me a snake and probably scared me off." I actually doubted that, I think I would have been delighted to see a snake, they were quite magical to me, as long as they stayed away from my ankles, of course.

"As long as you live in our house, you live by our rules."

"What? Your house? I am living in the forest. If it is anyone's house, it's God's," I said finally losing my cool. 'Only if I were to actually live in someone's house, would I have to go by their rules,' and be their private slaves to be educated into the ways of obedience and humility, I thought. That's probably what she doesn't like about the whole set-up. I didn't fit in with how they do things here.

The skinny man sitting behind another desk, who had so far quietly observed the argument, now thought it was time to diffuse the situation and started speaking in a slightly forced, conciliatory tone: "You have to understand, we will be held responsible if something happens to you. But you are most welcome in my house; you can move in this evening."

That was the last thing I wanted to do. But I told him that I appreciated the offer and added: "I have actually been offered a bed in my friend's house. His name is Klaus, and he is from Austria."

"Yes, I know Klaus," the fat woman now said with a cheerful smile, which would have won her employee-of-the-month at any major fast-food chain, had she been able to keep it up.

"Well I shall move in there as soon as I can then," I said, trying to imitate her most sincere, cheerfulness.

"Try to move in there tonight, please," her bony helper advised.

I left the office in a very compassionate mood, but decidedly unwilling to leave my little paradise, they would have to drag me out of there. That afternoon I sat in Klaus's house and told him about the little dispute.

"Yes, they come from the city and they like to bring their neat little ways into the jungle. I think that is why they like all those white uniforms and the little Verdado stars. But, hey, they are insignificant things; what counts is the Daime."

"But if the Daime can't make them a little more open-minded, what will?"

"It's a process, you can't expect them to become enlightened in a matter of years; probably takes a lifetime. Just accept them as they are and try to cause a little less dispute. They are beginning to talk about you."

"Talk about me? What do you mean?"

"Well, you are not coming to work very often."

"I work all the time. Just not in one place. I go to a different place all the time: the Casa Azul; the medicine garden; the art factory. I know the bureaucrats aren't there, but that's precisely why I don't go there."

"Well, I am just telling you, you seem to like to take things from others but not give much. I mean you have come here and eaten with us quite often, and have you ever brought a sacrifice to the padrinos?"

"I can't believe what you are saying. I come here because I thought you liked my company and I didn't think you guys were poor. You invited me for meals. I did not invite myself, plus I was pretty happy to share my Santa Maria with you. And as far as the padrinos are concerned, they have got their porches full with food that they can't eat, because people think they have to bring them something all the time, when they have very little themselves."

"I like you and you are welcome here, but be careful with others. That is all I am saying, and I don't think you understand the idea of sacrifice. That is a form of gratitude to the teachers of this town."

"I think the only reason you are thinking that way is because people have tried to influence you. I mean did you think I was taking advantage of you before?"

"I didn't, but I am beginning to think so now. You might be a bit of a free-rider."

"See that is the reason why communism doesn't work. People are so afraid that others will take advantage of them. I don't take advantage of people. I give and I receive, I understand the law of karma. But I don't give to those who have plenty already. I share it with the local natives, the one's who don't own tiled villas, fridges, TVs and satellite dishes, because they come with money from the city and try to run this place now. I give to those who don't have much. I live on their level, eat simple and live in a tent. The reason they don't want me to live in a tent in the jungle is because they couldn't and because they can't control me there." I realised that I had become a little agitated and tried to calm myself down, it just seemed unjust and totally distorted to me, but I had to respect the fact that this was their way of doing things.

"Just try not to upset too many people, that's all."

"If people are bigots, greedy and corrupt they tend to upset themselves once someone comes and does not live by their rules."

"I'm just telling you that conflict is not a solution, it is not the Christian way."

"Well, if I may remind you, Jesus pissed off enough people to get nailed to a bloody cross for it."

"Oh, c'mon you're not Jesus."

"Of course I'm not, he ascended two thousand years ago, but don't tell me about Christian teachings to justify and condone their bigotry."

"What are you two fighting about?" his daughter finally interrupted us in an unusually cheerful manner. Perhaps she had become a little fed up with her dad and I being best buddies. I was glad for the interruption. I really had no intention of pursuing the issue any further, although it left me with an uneasy feeling. Carlos Castaneda held some wonderful advice for me though, contained in a story that has him run away from a Puma. Through some outrageous feat of perception he escapes, only to be asked by Don Juan, whether he felt personally insulted by the Puma, because he wanted to eat him.

"That's absurd, the Puma was hungry, and I happened to be there," Carlos responds.

"You should look at other people the same way. If they are dangerous get out of the way, but don't feel treated unjustly or in the position of a victim — they are just hungry for energy and you happen to be there," Don Juan suggested.

I walked to my tent and turned on my Sony Walkman. Enigma encouraged me not to care what people say and follow my own way, yet I did feel a little like I was on my own now and that my time in the tent was limited, because they would notice that I was still living there sooner or later. It was more than timely then, that I got to know Big Bear Frank, who had come to Mapia, under even more conspicuous circumstances than myself. We were standing in church after another trabalho that had left me light and free of the tension, I had accumulated during the day, when he told me his story. I loved the way he was speaking English with his French accent, all the time moving his tall, well-filled body. He had an impressive presence and made the story come alive for me:

"I was doing the Sweat Lodge - the hardest thing I have every done. I mean it gets so hot in there. You think you can't take it anymore. But you can't leave, not if you do it the Warrior Way. You really know you are in a body, when you are in there and at some point you just let go. It is the only way — you have to just let your body deal with it. Once you come out of there and fall naked into the snow you are pure, and then the visions set in. So I started seeing this face of a black man, pretty scary man - scared the shit out of me. But the shamans I was working with just said, 'Wait, you will find out what it means.' You know they say: 'If you don't see visions or hear voices, you are the crazy one.' Well, two weeks later, I meet this woman and I tell her about my vision and she says that it is Mestre Ireneu, the founder of the Daime Church in Brazil. She happens to know a Padrino in Canada and I take the Daime. Now I have really wild visions of the jungle and snakes. So she tells me that I have to go to Mapia. On my way here in the boat I constantly see Ireneu's face come out of the jungle, it is getting really crazy. I actually have to try not to think too much about it or I will go crazy."

"Wow, what a story. So what do you think of it, now that you are here?"

"Seems a little rigid so far, but I give it a chance," he said.

"Yeah, sometimes it seems really rigid and other times they just go mad. I have the feeling there are two sections in town, one is a bunch of bureaucratic control-freaks and the other is a free-spirit group of artists and youngsters - interesting town regardless and I love the Daime."

"Meditation is still better I think."

"Yeah, but the Daime is like the Spirit out of the bottle, it can really fulfill some of your wishes. Do you know Aladin?"

"What?"

"You know 1001 Nights," he nodded his head. "Well, the spirit out of the bottle has been imprisoned for thousands of years and now that he has been found, he becomes Aladdin's servant, but unfortunately like everyone before him, Aladdin only wishes for things that he wants. Give me, Give me, Give me, Daime, Daime, Daime. But Aladdin is a smart boy and after the first two wishes did not make him happy, he decides to let the spirit free. So finally after thousands of years the spirit is free and Aladdin is happy."

"Nice story. It is quite remarkable, how the Daime lets the words come out more freely," he said thoughtfully.

Soon it was the day of Saint John the Baptist and one of the most important celebrations in Mapia. The interior of the church was impressively stimulating to the senses and literally bursting with colours and smells. It was also full to the brim with people all wearing white shirts and their verdado stars. There were children and elders, who usually did not attend the services, but also people from all over the world: Japanese, Canadians, Hawaiians, Germans, French, Dutch, Spanish and Latin Americans.

The women wore green skirts, crowns and white shirts. They looked like bewitched jungle elves, dancing and singing around a decorated tree. The men wore blue trousers, white shirts and blue ties, all sporting their silvery Verdado Stars. The scent of Santa Maria mixed with Frankincense, creating an atmosphere of haze and holiness. I felt sheltered and save — there was a sense of communion with the rest of the world, a microcosm of global unity, inside the wooden Star of David. As I looked around I also noticed the man I had met some time ago who had gone to hell after flying with the Angels. He now stood there with nervous anticipation.

We all began dancing and singing about balance, unity, the forest and Jesus Christ. I could see that the hell-boy was channeling his nervous shake into two rattles in his hands, and danced and sang with more vigour than anyone around him. Seeing him move towards liberation like that made me feel happy too. I truly wished for him to find his way back to heaven again, no matter what he had possibly done once. The following day, I saw him wearing unusually colourful cloths and working with spirit and enthusiasm around the main square. He greeted me happily and smiled the most liberated smile I had ever seen on any person to this day.

But I already knew that night that he was going to be fine and that thought gave me such faith in the Daime and the forest spirits, or whatever it was that was helping us, that I was able to completely lose myself in my endless figure eight and the cryptic Portuguese text I held in my hands, somehow answering my innermost questions and establishing a more profound peace than I had ever known. At one point I felt as peaceful as a baby and perceived all of my sensations with an intensity that I could only prescribe to that of an infant; indeed I felt like a baby in an adult's body. I walked out onto the balcony, where children were sharing Santa Maria with old men, teachers and parents. I noticed Frank who was sitting on a twisting trunk of tree, apparently in deep meditation. He opened his eyes, as he heard me approach and stuffed a bundle of leafs back into his shirt.

"Gives me strength," he explained. "One of the shamans gave it to me and told me that they are magical and that I should keep it close to my heart," he said and smiled mysteriously. "The Daime is truly amazing. I felt a lot of tension earlier, but now all this energy is leaving my body. I can feel it pouring into the earth through my legs. Have you ever felt this?"

"Yeah, it's a great feeling. When I can't sleep at night, I just shake my legs and then feel the anxiety pour out of me."

"How are you feeling now?"

"Oh, I'm great, I feel so incredibly peaceful, it is almost like floating above the ground with effortlessness. You know, I would say that what they do here feels like an Egyptian ritual, like they are breathing light into me," I said not really thinking about it.

"When I was meditating, just now, I had a vision and I was in Israel, two thousand years ago. I was witnessing the crucifixion and there was an incredible pain in my heart. Earlier I stared into the fire, a face appeared and said to me: 'Ask yourself where the pain in your heart is coming from'."

"Do you think you know?" I wondered, although I had heard of other people projecting themselves onto Judas or Jesus or whatever they felt they deserved. An Israeli once told me the mental wards of Jerusalem are full of people with Jerusalem syndrome, and it's not an unusual sight to see people in bed-sheets walking through Jerusalem and talking about being the next messiah.

"I have an idea, but I can't say for sure," he said quickly. A tall, slim figure approached us. I had noticed him before; he looked like a shepherd from the Chilean mountains, because he always wore a sheepskin coat, even inside the church, as well as an impression of madness on his bony face. During the day he always walked around with sunglasses, and a walkman. Once I had met him in the forest and he had started babbling away, although he seemed to be a loner otherwise. I had not understood much except God and the world, music and Jesus Christ Superstar. He now looked at us and began speaking in a tone that sounded like a message from the superior of the universe himself.

"You talk too much, go back and dance!" he exclaimed. Somehow his tone made me nervous and I was about to get up, but hit my back against the veranda. Frank pulled me down again and turned towards the Chilean shepherd.

"We will be going back, five minutes, don't worry yourself, go back inside!" the self-acclaimed shepherd walked off and Frank explained that I needed more strength and that I should not let others throw me off balance.

"Be stable and firm," he added.

"I'm very sensitive to people's energy, when I am on Daime," I explained.

"You probably always are. The Daime just amplifies it. Be like a rock, you need strength."

I asked him, what his plans were once he leaves Mapia.

"I am going to Peru. I want to visit Machu Pichu. It is supposedly the navel of the world."

"You know I had dreams about Machu Pichu; it appeared as a vortex of energy and I was flying above like a condor, but there was also a pyramid and somehow it appeared to me as the most energetic structure, because all the forces were in equilibrium."

"Mmh, that is an interesting thought. The Natives always think in terms of four, the four elements and the four corners. But in a pyramid the elements would be united by the apex as a fifth. Let me meditate on that."

I left him alone and went back inside, rejoining the collective trance. There was a two-hour break at midnight, and again we sat and ate at Klaus' house, who felt unusually light and jovial.

"Sorry if I was a bit hard on you," Klaus said. "You're a good guy but you have to be careful about people, you still want to stay for a while, no?"

"Actually my visa runs out soon, at the border post they only gave me 60 days, because I told them I am going to Mapia and they did not like to hear that."

"You should not have told them, especially at the border with Bolivia, because so many people from here go there, leave the country and come back in. They are just a bit complicated. Well that's a pity, I was just getting used to you."

"You are a bit of a loopy Ossi though," his daughter commented. I took it as a compliment. In fact, I took a certain pride in the classification, and made a few more-or-less successful attempts at imitating Brad Pitt in The _Twelve Monkeys_.

"You may think you've got me analysed, figured out and classified, but you're wrong. I am much crazier than you think and I'm not an East German, I'm a Russian from a Russian-occupied zone," I began mumbling in Russian and shake my hands idiotically, until they fell into epileptic laughing fits. We calmed down again and Klaus recounted his own experiences on the edge of madness.

"I kept hearing voices, they were screaming in agony and wanting me to help them, they were all around me, but I wasn't going to join them. I just told myself: 'Hey, that's just the way it is and I am going to sit here and go on meditating.' But I heard stories much worse than that. You know at the beginning here in Mapia they just had a big hole for a toilet and people would sit on a tree just above it. Being on Daime, they would sometimes lose their balance and fall in. The hole was pretty deep and they could not get them out, because they were completely out of control. They were screaming and shouting down there. Apparently they thought that they were getting eaten by worms. Not a very nice experience really."

"Not nice at all," I agreed. We returned to the church and to my surprise there was absolutely no problem in continuing to dance, as soon as I was in my figure eight, my body just kept going by itself, as if on automatic pilot, plugged in to some earth-based battery. At one point I saw Frank waving me over to the balcony and joined him. He looked visibly excited and his face was glowing with joy.

"Thank you, man. That idea with the pyramid was a brilliant one, although it is actually a double pyramid. I just saw it before me, all the elements in balance. Then I saw Mestre Ireneu again and I was given my name and he told me his." He pulled out a green bag no larger than a plum, opened it, and showed me a small green double pyramid made of Jade.

"I know now why I came. A shaman gave this to me after I had drawn it on a piece of paper. He just said: 'Hey, this is for you,' without me having said a word. Those people just know; they are incredible." He pushed me towards the centre of the temple and pointed towards the round table in the middle.

"You see the picture of the man on the table, he is wearing a bag just like this one," I couldn't see exactly, but I promised that I would take a look next time I was near.

"This could be for you too at some point in your life," he held the bag like a pendulum and let it swing towards my heart, the effect was so overwhelming that I though I was going to faint. A magnetic force seemed to pull my heart and expand it like a blowfish.

"But you are not ready," he said. I looked at the bag, like Frodo had looked at The Ring of Power. I wanted to pull it out of his hands and take it. But then he was just a little too big for me, 'Well, Kung Fu might do the trick.' He grinned, as if he had read my thoughts.

"There are secret techniques for enlightenment, but they are secret for a reason, because if you are not ready, they will burn your spine, you have to get rid of the knots in your spine first." He was still smiling at me and then just walked back into the church. I followed him and we continued to dance. I took a closer look at the little bag on the picture of Jesus and indeed it was seemingly the same one I had just seen, swinging towards my heart. All of this was a little too creepy for my liking, just a little bit too much all at once. So I decided to forget such fancy ideas as enlightenment and keep dancing instead.

The morning light slowly crept into the windows of the church when I walked outside and was a little unnerved by the fact that I could see the grass and the trees glowing intensely with a strangely vibrant frequency, which I supposed must be their aura. The flowers, too, were radiating with an intensity that I could only liken to that of the sun. I was still utterly fascinated by such unusual modes of perception, when the crowd gathered around the pole and went into prayer inside the wooden Star. I walked inside again to join the rest of the group, closed my eyes and spread out my arms, animated by a force beyond normal understanding. While I gave in to whatever it was, a spiral moved towards me in my mind's eye. I was about to enter its vortex of light, when someone pulled my arms down and told me to go and stand in my spot. I knew that I had missed my shot. As we walked out of the church I passed Frank and he asked me what I had seen. I told him and he seemed visibly disappointed.

"Damn, that was the spiral of time, you could have gone in. What a pity."

"Guess it wasn't time yet. What was the name given to you by the way?"

"Judas. Mestre Ireneu was Sao Joao the Baptist."

I sat in Frank's hotel room the following night, which was also my last night in Mapia. I had organised a boat for the next day. In front of me were Native American artefacts, spread out neatly over a beautifully woven cloth. Frank had wanted to return the favour, because I had given him three eagle feathers. He had slipped off his chair and lay on the floor, to thank the spirit for its gift. The elders would cry, he had said, when they given the gift from Brazil.

"The Natives say that everything is a part of the spirit, nothing belongs to us. When we are given something we use it, because we need it and then we pass it on. You can now choose three things yourself."

"I don't know they are all so beautiful."

"Just look at it and see which one draws you most."

"I think I definitely want this one," I said and picked up a necklace with a thumb-sized tooth.

"Woah, I had a feeling you would choose this one. That means you will have an incredible adventure and you will need the strength of a bear, because this is the tooth of a Grizzly Bear."

"I don't know if I like the sound of that, maybe I don't want it anymore."

"You picked it so you'll need it," he said. I also decided that I needed a dream-catcher and a postcard depicting a Healer; an old Native American woman.

"Sure you don't want to stay a little longer? There are a few more works coming up."

"No I have to go. I am already over my visa." We exchanged email IDs and I stumbled home in the dark. What an adventure it had been already! How can it get any more adventurous than that? And do I care much for more adventure? Maybe I should just chill out on a beach somewhere? But of course there would be a bit more excitement up the road and had I known what to expect, maybe I would not have chosen that path, but in retrospect it was all worth it.

As I sat at the front of the boat the next day, the jungle passing me like symbols from a more primitive time, I felt free like a child — once again connected to the spirit and nature. It was a feeling of utter connection and trust in the world and the magic of life, like I had come home from a long journey, but then again I was still smoking Juma's buds. But the one thing that I had not so far managed, was to have a real vision on Daime. Hearing about visions from other people and not getting any yourself was very frustrating. It's like being able to listen to the radio but not being able to watch any television. It made me feel like living in the valley of the _Ahnungslosen_ again. So I was hoping that taking ayahuasca with a shaman might bring about a true vision. So in a sense I was on a vision quest. I was really hoping that a vision would reveal my path and a my true destiny in this life. Based on my experiences so far I was really optimistic about a communication with the spirits through visions and though that my journey so far had only been a preparation for finding my own true potential. And in a sense it was right but on the other hand things never quite work out the way you think. Well at least they don't do for me.

# Chapter 10

The Bite of the Grizzly

I disembarked the small plane, which had just landed in Cruzero do Sul in the northwest of Brazil. Jose, one of the Chileans in Cobija, had told me that this was he fastest way to Iquitos, Peru, where I could work with a shaman. I'm not sure if it was revenge for smoking inside his church but it was the worst travel advice I have ever received. The idea was that I would catch another flight to Iquitos. But I soon found out that there was none scheduled. There would have to be at least six people, for the little Cessna, to fly to Peru. There might be one in two or three weeks, I was told.

Cruzero do Sul is a desolate, dirty town and I had no intention of staying around, so I went to the port and began asking around for boats going to the border with Peru. I didn't have much luck at first and spent three exhausting hours scrambling over houseboats trying to communicate with my horrendous Portugnol. Finally someone agreed to take me to another town, which would be a three-day journey up the river, from where I would be able to reach the border. They would leave in twenty minutes, the captain informed me. I realised that I needed an exit stamp on my passport, so I left my backpacks with a restaurant owner and ran to the immigration office.

"Why do you want an exit stamp? Where are you going?" the official asked me, looking at me a little puzzled.

"I am going to Peru. I have someone who will take me down the river on a boat," I explained, still out of breath from running up the hill to the immigration office.

"You can't do that. You can't pass the border there," he said looking at me like I'm nuts or up to no good.

"Why not? There is a border post, they told me."

"There is, but it's not for foreigners. Why do you want to go in a boat?"

"Because there are no airplanes. I just arrived here today and I can't go back," I said,realizing this may be more difficult than I had imagined.

"You have to go back. I'm sorry." He pushed my passport over the counter and disappeared. 'No way, I'm not giving up now. Where there is a will there's a way', I thought. 'There must be.' I followed him into the adjacent office and explained that I did not have the money to return to Rio Branco. I needed to go by boat, and they were waiting for me.

"You can't go this way, it is too dangerous and you will only run into problems," he said.

"No, I won't. I trust in God and I will be protected," I said, appealing to their Christian beliefs. Besides, it was true. I somehow had faith now, I had the Grizzly tooth around my neck, after all.

"What do you want to do in Peru anyway?" another, perhaps more flexible, immigration officer now asked.

"I want to work with a shaman," I said truthfully.

"He is right though; you will only get into trouble there," he responded looking at his colleague.

I was not going to be convinced. I wanted to go. I was not going back to Rio Branco; that was for sure. But I really did not want to wait for weeks on end for an airplane to go to Peru.

"I will deal with it. Can you please give me my exit stamp?" I pleaded.

They discussed the situation amongst themselves and finally decided to give in, but they wanted a copy of my passport. The copy machine, however, was, for some incomprehensible reason, in another building and someone disappeared with my passport. I looked at my watch. Twenty-five minutes had passed since I had left the port. 'Damn, I was going to miss my boat and sit there with my exit stamp. 'No,' I thought to myself, 'I managed this, so I will catch the boat as well. They will wait for me.' After all I had not paid them yet and I had noticed how his eyes had grown larger when quoting me my fare, which was about 20 US Dollars. I sat there for another very long ten minutes, like an aspiring fakir on nails. And I was almost thankful, when the officials began talking to me, because it helped to pass the time, although being Brazilians, they wanted to talk about football as usual, something I knew very little about and had no interest in whatsoever.

I had stopped telling people that I lived in Munich, because they would endlessly go on about Bayern Munich and list every single player in the team. I had picked up a few useful pieces of information about football from those conversations and simply repeated them when the situation called for it, and at this stage I actually sounded knowledgeable, well at least to myself. Finally my passport arrived and I was free to go. They watched me leave the office with a sense of pity in their eyes and as it would turn out the look in their eyes was certainly justified. I ran back to the port with my exit stamp, only to stare at an empty patch, where the houseboat, which was meant to bring me up the river, had been about 40 minutes ago. In Brazil, like in most developing countries, time was a flexible unit of measurement, but it seemed I had run into the one boat captain who liked to stick to his schedule. I asked people when it had left and they told me that it had gone up the river five minutes ago. I just wanted to sit down and cry, and almost did too, but then decided to hire a motorised canoe and race after the boat instead. My situation had caused a bit of a scene in the port and people were obviously enjoying the show, but they were supportive and actually cheered me on as we left the port. I thought that if I hadn't been that stressed I might have actually really enjoy this entire experience, but at the moment I was just fretting what I would do if I didn't catch the boat, because it had not been easy to find a boat that would go that far down the river. The boat driver really gave his best, but those heavy wooden boats, moved by a pitifully small propeller on a two-meter long metal pole, would not go any faster than about twenty kilometers an hour. I found myself praying to the spirit and God knows what, while grabbing my bear tooth talisman, when to my utter amazement I finally saw a familiar-looking green hut on a flat boat, powered by two propellers. That was my ride, tugging along down the river. I was so happy I slapped my boat driver on the back and shouted 'well done.' He was quite pleased with himself and smiled at me as if to say: 'What you doubted me. Of course we were going to make it.' We leveled with the boat and I threw my backpacks over, thanked the driver and paid him. The five people already on board, who were also hitchhikers, were laughing, while the captain kept a perfect poker-face and said: "Thought you weren't going to come."

