Peru: the Beautiful, the Mystical and the Ugly

By Halle McQueen

SILVER MEDAL WINNER: 2017 Global Ebook Awards
At the age of 58, Halle McQueen made the bravest decision of her life; to live in the Amazon jungle of Peru to study the plant medicine and build a small business.
Armed with her newfound bravado and blissfully ignorant about the dangers, Halle returned to Peru after visiting as a tourist, to fulfil her dream. However, her naivety and lack of knowledge about the dangers of living alone in the Amazon jungle exposed her to many experiences. Some were illuminating but others were very ugly.
Her Amazon jungle dream of meeting with shamans, making plant medicine and embracing the simple life lasted for 8 years before it all turned nasty.
She was systematically robbed and deceived by her new friends. When she had nothing left to give, her personal safety was threatened which culminated in a shocking personal assault.
Halle writes as she speaks; with brutal honesty and a wicked sense of humour as she shares her fearful times and gut wrenching sad times as she invites the reader into her private world. McQueen returned home with no regrets knowing that if she had not pushed herself to her limits, she would never have known how strong she was.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Sep 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781925529333

Halle McQueen

Halle McQueen has a BA in Health Science (Complimentary Medicine) from Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, and an Advanced Diploma of Western Herbal Medicine from Athene College in Western Australia. She is the mother of three and grandmother of seven.

Book preview

THE TOURIST

I am a typical middle-aged woman who lived most of my life being a good person and being what everyone expected of me. This was because I was scared to misbehave. I was scared of my teachers at school, my peers and I had a few friends who were like me - scared of everything. I always felt like I was the cart, not the horse, being dragged around by circumstances and groups.

After seventeen years of being a subservient wife and having three of the most remarkable children, I was divorced. I had to toughen up after that and find a job which I did and stayed in that job for twenty five years. Can you believe it? Twenty five years in my one and only job ever! Obviously, my fear of stepping outside the square stayed with me.

That changed when I was fifty years of age when I decided to begin studying herbal medicine while still working. After five years of part time study, I achieved an Advanced Diploma in Western Herbal Medicine and BA in Health Sciences (Complimentary Medicine). It was really hard but I persevered and no-one was more surprised with the results than me. I framed my certificates and kept them in a prominent place at home just to remind me that I had actually done it. Plant medicine became like an obsession for me, I couldn’t drag myself away from the plants.

It’s funny how things happen because I never had the desire to travel overseas and it was out of the scope of everyone else’s expectations of me. And it was a scary thing to do! I was happy to stay in Australia, my country of birth and work with my plant medicine.

Well, that all changed one day when I was browsing on the internet and saw a photo of the ancient city of Machu Picchu in Peru, South America. From then on, I had a feeling that one day I would go there