The boat was fairly large, and there was plenty of room for seven people. But it was also terribly slow and constantly stank of gasoline vapours. The first thing I did on my new home was to move to the rear end of the boat and pour three buckets of water over myself. I was told that where I was taking a shower was also the toilet. Apparently you simply hung you're your ass above the water. It certainly wasn't designed for anyone with constipation. The rest of the evening I just spent looking at the lush vegetation around me, marveled at birds and beaver-like creaturs, listened to stories of jaguars and snakes, and quietly thanked the spirit for the strength to persevere and the reward given. I felt pretty good and I actually put up my hammock in the back and just chilled out to my music. And thus three days passed me by. We eventually ran into engine trouble and had to change boat, which was even slower, because it only had one propeller and it leaked like a sieve, so that we spent hours shoveling water back into the river. I was glad when we finally arrived.

The light was dimming when I disembarked the boat in a town called Belen. The town was an indistinct dwelling right next to the river, but quite a few people lived there and houses actually looked quite neat, while gardens and roads where strewn with rubbish, as is custom in Brazil. I went straight to the church because I had been told that there were no hotels and I hoped that some Christian soul might want to shelter a stranger. Instead, I was sent to the only Spanish-speaking man in town, an enigmatic Peruvian, in his forties, who looked like the Latin American version of James Woods. I say enigmatic because he seemed to possess an incredible knowledge of philosophy and history, and was eager to share his knowledge, yet he was a construction worker and he lived in a shared house with other single people. He also had a peculiar way of speaking, which reminded me of a turtle named _Momo_ in one of Michael Ende's Novels.

I was invited to join him and his housemates for dinner, which was the usual rice and beans but this time with fresh fish from the river, which was delicious. Everyone made me feel really welcome and I slept in the living room on the couch, in front of the TV. The house itself was fairly well furnished, with modern equipment and religious artifacts, but the garden surrounding it was in a state of devastation. Not only was it overgrown with weeds and randomly sprouting plants, garbage was seemingly flourishing in midst of it and competing for light and space with other plants. I had noticed this in other Brazilian villages and towns. In fact, the rest of the community looked just the same - the only exception that I had ever come across was Mapia.

The people, on the other hand, were the friendliest, most welcoming and giving people I had ever met anywhere. I stayed in the house for several days, always hoping for a boat to carry me onwards and became a bit of a celebrity in the process. Apparently no tourist had ever lost himself in this part of Brazil before. I was dragged around from house to house and given food left and right. My favourite was still the dried yucca with beans and rice as well as plenty of chili, even though the fish they pulled out of the river was ridiculously soft and flavorsome, plus there was plenty of it. It seemed like all they had to do was drop a net and pull it out to collect the fish. Soon my presence as well as my plans became known to the local police, and I was invited for a visit to the office, which was no more than a hut with a desk and two security guards with machine guns.

"You can't go to the border," the friendly looking man with a round beaver face said after a few niceties and a cup of tea. "You have to go back."

"I can't go back. I have an exit stamp from the Brazilian immigration now." I showed him my passport. He brooded over it for some time and discussed it with his colleagues. I gathered that he was most delighted by a welcome distraction, in what was otherwise an unexciting position.

"You see the problem is that you can't go to the border, because you will enter a National Park and you need a permit for that," he explained.

"Well how can I get one?" I enquired, thinking that there must be a solution to that particular problem too.

"The woman who can issue one is not here right now and in any case you can only get one if you do a study and have some letter of recommendation from a reputable organization," the official said.

"There must be a way around it. I don't have the money to fly back from Cruzero do Sul," I said to him.

I had learned that especially in the countryside, the law was a very flexible thing, much more so than in Western countries or the city. He also seemed a very understanding type of person, while his colleagues fondling their machine guns, eyed me with a certain degree of suspicion.

"Why did you come without money? What tourist travels without money?" one of them asked me now.

"I have money, just not enough to fly back."

"Ok, I will make a few phone calls," beaver-face decided and I left the office promising that I would return the next day. I told the James Woods look-alike about my predicament and he began telling me about a dream he once had, in his characteristically slow voice, which somehow drew me in as if were going to a reveal the purpose of the universe.

"I dreamt about a woman; a beautiful woman, she was intelligent and hardworking and I knew I was in love with her and wanted to live with her. But then another woman, who I had known a long time ago, reappeared and I remembered how much I loved her also. She was jovial and playful, as innocent as a child. Now I was very confused. I did not know whom I wanted more. But I knew I had to make a decision. I woke up and knew this dream somehow applied to my situation in life. So I ask you now, what should I do?"

I was going to say something boring, like follow your intuition or let time decide, but then I said: "You know, I always believed in the third way, the best of both worlds, perhaps you can be happy with both women at the same time?"

"Very good answer. That is precisely what I thought," he said with a mischievous smile on his face. And apparently his dream constituted an answer to my dilemma because he just continued sipping his juice without saying another word. I did not understand at all at the time, but I was going to find out that indeed, this was going to be the solution for my situation, which was becoming increasingly complicated. I returned to the local police office the next day and the news was semi-encouraging.

"I spoke with the National Park administration and they told me that the river you are travelling on is not part of the park, so you can go, but you must stay on the boat and cannot under any circumstance set foot on land," the head of police told me. I was overjoyed and thought that all was going to end well.

"You will have to wait though, until some official from the border town will go with you to make sure you stay on the boat," he then added, somewhat dampening my enthusiasm and hope.

"When will that be?" I cautiously enquired.

"I don't know. You will have to wait," he said.

"But I really have no desire to go into the jungle. I just want to get to Peru, that's all. I mean if it had been up to me I would have flown there a week ago."

"You will just have to be patient," he said.

Patience was not a virtue I fully possessed and when one of the passengers of the boat I had arrived with, told me that they would leave for the border I just hopped on and left Belen. Unfortunately my driver had left out the minor detail of staying overnight at a small village up the river. We went up the river for about an hour and then disembarked in the early afternoon. People were willing to shelter me, so all seemed fine at first. I quickly made friends and was playing volleyball with some kids, when the mayor of the village called me off the field. He was the perfect cliché of a mayor, red-faced and overweight, with the kind of self-importance only a jungle mayor would hold – a combination of royalty and pathos – considering the village had about 200 inhabitants and apart from fishing no real economy to speak of.

"You cannot stay here. You have to go back," he said, not willing to discuss the issue any further.

"I will leave tomorrow - there is no problem," I pleaded with him.

"No, you have been told that you cannot be in the National Park and this is part of it, so you have to go back to Belen." Damn information travels fast here. I suspected that one of the passengers had snitched on me or perhaps the Mayor had called Belen to find out about the gringo.

"Why is it that I can't be here?" I asked, getting rather frustrated with this cat and mouse game.

"There have been problems. Illegal studies have been conducted and the government does not want them to continue," he explained.

Illegal studies? What could possibly be illegal about studying inside a National Park? Something seemed odd about this whole affair. He left and I decided to continue playing volleyball, hoping that the issue would resolve itself. Indeed it was about to be resolved, because an hour later the two unpleasant policemen from Belen arrived with their machine guns and asked me more or less politely to accompany them back to where I had come from. So guarded by two machine guns, watched by the village, who visibly enjoyed the spectacle, I climbed onto the boat that would bring me down the river once again. The beaver-faced head of the police was not impressed with my subversion of his authority and told me to stay put, until he would give me permission to leave. It seemed like I was trapped in Belen and I did not particularly care for the sensation. I noticed my patience and acceptance diminishing by the hour and decided that I needed a conversation with the Santo Daime.

I had been given a bottle of Daime by the Italian back in Acre, after I had sat waiting there for him for 3 hours. But the wait had been worth it because I now possessed about a liter of the stuff. I found a beautiful hillside, behind the village, where I could perform a private ritual with my walkman as the sun-set of the horizon. Given my circumstances and mindset, it was a bit of risk, but it felt right and I went ahead with it anyway. My apprehension and frustration soon melted away into the star-studded sky and the serenity of my surroundings, while the vibrations of Enigma penetrated my entire stressed being. My faith returned, while I wished to be taken back to the _Rivers of Belief_ and I trusted that a solution to my conflict would present itself. Once again I realised how little faith I had had and how easily I had lost my patience and trust in the path ahead of me. I was still a control-freak, who faltered as soon as things seemed to not go my way or work out as I wished. I felt childish and silly, given how much patience and support I had received from the people around me and left for the village with the resolution to be more open to circumstance and people and simply go with the flow – after all I had been having fun – I had never been escorted by military police and guarded by machine guns to the amusement of an entire village without any serious consequence. I laughed at my self and my circumstance and felt much better about my situation already. It was truly remarkable how the Daime allowed me to just step out of myself and reflect; see my self from a distance and just appreciate how hilarious and generous life could be. Anything could have happened; I could not have received that exit stamp or not caught that boat back in Cruzero do Sul. I could have been sent back by the local police man or not found anywhere to live, I could have been thrown in jail after running off on my own but no I was still here and just had to be patient. Synchronicity had brought me this far, obviously I was meant to go this way. Clearly everything was going just fine I merely had to trust the path and go along for the ride, I might even have some fun along the way. I promised myself that I would remember this perspective for a little while, but I also knew that I would most likely get caught up in circumstances again and lose my trust and faith in the process. When I got home Peruvian James Woods talked to me about Jesus and about his message of belief, which is based on faith. I still didn't know exactly where I stood on the whole Jesus thing, given I still hadn't met him personally, but I certainly agreed that something greater was moving our lives and that we could live much easier lives if we simply had faith that everything will work out just fine. It always has and it always will, as long as we keep our karma clean. So in that sense I guess I was more of a Taoist, who observed that the trees grow and the sun rises every morning without our doing. Our lives will always move forward and all we need to do is try not to interfere too much. There will always be new goals along the way and thus we will always be on a path to somewhere, so we might as well enjoy the way. So in that sense the goal _is_ the way.

I was finally given the go-ahead, because the mayor of one of the small villages near the Peruvian border was travelling back with his relatives and several friends. I thanked the head of police for his help and support and said goodbye to all those who had fed and sheltered me. I promised that I would not forget them and the help I had received. They told me that it had been a pleasure to hear my stories and share their food and culture with me.

The head of police wished me good luck and hoped that I would make it, even though he seemed somewhat skeptical about my prospects. I loaded my bags onto the boat and was all ready to go, when I was asked to sit in another boat and leave my bags. I was just happy to leave and did not think much of it; it later occurred to me that this was a precautionary measure to really make sure I did not run off into the jungle. Why were they so afraid that I would run into the jungle? I didn't understand and didn't care much about it either. I had no intention to do so anyway. I was just happy to finally leave for the border.

We were moving at a decent enough speed, certainly much faster than the last boat I had been on and I didn't even have to shovel water. I was in good spirits and hopeful that we would arrive before darkness, when the sky blackened and it began to pour down in buckets. All my cloths being on another boat, which was apparently two hours behind us, I was vulnerably exposed to the icy winds and nail-like rain-drops on account of the speed of the boat, so that I soon turned into a shivering bundle of misery. Attempting to shelter myself from the wind and the rain, by hiding my face in between my arms and knees, I entered a zone of total numbness and desperation, while cursing those miserable bastards for separating me from my cloths. I had a perfectly suitable rain-jacket for such occasion, but instead I was sitting here like a shivering mess because these fuck-wits somehow got it into their head that I wanted to run off into the jungle. The following seemingly eternal hours were sheer torture and when we finally arrived in the middle of the night, I could hardly walk, because my body was shaking uncontrollably. That I did not fall sick of pneumonia was a miracle, and once more proof of the adaptability of the body. I was still shivering under two blankets, sipping on sickly sweet coffee and trying to remember what could be said about football, while my new hosts were watching another one of those matches where twenty-two men chased a piece of pig skin, when my luggage arrived, also completely soaked in rain.

The next day the sun had returned and with it my spirits. Now it would only be another hour's ride on a boat, and I would be on Peruvian soil and my ordeal would come to an end, or so I thought. I was hopeful, too hopeful for my own good. Because when I arrived at the Peruvian border outpost, the soldiers told me that I could not pass the border, but their _jefe_ had the last word and I would have to talk with him. I would find him a couple of miles up the river. The outpost was guarded by obviously bored men, who understandably so, did not want to be there, but tried to make the best of the situation by drinking and practicing their shooting skills. They were actually drinking and shooting at glass bottle when we arrived and even though the drinking did not improving their aim, they got lucky once in a while. The sound was deafening and rather annoying. The man I was currently talking to eventually got annoyed as well and told them to stop. The barracks were in a miserable state and the office featured a typewriter, a walkie-talkie and a tape player that said: _The Police - Ghost in the Machine,_ which I thought was rather ironic. The men were cheerful, probably on account of the fresh supply of wine and rum that had just arrived with me on the boat from Belen. They were obviously much more interested in chatting than resolving my current state of affairs.

"Can you translate this song for me? I just love the way it sounds and I have seen the video, but I don't know what he is saying," the soldier, who was probably my age, said, sincerely happy to meet an English-speaking foreigner. The song was _Bitter Sweet Symphony_ by _The Verve_ and happened to be one of my favourites. I was only too happy to oblige:

"Trying to make ends meet we are Slave to money and then we die...." I said in Spanish, which seemed to depress him slightly. But I quickly pointed out that life is bitter as well as sweet and the message was not all that sad.

"I need to hear some sounds that recognise the pain in me. Let the melody shine, let it cleans my mind, I feel free now. The airwaves are clean, and there's nobody singing to me now..." I continued.

That seemed to cheer him up a little and responded: "I really like the video, because you see him walking the street. But somehow at a different speed than everyone else and he keeps on bumping into people, but he continues walking anyway, just in his own zone or something."

I could not help but notice the similarity to my own situation and tried to steer the conversation towards my personal problem of not being able to pass through the border.

"Well the border is not really for foreigners but for locals only," he said, still pondering over the lyrics.

This made no sense to me whatsoever, but he was obviously not the man in charge, so there was no point in pursuing the topic and affect his wonderful mood anymore. Besides, I was not the one stuck here for months like those poor souls. We talked some more about Germany and the question of what had brought me to this place. I didn't really want to go into the issue of Ayahuasca and the Daime, although this was not an illegal drug, but thought it better to emphasise my desire to get to know his marvelous homeland of Peru. This sparked off a whole series of recommendations about the different types of beer and the best ways of enticing the hot-blooded Peruvian girls, who would be more than happy to engage in all sorts of sexual activities with an attractive and wealthy tourist like me. After several attempts to fill out a piece of official paper, using an ancient typewriter, I was free to go on my way. My companions, who had patiently sat and waited in the boat, were pleasantly surprise to see me emerge from the outpost, a whole hour and a half later. I was steadily going upstream against all odds and I was still hopeful. But that hope was crushed when I met the _jefe_ of the border police, in the small village already on Peruvian soil, which featured nothing but banana trees and barracks. He was no man to argue with and without further ado or greetings he demanded my passport.

He looked at it and said: "You have to go back. You can't pass here," handing back my passport. Remembering my situation in Caracas a few years back I was glad he at least handed back my passport but I was not happy about the most recent turn of events. I was too close to Peru to simply turn back now.

"I don't understand - this is an official border-crossing." I said.

"Obviously you don't understand, you cannot pass here, this is for Brazilian and Peruvians but not for foreigners." 'That's a little discriminatory,' I thought, and kept on pushing. I had not come that far just to give up now.

"Why can't foreigners pass here? There is no sensible reason."

"Foreigners can come into Brazil at designated posts and airports, but this one is not a designated one." I had a feeling he was making this up, because there was something they were hiding here. But it was a hunch, nothing more, nothing I could do about at this point.

"I can't go back to Brazil; I have an exit stamp. I need to enter Peru and get an entry and an exit stamp, before I can go back," I explained, while beginning to lose my patience.

"That is your problem. They should have never given you an exit stamp, they should know better."

"Well, they didn't, so what do I do now?" I asked.

"You go back and deal with the Brazilians, it is their problem. They sent you here, so they can take you back" he said and walked off.

I could not believe it - this was it - the end of the road. I had come this far and now I was going back. I was depressed. I went to a _tienda_ and bought a couple of cigarettes. I had not smoked cigarettes for months, but now I needed one. I didn't know whether it was good that they sold single cigarettes, because on the one hand, at least you don't end up with a whole pack because you felt depressed, but on the other I might not have bought any if I had to buy a whole pack. I started speaking to one of the women in the _tienda_ about my situation, because I simply needed someone to talk to. She explained that there would be a flight to Pucalpa the next day, because the local teachers were going for a trip, and as far as they knew there was still a seat left. Hoping for one last chance I rushed over to the school and spoke to the teachers and indeed there was a possibility that I might be able to go. The _jefe_ appeared out of nowhere inside the school, probably to keep an eye on me, so the teachers explained to him that I could be flown out the following day. To my surprise he said if this were so, then I could go, but for now I would have to go back to Brazil. I could not stay in the village. It dawned on me that the reason I was having all these troubles was because I was not supposed to be in this area, there was something that they did not want foreigners to know about.

I went back to the tiny village I had come from, accompanied by the _jefe_ and two of his soldiers. I was feeling a bit more upbeat about my prospects and noticed that I was beginning to make a habit out of having a military escort and actually felt like smiling, once again thinking that it was so easy to lose my balance. The mayor, whose house I had slept in the previous night, was not surprised to see me again, but also not exactly overjoyed. I gathered that he was afraid that I might be there for some time. The two soldiers acquired some more alcohol, more or less willingly given away, and invited me to party with them. I was more than happy to forget about my troubles and took generous gulps from a three-liter jug of delicious Chilean wine. The soldiers were a great laugh, although the conversation primarily revolved around women and alcohol. But for the time being I thought that I had to simply give in to the situation and enjoy the great adventure, for what it was - just an adventure – and the wine certainly helped. I was quite elated all of a sudden and I realized that this journey was exactly the kind of authentic experience off the Lonely Planet trail that I had wished for. So what was I complaining about? It always happened so quickly that I would get all worked up about nothing when the life was just fulfilling me my wishes. It also reminded me to be careful what I wished for.

I went to bed with a big grin on my face that night and even woke up feeling relatively human and optimistic, despite a bit of a hangover. I decided to explore the countryside behind the village and found a wonderful lookout, where I could enjoy a view over miles and miles of virgin jungle. God, it was beautiful, so much raw nature and pure energy, which was being chopped down so carelessly. What an incredible pity, we really did not know what we were losing. But the locals just wanted to tame nature and herd cows, eat well and enjoy the comforts, they were being told about in between soap operas and football matches - the enticements of the city, where life was wonderful and exciting. And could I blame them? I wouldn't want to live in their village either — it was a desolate, barren outpost - seemingly the end of the world. On the other hand, they could have made it a bit nicer for themselves, like the Daimistas, and perhaps story would be a different one. But somehow they were just an imitation of the city, without achieving the same standard, but creating the same problems like garbage and noisy generators, the smell of gasoline and sewage running into the river. The Daimistas on th other hand with some of the same city mentality, and their tendencies towards the bureaucratic, were certainly more earthbound and had created a beautiful model for the rest of society to measure up to. Some of the other Daime communities I would get to know later were just the same, so indeed there had to be something educational in talking to one of nature's teaching plants. The bad news arrived the next day. Evidently the plane was full because the last seat had been taken by a sick child and I would have to go back to Cruzero do Sul. It finally became clear that would not be able to go forward. I was depressed once again, but not quite willing to give up just yet.

I began to feel uncomfortable in the mayor's house and did not want to be a burden, so I put up my tent at the back of the village, close to the edge of the jungle. I began to help out some of the locals, carrying goods and cutting weeds, for which I was given food and drink. For the time being I felt content. I had also become friends with the local protestant priest, who I thought might be able to convince the authorities that it would be a very Christian thing to do to let me pass, since I was no threat to anyone. But after the first night in my tent I was asked to move back into the mayor's house, because the local women were of the opinion that I was a bit of a peeping tom, who was going to watch them bath naked at a spot, which was three hundred meters away from my tent; a place I had not even been aware of. I had no idea where the slightly absurd idea had come from. I was, after all, not in the least interested in watching plump housewives take off their knickers in a muddy creek. Something odd was going on here with those isolated jungle-dwellers, who were being fed evangelic messages and soap opera mentality. I did not feel like putting up a fuss though, and moved back into the house, even though I much preferred my privacy. People could be so bloody complicated.

The Daime had called me again one day and I sat on the river's edge, after a good gulp of the hallucinogenic substance. For some reason I felt compelled to take my shirt off, which meant being attacked by a cloud of sand flies, leaving little drops of dried blood all over my body. In a retrospectively bizarre act of self-sacrifice I allowed them to suck my blood without interfering, while I observed the pain dissolve into a mere sensation. It was an intense feeling but not unbearable. I had the sensation that the Daime was showing me a way to get through what was about to happen and although I really did not care much for a further intensification of events, I knew, and experienced symbolically that it was all just a matter of perspective, because it was not objectively painful at all. Years later I would spend some time at a Vipassana meditation camp in New Zealand and they would use that same technique of merely observing sensations of the body, without classifying it as either pain or pleasure but mere vibration. It seemed that the Daime was capable of showing me a meditation technique that is as ancient as the teachings of the Buddha.

The priest, who had been talking to the mayor, both of whom had been eying me suspiciously for some time, walked towards me and planted himself to my right. Wearing khaki pants and holding a machete in his hand, the heavyset man looked to me more like a guerrilla fighter than a priest and his second question put me a little on guard.

"Do you have sand-flies in your country?" was the first question on his mind.

"No, we don't," I said, and put my shirt back on.

"What are you doing here exactly?" He asked with a frown on his face.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what is your job? Who sent you?"

"No one sent me, well God perhaps," I said and laughed uneasily. I didn't know where he was going with this, but thought that bringing God into the conversation might put the priest a bit more at ease, plus the Daime seemed to have taken charge of my words.

"Are you a journalist?" he wondered.

"No, I am just a tourist," I said truly puzzled and feeling the Daime intensify the grotesqueness of my situation and the apparent sense of paranoia in the air.

"So, why did you come here? Tourists don't take this route to Peru."

I had to admit that he had a point and perhaps a sense of suspicion was justified but what exactly were they afraid I might find out?

I explained my story with the plane again and added that I am looking for a shaman so I can take _ayahuasca_ , also called the _Daime_. He looked at me, still not knowing what I was talking about. I added that it is a spiritual drink, something he might know as _vegetao_. He seemed to have heard of it and began to be more comfortable with the idea that I was truly just a tourist, who had walked up the wrong path.

"Why do you want to take _vegetao_ , and why with the shamans?" he enquired.

"I believe that the vegetao is a magical plant that can put us into direct contact with God. The Natives are in contact with that holy spirit always, they know that God is also in the nature around us and that we have to take care of it and not just throw our garbage into the house of God as we please. I mean we just take from Mother Earth and what do we give back? Garbage. What a way to treat our mother, what a way to thank God for what we have been given so generously." I stopped and became conscious of the fact that I was preaching to a preacher. I laughed at the irony of the situation but knew that I was certainly not wrong.

"How do you know you are in contact with God?" he asked with sincere interest and not aggressively at all. So I thought I could pursue my point.

"When you feel the nature talking to you via your senses and your intuition. You know, the Natives have been suffering for centuries, seeing the forest being reduced and their homeland being invaded — this is not the way of God."

"Why do you speak for the Natives?"

"Because I want to speak out for them."

"But who gave you the authority, who asked you to speak for them?"

"The spirit perhaps. I don't know - I just feel like it. I think someone has to and so I do. I mean you are here and you are talking to me and perhaps you will talk to people about it and that they should keep the house of God clean. You are in a position to really influence the way people think, and so the word spreads."

"But who are you? You're not just a tourist."

"Well, if you like then I am a pilgrim, looking for God inside and outside of myself. I guess I would like to be an instrument for the spirit, a mouthpiece for nature, if you know what I mean."

"Well, you seem like a good person. I wish you good luck on your journey."

I thought this might be a good opportunity to talk about my little problem: "Do you think you could help me get over the border by talking to them?"

"I guess I could talk to them. Hey, you know I really like your watch, it is very nice," he pointed at my _Rip Curl_ watch, which I was rather attached to.

"We could exchange watches. I have a very nice one too," he suggested.

I looked at his watch, a silver piece of rock, which would have made an inexperienced swimmer drop straight to the bottom. But those were desperate times, requiring desperate measures, so that I went ahead with the exchange.

Back in the mayor's house I listened to _Santana_ , who did not have the same supernatural effect that it usually inspired and I decided to take a shower instead and wash off all my accumulated tension. I realised how much I missed my girlfriend and how far away I was from everything that was in any way familiar or comforting. I felt much better after a couple of buckets of water and asked the mayor, if he could not put in a word for me as well. I realised what a sincere and honest guy he actually was, once he started talking, which was something I had only just been privileged enough to witness. He promised to try his best the next day.

I relaxed and saw a light at the end of the tunnel of my journey. Looking at the news and understanding little but noticing the time, I slowly became aware of the fact that the three-pound weight I now carried on my wrist did not do a very good job of keeping the time. I also came to trust the fact that a priest should be fully capable of a non-compensated act of generosity and went to his house to reverse the deal, arguing that I needed a watch that actually did its job. He reluctantly returned my surfer watch and I was happy to feel my faithful companion strapped to my arm again. I went to bed hopeful and woke up desolate because the mayor had achieved nothing. Becoming desperate now I began discussing adventurous routes through the jungle with more or less trustworthy characters, who were going in a week's time.

To make matters worse a park official arrived that same afternoon and began complaining intensely about my being on the parkland. The village was after all inside the National Park, where illegal studies appeared to proliferate beyond a measure of control. To my surprise the mayor, the priest and the other members of the community began to argue with the official and from what I could gather, explained that I had had no desire of staying but had been forced by the unwillingness of this alcoholic group of Peruvian border police. That same afternoon I found out that my enemies are literally my friends, because the official was so eager to get me out of there that he offered to bring me back to Belen the same day, if I paid for the gasoline. Because there was another Peruvian and a family who wanted to go, the price worked out alright and I was on my way back again.

I was going back to where I had come from, but at least I was leaving this desolate town. I thanked the mayor and the rest of the group for their help and wished them to be blessed by God, which was always something they appreciated enormously. As I sat in the boat going with the flow this time, I was finally revealed the mystery of the apparent paranoia that had enveloped my journey into the border land of Northwestern Brazil and Peru. The likeable Peruvian travelling with me was fully aware of my situation, because apparently it had caused a bit of a stir in the little Peruvian outpost, too.

"You were very unlucky. Normally there is always space on those flights to Pucalpa, but they had some teachers' conference and so it was all booked up." In an obviously lower voice, he then explained that I had also been very lucky.

"You know, you could have gotten into some trouble, too, but they don't know who sent you, so nothing happened," he whispered to me.

"People kept asking me what I am doing here and who sent me. What the hell is all that about?" As I said it, it suddenly dawned on me. I don't know if it was a sudden flash of unconscious telepathic communication but I knew what he was going to say.

"I mean, does it not seem odd to you that this park official is bringing you back personally? Both the Peruvian and the Brazilian governments are involved in cultivating coke in the jungle."

"The governments are?" I asked incredulously.

"Well, not exactly, but there are powerful cartels with a lot of money and the governments have no interest whatsoever in cutting this very lucrative form of income, as long as they get a cut. They will do mock raids to keep the gringos off their backs, but the really large operations happen with the consent and under the protection of the governments. Apparently even the CIA is involved, because they earn big time, too, but the small dealers are often eradicated and the prices kept up artificially."

"How do you know all this?" I asked, still a bit doubtful.

"Living here you know those things. People talk about it, but they try not to get involved, it is an ugly business and lots of people die."

The park official was eying us as if sensing what it was we were talking about, although given the engine sound there was no way he could have. My Peruvian informant stopped talking nonetheless.

Damn, I thought. I was sure glad I only just found out now. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I would have started going down the road of paranoia myself, had I known. The Peruvian also opened up another avenue out of Brazil, that of going through the jungle from Belen. Someone had mentioned this before, but I had not really considered such an adventurous undertaking. The circumstances called for desperate measures, though, and I decided to find out more about this alternative route.

I spent a miserable night on the boat, which they had docked behind the same village I had been escorted away from by the military police a week ago. Naturally, I was still not allowed onto the parkland and was thus forced to sleep on the boat. I arrived tired and frustrated in Belen, where I was ripped off big time, when I was given the worst rate of exchange possible for my dollars, which left me with a pitiful 50 Reais, after paying for the gasoline, until I would reach Peru and be able to exchange my Tavellers' Cheques. I had come to realise that the only thing that was secure about Travellers' Cheques was the fact that they were a pain in the ass to get rid off and were unjustifiably expensive, because one paid upon purchase and sale.

I was beyond caring and just wanted to sleep and then find out about this mysterious and apparently treacherous way through the jungle. To my surprise the head of police greeted me and began talking about exactly that road. He explained without much effort of sugarcoating the facts, that this is the way locals and drug dealers take and that once I would have arrived in Peru, it was another week or so down the river. Plus he was not sure that there would be any boats on the Peruvian side, because we were in the dry season.

There was a canoe, however, which could take me to the trail and I could go within the next hour. He did not know when the next opportunity would arise and I would be well advised to leave on that boat. I couldn't decide whether the news was good or bad, all I knew was that I wanted to get the hell out of Belen and go to Peru. I also knew that this was the third way — somehow the best of both worlds, because I would not have to go back nor would I have to pay an expensive flight. I would make it on my own, all the way. I decided that it was good news and hopped on the boat.

# Chapter 11

Boot Camp

I was let off at some indistinct little dwelling and asked the locals where the path to Peru was. Somehow this sounded stupid: 'Which way do I go, to get to Peru?' But then that's how it was. They said that I should go with a guide. I asked when the guide could go, and the answer was that they didn't know. So I walked right into the jungle by myself, packed like a donkey carrying a backpack on my back and a smaller one in front, together weighing at least 25 kilos. I also felt about as smart as a donkey because I had been so outrageously stupid to fly into Cruzero do Sul in the hope to fly on to Peru, just because Jose had apparently done this ten years ago. Perhaps this was his revenge, conscious or not, for smoking a cigarette and polluting his church with the scent of the devil. God only knew. I resigned myself to the fact that assigning blame was not going to get me through this damn jungle.

I had been told that it would take around six hours to walk across to Peru, and when I came to the first fork in the path I was beginning to seriously regret my decision to walk without a guide. This was the time when I began cursing a lot, but given the fact that I was surrounded by vegetation only, which I hoped would not take offence, I felt free to express my frustration rather noisily. After following a few trails that only disappeared into the undergrowth of thick jungle vegetation, my frustration and anxiety began to increase dramatically. After some time the disconcerting little trails ceased, instead I was now faced with knee-deep creeks crossing my path.

The creeks were inconveniently running trough miniature canyons, bordered by muddy embankments. Occasionally there was a tree laid across, but given that my shoes were too muddy to retain any grip and the weight of my backpacks, affecting my balance, I had to find out the hard way that this was not my path. I slipped, hit my ass and fell in to the creek, head over feat, to the amusement of no one, because I was after all and thankfully so, alone. Apart from the fact that I was tired, didn't know where I was going and carried my entire belongings, including tent and sleeping bag on my self, I was now also completely wet and muddy. Moving up again on the other side was a little more challenging still, because there was absolutely nothing to hold on to. If you have ever tried to hold on to mud, you will know that this is a pretty fruitless undertaking. Crawling up was the only way and as I did this with my two backpacks, which were now largely covered in mud, I was unpleasantly reminded of an army boot camp. Not that I had ever participated in one, but I had seen them in movies, and it was precisely because of the nature of such camps that I had never felt the desire to partake in one. Experimenting with the idea of walking down the next embankment, I realised that sliding down was a more realistic option, but at that stage I was wet and dirty anyways, so there was no point in trying to be careful about keeping the laundry clean.

The path became increasingly muddy as I progressed, in fact that which had been the path began to disappear entirely underneath an ankle-deep layer of mud, making the pulling up of my feet out of the mud more arduous than the forward movement. The suction force of mud was something I was honestly impressed with, for a step or two, after which it began to turn into a major inconvenience. Every step was lierally accompanied by a thud of mud, trying its level best to keep me stuck to the path. It was after one of those highly irritating jungle creeks, which I had just made my way out of that I slipped and fell forward. I caught myself on a tree, which was covered in razor-sharp thorns, slicing open the palm of my hand. At that point just lost it and began to scream with pain and frustration. Since it felt rather nice I decided to continue the screaming, even though the first onslaught of pain that had caused its spontaneous outburst was gone. Taking advantage of my situation, I screamed my lungs out, because the fact that I was utterly alone was the only positive aspect I could discern within this, quite frankly, fucked-up situation. It was during this prolonged episode of guttural self-expression that I discovered the liberating effect upon my overworked psyche. Years later I found out that screaming may be used as a form of therapeutic practice and is even classified as a form of meditation. Given the circumstance, I would not have wanted to claim that I was meditating, but it certainly let go of some frustration and built-up tension.

Continuing on my path, well whatever it may deserve to be called, I now moved myself purely through the force of anger, accentuated by the practical chanting of the word Fuck, which proved to be very energising. Eventually my breath became so short, the cursing ceased involuntarily and a certain peace and resignation to my fate pervaded my being. I began to think about soldiers in Vietnam, who must have had to do this everyday, with the added inconvenience of Charlie lurking behind the trees, and the occasional booby-trap catching one of their companions. From such a perspective I was merely enjoying an unusual jungle trip as a lost tourist, nothing more nothing less.

I sat down with my back against a tree had a couple of biscuits and a good laugh about my situation and my state of mind which could be so easily tipped towards unbalance. I filled my bottle with jungle water and waded on. Just before dusk I came across a thatched roof in a clearing, where I put up my tent and spent the night listening to _Die Toten Hosen_ , who reminded me how lucky I was, because I did not have to get up the next morning and sit in an office for eight hours, occasionally wondering if this is it; if this is all there is to life. I had more days full of adventure and surprise ahead of me. And the days did hold a number of surprises still, suprises that I could not have dreamt of in my wildest dreams. On second thought, I had fantasised about this kind of adventure when working as a caretaker and mowing lawns in Germany three years ago. It was just a way to pass the time back then, but I had actually seen myself lost in the jungle and moving from one incredible event to the next, thus really testing my character and strength. We really had to be careful what we wished for, because it would all come true one day.

I got up feeling rested and content and washed my face in a particularly large waterway, which consisted mostly of mud and was now running across my path. Inexperienced jungle trekker that I was, I tried to walk across the river of mud, at least ten meters in width. I realised the idiocy of my undertaking once I had sunk into the mud up to my waist. Feeling myself sinking deeper still, I quickly panicked; saw my own impending death before me and decided that drowning in mud where they couldn't even find my body, was not a good way to die. So I cursed and shifted my weight forward in order to grab hold of a tree, which happened to be rotting on the inside and unable to support my weight. I looked around, found another slightly larger tree and pulled myself out of the mud. I returned to where I had started my mud bath, still on the side of the creek I did not want to be on, and began exploring the depth of the mud at different locations. It was always the same; too deep to walk through, especially with two backpacks the weight of a chubby child. I noted a few trees precariously balanced over what I was now beginning to regard as a swamp. I tested their strength and they appeared strong enough to support my weight, but I doubted that I would be able to walk across and remain on top for very long. I took off my shoes and tried it barefooted, which seemed to afford enough stability. Now I just had to make it across without losing my balance while carrying my two heavy backpacks, especially with the smaller one blocking the view of my feet. I though of making the journey twice but really didn't want to double my time over the swamp. I even thought about putting on my walkman, but thought that might be going a bit too far. I decided it would be better to put the smaller backpack on top of the bigger one, on my back, because at least this way I could see my feet.

I began to walk carefully, placing one foot in front of the other, while my legs were quivering, apparently on the edge of controllability. I was breathing deeply in order to maintain my balance slowly made my way across. Once I was closer to the opposite embankment I felt myself relax, because even if I fell now, I could still crawl to safety. Just thinking in such positive terms gave me stability and I made it across the last few meters almost, with a sense of ease. Once on the other side I let myself fall backwards onto my backpacks and closed my eyes. I could not believe what I had to go through to get to Peru. Does it have to be this hard, I wondered.

I finally pulled myself up again and continued walking, when I became aware of the distinct smell of animals and something running around somewhere within the thick vegetation surrounding me. I knew the smell from the zoo, but I also knew that there was a slight difference of circumstance this time, because I wasn't a gaffing child staring at a disgracefully encaged wild animal. There were no metal bars here in the jungle, separating me from my potential predator. Here I was in foreign terrain and the animal in its element. I stood still, trying hard not to breathe, which for obvious reasons was hard, because I was panting like a heavy smoker climbing stairs. Notwithstanding, I was holding my breath and could hear branches cracking and underbrush thrashing. It sounded to me like the predator, whatever it was, had already found its prey and was pursuing it now. I relaxed, better some other animal instead of me, I thought rather selfishly. On the other hand, dying in the jungle as a feast for a wild animal would have been a glamorous way of to go, something that would possibly have afforded me an entrance into nirvana. Instead I kept on suffering, walking, cursing and sliding through this alien environment.

I had been walking for three hours that day, when I started getting a little concerned, because adding the hours of the previous day, I had already been on this path for nine hours. Had they not said that it would take six hours? I had been walking pretty fast, I thought, surely I should be there by now. On the other hand, they had also told me that there would be a good footpath and that we were in the dry season. Obviously, the path was anything but good and certainly not dry. Nonetheless, I was now feeling very anxious. I realised, however, that I had become anxious only upon thinking about time and calculating hours. Before I had been engaged in such negative thoughts, I had been merely thinking about recounting my incredible adventure to friends and perhaps even writing a book about it one day. Now I was a mental mess and began considering the worst. What if I had gotten lost? What if I were to run around like this for days to come? The thought horrified me. I could not take another day of this shit, my back and my shoulders ached from the weight of the backpacks, my feet were covered in blisters and my fat reserves had vanished. I had begun to defecate in peculiarly bright green and yellow colours and started thinking that I'd rather have a tiger snap my neck than starve to death. I tried to get a grip on myself and started talking to myself inside my head.

'No, Tom, you are just thinking negatively again. You are just troubling yourself. Just keep on going and you'll get there eventually. You've just been walking very slowly because of your load'

'Right, nothing to worry, except that I have been walking for nine bloody hours and I don't see a sign of civilization,' I responded to myself.

'What was that thatched roof you have seen, was that not man-made?'

'Yeah, right, built by drug-dealers. I will probably enter cocaine cultivation areas soon, meet with ruthless machine gun-bearing paranoiacs, guarding a jungle laboratory, or perhaps a pissed-off tribe of natives, who shall pull off my skin and take revenge for invading their territory and stripping the earth of its cover.'

'Man, you watch too many movies and have a wild imagination, just chill,' I said and realized that I had said it out loud.

'Chill? I'm sweating like a monkey. The sweat is pouring down my face and burning my eyes,' I now said, fully aware that I was speaking to myself.

'You just complain, complain, and complain,' I shouted at myself and thought if I was going to go on talking to myself for much longer I will be ready for straightjacket very soon. That was assuming that I would ever get near civilization again.

Continuing my internal dialogue in this way I finally stumbled into a clearing. I don't think I have ever been as delighted or ever will be again, by the sight of banana trees, because I knew they meant civilisation. Suddenly all the pain was gone, all the thoughts of suffering and dying were gone, my energy returned and I almost ran as effortlessly as a gazelle towards the village that must lie behind the banana plantation. When I saw the first house, I went down on my knees and kissed the ground. The calming voice in my head just laughed and said: 'I told you that you that you will be just fine. You just need to relax a little. You were always going to arrive here, you just lost faith along the way, once again.'

I walked over and was greeted by two women conversing and feeding their babies. They were in their late twenties and looked at me curiously. Chicken were running around freely and I noticed a pig eating garbage below the wooden hut, which was sitting on timber poles, as was characteristic for this area, and the sight of which was simply delightful. I took off my backpacks and asked a question in Spanish that must have sounded slightly idiotic: "Is this Peru? Am I in Peru now?"

They looked at me a little bemused, and merely nodded their heads. I was going to start dancing and jumping around, but contained myself, because I was offered juice and dried yucca, soaked in water. I didn't even mind the sugar on top of the yucca; after all I needed a little energy. I was explaining why I had come this way and where I was from, but we were rudely interrupted by a crying baby. It was lying on the floor and had just fallen off the veranda. They became seriously alarmed and were both terribly upset. They anxiously checked whether the baby was uninjured. The baby was ok, but two days later I found out why they had been so concerned. Inside the house I had heard disturbing grunting noises and sometimes terrible screaming, originating from a young boy. I got to see him one day when his mother was kind enough to let him out. He was nine years old and mentally ill; he could not walk and was evidently in perpetual pain. They explained that as a baby he had fallen off the veranda and injured his head. Over the days I realised what a terrible burden the boy must be, because he was almost constantly screaming and kicking, but also needed to be fed and bathed. The only peace the mother could afford was to lock him up inside the house and tie him to the bed, which seemed like a cruel thing to do, but prevented him from hurting himself and kicking things about. Now in the Western world the kid would have been taken care of by professionals, or perhaps been given drugs to ease the pain, I don't know, I'm not an expert on those matters. But here he was locked up like an animal and a constant burden for all involved. I slept on the veranda for the next couple of nights, using my sleeping bag and therma-rest and I would wake in the middle of the night because the kid was howling like a dog, with pain that seem to come from the depths of hell itself. Now I don't believe in hell, I think that perhaps there is a self-induced state of hell in our minds or consciousness, but if there was such a thing as hell on earth, that kid was living in it.

The kid's screams so disturbed me that I did not think I could stay at the house for much longer. But for the time being I was stuck once again, because there weren't any canoes to the next village, on account of the lack of rain, which had turned the river into a creek. The woman was amazingly hospitable though; she served me with food and even washed my cloths, because she was so thankful that I had given her money. Given that her house was the first one after emerging from the jungle path, everyone came to her house for food and accommodation and apparently most of them never left a _sol_ (the Peruvian currency, which literally means sun), so the fact I actually paid for her hospitality impressed her. The rain on the other hand was less cooperative.

It was on the third day in that village that a I saw a family emerge from the path to Brazil. Although they had rubber boots and no luggage, I was impressed, especially with the two children and their mother. Their father, who was probably in his late thirties and quite handsome, was astonished that I had managed to walk the path with my entire luggage on my back and called me a Levi Strauss Horse. I was slightly confused but began to understand, once he pointed out the pulling horse on the Levi's label. I told him about _ayahuasca_ and that I was looking for a shaman. His eyes lit up and he began to reminisce in an experience of some years ago. "I once worked with ayahuasca too. You know we only use it when we are sick. I saw this beautiful creature and it looked like a snake-man. He offered me two cups and said one cup will let me go back to my normal life and the other will give me more knowledge than I have ever dreamt of. But I was afraid of the knowledge, so I took the cup bringing me back to my life. _Bueno_ , I still think about it sometime, I guess I was just not ready at the time."

"Would you make the same choice again if you got another chance," I wondered.

"Probably not, even though I would love to, I have a family to support and no time for fancy overtures in the netherworld," he explained with a lowered voice because he did not want his wife to hear. I loved his story and I had no doubt in my mind that I would have taken the cup of knowledge. I just hoped that one day I would be offered one. The family organised a small non-motorised canoe and I pleaded with them to take me along. But I sensed that the woman felt uncomfortable with me on the boat, for reasons I would later come to understand. And I believe it was she who told her husband not to take me. The husband, however, must have taken a liking to me and before he left he told me that there was a canoe, which had arrived from up the river and if I wanted I could take it and leave. I still don't know whether it was really a gift from the river or whether the locals had just wanted to give it to me. I assume that it was the former, because they knew how desperate I was and no one ever asked me for money. I thanked my host for all her help and left the same day on my new and adventurous mode of transportation.

# Chapter 12

Going with the Flow

The canoe was about three meters long and about half a meter wide with three perpendicular benches, evenly spaced out, inside the canoe. I used a couple of boards I had found to place my backpacks on, because there was always water collecting inside. There was no paddle, only a two-meter long wooden stick, which I would use to push myself forward. Never having done this before, I stood in the front of the canoe and tried to move, which seemed to work alright until I noticed the locals looking at me and laughing themselves silly. Someone was kind enough to point out that I had to stand in the back, in order to make the steering a bit easier. I tried that and found that indeed it did make my life a lot easier, which was soon going to become very complicated. It started with the fact that there was often not enough water in the river to allow for the canoe to float. I found myself pulling the heavy canoe over rocks, sandy patches of river and trees blocking my way. Naturally, I resumed cursing frequently and began thinking in very negative terms again: how could I have been stupid enough to assume that I could do this on my own? I would never make it at the rate I am going.

I was literally pulling the canoe more often than it was transporting me. I even considered abandoning it and walking along the riverbank, but then decided against it. My situation began to improve gradually and the river became a bit deeper; in fact, in some spots, it got so deep that my pole would not reach the ground. This was always the case when I found myself inside a sharp bent in the river's path. It was then that I really wished I had a paddle because I was floating aimlessly while I was going around in a circle. The only option was using my hands, which doesn't seem that bad until you consider the fact that every time I approached one of those deep spots I could see the red-colored eyes of caimans disappear below the surface. I stuck my pole into the water to see whether there would be any reaction. There was none. But I did this several times because I knew that there was a group of caimans lurking in the murky waters, so I didn't feel all that confident about sticking my hands into the waters below. When I eventually did I paddled like a demented monkey in a boat race because I really didn't feel like taking my chances with the caimans. I managed not to have my hands bit off and I can only accredit it to my luck, the fact that they weren't hungry or perhaps the bear tooth around my neck that I didn't end up with stumps for arms. In any case, I believe that I was protected somehow, especially considering the events about to unfold.

I had been making quite decent progress and was moving along swiftly because the creek had turned into a river but that presented its own set of problems because I was frequently held up by unnecessarily inconvenient trees and rocks blocking my path. It may have been due to my horrendous canoe-steering abilities that I always managed to move myself right into one of those natural barriers, but I managed to untangle myself everytime and keep my backpacks dry. But as the river picked up in speed and volume so did the occurrence of rapids, which became increasingly turbulent and speedy. Every time I heard one approaching around the corner, my heart would speed up along with it and I would start praying to the spirit to protect me, clutching that ridiculous bear tooth around my neck. I guess someone had been listening, because when I got caught up in a particularly strong rapid I managed to slide right onto a group of rocks, causing the back of the canoe to go under and fill with water. I jumped out of the canoe as fast as I could. The water being only waist-deep, I managed to lift the rapidly sinking canoe to one side and tip the water out the other. My backpacks were luckily still floating on top of the two boards and only partly soaked.

I sat there on the sandy riverbank shaking my head in disbelief because of the challenges I was being put through, when I noticed a group of jovial monkeys jumping from tree to tree in the canopy above. It was then that I became aware of the incredible natural beauty and the abundance of wildlife surrounding me. There were enormous trees and unbelievably varied forms of vegetation, teeming with insects, birds and river fish. The sounds of the jungle were incredibly diverse and I felt a sense of privilege to be amongst it on my own. Yet only a second ago I had literally not even noticed it. Granted, I had been busy navigating a canoe too large for one person past various obstacles and through rapids and water holes occupied by caimans, but had this been an organised jungle trip, I would surely have rejoiced in the adventure and been busy enjoying myself. I climbed back into the canoe and continued my journey, now much more perceptive and appreciative of my surroundings. I almost felt that everything seemed to work more smoothly as a result. I was able to steer my wooden canoe much more elegantly, avoiding obstacles that I would have previously moved right into. I pulled over onto a golden-coloured sandbank and lunched on dried yucca, soaked in water, which actually still tasted delicious. But then you become a bit more appreciative of food when it's rather scarce. I realized that his had been my dream; a childish wish for adventure in exotic place, I had entertained years ago. I had wanted to be like a Native American, sitting in a canoe and moving through the jungle all by myself, with no tourist guides or people to influence my journey, just myself and nature in some kind of primordial embrace. And this was it. I was living my dream, except that it would briefly turn into a nightmare.

I was now confidently moving down the river, casually sitting in the back of the canoe and pushing myself forward, when I heard the sound of an engine approaching. I thought nothing of it. Probably another family moving up the river, most likely going back to the village I had come from. I saw the boat emerge from around a corner, when I noticed that those guys were not a family at all. They were three men all in their mid-thirties, and unless they all had been conceived by the same mother but different fathers, they certainly did not look related. One wore a cowboy hat and a moustache and looked like he was from the Wild West. Right, this was the Wild West. The person behind him looked pretty ordinary and slightly skinny. The man operating the motor looked less friendly and was well built. He looked like the human equivalent of a bulldog. As they were approaching the Cowboy greeted me in Portuguese. I returned the greeting and once they came closer, I noticed that he began to frown. Suddenly he ordered his man to pull over and me to stop. He jumped out of the canoe onto the riverbank and pulled out a large handgun. I had been presented with guns before but never quite in the same situation. I decided that it might be wise to stop, got out of my canoe and in an unconscious act of defiance stuck my pole into the ground, sat down in lotus position and crossed my arms. He walked over and I noticed that the other men also held onto handguns now. There were thousands of thoughts running through my head, while my heart was pounding like Sioux drum. But none of those thoughts were particularly useful, so I just decided to go with the flow and see where it would lead me.

"Are you alone?" he asked me in Spanish. I decided that it might not be wise to be and told him that I was not. He ordered his bulldog to keep an eye upriver and asked me how many people were coming.

"A family of five," I said, surprising myself with my sudden calmness.

"How far up the river are they?" he wanted to know.

"I don't know, I moved faster than them," I explained.

"Where are you from?"

"Germany."

"How come you speak Spanish?"

"Because I learned it."

He's not one of the brightest people I have ever come across, I thought. And stupid people with guns are not a good combination. 'You should not think of him in those terms,' the wiser part of me interjected. 'Your enemies are your friends, remember?' Those were actually quite coherent thoughts, I noticed and went with it.

"What are you doing here?" he now enquired, in a less threatening manner.

"I am going to Peru."

He laughed hysterically, and said: "You are in Peru."

"Yeah, well, I am coming from Brazil."

"What were you doing there?"

Drinking Daime in copious amounts and struggling with the authorities, so I could take more of the stuff with shamans in Peru. "I was doing volunteer service," I said.

"What kind of service?"

"Helping out in the National Park." Shit, what am I saying, that would only get me into trouble. Right, I am in trouble already.

"Are you _servicio intelligente_?"

Because I was under a lot of stress and my Spanish still left much to be desired I only heard _intelligente_. Why are we discussing my intelligence now, I thought. Is it because I had thought that he is a little stupid earlier? Fuck me. This reality is weird. Was I still hallucinating? Perhaps I had never really left Mapia and was caught up in a particularly vivid dream? I remembered the words of Morpheus: _what if you were unable to wake from that dream?_ Was I really dreaming? All that rubbish about reality being just a dream came rushing back to me and my situation seemed suddenly incredibly surreal. The were holding guns and staring at me, obviously waiting for an answer.

_"Intelligente_?" I repeated idiotically.

"Don't play stupid with me," he said and lifted up his gun as if to remind me that he had one. I was painfully aware of it and really needed no reminder. One could hardly overlook it. I had seen handguns in the US before, but this one was a little bigger. It looked like he used it for hunting jaguars and crocodiles, when he was not targeting tourists.

"Do you have any documents on you?" he asked me now.

I showed him my passport and started explaining my story with the Brazilian exit stamp. He was not particularly interested in my immigration problems and asked whether I had any weapons with me or perhaps any drugs.

"No, I don't. I'm just a tourist."

"Just a tourist," he shouted to his skinnier friend, while laughing, as if I had just told him a joke over a cold beer sitting inside a cozy bar. This guy was odd and this situation was getting weirder by the minute. Was I perceiving a premonition of my impending death? Is that what it feels like when your spirit knows that your time is up? I tried to focus on reality and wondered who these guys were and what their agenda was. But I couldn't make head or tails of the situation, it was simply too surreal.

"Tourist in the wrong place," he added obviously amused and then told his friend to have a look through my bags. He obliged and removed my backpacks from my canoe and began pulling out my belongings one by one, placing them on the sand.

"Try not to put them on the sand. See if you can put something underneath," the Peruvian Cowboy said to my surprise. I didn't know what to make of it. Is he going to rob my things and does not want them get sandy or is he really just very considerate of my belongings? His little helper found my poncho and put it underneath. Who are these guys, I wondered. Undercover police? Robbers? Border patrol? Drug-dealers? I couldn't decide, but I thought that maybe I could pull myself out of this situation too, like I had done so many times before. It was just another adventure - just another test.

"What's this?" he asked, pointing at my tent. I explained what it was.

"What is it for?"

Is he just really stupid or is this a trick question? "It's for sleeping in," I said not able to think of a better answer.

"This guy is prepared for everything," the Peruvian Cowboy said to his friend. "They sent you to investigate here, right? No tourist goes down the river in a canoe on his own. Who sent you, gringo?"

"No one sent me," I said getting a little tired of this line of questioning. Why did everyone assume I've been sent here? Is it so hard to believe that I just wanted to come here of my own accord? Well, I guess I didn't entirely. I suppose, I was forced to come here because I couldn't get a flight. So maybe they had a point; no tourist would come here of their own volition. Then they found my camera.

"Look what we've got here. Come to take photos, have you?" the Peruvian Cowboy man said to me.

"I'm a tourist, of course I've got a camera," I said, while it was slowly dawning on me what they wanted or rather what they suspected.

"See if he's got any documents in there," he instructed his colleague, while gesticulating with his gun and pointing toward my backpacks.

"You are American Intelligence, right?" he said to me now.

Finally I thought I understood. This guy thought I was a CIA agent. That's what he had meant with _servicio intelligente._ I was almost relieved by the realisation and knew they were most likely cocaine traffickers. I got up and told them: "Hey, look, there is no way I would spy for the _gringos_. They are a bunch of hypocrites, they are the one nation consuming the largest amount of drugs and yet they hold other countries responsible for their drug consumption. If they did not want drug users, maybe they should make a few social changes in their own country." I could see that he agreed enthusiastically with what I was saying.

"Bueno, maybe you are just a _tourista loco,_ but I don't know if I can trust you," he explained still playing with his gun, but looking much less menacing now.

I thought I knew a way out of this dilemma. Perhaps watching American movies would finally pay off.

"Alright, how much do you want for you coke? Maybe I should try some with you guys," I offered, which solicited a happy grin. Finally we were talking business. Did all this just come down to making a few extra bucks?

"What about those other people with you?" he now asked. I had completely forgotten that I had told him that there would be more people arriving soon.

"There aren't any. I just made it up," I said giving up my cover, but being honest with him.

"Hey, Alfredo, can you bring us a bit of the white stuff?" he shouted to his lookout, while grinning like an idiot.

Bulldog Alfredo abandoned his position and walked over to the canoe. He peeled off the lid from one of the two plastic buckets, sitting inside the canoe, scooped out a handful of cocaine and then walked over to where we were standing. The stuff looked pasty and wet, not like I had seen in the movies. Is this really a good idea, I wondered, briefly.

"Ok, that is about fifty dollars, my friend," the Cowboy-looking coke dealer said to me.

"I only have a few _Reais_ left, until I get to the city. Maybe you can give me a bit less."

"Well, let's see. I saw that you have a Swiss army knife."

"He's got Santana on tape," the skinny guy still rummaging through my belongings said, looking up at his boss.

"Great, so give me thirty _Reais_ ; the tape; the pocket knife and the poncho."

"No, I need the poncho. I don't like when I get wet," I explained.

"Ok, keep your damn poncho."

"Deal."

He handed over the cocaine. It was pretty wet and I was about to pull it up my nose, like I had seen them do in the movies.

"Nah, you don't want to do that. You don't want to get addicted do you?"

"Not really," I admitted.

"You just want to try, right? Hey, Alfredo, bring us some papers and some tobacco." Then he started rolling a coke joint for me, all the time laughing and saying something about crazy tourists in the jungle, snorting cocaine with gun toting strangers. The three of them were terribly amused by the situation and I could see no reason why I should not join in the general merriness of things. This was indeed a bit of a cosmic joke. Five minutes ago I thought I was going to end up dead in the jungle and now I was making friends and getting high, and the relief at not ending up dead here in the jungle really put me in a good mood even before I started smoking cocaine. So I was laughing with those guys and telling them about my adventures so far. He passed the joint and I took a few puffs. It did not taste too bad at all, but I felt my tongue and gums go numb. The sensation reminded me of being at the dentist, which was not the most pleasant experience I could remember. I passed it back to my new friends but to my surprise they refused.

"No we don't use this shit, we just sell it," they told me. Great more for me, I thought. I was getting an interesting buzz off the peculiar cigarette in my hand and once I became used to the numbness, it was not unpleasant at all. I started laughing at all their primitive jokes too, and we began talking about football as usual. I think I might have sounded pretty knowledgeable at this stage and they were all ears. I also told them about my wish to find a shaman to take _ayahuasca_. They told me that they knew a shaman named Pablo, who lived down the river, close to the village where I would have to leave my canoe anyways because the river would become too big to navigate, especially with this pathetic piece of wood, as they put it so kindly.

They became very excited, once we talked about prices for cocaine in Germany, and proposed starting a little operation, smuggling the stuff back to Europe. I told them that I had no desire to risk jail for a couple of thousand dollars and they suggested I should do it for a couple of hundred thousand. I actually found myself lecturing them on how I didn't want to live a life in paranoia and illegal activity and they explained that there were no legal ways for someone to earn a decent amount of money in Peru, unless one had contacts or rich parents. They had never hurt anyone, they explained, and carried the guns only for show and for shooting jaguars, of which they had seen one earlier.

In this way we continued chatting for a little longer, until they resolved to continue upriver, because they still had a few clients waiting. They also promised to pick me up at the next village because they were going back to Pucalpa soon and told me to wait for them. I had no intention of waiting for a threesome of drug traffickers, but said that I would. So I hopped back into my canoe grinning like, well, a solitary tourist floating down a jungle creek high on cocaine, and decided that definitely I would have to write a book about this one day. I doubted people would believe it though, and regretted not having taking photos of the three, but then I might have gotten shot after all. I found myself laughing idiotically all the time, because really this was just too much to believe.

"Oh, hey Croc, how you're doing in there. You look pretty high yourself, your eyes are all red." I just laughed at my own stupid jokes but then it got dark and there was no village in sight and I became a little preoccupied again. I got stuck on another inconveniently placed tree and could not get my canoe untangled in the darkness. I decided to just camp overnight and try again the next day. The only problem was that the spot where I had gotten stuck featured no flat terrain at all. There was a clearing just to my right, but it was at a forty-degree angle. I realised that I had no choice and put up my tent as best I could, crawled inside, let my therma-rest blow up itself, put on Lenny Kravitz and smoked a couple more joints of cocaine. It was a little awkward in there, given that I was sliding down the embankment and towards the river, but I had used a couple of tree stumps as a kind of buffer so at least I wasn't going to end up in the river, but it certainly was not very comfortable.

That night I went into a peculiar half-sleep, while still partially conscious and able to contemplate the day. I was once again confronted with the notion that I was living in a dream. None of the day's events seemed in any way realistic and likely to occur. Was I merely dreaming this? Perhaps I was still back in Mapia and had gone crazy on ayahuasca? I remembered the session that had left my reality splintered because I realized that my life wasn't real at all but purely self-induced. Was I really just a luminous entity dreaming of an existence that was entirely fictional, awaiting my return to the light? Perhaps I was already dead but not fully conscious of the fact, like that bloke in _Sixth Sense_? I became submerged in my subconscious and felt my entire existence on this planet melt away into nothingness, an illusion of epic proportions – my life exposed as a lie. Maybe I was losing it but something was beginning to unravel inside of me. Had Carlos Castaneda not said that in order to find the spirit we have to lose our minds? Except that insanity scared the shit out of me. I thought I heard another large animal approach and the shot of adrenaline brought me back to this reality, so I was almost thankful for the distraction but remained frozen in state of fear until the sound finally abated.

I awoke in the morning feeling groggy. I felt as if I had just smoked a plastic bag out of a drainpipe. The whole experience was rather synthetic. I dumped the rest of the cocaine in the creek and hoped the crocs and the fish might get something out of it. My tent was a pathetic sight in the light of the day and I was glad that the jaguar, or whatever it was I had heard, had not stumbled over it. He might have gotten all tangled up and tense. During the rest of the journey I could see more and more people, standing by the river's edge and looking at me like an apparition. I stared back with the same sense of disbelief when I saw an old man in a canoe, busying himself with rummaging through a white mountain of cocaine in front of him. I pretended I hadn't noticed and upped my pace a little. Those jungles certainly make for interesting journeys, should you leave your Lonely Planet behind.

# Chapter 13

Being Detained

I finally arrived at the next village, the name of which now escapes my mind. The creek I had been traveling on suddenly expanded into a proper river and I had to be careful not to be swept away by the current, which was not that easy given that I didn't have a paddle. I tried to stay close to the embankment but had to use my hands now to steer the boat because the pole had become useless, since it couldn't reach the bottom of the river anymore. I would have been swept out into the middle of the river and carried away by the current had it not been for the wooden jetty, which I caught just in time.

When I walked into the village I realized that I caused a bit of a scene, because the family I had met up the river, had already told them that I might arrive, so that I had a welcome party help me carry my things. I was allowed to sleep in the storage area of a little _tienda_ , where I shared the space with a number of little mice, which did not like my presence at all. A very communicative, friendly and also very obese woman was thankful for the distraction and offered to cook for me and I spent the afternoon playing volleyball and chatting to the locals.

The town had not yet been hooked up to electricity, and there were no cars, scooters or generators, but the locals were terribly content socialising around a fire every night. There was an old man, who seemed to have escaped a Gabriel Marquez novel, and practically functioned as the local TV broadcast. He was the human version of the National Geographic channel, because he had been everywhere, working his way around the world on oil platforms. I don't know whether all of his stories were true, but I suspected so; they sounded every bit as outrageous as my own, and were entertaining a crowd of ten at certain times.

I tried to find the family I had met up the river but every time I knocked on the door of the house, where they were supposed to live, a sister told me that they were not in, even though I had heard their voices before I had made my presence known. Well, I wasn't going to get all hung up about it — I guess they must have thought I was a drug dealer, too, and I could certainly not blame them. I would have thought the same, had I met myself. As it were, I was only interested in _ayahuasca_ and made inquiries about Pablo. He was indeed the local shaman and stories abounded about how he had healed people in the village and how they had been terrified by large snakes and terrible tigers.

"You will cry like a baby if you visit him," my friendly cook told me, making her brown, round face smile with genuine amusement. Sounded very tempting indeed. I might have a vision after all, even if it was going to be terrifying one, but at least I'd finally see something. I was hoping I would open some kind of channel and then be able to tune in at any time and thus have visions inform my life by being in direct contact with the spirit. Also I was lucky because they had scheduled a town meeting and Pablo was expected to turn up as well. I was waiting impatiently, as people scrambled into school and took up seats inside a simple classroom. Finally someone pointed Pablo out to me, although really there had been no need at all, because he looked just like I had imagined an _ayahuascero_ : a short, stocky, enigmatic, quiet Indian with a mysterious sparkle in his eyes.

"Come over in two days," was all he said when I asked him if I could work with him. He obviously was not a man of many words.

I was excited. There was only one worry on my mind: there were no boats going to Pucalpa any time soon and instead a bunch of military helicopters were expected to arrive any day now. They were to supposed to drop a few bombs on a couple of illegal airstrips as well as bring a few supplies from the city. If I were to talk to them they might bring me back to the city, my cook suggested. I didn't know whether this was good or bad news, as exciting as a helicopter ride might be, if it were to end in a jail cell, it would not be worth the while. I was, after all, entirely illegal, because it had been two weeks now since I had left Cruzero do Sul and received an exit stamp. I had walked across the border after I had been sent back by the military police of Peru, and then I had frequented with a group of cocaine traffickers. Thus, without wanting to, I had broken the law repeatedly. I decided to worry about it when the time was right and took a ride back up the river to visit Pablo. He lived only about half an hour from the village and was already preparing the magic brew when I arrived at his simple hut, which was nothing less than a bunch of boards, lifted off the ground by the obligatory wooden legs, with a thatched roof overhead.

There were no walls but it was set on a hill and afforded a beautiful view of the surrounding, partly cleared area, occupied by sheep and cows. His wife was looking after their baby and gave me a friendly nod. There was another older man, walking around aimlessly, who mumbled incomprehensible things and seemed to be an alcoholic. One of Pablos's current patients, I was told. I asked Pablo if there was anything that I could do to help. He was busy stirring the potion inside a giant pot, placed on an open fire. He had already smashed the vine and added the _Raina_ plant, so that the potion was bubbling away in front of us, letting off a pungent, bitter smell.

"Sit down and wait," was his answer. So I did and I waited until nightfall for the potion to be concentrated enough to be ready for consumption. We sat around his hut, smoked a few local tobacco cigarettes and without further ado swallowed the ayahuasca. It tasted distinctly different to the Daime. It was much thicker, fresher, more potent and bitterer. I thought something was going to happen, but we just sat quietly in utter darkness enveloped by the sounds of the jungle and farm animals. Suddenly, as if Pablo had arranged it, thunder started rolling in and lighting illuminated the night. It had not rained for weeks and everyone was pleasantly surprised, including the sheep, which started bellowing loudly, while the baby began crying. The mother consoled it and then the heavens just dropped on us in a torrential downpour. The spectacle was so incredibly fascinating and impressive, that any other form of entertainment would haven paled in comparison. The spirits almost wanted to congratulate me for the journey I had undertaken, it seemed. But I still hadn't had my vision.

Suddenly Pablo started singing his _Icaros_ and the old man joined in. Both seemed to be a spirit, awoken by the magic of serotonin, and especially the old alcoholic appeared like an ancient, once powerful native soul, which had been imprisoned by a life of tragedy and spiritual isolation. His voice made my heart weep, because I could hear his spirit crying out like the forest around us because it was being reduced and cut to make room for civilisation. I could feel an incredible energy moving through myself and involuntarily spread out my arms, to receive the energy with open arms, so to speak. Because we sat in pitch-black darkness I was not aware of Pablo's position, and found myself accidentally touching his nose.

"Estas boracho? (are you drunk?)," he asked without surprise or emotion.

"No, I'm fine, sorry."

"No, don't apologise. Do you want more?" he asked.

"Sure."

He lit a candle and poured out some more of the magic liquid. I really wanted a vision, even if I had to cry like a baby. I swallowed some more and they continued singing. I could feel my stomach rumbling and left to answer its call. Pablo just laughed and his patient sang. As I sat on the toilet and heard their _Icaros_ , it felt like I had returned to another life, in a time before the whites had arrived and things had become complicated. I felt a connection to the land, but also the exposure to the elements and the forces that came with it. Once I finished my business, I crawled back into my sleeping back and closed my eyes, feeling every part of my body move about like ants. The constantly changing sensation was almost too overwhelming, but it really just felt pleasant and right, like the balancing and self-tuning mechanism of my body, which had been strained to the max, over the past two weeks. I fell into a semi-conscious dream state and suddenly heard the sound of helicopters approaching the hut. The helicopter landed on the field in front of us, while all of Pablo's animals scattered in different directions, running for their lives. The wind from the rotors pushed the rain into our shelter and I was gripped by an irrational fear that something terrible was about to happen. Several soldiers with machine guns jumped out of the helicopter and ran towards us. They moved the other people out of the way more or less politely and demanded my papers. Naturally I hadn't brought any, I didn't think that a a hallucination would require a passport. Without any explanation whatsoever they grabbed me and dragged me towards the helicopter. I protested and demanded to know what was going on and someone said "Shut up, gringo," and threw me into the back of the helicopter. We took off and were in the air for an eternity it seemed. Normally I would have thought that this was amazing I was flying above the Amazon in a military helicopter, but under the present circumstances it was not all that enjoyable. We finally landed somewhere in the jungle and they dragged me into barracks, opened up a reinforced metal door and threw me into a stinking hole of a cell. They closed the door behind me and left me in the dark, shivering and alone. I was now confronted with my own demons, my worst fears of torture, disease and years of isolation, causing the slow deterioration of my body and mind. I tried to get a grip and was thinking that they would have to grant me a phone call. Wait, that only happened in movies set in the US. But surely someone would miss me and they could not simply disappear me. They would have to let me talk to someone. But what I would say to my girlfriend? 'Oh hi Honey, guess what I'm in prison in Peru.' 'What, how did you manage that?' 'Oh well, I crossed the border illegally, I met a couple of cocaine traffickers and I never received an entry stamp for Peru. Can you come and get me. I wanna come home now.' Not really much use in that is there? And how I would explain it to my parents? What would they be able to do? How could they get me out? Would they be able to handle it? They would probably get sick with worry. Fujimori, who was the president of Peru at the time, was known to be tough on terrorism, drugs and crime and I would be just another scapegoat in the fight against drug trafficking. I knew that the only way to get through this was to think positive and think about the future; about being a normal tourist and traveling through Peru. I again fell into a state of semi-consciousness and saw myself on a bus traveling south towards Huanuco in the Peruvian Andes. The bus wound its way through the mountains for hours, gaining more and more altitude and affording stupendous views of the surrounding mountains and valleys, some of them covered in snow. I disembarked the bus and walked up the mountain toward a formation that shone with light, out of which appeared a local indigenous man, dressed more like the Northern American Sioux or Apache. He grinned and seemed amused by my confusion and fear:

'You stupid fool, after all you have been through you are still thinking worst-case scenarios. You still don't have any faith in your path, do you?'

'I don't know what you are laughing about. You should know better than I do that they killed all the Indians, probably including yourself.'

'They might have killed us but never our spirit. Anyways, you are living in a different time under a different circumstance; you've got an easy life, stop worrying about idiotic catastrophes that will never happen.'

I knew he was right. All my worst fears had never materialized - they were just that — idiotic fears — nothing more, nothing less.

'But if you dwell on them you will just make yourself miserable and sleep uneasily,' the Indian explained with a warm and genuine smile.

So, I just fell asleep and dreamed of fun helicopter rides, while chatting to soldiers about football, women and beer.

I woke up in the early morning hours and thanked Pablo for the experience. Since he did not want money I gave him my canoe, which he accepted thankfully. I went back to the village and as it were the helicopter ride never materialized, apparently they were too busy preparing for Peru's Independence Day celebrations. But two days later my salvation arrived at four o'clock in the morning, when someone knocked on my door.

"Who is it?" I asked still sleepy, pulling out my earplug.

"Francisco. Your chauffer," a voice said, evidently amusing itself. Francisco? I didn't know any Franciscos.

I opened the door and there he was my drug-dealing Peruvian Cowboy friend from the jungle.

"Get your stuff, _muchacho_ , we are leaving," he said grinning mischievously. I considered his offer briefly and under the circumstance it did seem like a good idea. Living in a village without electricity and playing volleyball is nice and romantic for a few days, but I just had to admit that I was way too used to Western convenience to live here for more than a week. He helped me gather my things and tried to stuff my therma-rest into its polyester bag.

"Like putting on a bloody condom," he complained.

"Well, are you out of practice?" I asked.

"Don't use condoms - hate the stupid things. Can't feel a bloody thing with rubber tubes," he explained though it was really way more information than I required at this time of the morning.

I said hello to his two colleagues. We then went to one of Francisco's friends and had some coffee at his house. While we sat there drinking sweet coffee with sugary buns, I asked his skinnier friend for his name. But before he could answer Francisco did so on his behalf.

"Fransico 2, tourista Tom," he said.

"Right and your boat operator is Francisco 3, am I right?"

"You got it, Tomas. So are you ready to leave the jungle?"

"Yes definitely, I think I'm ready for civilization," I said, "It's been exciting and all but it was time to get back to the conveniences of the city."

We sat on the boat an hour later moving briskly down the river, which was probably about twenty meters wide by now and pretty milky in coloration. They were passing me beers and biscuits for lunch, and Francisco asked what I had been thinking the first time I had met them.

"I just thought: 'Oh well, here we go with another adventure. Let's see what happens now'," I said.

"You really are a crazy tourist, _mi amigo_. So how did you like our friend Pablo?" he asked.

"Great guy - not a waster of words - but good stuff, his brew."

"So why do you think it's different than cocaine, it's just a different effect isn't it?" Francisco wanted to know.

"No, for one thing it's natural, like coca leafs, and secondly it really can connect you with God," I explained.

"Are you religious?"

"Not really, I believe in nature and perhaps some kind of greater intelligence, I like to call the spirit. Did you know that Pablo has cured people and that he learned it through _ayahuasca_? It shows him what's wrong with people and he can see and feel their disease, which is really just a manifestation of some kind of mental ailment. So he gives them a vision which is a visual representation of the disease and then they get rid of it, by chasing away their demons, or vomiting cockroaches, or taking the herbal medicines he prescribes."

"But you're not sick," he suggested.

"We are all a little sick in one way or another — mental diseases that make our lives difficult."

"So what's your problem?"

"I always get stressed out about nothing. I don't trust the flow of things and get all worked up," I explained.

"I just smoke a joint for that," he said and took another sip of his beer.

"Yep, that's a medicine, too. Just not mentally as clear. Wow, did you see the crocodile over there? That was pretty big."

"Yeah, they can get pretty big," Francisco said matter-of-factly.

"How big do they get?" I asked him.

"Well that depends on the client," he said and laughed at his own joke. We continued moving until lunchtime and then pulled over to an elderly woman's house, where we were served freshly slaughtered chicken with rice and beans. We were sitting there enjoying the meal, when the woman began telling us that just last week the military had been here and they had caught a drug-trafficker and tortured him. "God, he was still alive and twitching three hours after they had left him to bleed to death."

I could see that Francisco and his companions were getting uneasy. It suddenly occurred to me that I was seriously putting myself in danger by traveling with three drug-traffickers. A gringo traveling with cocaine dealers would only really have one thing in mind. I remembered how suspicious people had been about my being in this area ever since I left Cruzero do Sul, so traveling with those guys, as nice as they might be, would really only lead people to the wrong conclusion.

"That's the way in Peru," Francisco explained. "They take out the little guys, because they are competition, so that the big guys can continue their business and the government officials continue to receive their bribes. You know I have sat there rolling cocaine joints for soldiers and they told me if they ever see me selling somewhere they would have to kill me."

"So, why take the risk?" the woman asked him.

"Because there is no other way here in Peru, you have to fight to survive." The woman agreed with him although she surely did not approve of his activities. She explained how they were going to the city soon to sell bananas, but the trip was almost as expensive as what they would get for their bananas. Farmers received nothing for their produce even though everything was expensive, she complained.

"But you have a house and plenty of food. At least you are not starving," I suggested.

"Sure," Francisco said. "But people want more than to survive. They want a radio for example, so they can listen to some music, or a TV and a faster boat. Food is not everything."

"Right, but it's not like Africa where people are starving to death."

"This is not Africa, no, but we would like things, too," the woman argued. Of course, they were right, on the other hand they had everything they needed, rice, chicken, pigs, plenty of fish from the river and a roof over their heads. Life had been generous to them, I thought, but then again, they would never fly around the world like I was doing and I would not want to live here either. On the other hand are we really better off as Westerners who constantly need the latest iPhone, LCD TV or Wii Station just to keep ourselves occupied? Sometimes I think a simple life might be healthier than chasing money and a career. I guess it was like East Germany, we didn't miss telephones and Legos until we knew that they exist, and then we suddenly wanted it. I supposed one could live in the Amazon with the Daimistas in a nice little house and without television, but I would probably get itchy feet and want to move on soon. If I had noticed anything during the last few weeks it was that I do like my comforts, even though I love nature. It would be great to find a happy medium, a nice comfortable home in beautiful and natural surroundings while doing something that I love. Well, I would have plenty of time to think about what I wanted out of life over the next few days, but my troubles weren't quite over just yet. We thanked the woman for the food and the drug dealers insisted that they would pay for me as well. They were quite generous, nice chaps really, when they didn't suspect you of being a spy.

We moved further down the river and I noticed that the Franciscos were starting to discuss their situation nervously, but I couldn't hear details because of the engine noise. We pulled over and walked into a banana plantation just as the sun was setting. I slept under a thatched roof that night, while the three of them disappeared somewhere into the banana plantation behind that thatched roof. It was already ten o'clock the next morning when they told me that they would not continue their journey towards the city, and go up the river instead. I could only assume that they had become scared and did not want to risk the chance of getting caught downstream, because apparently they were patrolling there, as Francisco had explained. They dropped me off on a muddy patch of land, occupied by a few miserable looking houses. The place stank and was infested with sandflies. How anyone could live there was a mystery to me. The Franciscos said goodbye and I gave them a couple more of my tapes, but I didn't want to part with my poncho, which annoyed Francisco 1 a bit. But I really thought I would need it sooner or later, although in retrospect I really should have given it to him, they had helped me move down the river and given me food and drink, after all. They really had been quite generous hosts and probably the nicest coke dealers I have ever met. Who knows where I would have been without them. Probably still stuck in the village up the river listening to the old man spin a bit of yarn of far off places.

While I sat there more frustrated than ever, a drunken drummer decided I needed some company and planted himself next to me. The obnoxious man had somehow acquired a drum and was hammering away in most unmelodious and annoying ways. To make matters worse he began hitting me with his drumsticks as well. Naturally I told him to go away in no uncertain terms. But since he was too busy making noise he didn't hear me and I had to physically push him away. He got up and stumbled about for a while but seemingly unperturbed continued his loathsome activity a bit further away from me. I was pondering the idea that we create our own reality and that everything around us is merely a reflections of our own state of mind. We constantly look into the mirror of own psyche. I consoled myself with the fact that I was not the only one whose nerves were being grated, because he was told several times to stop the noise by angry locals. But he continued, regardless – he was drunk and he just wanted to have some fun, he said. The show came to a dramatic end when he stumbled onto a baby chicken, crushing its bones and leaving it for dead. It was then that the owner pulled the drum away from him, kicked a hole through it and threw it into the river. I quietly thanked him for the deed and wished I had been able to do it myself. But even watching it had been extremely satisfying, because my frustration at being stuck again and the noise really made me want to hurt someone and inside my mind I actually imagined kicking the drunkard in the guts.

Although it was quiet now, I was still stuck there and I had no idea how long I would have to stay. Compared to this place I had been sleeping in idyllic river resorts previously. The place reeked of desolation and desperation. Maybe it was just my perception but alcoholism seemed like a reasonable solution for living in this god-forsaken place. I seriously began praying and asked the spirit, or whatever listens to desperate prayers, to please take me out of this dump. I had had enough adventures at that stage and just wanted to return to civilization, as decrepit as it might be. As if the spirit had heard me a boat appeared in the distance moving painstakingly slowly down the river. I became quite animated again and seriously excited about the fact that I just had my prayers answered. I ought to remember that this shit really works, I thought. Then I asked a local to carry me across to the boat using a canoe. I certainly was not going to let it go. The boat was a self-made construction, which really consisted of two canoes that had been connected by planks, now loaded with bananas. There was no roof above the entire haphazard construction and it moved about as fast as a senior on crutches, but I desperately wanted to leave. I just wanted to move even if it were at five kilometers an hour. To my surprise I recognised the elderly woman who had made us lunch the day before. There were three others with her on the boat, presumably her husband, and their children; a man in his thirties and a slightly older sister. But she did definitely not like the sight of me. In fact she refused to let me come onboard. I pleaded with them and offered them money and after some time they finally agreed. I found out a couple of days later that she had also thought that I was a drug-dealer. Not a good reputation to have, given there are murderous, death squads, who like to torture people, out and about, I thought.

Although I spent the next couple of days baking in the sun, with absolutely nothing to do except eat delicious, freshly caught and perhaps mercury-enriched fish, I was content. I was finally going to the city and this time I was going to arrive. I spent my time dreaming about traveling around in a mobile home, which I considered the perfect symbiosis of having a home and being free. I also tried not to worry too much about my passport issues and how I would explain the days I had spent crossing the border illegally. I would deal with that when the time was right. I had come to trust the flow now and had full confidence in an easy solution. The trouble is that just when you let your guard down you get slapped across the face by life. Or was that just what I had been taught by my parents and other people around me? Perhaps it was the reason I constantly worried because not worrying meant that something terrible would occur. If I constantly kept preparing for the worst I would be ready and would be pleasantly surprised should something much more positive come about. That's what my dad had always told me. I contemplated the dynamics of worrying as we slowly drifted down the river and I realized how similar it was to my childhood dream of traveling down the Mississippi on a raft, like Tom Sawyer and his black friend. While Tom Sawyer had been afraid of being caught with an escaped slave, I had to worry about being illegal and mistaken for a drug dealer. But just like those fictional character I had always come across generous souls who were willing to help me move on with my adventure. It wouldn't be an adventure if there wasn't some kind of danger around the corner, I thought. But the spirit had always been on my side and with a bit of luck I would make it to the city and hopefully not end up in jail. Two more hitchhikers joined us a couple of days later. One was a teacher and the other an attractive guy who was about my age. He was going to Pucalpa to do a check-up on his operation. He told me that his entire face had been destroyed by a boating accident. He had gotten caught up in the propeller while swimming in the river, which had ripped his face open. It had been reconstructed a couple of months ago and they needed to extract the thread from his scars now. They had done a really good job actually. I could see the scars only behind his cheekbone, once he pointed it out. He also showed me photos of how he had looked before his operation. He had had a terribly disfigured face and I found it incredible that this was the same person and that they were capable of doing such complicated reconstructive surgery in a town like Pucalpa. I also thought about my own ordeal, if you could even call it that, and how easy I had it in compared to this guy. Could I really claim that I had been through a lot? In comparison I had had a safari in the Amazon - just for kicks. But on the other hand I was sure glad that it was behind me now. A couple of nights later we approached a river checkpoint in the dark of the night. Some of my travel companions thought that I should stay put on the boat because they all knew my story by now and that I had not exactly entered the country of Peru legally. Meanwhile they would go up to the barracks and deal with the soldiers hoping that they did not want to check out the boat this late at night. But others thought that they did not want to take a risk because of my crazy escapades. So I eventually offered to come up and see the soldiers myself. We entered the small outpost station where a couple of soldiers were watching TV. The whole place looked just like my ayahuasca-induced dream I had had at Pablo's place a couple of days ago. I felt a sense of fore-boding and something odd going on in my reality. As if my perception was not quite right. It was 11 o'clock at night and they seemed pretty tired and quite dazed. Probably hung over, I thought. They others showed their Identification cards and then it was my turn. The soldier who was not much older than me, looked at my passport and leafed around the pages for a couple of minutes. My heart was pounding, but I said nothing. I thought it would be better to let him run the conversation, rather than appear suspicious. The others eyed the soldier with apprehension and I thought I saw a glimmer of glee in the woman's eyes. I'm sure she still suspected that I was a drug dealer.

"Where is your entry stamp for Peru," he finally asked with a sense of confusion but little interest.

"I will get it in Pucalpa," I told him.

"Where have you been since you received that exit stamp in Brazil," he asked me now.

"I've hitchhiked down the river because there were not flights in Cruzero do Sul," I told him truthfully.

"You might run into some trouble in Pucalpa, " he said and looked at me.

"I will deal with it, when I get there, " I said, wanting to get out of there. I did not like that I had seen this place in my dream and hoped to God that I could leave and try my luck in the city. The soldier was still staring at me. The only sound was that of the TV. There was some kind of cheesy action movie playing, guns were rattling and helicopters flying about. The soldier gave me my passport back and wished me good luck. He sat back down in front of the Television and we got out of there as fast as we could without appearing suspicious. We continued our journey for a couple more hours and pulled over onto a river bank later that night. I crept into my sleeping bag while thousands of stars were twinkling above me. It took me some time to go to sleep because my worries about what would happen in the city had returned with a vengeance. When I finally fell into an uneasy sleep, I was once again sitting in a jail cell.

Rats were moving about around me and I was incredibly cold. The cold had penetrated my bones and a chilling dampness sat within me and the stones of that jail cell. The floor was barren and rough. Only the smallest amount of light penetrated the window bars above me, so that I could make out shades and the bodies of rats scampering across the floor. I was literally chilled to the bone. The whole scene was so incredibly vivid that I could only conclude that it was real. The door opened and someone pushed a plate into the cell, but the rats were faster than me and once they had stuck their disgusting mouths into the goo of rice and beans, I had lost all apatite. I knew that I had come in here with very little body fat to begin with and that if I did not eat, I would soon become little more than a skeleton. In fact I was so weak that I fell back into a stupor again and continued dreaming about an alternate reality where I was free and merely a tourist in Peru. But my troubled thoughts were stronger and I could not for the life of me understand why everything had gone so wrong all of a sudden. I had been following synchronicity and kept my karma clean. Why was I in here? Was this the ultimate test? Was I going to find enlightenment in a cell just like Rubin "Hurricane" Carter? Perhaps I was meant to write my book in jail, just like Karl May? The ways of the spirit are mysterious I thought and exhaustion finally got the better of me, despite the cold and those disgusting rats around me. I began to dream again of a life where I was still free.

I awoke suddenly in a cold sweat and was incredibly thankful to see the stars above me. And even though I lay awake, trying to meditate, but being overwhelmed by thoughts, I was grateful for my freedom and literally felt like crying in gratitude as the sun rose and the air warmed up to the sound of birds and people around me. We packed our things and sat down again on our banana raft. As we continued on our journey we could see more and more settlements by the side of the river as well as traffic moving along the water in both directions. We briefly got stuck again in a particularly shallow area, because of the lack of rain. But we managed to find someone who towed us off the sandbank and so we slowly crept towards the city of Pucalpa. When I finally saw the city approach in the distance I wanted to jump up and down and give everyone a hug, but being German I thought better of it and thanked everyone instead. I disembarked the boat just as the sun was setting over the port of Pucalpa and together with the teacher we hired a motorcycle taxi and drove into the city. The amount of people around me was overwhelming but the sounds and lights of the city felt incredibly comforting, even though I felt that my big adventure might have come to an end. Little did I know that I was still right in the middle of it and that something would soon click into place inside me.

The teacher knew where the immigration office was located and agreed to accompany me on the motorcycle rickshaw. But of course we arrived to late to find anyone there that night. I took a hotel and rose early the next day after another fitful sleep. I made my way to the immigration office, in the early morning hours and to my great disappointment found the office closed, even though according to the opening hours, posted on the door, it should have been open for business. As was custom in South America there was very little information to be found. But I asked in the building next door and was told that the office would be closed for the weekend on account of it being Independence Day in Peru. I felt me heart sink because I just wanted to resolve my passport issue. So I continued to talk to people and found a helpful and friendly taxi driver who knew the head of immigration. He offered to take me to his house, where he might still be having breakfast. So we rode across town and found the pleasant-looking immigration official at his housing drinking coffee while his wife served him bacon and eggs. He was incredibly friendly and invited me in. He even asked me to share coffee and cake with him and just wanted to have a casually chat. He was obviously in a good mood or perhaps just a very content middle-aged man. I was still nervous what he would have to say about the twenty-one days I had been lost in the jungle since I had received my exit stamp from Brazil. But he really did a good job of putting me at ease and I just drank my coffee, ate his cake and told him about my jungle adventure, minus a few minor drug-related details, which he found terribly entertaining. He in turn told me about another German who had lived in his house for a month until his relatives in Germany had paid for a flight back, because everything had been stolen from him in Brazil. He also told me that just three months ago an Englishman had disappeared in the same area I had just visited. His family had come to investigate, but they had never found out what happened and his body was never discovered. I had been pretty lucky really, he suggested. I wondered if it had been luck. The idea of luck really suggests that I don't hold much control over my life. I mean sure I can assume I've got the number three easy life and thus I'm pretty lucky, but that could mean that my luck could run out, in which case I would now have to be careful and scared. But here is my hypothesis about how this so-called luck works and I call it a hypothesis because I do test it in my life on a daily basis and ask people about their lives to see if there is any validity to the idea. So far I must say, it seems to be true, though I recognize of course that we will always see what we hope to see. But then what's the difference if it works, whether it's self-fulfilling or not.

My concept of luck is based on the notion of karma, which means that as long as I keep my karma clean I will be protected. I'm sure you are familiar with the idea of karma, it's basically the Eastern equivalent of saying what goes around comes around, or in other words what you take from others will be taken from you and what you give to others will be given back to you. And it works because our perception of separateness is an illusion because we are essentially made up of the same stuff and share the same planet, same air and same energy - we are essentially one. I began believing in the idea long before I read the books by the Dalai Lama, it somehow made sense to me intuitively and I have had instances where I was not completely honest, i.e. I'd pocket a snorkel after a snorkeling trip in Thailand where they didn't do half of what they had promised us, and subsequently I had my camera stolen back in Melbourne, while my friends had nothing stolen at all, not even their cash in a drawer. Or I had pocketed money that was lying on my bed in a dormitory in Amsterdam when I could have just put it on a windowsill and a couple of days later had my passport stolen in a coffee shop. Secondly I believe that we attract certain experiences into our lives, sort of like they describe in the book _The Secret_ , although it's a bit oversimplified in there because I think there should be more of an emphasis on action and the law of attraction does not stand alone as the only law. They call it the law of attraction, because whatever you believe, think about and feel you will attract into your life, whether it is good or bad, subconscious or conscious. If you combine the law of karma with the law of attraction, based on the notion that we live in a conscious universe, then you could say that doing good for other people will lift our consciousness to thinking positively about the world and other people, thus we will attract positive experiences. Or if you look at it on a purely energetic level, the way the Incas do, who say there is only dense and refined energy, then acting out of generosity and good will means you lift yourself to refined energy and thus you will not have to contend with dense energy, which is another word for negative and painful experiences. Now the question is why do apparently good people have to experience negative events in their lives, like for example Nelson Mandela, or the Tibetans or just a good person living in a city like New York who gets gang-raped or ends up in a car-wreck. Now one could argue that perhaps they have accumulated that kind of karma in another life, perhaps that woman was once a man who raped someone, or that starving African was a rich white person who did not want to share in a past life? And maybe that's how it works, although Bob Geldof would probably call me a fucking cunt for thinking it. And I admit it seems to make little sense for people like Nelson Mandela, Tibetan monks or Jesus for that matter, considering that his life was ended pretty horribly, if he ever existed in the first place. I asked that question to a lady leading meditation retreats in Guatemala once and she explained that there is another law at work and that is the law of conscious evolution, which means that some people seek challenging experiences in order to grow. Which of course does not exist in isolation from the law of attraction because if you believe you have to be a revolutionary and a martyr to change the world, and sometimes we have to in order to stop apartheid or dictatorial regimes for example, then we may end up being just that: martyrs and sacrifices for the greater good. And sacrificing ourselves for the greater good perhaps means that we will eventually be completely free from suffering because we chose to suffer for the liberation of other sentient beings, who knows.

So you end up with three elements that govern your life experiences: your thoughts and beliefs, which shape your expectations and actions in this world; your karma, which will have an impact on your thoughts and your beliefs because as you do bad things you expect others to do the same. And finally the kinds of lessons you need to learn in this life and the sort of challenges you create for yourself, which in turn shape your expectations and beliefs. Now all of that only really makes sense if you assume that the universe is made up of infinite consciousness and you basically chose your experiences within that sea of consciousness, in the same way you chose a website within the internet. Which is why time is an illusion because these website all exist at the same time but you visit them and discover them over a period of time, thus creating the illusion of chronology.

All of these thoughts were running through my head as my host served me coffee and cake and talked about the adventures of another unlucky German because he had lost everything when he had been robbed at the carnival in Rio and had ended up staying at the border officials' house for two months until his relatives in Germany managed to buy him a new flight home. So he had been challenged by being robbed but had also found incredible hospitality and generosity along the way and maybe this was his lesson, and perhaps that's what all of life was, just a long experience with a few lessons about how we are all the same and in no way separate to our surroundings.

He stamped my passport with a big smile and said: "Bienvenidos a Pucalpa, mi amigo," and added cheerfully: "Difrutate, es dia de fiesta, y hay muchas chicas bonitas acqui." I thanked him and told him that I was glad that there were plenty of good people like him who had made my journey through the jungle a life-changing and eye-opening experience that had made me belief that there is indeed an incredible spirit in all of us and in our lives. He said Amen to that and we said goodbye.

That was it, it seemed. I was back in the city, free and healthy and it was Independence Day. I decided that I would celebrate and gorged myself on fruits, danced and drank and eventually fell sick with diarrhea for a couple of days. I started feeling really sick. Perhaps it was the strain of the previous weeks as my body realized that the worst was over, or perhaps there was another reason entirely and my body was trying to tell me something. I visited a Native American village close to Pucalpa because I had been told that they do _ayahuasca_ rituals there. But unfortunately they told me that their shaman had left the village because of the Independence Day celebrations. They told me that there was an _ayahuascero_ in town and told me where to find him. I made my way to his hut via a rickshaw. The house was simple and characteristic for this region, in that it was entirely made of timber and elevated off the ground in case of flooding. As usual chicken and pigs ran about picking food scraps off the ground. He agreed to do a session for me the next day but I would have to pay him. We negotiated for a little while and agreed on thirty US dollars. I returned to my hotel, still feeling week and sick, but optimistic. At the very least from now on I would simply have more faith and try to worry less about worst-case scenarios, which was a bit of a habit I had picked up from my parents. But then a lot of people seemed to worry about everything under the sun, it wasn't just me or my parents, it really is a societal disease and I guess our media only amplifies the problem by stoking our fears of disease, fraud and economic difficulties because it speaks to our most basic human denominator: fear. It's almost like the media has replaced the superstition and gossiping of the dark ages. And I assumed this is why so many people went to do jobs they never wanted to do, because their fear of ending up on the street was far greater than being stuck in a six by four cubicle. You might have seen _The Fisher King_ with Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams, and perhaps you remember a scene where Jeff Bridges meets a Vietnam Veteran in a wheelchair as he collects money form passers-by in Central Station in New York City. Jeff Bridges complains because people drop money in front of the guy without even looking at him. The Vietnam Vet then explains to him: "They pay so they don't have to look. You see, a guy goes to work every day, eight hours a day, seven days a week, gets his nuts so tight in a vice, starts to question the very fabric of his existence. One day about quitting time, boss calls him in his office: 'Hey Bob why don't you come in here and kiss my ass for me, will you?' He says: 'Hell with it, I don't care what happens, I just want to see the expression on his face as I jam this pair of scissors into his arm.' Then he thinks of me: 'Wait a minute, I got both my arms, both my legs, at least I'm not begging for a living.' Sure enough Bob's gonna put those scissors down and pucker right up. You see, I'm kind of like a moral traffic light really. I'm like saying red, go no further, boooey, boooey."

And that's where we get right to the crux of the problem, our society is designed around deterrents, for the benefit of those in power. I know that sounds very class-warfare, but it's not really, it's just about people along the have-have-not-continuum trying to hold on to their status by using fear as a deterrent. The result is people living in constant subconscious fear of losing everything, and _acting_ out of fear, making decisions based on fear and eventually doing things they never wanted to do with their lives. And trust me the older you get, and the more responsibility you take on, the more those worries will weigh you down in your decision-making. The pressure comes from everywhere, friends, family, television and our subconscious. That's why trust and faith in yourself and your path are the foundation for doing what you really want to do with your life because it diminishes fear, or at least a very large part of it. I don't think it's possible to never worry at all and it's probably not healthy either, you'd probably end up being some kind of doped-out ineffectual zombie, but it's about worrying with efficiency. Worrying only when it results in finding solutions for problems and not thinking worst-case scenario all the time, but to trust yourself and your intuition. I mean you don't get into a car and then constantly think of traffic accidents and completely avoid busy roads or highways because you're constantly fretting you'll have an accident, but you're going to put a seatbelt on and keep your eyes open and your attention on the road. And that's how life should be, I reckon, a pleasant ride where we keep our eyes on the path and attention on coincidences and opportunities without constant fretting about what could happen to us. And once you stop worrying and decide to take the courage to go your own way, the first thing you have to do is to figure out what it is you want to do with your life. I have found that most people don't know the answer to that question, because they've never had he time or opportunity to really think about what they would love to do in life. This is where travel helps because it allows you to lift yourself out of your social situation with all its pressures and obligations and explore your true desires and inclinations, to discover your self. This is what I realized as I sat in a nice comfortable hotel room already getting bored and wanting more adventure and hoping to find out more about myself.

I went to see the _ayahuascero_ the next day, but somehow I had a bad feeling. The whole setting was not very pure and the way he had asked for money was not very confidence inspiring and I didn't know if I could totally trust him. But he was friendly enough and he lived in the city, so he had to make a living. He was busy preparing the brew in his yard when I arrived in the late afternoon. We sat down did a few prayers and once it got dark he passed me the liquid which I asked to drink out of my special cup from Cobija, which Juan had made for me. The ayahuasca was incredibly strong and I hoped that I would finally have a vision or at the very least get rid of my sickness. But it was not to be this way. I had a terrible trip where I felt waves of nausea overcome me. The city and its pollution as well as its smells made me feel claustrophobic and I was writhing in pain and discomfort. Then almost with a sense of relief I was once again in a jail cell. The cell had improved somewhat. It wasn't the same dark and damp cubicle filled with rats I had been sitting in before. I had a simple bed and a desk and I was writing, using a pencil and a block of papers. I was writing my book, so that I could tell my story. The realization shocked me. I finally grasped the reality of never having come out of the jungle. I was still there, although I was now in a prison in Pucalpa. My entire journey out of the jungle, arriving in the city and the unlikely event of an immigration official stamping my passport with an entry stamp for Peru on Independence Day was pure fiction. It was just my wishful imagination as I tried to cope with the reality of sitting in a jail cell in Peru. At this stage I didn't know for how long I would be here. But because eyewitnesses had reported seeing me with those three drug dealers, who had been caught as well; because they had found traces of cocaine on my backpack and I had entered Peru illegally after being sent back, I was in seriously violation of Peruvian law. As I said Fujimori wanted to appear tough on crime and I would be made an example of. I suppose this was my destiny. I would write my story in prison just like Karl May? Do we repeat our karma over and over again? Perhaps this was merely a test that would shape my character and maybe I would never emerge from those walls again, but I would write to share my story. Perhaps it would be this way that I could become a famous writer as my case became news. I desperately tried to hold on to something positive, because everything that happens had to happen for a good reason, right? I had felt suicidal for days but now I had a new purpose and as I had learned from reading _Papillon_ , the famous Frenchman, who had languished in a prison in French Guiana, if I put my hands over my mouth and thus cause a lack of oxygen to my brain, I could escape this jail and go on with my journey inside my mind. These walls could not contain my spirit.

# Chapter 14

The Inca's Crown

I left Pucalpa feeling sapped of all my energy because of the horrendous ayahuasca experience during the previous night. I could not remember exactly what had happened but I it was not pleasant and I did not feel good afterwards, unlike the sessions I had had with the Daimistas or Pablo. For some reason I could not remember my experience with Pablos either. But the other problem was that I now had had diarrhea for four days and I suspected that it might even be dysentery. But to top it all off I now also had a serious cough. I felt like I needed to get out of Pucalpa and took a bus to a mountain town called Huanuco because I longed to be high up in the mountains where I could enjoy a sense of freedom. I somehow felt stifled and claustrophobic here in the forest. It was a six-hour ride but the scenery was spectacular and after sitting for days on end on a Banana boat it was pure luxury. Though I will never understand why they had to turn on the air-conditioning full blast while people were shivering under their blankets. They showed movies as well and I once again enjoyed _Shawshank Redemption_ with Tim Robbins. But my stomach problem was still weighing me down and I now had a cough as well, much to the annoyance of other people around me. I disembarked a few hours later, feeling cold and miserable and found a cheap hotel near the lively market. I soon found myself wandering through the wonderfully diverse market of Huanuco, which really was quite an attractive mountain town in the Peruvian Andes. The air was much fresher here than in the forest, but I could also feel the lack of oxygen, as I walked the cobbled streets, surrounded by overwhelming smells, colours and scores of people haggling over everything from fruits to shoes and empanadas. I was munching on coca leafs, which I had just bought off an elderly lady without teeth, when I saw an old Native woman on a corner, selling herbs and remedies. She looked familiar for some reason, but I could not placer her. She had an air of simple wisdom and I asked her if she had a remedy for my stomach problems. She asked for the symptoms, while serving another client. She was obviously incredibly busy. After dealing with another client she finally gave me a bottle of reddish, quite sweet-tasting liquid.

My stomach problem and the diarrhea were gone the next day. I came back to thank her, but she smiled benevolently and said: "What did you think - that it wasn't going to work?" It was at that moment that it clicked and I knew where I had seen her before. She looked like a direct replica of the woman on the card Frank, the Canadian, had given to me. I told her about it excitedly and promised to show her the card the next day. She invited me to her home to eat dinner with her family that same night. She lived up on a hill in a barren room with curtains for doors and there were at least three generations living in that tiny apartment. They started singing for me and asked me to sing a song, too. I sang one of the Portuguese hymns I had learned in Mapia and received a polite applause. She told me that I should visit _La Corona del Inca_ and the Hot Springs just past it. So I set off the next day.

I took a bus up into the mountains and asked them to drop me off at the Corona del Inca. Indeed, the rock looked just like a crown and I quickly walked up to the top. The view of the surrounding countryside was a real pleasure and I felt free and grateful for everything I had been given. I still could not believe that the postcard I had received a month earlier had led me to the person that would solve my stomach ailment. Just as I contemplated the incredible synchronicity of events I realized that I was getting a terrible headache. This was odd because I did not usually get headaches. Only under very rare circumstance did I get one, and it usually had to do with alcohol. But now I suddenly had to deal with a searing headache that was almost incapacitating. Then it dawned on me that what I was experiencing was altitude sickness. I had gone up the mountains for four hours in a bus that day, and had then climbed the mountain as quickly as my breath had allowed. I started descending as speedily as I could and walked back to the road. It was a Sunday and everyone I asked told me that there would be no buses returning to Huanuco that late in the day.

My headache was getting worse, in fact it got so bad I had to sit down, because I had the very real sensation of having my skull being split in half. To make matters worse there was a small group of people forming around me, who began staring at me like a zoo animal. Apparently they didn't get a lot of tourists up here. People were asking me the usual set of questions about where I came from and how long I had been in Peru. Normally I would have been happy to respond, but I was quite simply in no shape to make any conversation at this point. I lay down on the ground, because I thought my head was going to implode, which drew even more interest. Someone offered me a bed in his house and I was only too happy to oblige. I lay down in his mud-brick hut, as the wind was whistling through the gaps of the thatched roof above. My headache was so bad now I started hallucinating. I had the distinct sensation that I was sitting in a much smaller room and used my jumper to restrict the flow of air to my nostrils on purpose. And it was the fact that I could not get enough oxygen into my brain that I got a headache. I released myself from my own grip and started breathing freely again. I now sat inside a barren room with fluorescent light above me. I was lying on a dirty mattress and there was a table with a block of paper sitting on it. It all came back to me with such dark and menacing certainty that I felt as if pinned to railroad tracks and hearing the sound of the approaching train. 'Do you hear this Mr. Reissmann? This is the sound of inevitability,' my dark twin said to me with a sense of satisfaction. 'All your ideas of synchronicity and happiness. Illusions Mr. Reissmann. Illusions. The product of a mind that's desperately trying to justify an existence that is both without meaning and purpose. And all of it as artificial as T _he Matrix_ itself.' I knew he was right. There was no purpose to life, no meaning, no sense to anything. How could there be? I had followed my intuition and coincidences to this jail cell and it became undeniably clear that I would not leave this prison for years to come. I had violated Peruvian law and I would have to pay dearly. I had no money to buy my way out and my parents were probably sick with worrying by now. I had not had the courage to tell them. I simply wanted to die. There was no way that I could stand ten years in a prison in Peru. Sure I could finish my book and learn Spanish from South American criminals and do push ups until I got blue in the face but there was simply no way I could do this. I was a traveler and I needed change like others need air. I slumped back down onto my cot and tried to forget once again where I was. At least they had allowed me to start reading books and I had begun reading travel reports by foreigners exploring Peru and the Inca Trail, talking to indigenous people and learning about their customs. As I read I slowly drifted off into a life of joy and happiness, where I was living my dream.

I was still lying inside the man's mud-brick hut when I heard the sound of a bus engine approach. I stormed out into the street just as it passed us. I ran after it and yelled until the bus finally stopped. I was given a front-row seat, right next to the driver, and my headache rapidly diminished as we crept down the serpentine road. I could not believe my luck. Just ten minutes ago I was lying in some stranger's hut and now I enjoyed the best seat it the bus as we sped back into Huanuco. I really was blessed and protected somehow. The driver was a bit of a brute and drove like a maniac but I thought everything was going to work out just fine, when clearly it wasn't. I could sense that something was wrong but I just wanted to enjoy the ride and not worry too much about the sense of foreboding. We sped around corners like a bank robber on the run, and I had to hold on to the dashboard just to keep my balance so as not to fall onto the driver, clearly he was in a hurry to get home.

We finally stopped at a little _comedor_ , and I was glad for the break. The soup was watery and bland, so I treated myself to a chocolate bar, something I did not usually do. It was getting dark already as we boarded the bus and once again I felt a sense of unease about this journey and my entire perception of reality, as if it was about to come apart. The driver continued to drive like a drunken idiot, which was nothing unusual for Latin American bus-drivers, I was just glad that he wasn't actually drunk. Well, at least I hadn't smelled any alcohol on his breath and I sat pretty close to him. And then it happened. Two headlights appeared around a bent rather quickly, and kept moving straight towards us. The bus driver was either sleeping or not paying attention but we seemed to be headed for a head-on collision. I shouted at him in English, which really didn't help, because he probably didn't understand. But it woke him from his stupor and violently jerked the wheel towards the right. Suddenly the lights disappeared and with it the road underneath us. I felt the bus toppling over to one side and heard people screaming behind me. Before I knew what had happened I was lying sideways and the bus-driver was lying on top of me, but at least we were not moving anymore.

I felt no pain anywhere and checked for numbness, but didn't discover any. I seemed to be fine. I sat up and was in prison once again. It seemed that the ayahuasca had opened a gateway inside my mind that allowed me to slip into an alternate reality that appeared just as vivid and real as normal waking life. But where was this reality leading me. I didn't exactly have control over it. It simply moved driven by a force beyond my mental volition and I didn't know where exactly this was going to take me. Was I going to die a symbolic death just like Klaus had in Austria? I remember that he had difficulties talking about it and that it did not resolve things for him. But my situation was quite different, I was stuck inside this gloomy prison and death would be a welcome relief. I still had no idea what would happen to me in here and any time I left the cell to go to the exercise yard or lunch I simply walked around like a zombie, longing to go back into my cell and continue my journey into the mountains of Peru. I had not yet experienced any violence in here, I was merely a gringo who was out of it. The lights went off and I knew it was sleeping time. I didn't feel sleepy at all but I closed my eyes nonetheless and began hyperventilating, because I knew that it could bring about a strange state of awareness that would take me out of these walls again.

I was lying inside the bus again. The screaming had finally ceased and people were now muttering curses or Ave Marias, depending on their religious inclination. We began crawling out of the bus and it seemed that no one was hurt. People did not even seem too shocked, evidently it was just another routine public transport problem in Peru. The bus was lying sideways in a ditch, right next to the road, where it had been just five minutes ago. As we stood there trying to hail down one of the passing trucks and buses, we realized that none of them were going to stop. There were just too many people looking for transport and the city was still some twenty kilometers away. I decided to start walking to find a place where erect my night for the night. Luckily I had brought all of my belongings, because I had wanted to visit the hot springs, an hour past the Corona del Inca. I put on my backpack and was about to walk down the road when an overweight, obviously ill-tempered woman started shouting at me.

"Where do you think you're going, gringo? You haven't paid your fare yet," the fat lady shouted.

"What?" I said turning towards her. "You can't be serious. I have obviously not arrived in Huanuco and now I have to walk for twenty kilometers."

"You still have to pay," she insisted.

"Are you out of you mind? Pay for what? Landing in a ditch?"

"You have to pay. The fare is eighty _soles_ , everybody has to pay- even you, gringo," she fumed.

"Well Peruana, I pay you sixty _soles_ , but I'm not paying the full fare."

"Eighty soles, that's the fare and you will pay."

By now a crowd had assembled around us, curious to find out how the drama would unfold. They just loved their soapoperas, those Latin Americans.

"Here is seventy, and now I'm leaving," I said after slapping the notes in her hand.

She grabbed the money and inspected it with the help of a flashlight.

"Probably a counterfeit - those gringos always use counterfeits," she grunted.

I was at the end of my energy for the day and with all the compassion I still had left in me, I could only conclude that the woman was either mentally underprivileged or had not been banged in a very long time. Regardless, I just wished her a wonderful evening and that God may bless her with emotional intelligence and an improved sex life. Obviously, the latter part I prayed for silently.

I could not find an appropriate place where to pitch my tent — there were only agricultural fields around. I temporarily took refuge in a small cave by the side of the road and slipped into my sleeping bag, but it was not particularly comfortable and I could hear trucks passing every ten minutes. I scrambled back onto the road again and used my flashlight to hail down any type of transport, willing to take a tired gringo back into town. To my surprise a bus actually stopped and opened its doors. I quickly gathered my things and jumped onboard. The bus-driver told me that they had seen the accident, but just like the other buses they had not stopped, because they did not want forty-odd people storming their bus. They brought me into the city and did not even ask me for a fare, even though I offered it. They simply wished me good luck and a pleasant evening. I was so happy to be in the city again, when only twenty minutes ago I thought I would have to spend the night in a cave, that I invited myself to a Chinese takeaway and a room with cable TV. I had had enough of adventures for a while and decided to stay on the main tourist track for the rest of the trip. I had written an email to Frank about my adventures and told him about the healer who had fixed my stomach, but he just said that there must be a lot of shit in my head, given that we create our own reality. I considered this and specifically asked the spirit not to let me stumble into any more adventures for the time being. I needed a rest. I even considered taking off the grizzly tooth but I had become rather attached to it and liked the feeling on my body and that probably meant I was going to need it still and indeed I did. My challenges weren't quite over yet.

# Chapter 15

An Encounter with Death

I sat in a bus on my way to Cusco, the Incan navel of the world, staring out the window and sinking back into my own world, and the notion that I was missing something. That something was holding me back and not allowing me to be free. Outside, waterfalls and lush vegetation covered the sharp-edged mountains like skin, as if enveloping the body of Mother Earth, _La Pachamama_ of the Incans. The beauty of nature focused my attention on the here and now and I arrived in Cusco ten hours later, feeling peaceful and calm. Despite the hordes of tourists, commercialism and invasive Christian churches, which sat there like symbols of a New World order, imposed upon the native people by Pizzaro and his cruel and greedy minions, Cusco still beheld the magic of a different world-view. The Incan temples still surrounded the city and bore witness to an empire in deep reverence to the forces of nature. The architecture of the Incans, with all its incredible sophistication and stunning feats of ancient technology, were always an extension and enhancement of natural conditions, rather than a subjugation and imposition upon the land. It must have been for those reasons that the foundations of the Incan temples withstood natural shocks like earthquakes, while Catholic churches had crumbled to the ground as if symbolizing an illusion that could collapse just like the lie of so-called socialism in East Germany.

I first visited the temples around Cusco riding a horse, with my guide walking along beside me. And although I liked the elevated position and the view it afforded, I felt uncomfortable, like once again sitting on a high horse, just like the invading Spaniards had done. The Incans had never possessed such modes of transportation. The local llamas only carried children and supplies weighing no more than 15 kilograms. Walking had been the only way, and walking the Inca trail up to Machu Picchu was what I really wanted to do. But now that I knew where the temples were situated, I could always return and I did with a supply of the Daime, the sound of pan flutes in my ears and the guidance of lunar illumination from the sky. I performed a private _ayahuasca_ ritual in a large circular area, inside the temples of _Saqsaywaman_ , which was, according to a local shaman, the most energetic spot in the whole of Cusco. And it was there that he always did his meditations.

I could almost sense and see the proud people in their colourful dresses dancing and singing within these walls, made of massive, perfectly-cut slabs of stone, a three-dimensional puzzle that still sat as solidly and stable as it had done five hundred years ago, when the white men from across the sea had arrived. The Incans had not even needed any type of mortar to erect those timeless monuments as a reverence to the elements, and how they had achieved such precision is still a mystery to the modern mind. Although I would have liked to know I was content in the knowledge that some things would always remain a mystery, uncharted land within a world that has been largely stripped of wonder and magic. Sitting upon finely-carved stones and crawling through ceremonial caves with no one around I felt an overwhelming sense of privilege and connection to the people, who had created it and the nature, which had inspired them.

The sense of partaking in a rite of initiation was the strongest when I entered _El Templo de la Luna_. A snake carved into the entrance, like an Incan road-sign, tempted me to enter, and a solitary candle; the smell of incense and various sacrifices bore witness to the continued use of this interior temple as an active place of ceremony. The moon shone in from a hole above, naturally illuminating the room, which reminded me of an Egyptian Chamber inside of a manmade Pyramid. Only this room was situated inside a natural mountain. I offered Palo Santo, coca leafs and cheese to the Incan gods and sat there in silence, meditating upon my journey. I just sat there in Za-Zen and suddenly realized that my surroundings had shifted. I was somewhere else but I kept my eyes closed and continued to focus upon my breathing, losing myself in the continued ebb and flow of my breath. Thoughts of fear, imprisonment and isolation entered my mind but they passed through me like waves on a beach, crashing onshore and disappearing into nothingness. It was a continuous flow of mental energy but connected to an ocean of infinity. I was never alone, no matter where I was. I was never abandoned or stuck. I was in fact always free within myself. I guess that's what Rubin "Hurricane" Carter must have experienced and I felt a connection that I had lost for so long, for months; years; perhaps decades. I sat there in this cave until the sun rose, relieving the moon of its nightly shift. A sense of gratitude for all of the workings of nature, enabling my existence was the predominant feeling as I left this wondrous, womblike cave, while another much bigger snake directed me back into the light of the day.

Walking the Inca trail up to mystical Machu Picchu had been a long-time dream of mine and one of the primary motivations for coming to South America, and I wanted to do it alone, although the travel guide and, of course, the local tourist agencies did not recommend such a risky undertaking. Frequent attacks and robberies had made the Inca trail unsafe and although much had been done to improve the situation, walking in large groups was always advised. Luckily, in 2000, one still had the option; while these days going without a guide isn't allowed anymore.

I took _a colectivo_ to Ollantaytambo to explore the impressive fortress, situated by the side of a mountain on the western end of the town, nestled in the sacred valley of the Incans. Car-sized boulders made of red porphyry (red granite) were the most prominent feature of this complex, but I was more interested in climbing the mountain behind it to attain a view of the surrounding area. I soon found a path and climbed up speedily, my lungs now well adjusted to the reduced level of oxygen at this altitude. The view, however, was breathtaking. I could see villages and snow-capped mountains in the distance; a train winding its way through the valley below. The whole scene possessed such beauty that it seemed almost unreal, like a magically detailed model-train landscape, a child's dream come true in reality. I felt incredibly big and had the impression I could reach out and rearrange things at will, but something compelled me to ascend further to see more of this mysterious valley.

I moved driven by some internal impulse and undoubtedly aided by a cheek full of coca leafs, diminishing all desire for food or drink. I had been walking for about two hours and still had not reached the peak, when I finally felt thirsty. I had not brought enough water, since I had not planned on going this far. I was so high now, I could hardly see any vegetation and the air was icy and wet, clouds were passing by and still the sun shone relentlessly. I decided to search for water; indeed I could hear a creek running in the distance and began to descend again on the other side of the mountain, after passing a false peak, one that only led onto another via a saddle of stone. I finally reached the creek, but there were dozens of cows and I had no desire to drink fecal bacteria. I wanted to walk the Inca trail without diarrhea. I walked up a slope on the other side, until I couldn't see any more cows nearby. The water seemed clear and fresh and I drank to my heart's content. Mineral water straight out of the mountain, I thought.

I felt energised and ready to return, but decided to take a different path, which would lead directly to the village, or so I thought. I ended up taking a detour and had to ascend again anyways. I was now faced with a serious problem, that of diminishing sunlight. It was getting dark and I didn't carry a torch. Sometimes I really wanted to kick myself for those adventurous outbursts of spontaneity. I began to increase my pace and still the sun was disappearing faster than I was descending, and I was only about halfway down the mountain. I came to a rocky area I had passed earlier. There was now a straight cliff in front of me, extending down about ten meters. I knew I would have to make a rather large detour to get around it. Why not take the quick way, straight down and save time, I thought. This seemed like a good idea at the time; there appeared to be plenty of rocks on that cliff, so that I could quickly climb down.

I lowered my body over the edge, facing the natural wall, my feet using rocky outcrops to descend further, when I realized that they were not as solid as I had assumed. In fact, one of those pointy little rocks simply broke off and fell down noisily. I caught myself by holding onto a bundle of grass above me, but I could already see it severing its connection with the earth underneath. I quickly grabbed another, but experienced the same disturbing reaction. Suddenly it dawned on me, with inescapable and shocking clarity: I had maneuvered myself into a situation with no way out, except straight down. Inevitably my legs started shaking, breaking another rock. I tried to catch myself but the bundle of grass that had been my last support finally gave up its effort of holding on and I knew with certainty that this was it. I was going to fall. I would have rather fallen without this horrifying clarity, it would have come with a surprise, without warning; my mind would have been unprepared and less terrorized. But it wasn't to be this way.

I sat up straight on my cot, the stench of Peruvian plumbing and South American delinquents crept into my cell, but it was still dark outside. I got up and tried to look out a hole in the wall but I couldn't see anything apart from another wall and barbwire. Fuck this reality, I thought. Even if I had to die in the other, perhaps I would find complete freedom there. I went back to sleep and continued my journey behind the temples of Ollantaytambo.

I was fully conscious and certain that I would die at this very moment in time. I fell. And I kept falling, because as soon as I hit the ground I was rolling backwards and there was apparently no stopping me, because the hill kept descending, as they tend to do. Only I did not want to descend in such awkward terms, but the hill was master and I a rolling bundle, carried downwards by the force of gravity. I finally stopped. Why I did, I cannot say. I have neither recollection nor retrospective explanation. I didn't search one at the time. I wasn't really interested, only overwhelmed. One would assume that I lay there for some time, simply in shock, but I didn't. Instead, I jumped up and tried to feel my body; testing it out; checking if it was still functioning properly, and to my utter disbelief it did seem to move about as I would expect it to.

In fact it worked perfectly. There was no pain, no numbness, no tingling, or loss of control. It was odd really. I looked up at the cliff; at the height I had fallen from; at the distance I had traversed by rolling about aimlessly; at the rocks that had been in the way and I could not believe that my body was intact. I once read in a book that the mountains in the sacred valley all have an _Apu_ (Nope, no relation the Indian Kwiki-mart shopkeeper in _The Simpsons_ , although the first Kwiki-mart was built on a mountain in India, so who knows _)_ , a living spirit that may be kind or malevolent, depending on its mood, I suppose. The existence of such entities must suffice as an explanation for why I didn't break all my bones or indeed end up dead with my head on a rock. I really can't offer any better explanation. So I simply went down on my knees and thanked the spirits for having spared my life. I quickly wondered whether this was at all possible or whether I was actually trapped in a fantasy, but the desire for life was too strong to questions its origin.

When I eventually checked out my Sony Walkman and found it to be working also, I could only shake my head in disbelief. The entire episode was weird and I really wasn't sure whether it made any sense at all. I guess it's the same feeling we get when we dream and something completely ridiculous occurs. We quickly look at those events with incredulity but then we just keep on moving, because we don't have time to think about it, because we're usually being chased or looking for something. I turned on my walkman and listened to the Verve, catching butterflies in those lucid dreams of mine and then just slid down the hill as fast as I could. I eventually did find a shortcut to town and ended up slurping a soup and telling the market women about the divine intervention up on the hill.

"Protegido por dios, este muchacho," they said. "El poderoso Senor protege as sus ninos, siempre," they decided. (This man is protected by God. God always protects his children.)

"Si los ninos y los borachos," (Children and drunks) another joked, producing laughter among the local vendors. I was glad to be there and have a good laugh about it all at the end of the day — it seemed a better way to be than all cracked up on a hill. One more time I had been given proof of the existence of something beyond our normal perception. I promised to that invisible power that I was a believer now and did not need any more near-death experiences in the future, but of course it wasn't the last time that I would get myself into a rather tricky situation. I suppose in my own way I was just like the Andrew the German who had jumped out of a window to find God. I had to continue to find out what was beyond the surface of this reality. There was certainly something not quite right, it all seemed way too unlikely, like a child-hood fantasy I had created for myself.

# Chapter 16

The Incan Pilgrimage

I jumped off the train at kilometer 88, and onto the Inca trail, together with a few other trekkers. I longed to be a solitary trekker though and aided by coca leafs and my workout the previous days, I was able to leave everyone behind me quickly. At the beginning of the trail I still passed several small villages, and I tanked up on _chicha_ , an interesting fermented drink that requires some getting used to, and sported on up the mountain. I was sweating but still fairly proud of my pace, when three local _Porteros_ literally ran past me, each carrying two backpacks, which were significantly larger than themselves. I just gazed with amazement at their skinny legs, as they seemed to float up the track, in sandals.

I stopped and stuffed some more coca leafs into my cheeks, when another _Portero_ walked by. He saw me and grinned, so I passed him a handful of the ancient medicine, he grinned even broader, thanked some sort of Incan deity and walked on. These people continued to amaze me and so did the landscape: it was bursting with the colour green. I could sense its strength and wished it were like that everywhere. The Incans in my ears, amplified by Western technology, seemed to be dancing with joy, as their white brothers had finally left behind the greed of Pizzaro and his peer and began living in harmony with nature, all the while using their technological achievements to enhance La _Pachamama_ , which responded joyfully by sprouting over the destruction of the last centuries into the Garden of Eden.

For the time being, I was already there — the flutes and sounds of _El Carnevalito Llegando_ made me feel joyful. I was dancing with them in my mind's eye. I wanted to be like them, free, joyful and honoring the gift of life. I walked on, almost dancing up the hill, feeling neither tired nor longing for anything else. I was right there. My whole presence was in the moment and on the Inca trail, leading up to magical Machu Picchu; El Dorado of my own dreams and fantasies.

I came to a sharp curve, the path following the shape of a hook and I could see where I would be in five minutes. Five minutes later I stopped in my tracks, because stretched out in front of me, was a transparent fishing line, blocking the path. I had almost not seen it. I didn't know what to make of it. Why was it there? I looked around and saw no one. This was most peculiar and I only assumed it to be some sort of a trap; I had no other explanation.

I thought about waiting for other people to arrive, but something told me that it might not be wise to stay put. If someone had arranged this contraption, then most likely, they would still be around. So I ducked under the line, careful not to touch it, which was hard, given that I carried a large backpack and walked on. I walked on pretty swiftly, my heart beating rapidly now, when I reached another curve, veering off to the left. I came to a clearing, where horses where grazing peacefully and then I saw some young bloke with a pretty ugly face, sitting on the hill above me on my left. He was apparently on his own and asked me a rather stupid question.

"Where are you going?" He looked a little puzzled while he said it.

"Well I'm going up," I said sarcastically. He did not look particularly trustworthy and I kept on walking as quickly as I could without running.

"Where is your group?" he asked me.

"Arriving soon, I'm just a little quicker," I yelled.

"How many are there?" he shouted after me.

"About fifteen people. Adios y que le vaya bien, amigo."

I walked out of sight, coming to another curve. I could now hear him talking to someone else behind me and decided to climb up the side of the path, hiding behind some bushes, expecting a horse to ride by any time soon. I waited there for five minutes, but the horse never arrived and neither did the man, so I jumped out of my hiding place and kept walking up the path, at an even faster pace. I soon reached a group of five with a guide and I asked whether they had noticed a fishing line, tied across the path, about a kilometer or so back. They told me that they hadn't and I just walked on, stone steps now making my ascent even harder.

I came to a clearing when I noticed the first drops of rain hitting my scalp. I decided to walk to a simple hut made of mud bricks and was welcomed happily. The talkative old man made me coffee and I shared my biscuits with him. He talked about robbers, sheep and his wife, who had passed away some time ago. He sure was a happy shepherd and he loved his life. There are so many foreigners coming by, but few come into his house and talk to him, he told me. It was cozy and warm in his hut and I was glad to be out of the rain; it was pretty chilly out there now. It was truly amazing how the spirit blessed me with everything I needed at the right time in the right spot, I thought.

I ended up erecting my tent there that night, knowing that I would not be robbed, because there was another hut that soon filled with more park-rangers, working on the path during the day. We drank rum with tea, chatted and laughed. I was even offered a bed but I preferred my tent. I spent the night in my cloths, wrapped in a sleeping bag and was fairly comfortable considering the temperature, which was close to zero. When I climbed out the following morning I could see the most enchanting play of light upon the dew that had collected overnight. I also discovered another tent with a French couple, who would become my trekking companions later on, but for the time being I marched on alone because I did not want to lose time and they were still cooking breakfast.

I had contended myself with a piece of bread and some goat cheese. I knew I wasn't eating much on account of the coca leafs, but I liked the feeling of lightness and energy it afforded; it seemed part of the ritual of the Inca trail. When I saw encampments of tents and tourists, like the Roman army in battle, being served by Mayans like royalty, while others ran ahead with their luggage, I was sure glad I was walking on my own and that I had decided to stay further down and hang out with the rangers. I passed hordes of panting tourists, some were even crying and others on the point of collapse, until I reached the highest peak of the Inca trail, _Warmiwansk_ a or Dead Woman Pass, at 4,200 meters above sea level. I could see why it would be called that, because there were plenty of out-of-shape women lying about and looking pretty close to death by exhaustion. By all fairness there were plenty of fat-bellied, sun-burned men in no better state than their female counterparts lying about too, but it was the women I noticed on account of the name. Though I'm sure there's a really good explanation for the name of the pass that doesn't involved out-of-shape tourists.

I just sat there marveling at nature, soaking it all up and enjoying it, while my Walkman provided a pretty good sense of privacy. I finally moved on, now descending the steps that took so much effort to maintain. I felt a real sense of appreciation for them, knowing that people were working on them five days a week, because erosion caused by the weight of stampeding tourists, had to be continuously corrected. As soon as they were finished with the stretch assigned to them, which would take approximately three months, they would start again at the bottom, the rangers had told me. I was stepping lightly and carefully, also to protect my joints, when someone jumped past me, slapping me on the back. It was the French girl and her boyfriend I had met in the morning. We engaged in some chitchat about nature and out-of-shape tourists for some time, after which I decided that I really liked the two and joined them. He was a quiet bespectacled guy, my age, with a Zen-like presence, while she was a hyperactive, talkative, happy girl. They made a great match and I tried my best to keep up with them, because they ran about in the Alps on a weekly basis.

"You know they were such simple and joyful people, these workers, especially the old guy. He made me coffee and offered me to sleep in his house, such a nice guy. He was so overjoyed because I gave him five soles," I told them

"What you gave him five soles? Why did you do that? That's so typical of Westerners: they measure everything in monetary terms," Annette complained.

"I gave him some biscuits, too," I defended myself.

"You just gave him bad habits and next time someone comes he will expect money and food."

"I doubt he will expect it; he was just happy about the company and I was happy about his hospitality, so I rewarded him with some money — he deserved it," I said.

"He lives in the mountains, he probably doesn't even need money and now he will get sucked into greed, too. C'est vraiment un dommage."

"Money is not what causes greed, it is people's minds. Money is only a tool. You can cut bread with a knife or stab someone; it depends on you. We are responsible, not the tool. I mean do you drink alcohol for example?"

"Sure, I drink beer."

"Well, you could become an alcoholic if you're not careful."

"Ok, I understand, I just don't like the way everything has a price-tag these days; hospitality should be free."

"His was. I just shared something with him, gave something back. He didn't have a board with the prices for coffee and I doubt he will in the future. He is just a content old shepherd, who lives with _Pachamama_ and I'm sure he will thank her tonight and not plan on how to make a business out of a hut on a hill."

"I'm not so sure," she said and ran on.

We arrived at the last campsite just outside the National Park of Machu Picchu, and it was not a pretty sight. The place was filled to the brim, it was dirty and noisy and the only accommodation available was on the floor in the restaurant. We really had no desire to stay, but I desperately yearned for a shower; two days of sweaty walking had taken its toll on my hygiene. To my horror there was a fifty-meter line in front of the showers, which reminded me of East Germany more than I would have liked to, only the prices were very capitalistic. I decided to stink rather than wait and pay five dollars for cold water.

"You really live up to the cliché of Germans obsessed with cleanliness," the Frenchman joked.

"Well, I'd rather be known as obsessed with hygiene than infamous for being a smelly bunch," I said with a smile.

"What do you mean?" he asked in his very likeable French accent.

"Well, did you ever watch the Simpsons episode when Homer gets thrown out of the house by March and starts living in a tree-house? At one point he begs March to take him back, and he says: 'I am on my knees, I am hungry and I smell like a dirty Frenchman'."

"People should not generalise because of our taxi-drivers," he said and laughed.

We decided to go and visit the ruins behind the campsite, the name of which currently escapes my mind. The ruins were a beautiful, terraced site, with clean running water and temples on several levels, which had functioned as baths in Incan times. The site had apparently been a place of spiritual cleansing, during the pilgrimage to Machu Picchu and it occurred to us that this would not be a bad place to stay at all. My travel guidebook had discouraged people from pressing their sweaty bodies against the sacred walls of the Incans and sleep in the ruins, because it was apparently a sign of disrespect. I had wondered who would be disrespected if no one were to leave garbage, make fires and have noisy parties. And what was the sweat going to do to granite slabs that had been designed to shelter bodies? So we found a quiet protected spot and waited for people to leave. We were just congratulating ourselves to our free Incan hotel with running clean water, when we noticed a flashlight searching the complex.

We sat still for about fifteen minutes, hearing the steps come closer, but somehow _La Pachamama_ did not mind our presence in a temple erected in its honour and the man disappeared. I'm not encouraging people to do this but that night, given the circumstance it seemed like the right thing to do. And I even think the guards should keep on patrolling the area, besides nowadays you can't go to Machu Picchu on your own anymore. In fact it's suffering from over-use, although that's probably just lack of management and a little bit of greed. We ate a lovely gas-heated soup, shared cheese and crackers and I ended up having a wonderfully refreshing bath before we crept into our sleeping bags, sheltered from the wind by three mystic walls, while the stars wished us a peaceful night. I did not even want to close my eyes, because I could not get enough of the beauty and magic of my surroundings and the moment. I wanted to savour it and hold on to it, but I had listened several times to the Incan version of _Dust in the Wind_ and I knew it would pass, although it would never leave my memory until the day I would be dust in the wind, and yes cremation is fine by me. Somehow lying in a box and being eaten by worms is not my idea of a dignified afterlife. Although to be honest I really don't care what happens to my body once I'm dead. I expect to be somewhere else and hopefully making my way to Nirvana. The Dalai Lama once said that death is like changing your cloths, with the chance of a promotion, and who would mind a promotion? Though personally if I get the chance I'm not coming back here, it's all good and fine to be human, but it's also a bit tedious, what with the constant desires and needs and the aging and disease and the fragility of our bodies. I'm always amazed when people say they wouldn't mind being immortal, personally I think immortality would be a bloody curse, at least on this planet it would be. I imagine that I've been through a few lives already to feel that way, and don't get me wrong I love my life and truly believe that I lead a charmed life, but I'd take a promotion to another place any day of the year. Contemplating immortality and the impermanence of life, I finally drifted off into sleep.

But once again I awoke in my other reality where I was also surrounded by walls, except I couldn't see the stars. Why did I always remember that I was imprisoned when falling asleep inside walls? I hadn't remembered the night before when I was sleeping in my tent. The days had dragged on, appearing in front of courts and hearing their reasons for keeping me locked up. I walked through it almost unawares, like sleepwalking. I guess I had pulled a blanket over my whole existence to protect myself from the despair and the pain underneath. The whole scenario was very Kafkaesque, like I was on trial for my life; for the simple fact that I was a gringo and that gringos had been exploiting South America for decades. The Americans had meddled in affairs for so many years, even assassinating democratically elected leaders like Salvador Allende and replacing him with a murderous despot and a brutal military. In fact drug trafficking was mostly a result of American consumption and I was now caught in the middle. Where would this end? Why did this happen to me? Where did I go wrong? The answers were not easy to come by and I preferred to live in a happier more fortuitous existence. Whenever I was outside I just longed to be in my cell again, where I could escape into my own fantasy world. Maybe this had always been my destiny and I had been preparing for it by gobbling up fantasy books when I was young, just to spark my imagination. Perhaps it was for those reasons that I had loved _Papillon, Shawshank Redemption, The Count of Monte Cristo_ and the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. I kept singing the lyrics of _Hurricane_ by Bob Dylan to myself as I sat in court, assigned some kind of second-rate lawyer, who did all the talking for me. I felt like Jose Chepito Areas now, living in my own world with no real connection to what was happening around me. The German embassy had no interest in my case, as far as they were concerned I had brought this on myself and had to deal with it myself. I didn't want to talk to my parents or girlfriend. I just couldn't stand to hear their pain and worries. I was completely on my own just like in the jungle and I was grateful that I was. The only difference was that I now had lost my faith in the spirit and walked around in some kind of netherworld, it seemed somehow more bearable than reality. I couldn't wait to be back in my cell, reading, writing and drifting off into my own world. I sat down and started writing again, about a life that was ideal, beautiful, free and magical.

My first sight of Machu Picchu was from the Sun Temple, as the sun rose behind a chain of mountains and slowly illumined the place made of dreams. I felt tears come to my eyes, because I was really there, looking at El Dorado and it was for real. I had seen it in my dreams awake and asleep and now I would be able to walk between its walls. It seemed to be held out by a hand, like a rare jewel, presented as a gift to the sky, the gazing mountains, the joyous waters and the playful winds, all rejoicing in the achievements of its joint creation: humans.

Those humans were now taking pictures and selling it as a tourist attraction, but the locals knew that the Incans would return and that is why they toiled to reconstruct its entire beauty. That Machu Picchu was the most sacred achievement of the Incan empire is illustrated by the fact that the Spanish never found it, not one Incan gave away the secret. It was not until 1911, just before World War I, that a man named Bingham stumbled upon the secret that had been guarded so well. Because he had better things to do than to try out the newest, most savage machinery, developed by humans as of yet, he returned in 1915 and found the Inca trail and the rest of the temples along the pilgrimage route to Machu Picchu. As blessed as I felt right now, I could only imagine what he must have felt when he laid eyes on this incredible feat of ancient engineering. Those giant slabs of stone that made up Machu Picchu, were the size of cars and weighed several tons. How had they managed to pull those boulders up to Machu Picchu? The debate still rages on but so far nobody has been able to fully explain how they managed to do this. The most interesting explanation that I heard was that the Incans knew how to manipulate energy, because they saw the universe made up of energy, from very dense to very refined. So it is said that they were able to make these stones appear lighter than they were and actually have them float above the ground. Seems a bit far-fetched but then you got to love those legends. But it makes you wonder how their entire empire collapsed because of a few hundred Spanish soldiers. History tells us that they were very divided and that the two brothers Huascar and Atahualpa were engaged in a fight for the thrown, because their father Huayna Capac died of smallpox, which was introduced by the Spanish during the conquest of Mexico, so that he could not chose a heir. The fight turned into a civil ware in which Atahualpa emerged victorious. The Spanish then offered their allegiance to him, but instead took him for ransom in the town of Cajamarca. The Incan troops, waiting outside, numbered in the thousands, but they had never been confronted with horses, guns and cannons before, so that a hundred Spanish Soldier, managed to slaughter some 2000 Incans and leave the rest in total confusion. Atahualpa was executed a Christian to avoid being burnt on the stake. The rest of the Incan empire then revolted together with the Spanish against their own rulers and the Incan empire became history.

We walked down and were one of the first to arrive at _El Mirador_ , where we stared some more. As we walked around I found myself touching the stones like a lover. I could not get enough of it. I was in love with it. We stuck our heads into sightless windows, designed to amplify the vibrations of chanting, and it really worked. It was like an Incan megaphone. We caressed llamas, drank from the waters that poured through Machu Picchu and gazed in amazement at the beauty of our surroundings. We soon climbed up the steep stairs of Wayna Picchu, the Puma looking after Machu Picchu, and as usual I had my troubles keeping up with the two French trekkers, when Annette sat down abruptly and held her stomach. People passed us in both directions and enquired about her health. "I have those stomach cramps again, always happens at the wrong time, " she said apologetically.

Her boyfriend put his arm around her lovingly and assured passers-by that she was ok. It was then that I remembered something.

"Do you have this often?" I asked.

"More often than I like," she said.

"You know, I have this medicine from a woman in Huanuco. I had really bad diarrhea for days and it left within a matter of hours."

"I have tried everything under the sun, nothing has ever helped."

"Why don't you try one more thing, can't hurt," I suggested

"Yeah, it hurts plenty already. Anyway thanks," she pulled herself up and continued climbing the steps, which seemed to grow in size as we continued. I saw her stumbling and losing her balance and she had to sit down again.

"I am really dizzy now, too. I have to sit for a while," she said.

"Maybe we should go back," her boyfriend suggested.

"No, I want to go up there."

"You sure, you don't want to try?" I said pulling out the little bottle I had taken with me in case I was hit by diarrhea. Without waiting for a response I practically pushed it into her hands. She pulled out the little droplet and let the orange-coloured liquid dribble into her mouth.

"Mmmh, tastes pretty good actually," she said.

She was about to pass me the bottle again, when I suggested using some more.

"You might as well take a bunch of it," I said and so she did. We sat there for ten minutes or so until she felt at least well enough to get up.

"I am still a little dizzy," she said, but marched on bravely. We continued at a slow pace. I certainly did not mind; even more time to take in the view around us, I thought. At first I wasn't fully conscious of it but then I certainly noticed that we were walking pretty quickly again. Annette was actually slightly ahead of us. I thought she was just fighting hard and wanted to get up there as quickly as possible, so she could rest, but then she turned around and said: "You know it is a bit strange, but I think it may be working."

"The stuff's magical," I said, feeling happy for her.

"Well let's wait. I mean I am not dizzy anymore and it doesn't hurt as much, but I still have cramps."

We continued climbing the seemingly endless steps, when we came to a virtually vertical ladder. Annette climbed up confidently and her boyfriend just looked at me, mimicking obvious astonishment. We finally arrived at the top and I was overcome by only one urge, and it was not that of lying down and resting, as many of the tourists around us were doing, it was that of spreading my wings and flying. I wanted to be up there like the Condors and circle this incredible scene. I was not too high to actually try but in my mind I did and I enviously observed the Condors circling overhead. My two companions were as impressed as I was, and Annette looked a lot better than she had done half an hour ago.

"You know what is really scary?" she said to me.

"What is?"

"I actually have no cramps anymore, it is gone - completely."

"Why is that scary? That's great," I said with a huge smile. I was so happy for her and of course I was happy that I had been able to help her.

"It is scary because I have searched something for years, I mean, I have this since I was little and now I don't even know what it is."

"Well, do you want the rest?"

"No, I don't think I want it."

"But I want you to have it."

"No, I think I was just lucky today, must be the air or something."

It was then that I realised that people may not want to stop suffering, that they cannot believe that salvation is available, maybe the suffering has become a good companion, something that helps to gain sympathy or just a part of who they are. They hold on to the suffering because it's familiar and even provides a sense of comfort. It seemed incomprehensible at the time but I have met countless other people who continued to suffer, because they chose to, whether that was in a job they hated and that brought them close to burn-out, or a relationship that was unhealthy and perhaps even abusive. We are so afraid of the unknown that we prefer to stick with the familiar even though it causes us pain. I have never fully understood it but I am confronted with it all the time. I say to people why don't you quit your job or work less, why don't you get a new boyfriend or stop spending so much money on alcohol and cigarette, why don't you go out and travel the world or do something to reignite their passion of life? But people always have a good reason why that's impossible and simply not realistic. I think people are quietly fascinated with suffering and bad news. They must be because that's what is on Television all the time and on the front of our newspapers and we all know that they wouldn't put it there if it didn't create ratings and sales. It's why this story is of interest to you, because we define ourselves through suffering and we admire it, as if suffering is what makes a true person. Perhaps there is even some truth to that but I also believe that we attract suffering and a life of strife and drama because we subconsciously desire it. We have to free ourselves from the attraction to suffering and truly allow ourselves to live an easy life and grant ourselves only joy and happiness.

For me it was time to take another sip of my own brain medicine and I performed a little ritual with Palo Santo, and coca leafs, scattering them in the wind as an offering to nature, before pouring the Daime into the clay cup I had been given by one of the Chileans. I drank the sour-tasting, now progressively fermented brew, and involuntarily shook my body. The effect was going to be anything but sour, however, because after we had descended Wayna Picchu and I had said goodbye to my French companions, who were ready to leave, I walked around with my digital singing companions and felt tears of gratitude come into my eyes in a quiet spot facing the mountains. Crying is not usually my idea of a good time and I certainly don't do it on a regular basis, but I was high on ayahuasca and happiness and it seemed like a good occasion to shed a few tears. The feeling was one of overwhelming gratitude for everything around me - the incredible beauty of nature and the temples of the Incans - but also my journey here. I had been blessed all the way and emerged unscathed every time. I truly had been protected by something or other, it seemed. In fact it appeared almost fantastical how this trip had unfolded as if everything was a bit too good to be true. As I felt doubts rise from within me and my reality disintegrate as the effects of the ayahuasca kicked in, confusing my perception, my world turned dark once more. I lay on my cot inside a dark room, and felt the rough fibers of my blanket irritate my skin, while I realized that I had been crying. They had not been tears of joy but tears of desperation. The contrast between my reality here and that of my imagination was too stark and everything I had wanted to belief was just an illusion. It was all just mumbo jumbo, new age rubbish designed to prey on the weak for personal gain. There was no magic in this world, no powers of protection or guidance from above. When bad things happened they happened for no reason and there was no silver lining, just random occurrences in an indifferent universe. I cried because all of my illusions came crashing down on me. My entire world-view collapsed and I could suddenly identify with those in East Germany that had wanted to kill themselves when they realized that a giant blanket had been pulled over our eyes and that the system was cruel, self-protecting and malevolent. For me the loss of hope was even more profound because it wasn't merely a societal illusion that had caved in but the nature of the Universe itself. I simply wanted to die and my only consolation was that if there was nothing beyond the surface of reality then perhaps there is only unconscious nothingness beyond death. I tried to loosen the rope that held up my trousers. Once I had managed, my trousers wanted to slip off my starved figure and I had to hold on to them and sit down in order not to lose them. I wondered where I could attach the rope so as to find my peace, but I couldn't see anything in the dark. I decided to simply suffocate myself while lying down. It had worked for Michael Hutchinson so surely it could work for me, in terms of the final result, not the sexual arousal, of course. I lay the rope around my neck and pulled it tight, until I felt the flow of air constrict and then dazed off into darkness.

# Chapter 16

A Glimpse of Hell on Earth

I left Cusco and traveled south to Uyuni in Southern Bolivia, because I had been told that landscapes around the silver lakes the are simply stunning. There I met a couple from Holland who urged me to visit Potosi's silver mines, because that would be the most dangerous and shocking organised tour I would ever do. Naturally I was intrigued I had become a little tired of my own adventures, after tumbling down a mountain and rolling over in a bus. So an organized tour with a high shock-factor and a controlled sense of danger, sounded right up my alley. I wasn't entirely sure what their definition of danger was, they were, after all, about a thirty years older than me. But I would soon have to find out that I would be confronted with one of my own worst fears.

Potosi is a nondescript mountain town, nowadays, but it had once been the richest city in the Spanish colonial empire, because it was full of silver. The Spanish, greedy bastards that they were, totally flipped out when a local showed them the mountain full of shiny metal and lost no time in enslaving the Natives and sending them underground, where they could work off their sins and be allowed into the heaven in the afterlife – well that's how the Spanish justified it.

They took their devilish coca leafs from the Natives and prohibited the whole savage custom, until they realised that those lazy slaves worked a lot better and ate less when they were eating their coca leafs, so they promptly changed their minds and made the consumption of coca obligatory – yes obligatory. A real benevolent bunch they were, those Spaniards.

I had one sitting in the car with me now, as we drove towards the collective mines, although he certainly would not have said so, because he was a Basque. He was fiddling with a couple of sticks of dynamite, as those Basques were fond of doing, but this time the explosives wouldn't blow up any Spanish, merely a part of the mountain that would hopefully reveal its veins of silver. The sticks of dynamite were gifts for the workers we would visit, along with tobacco and plenty of coca leafs. A young couple from East Germany also shared the van with us and I was glad to chat in my native tongue to some of my fellow countrymen from the formerly Russian-occupied zone.

We arrived in front of the mine, located at a considerable height and indeed it was chilly up there; it was also dusty and for lack of a better word – pretty ugly. The collective mines are shared by independently working men, who were not employed by a company and, thus, did not receive a wage or health care benefits. They were completely on their own and took home whatever they found; a kilogram or a gram, depending on their luck. Most of it was rubble, containing some silver, which was stacked up in front of the mine and sold to a processing plant.

Our guide quickly excused himself, went into a hut and audibly vomited for about five minutes. He emerged cheerfully and ready for the tour, smelling of very concentrated alcohol. We were given a gas-lamp and a helmet each, and went inside the mountain, accompanied by another sickly-looking boy. Our first encounter underground was with the Devil, and he liked tobacco, alcohol and coca, which were spread out in front of him. Some of our presents now went to the colourful wooden Satan, sitting on an outcrop. Evidently Satan had no intention of proliferating or was possible afraid of sexually transmittable diseases, because he wore a condom over his wooden cock.

"If God lives in the heavens then the devil must live underground, we believe, so if we want to be protected down here we have to appease the devil," our guide explained.

"Do you also go to church?" I wondered

"Of course, we live like Christians outside the mine, it is two different worlds," our guide responded.

It certainly felt a little like hell in there — it was dark, hot and very claustrophobic and it was only going to get worse. We climbed further down but it wasn't steps we were using, merely holes and paths that led to more holes and walkways. It was like being inside a gigantic piece of Swiss cheese. It was during one of those precarious climbs, while I was trying hard to keep a hold of my gas lamp, which was shooting out an open flame, that I noticed something rather disturbing. There were unexploded sticks of dynamite in the wall, with fuses the length of fingernails. I informed my companions of my discovery and advised them to keep the gas torches away from the walls.

"Why are there sticks of dynamite in the wall?" I asked nervously, as we entered a somewhat larger cave.

"They did not explode and now the fuse is too short to be detonated safely," our guide said matter-of-factly.

"Are there a lot of accidents with dynamite here?" the Basque asked.

"There are some, usually because someone was too drunk. You know there are lots of parties down here, but the accidents happen when people drink and work at the same time. If you noticed people only drink this stuff," he took a bottle from the little devil in front of us.

"It is 97 per cent pure alcohol, because we believe that if we drink pure alcohol we find pure veins of silver."

'Sure, whatever works for you guys,' I thought. 'I would want to get wasted on a regular basis and as effectively as possible, too, if I worked down here.'

We were now introduced to Antonio, a real-life worker, who used four different tools to work the mine: a pick, a shovel, a bucket and plenty of coca. The latter was for keeping the time we were told.

"The time?" we asked almost in a chorus.

"Yes, you see down here there is no sunlight to indicate the hour of the day and the people can't afford watches, so they chew coca leafs. They know that the effect wears off after three hours and so they keep the time. After three portions of coca they usually go home, although some people work eleven or twelve hours a day, sometimes even on Sundays."

We gave Antonio our presents and the Basque seemed terribly relieved to get rid of the two sticks of dynamite he had been carrying in his jacket. We went further down and observed more people hacking away at the mountain.

"Doesn't anyone use drills here," the Basque wanted to know.

"No, they can't afford it. In the private mines they do, but the people here would just end up paying off the cost of the drill all their lives or not having enough to survive."

"Does anyone ever find a big piece here?" the East German girl asked.

"Oh yeah, once in a while someone hits it big time and he gets really rich."

I saw a bucket being pulled up on my right and I realised that I am looking at an authentic, real-life, fully-functioning, museum, displaying the way mines were worked five hundred years ago, because absolutely nothing had changed — time had stood still in here. I wondered whether the people toiling in here now were the reincarnated Spaniards, who had made the Natives dig for silver, and were now unconsciously working off their karma. Only God knew or maybe the devil. The further we went down, the hotter it got and also the more claustrophobic.

"It's like descending into hell," I said cheerfully but the Basque was not amused. He was having problems. In fact, he was sweating and hyperventilating. We told him to calm down and breathe slowly. He held on to the wall because he had problems keeping his balance now. The thing that happens of course is that seeing someone freak out akes it contagious. So I started freaking out too. I started thinking about all that mass of mountain above my head and how hot and tight the space was around us. I suddenly had trouble breathing and fell into a panic attack.

"I need to go outside. I need to leave now," the Basque muttered, while our guide looked on indifferently; slightly bemused even. 'Those gringos just can't handle a thing,' he must have thought. Meanwhile I felt waves of panic coming on and I went down on my knees, grabbing my throat, as if being strangled. I was coughing and now fully aware that I was somewhere else altogether again. I didn't actually realize where I was, and the feeling of claustrophobia and fear simply did not leave me. I fell forward onto the ground, hit my head and passed out.

I had almost blacked out with panic, but I managed to avoid fainting by breathing deeply and attentively just like I had done in Mapia - breathing in through my nostrils and breathing out through my mouth. My breathing finally normalized and so did my heartbeat. I was still standing straight and nobody seemed to have noticed my internal panic attack. We waited a while for the Basque to relax as well, and eventually he did. Being a man he decided to continue and stated that he was ok now. But the worst was still to come. Our guide stood in front of a small hole, only about a couple of feet off the ground, and then he told us to crawl in. I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. To prove his point he made the first move and disappeared inside the tunnel, that was no wider than about half a meter. His young helper followed him shortly after and we were left standing there on our own. We just looked at each other slightly dumbfounded.

'He couldn't possibly make us do this \- we were paying tourists - for God's sake. Oh yeah, this was the kingdom of Satan down here. God had no say in this,' I thought. I crawled into the tunnel first to prove my manliness, and wanted to go back out again when I lifted up my gas lamp and saw the length of the tunnel in front of me. It seemed to stretch on endlessly into darkness. But the East German was already behind me, nearly torching my ass with his gas lamp. "What the hell are you doing," I said, as I noticed my ass getting hot. "Oh, sorry," he said. And judging by the quiver in his voice he was trying hard not to freak out either. This was when I started sweating profusely and told myself to stay calm or else I would flip and do something stupid, like setting off one of those dynamite sticks decorating the wall. I would like to think that I am fairly fear-free but claustrophobia is something I have to work on, although I really don't feel like it. I suppose I was dramatised as a child when I had let my friends roll me into one of those big grey mats, used in gymnasiums. I had been stuck in that mat, unable to move an inch, for a couple of minutes, while they had amused themselves looking into the tube and watching my terrified face from the outside. I had pleaded with them to let me out calmly at first, along the lines of: 'Alright guys, this has been fun, but I want out now.' But they had to all look at me in there and there was quite a few of them. So, eventually my pleas had evolved into screams of panic, until they realised that I was seriously uncomfortable in there and let me out. I was now reliving this episode and just wished for the end of the tunnel. The guide and his little friend had disappeared a while ago, I couldn't see them in front of me anymore, because it had taken us a while to decide to follow them after they had disappeared in there and their progress had probably been a lot faster than ours. My knees were hurting from sliding over sharp rocks and I was really not enjoying myself. This was not what I had had in mind when I had signed up for this. We crawled through there for an eternity and I could not help but think of torture and prolonged imprisonment. I had read that in Iraq they had pushed people into holes, dug out of walls, so that a person would fit in there lying down and then locked the door. The thought seriously horrified me and I tried to focus on my progress rather than ideas of imprisonment. I would be out of here soon. I could see light at the end of the tunnel now, but it was somehow blocked by legs. In fact, there was a whole group of people standing right in front of the exit from my misery and they were not moving. I tried to get their attention by calling out to them, but they were somehow preoccupied. Their guide was telling them some fascinating story of someone who had actually managed to find a large piece of this godforsaken silver... I really did not care at all whether they were interested or not and forcefully pushed their legs out of the way, making a few people jump with surprise. It could have been funny but I didn't feel like laughing. I had just faced one of my worst fears.

Our guide sat about somewhere, chatting and sipping on superstitious spirits, when we rejoined him, and he seriously asked us whether we had enjoyed ourselves during his tour. I did not want to be impolite and said that it was very interesting and the others must have felt the same way, because they said similar things, all looking a little pale indeed, and it wasn't just the dust on their faces. The East German girl asked the kid what he wanted to do when he grew up and he honestly said that he wanted to work in the mine.

"I am just teaching him now," his dad said proudly.

"But would you not rather be a tourist guide?" she asked him incredulously.

"Yes, after I find a big piece of silver and be rich."

Jesus, they must still have this yearning for silver in their hearts, chaining them to the underworld. I sure hoped they would be freed one day. At least they did it on their own accord, but it filled me with incredible sadness to imagine the Natives being taken from their land and family and forced to work underground in perpetual darkness until disease, exhaustion or an accident freed them from a life of hell, imposed upon them by greedy Christians.

I was glad to be out of there again and we all looked a little shocked and worn by the experience. The feeling of desperation I had found down there would linger with me for some time. But I was comforted by the fact that there was no more slavery and if they really wanted they could work in the private mines, get drills and health insurance. So, they essentially chose their own destiny and that gave me a sense of tranquility — at least people did have a choice these days. At least that's what I wanted to believe that we chose our destiny and created our lives through our beliefs and actions. Had I chosen to live in this hellhole of prison I wondered, as I wrote these words. I had been found with a bloodied nose lying flat on my face with a rope around my neck by one of the guards. I had been placed on suicide watch but allowed to continue to write because it was seen as a form of therapy. I clung to my writing like a lifeline and tried not to think about the day and life too much. The conclusions and repercussions were too terrifying. I simply took each day as it came and wrote my life away.

# Chapter 17

Return to La Paz

The last stop on my South American journey were the pre-Incan ruins of Tiwanako, just outside of La Paz. I say ruins because most of it looked just like that and about eighty per cent still remained unexcavated. I arrived with high spirits and the remaining, rapidly fermenting supply of the Daime. I walked into the adjoining museum and was not entirely surprised but certainly delighted to meet the East German couple, who had gone through the silver-mine ordeal with me. We had a nice chat and looked at the display of artifacts in the museum, which were always fascinating, but somewhat stale, sitting there behind glass windows like designer products for sale to the rich.

Robert was an incredibly relaxed guy with a slight stutter that might have developed during his years marijuana consumption, which he had now overcome thanks to his beautiful but slightly authoritarian girlfriend. He had become a lot more peaceful through meditation than smoking vast amounts of cannabis and was now somewhat esoterically inclined to the distaste of his girlfriend. We sat around one of the outer ruins, most of which were still uncovered when I was telling him about the Daime I was carrying with me. His girlfriend was nowhere to be seen; she was a little under stress on account of their tight schedule — they wanted to leave La Paz the same day and continue with their journey to Argentina. He could not resist the temptation of sharing the rest of the Daime and so we drank out of my magical clay pot. We returned to the main area still not knowing where his girlfriend had disappeared to. But he seemed untroubled; if she was around she would probably just express her disapproval for taking hallucinogens, when there was a schedule to keep, he said. The ruins seemed completely deserted not only of its original inhabitants, but also visitors. We were almost entirely on our own. We sat on the top of a mount with a wonderful view when we began to feel the effect. I sat there and felt anxious at first. How would Robert react was it the right thing to do? My heart sped up and I remembered reading in some ludicrous book that the original inhabitants of Tiwanako, who predated the Incans, had build this place as a kind of spiritual fortress. Legend has it that in ancient times instead of capturing people from opposing tribes sorcerers imprisoned people's souls through black magic. The notion of being imprisoned for eternity was more horrifying than being a lifetime inmate. And it is said that these souls still languished in those jails of consciousness created centuries ago. I had never believed those stories, it was best not to, but I could also see that all of our souls were somehow trapped in a prison of fear, constructed by our own imagination. Suddenly I sat up and became aware of another part of me trying to find a way out of its own misery. My dark twin sat within a jail cell and wrote about me. I switched perspectives and became him while maintaining complete consciousness. I was now both the free and happy adventurer and the fearful, suicidal intellectual trying to find a way back to idealistic hopefulness and optimism. The two melted into one and I knew that I was both a skeptic and a believer. I was fearful and optimistic. I was torn between faith and despair. This was the human condition and once I became fully conscious of my own darkness I was able to shine light into my own prison cell and realized I was free to go. The Walls around me had been purely imaginary in nature. Unlike the physical Wall during my childhood those Walls that exist around us can be overcome without the risk of dying. Sure financial walls and fear of insecurity and change are just as immense as a wall covered with barb-wire and protected by snipers and land mines, but they exist only in our minds. Ever since I had taken ayahuasca with Pablo I had lived certain fears that had been with me for my entire life, be that torture, imprisonment, death or nihilism. The fear that I am utterly alone and nothing in this world could help me but myself, that there was no greater purpose or any magic to life but merely a sequence of events within a vast and indifferent universe, that I was merely dust in the wind. I had faced all of those fears as if through a ritual of initiation, where the only guide was the spirit. And as I sat there and felt silence move through me, as I sensed a profound peace overcome my entire being, I knew that I had been imprisoned by my own doubts and fears. I had returned to darkness and suffering over and over again through my own volition, and my own beliefs in a world that was cruel and unjust. I had doubted that we could be protected and lead a charmed life; that there was a higher purpose and a force guiding us toward our own destiny. This had been the illusion; the idea of loneliness born out of the notion of separateness. But I was neither alone nor separate. I was always connected to my surroundings, other people and the source of all there is in this universe. As I became aware of my own darkness the other part of me that had been imprisoned for decades finally walked free. As silence pervaded head, my mind wandered off into the distance and was finally free. We had literally returned to La Paz.

"Wow I think I just woke up," Robert suddenly said, grinning like an intoxicated ecstasy fiend. I took a deep inhalation and exhaled with such relief, it seemed I was letting go of centuries of anguish and fear. I would have liked to say something, but I couldn't, my mind was blank and I simply wanted to remain silent. And so we sat there in utter silence. I realized that the illusion of suffering was the result of my thoughts. The constant mental chatter was like a news station reporting only bad news for the entertainment of myself, while perpetuating my own suffering and insecurity. I knew now that the mental box I had perceived some time ago during a session of concentracao in Mapia had been my own thoughts. It had been no accident that I had found Carlos Castaneda's _The Power of Silence_ , that I had been unable to remain quiet during one of the silent mediations in the Daime church. My vision of the spiral of time had been a vortex that was going to return me to this primordial state of silence in my head, like the ancient hunters and gatherers. This was the essence of mediation I had been searching for, effortless and complete absence of thought, the unbecome and unborn world of ideas, where everything was pure potential and not yet formed. It all began within my mind and it was that simple. The answer to all mystic texts and treaties was so trivial that it almost made no sense at all. After all there were endless texts and rituals about returning to the spirit, but all of that was just a distraction. They were merely tools to trick the mind into silence. And I had to admit my initiation had been a very complex, dangerous and long ritual as well. It was almost like it had been designed by a wise and ancient soul, so that I could find peace.

"Yeah," I said slowly. "That's it. It's amazing." I looked at the clouds and the surroundings and I became one with its movement. My breath was merely an extension of that continuous and quiet ebb and flow of nature. Nature moved endlessly and effortlessly, just like my lungs, my heart and my metabolism. There was an energy and tranquility within that force that I can only describe as the very essence of the universe.

I was quiet again and then I just allowed the silence to sweep over me. It was an incredible feeling of relief; there was no chatter; no thoughts; no ideas. I knew that I had just woken up and even though I had tried for years to wake up the effort had been fruitless until now, because just like it was impossible to force sleep it was impossible to bring about silence through sheer willpower.

We sat around there for what seemed like an eternity and a split second at the same time. Then we got up and walked towards a circular area, surrounded by a fence. Behind the fence outside of the ruin complex sat an old man. He hissed us over and showed us several artifacts, just like we had seen in the museum: stone pumas, a miniature version of the sun portal, zinc figurines, decorated pots and similar such fascinating pieces of art. He had found them while working in the fields, he told us, and he was now offering them to us, for as little as five dollars a piece. Now I know that archaeologists would be appalled by this, after all it was their job to study and display those things. But we were both just way too enchanted to let an opportunity like this pass — to actually purchase a piece of the ancient magic and mystery from a Bolivian _campesino_ , who had found it in his field. So we began negotiating. Robert bought a little green zinc figurine, while I purchased a carved puma, made of the same stone as Tiwanako itself. We beheld our treasures like two kids, who had just found a couple of pearls in an oyster, and walked around with a smile that seemed to illuminate the scene as much as the sun itself. An elderly man walked by and smiled at us happily, before resuming his task of photographing it all, so he could look at it at home and say 'Well, wasn't it wonderful there at... what was it called again?'

We came to a rectangular square, surrounded by walls featuring faces that appeared very much alive — they all looked different and yet the same. The decorations seemed to me like ancient modern art, if that makes any sense. There was an incredible feeling of belonging as I walked around and felt that I was part of the same family, the same string of DNA. Those were my ancestors, the messengers from the past, the origin of our modern-day civilisation, which wants to make sense of the world and somehow leave a record of its own findings. Only they did it through art, which plays with our unconscious roots, if we let it, if we are willing to sense it and grasp it intuitively with our bodies. Naturally the Daime was a wonderful way to tune in. We now sat on the stairs of this temple and I was just unpacking a smoked fish when his girlfriend reappeared. She certainly did not look content.

"Are you trying to piss me off? I was looking for you all over the place. We were supposed to leave an hour ago," she said evidently irritated by her boyfriend's total disregard for time.

"I was looking for you too, but I was also appreciating the temples," he explained.

"Well I've seen them. You can do this in an hour; you don't have to spent ages wandering around aimlessly."

"To truly get a feel for it, you have to take your time," he said.

"We don't have time. We have to go," she said impatiently.

Robert was about to leave but I really wanted to hang out a bit more and share my fish with the two of them. So I invited them to just stay a little longer and eat some fish.

"We have to go now. It was nice meeting you," she said.

"I'm sorry. I've got to go," he said extending his hand. But I wasn't going to give up that easily.

"You should hang out in La Paz for a day — you guys haven't even seen it."

"We don't have time to hang around in La Paz; we have a time schedule. We have to be in Santiago in two weeks and we still have lots of places to visit."

"But you can't just run through La Paz," I said with a smile, aware of the fact that La Paz, was another way of saying peace, tranquility or appreciation.

"We have to. You might not have a schedule, but we do. So goodbye and enjoy yourself in La Paz," she said, while Robert just waved apologetically and followed her.

They disappeared behind a mount and were gone. I was a little sad. Robert had really made me feel like I had just met a long-lost brother — there was an eerie connection between us and it wasn't just the Daime. But, hey, that's the way it goes, we can never hold onto anything; we can only go with the flow.

I munched on my delicious smoked fish, had a few nuts and wandered about with my old friend Sony, who still liked _Dust in the Wind_ a lot, the pan flute version, that is. I stood in front of the Portal of the Sun, a lone stone arch that seemed somehow out of place because it stood there by itself, not connected to anything. A couple of guards were bored and wanted to converse; they explained that the Christians had wanted to move the portal of the sun and put it up in a church. But when they tried, it just cracked, so they left it.

I showed him my stone puma and he assured me that it was the original stone but he was not sure that the carving was ancient, it might have been made by the _campesino_ himself; they were very good carvers. It was precious to me regardless, perhaps even more so, when I thought that the people living here still possessed these skills and kept alive the tradition and art of the ancients. I told the guard about the zinc figurine and he said that most likely it is a true artifact and possibly over two thousand years old. I thought of Robert and was happy for him because he had managed to obtain a truly magical piece of art and if he ever gets to read this he might realize that it could really be worth quite a bit in monetary terms as well. I hope it gave him strength whenever he needed it. I wanted to share some coca with the guard, but they told me that they did not like the taste of the coca much, or the stingy feeling of the powder, which is used in conjunction with the leafs. I explained that I had found a better, tastier method of getting the juices out of the leafs by simply mixing it with a piece of gum. They were intrigued and agreed to try it, which left them truly impressed. A few other workers joined us and we all had a taste of coca with _chicle_. They laughed amongst themselves and commented on the great idea.

"Esta muy listo este muchacho," they said and I was truly happy and a little proud of myself. I had arrived six months ago, knowing hardly any Spanish and now I was showing the locals innovative ways of using their ancient traditional medicines. This had been a great journey. I had been given so much and learned so much. I had had adventures and experiences beyond my wildest dreams and yet I had dreamed of it all my life. I was now truly a believer in life and a faithful pilgrim, who had come face to face with the power of the spirit again and again. I knew that even though there would be more tests and a certain loss of magic in the so-called real world of exams, career choices and relationship problems, I would always remember that there is a force that guides us, if we allow it. But most of all I had realized that worrying was a waste of time and energy because most of the time a worst-case-scenario never occurs and we never really had much control over how I lives unfolded. I remembered the sequence of events that had led me to the Daime, and going to Mapia. I had wanted to do have a mystical experience in South America after reading about it in _The Celestine Prophecy_. I had managed to organize my volunteer service in Cobija, had met a German, who happened to be in the same hotel because he needed to extent his visa and I had ended up with the Chileans, who sent me to Mapia and then told me that I could cross the border at Cruzero do Sul because I had read Castaneda and wanted to work with a Shaman and have a true vision. And from there on I had really lost control over my journey as I ended up hitchhiking through the jungle. Every person and event led me down a path that I had never intended to walk, nonetheless I had freed myself in the process of walking it. It was almost like a force greater than myself had guided me through my own initiation into the magic of the journey that is our lives. I still did not fully understand it, but I guess one could call it intuition or faith in a greater force. But I now knew with certainty that it was there and I knew that because of the experience I had had I was going to walk through life in a very different way than most people. I would still stumble around like a raving lunatic at times, just like I had in the jungle, but I would walk the road less traveled throughout my life as well, because I knew that I would come out on the other side and feel more fulfilled than if I had gone down the well-worn path. I had never liked the idea of a mundane life, where I study, get a job, a mortgage, a wife and kids and work my ass of just to pay the bills. I wanted a bit more adventure and freedom, without giving up all of the luxuries of life in the Western World. I didn't yet know how I would this, but I knew then that I would try anyways. And I also felt that weird coincidences and chance encounters could function almost like road signs on my path towards my dreams. But most of all I had to stay in touch with myself and ask myself what my dreams really are. I had overcome my own fears and worries of capture and imprisonment which were nothing less than a real fear of living a life without freedom and happiness. Having overcome my dark twin and my own limitations I was now free to move forward and imagine my life just the way I wanted it to be. I had entered the Imaginarium the Dr. Parnassus, walked up the mountain of enlightenment and sacrificed my dark twin - the control freak and the cynic - to the untamable forces of life. I could wish for things that would never bring me happiness but if I allowed my life to guide me, I would eventually find complete happiness. Because I try to travel a little less dangerously, I now like to experience the extraordinary diversity of human life through film, so that recently I tend to gain a lot of my insights from movies. And the following line from _The brothers Bloom_ , probably encapsulates best my entire philosophy on life: "There is no such thing as an unwritten life, only a badly written one. So let's live our lives as if it's the best damn story we've ever read."
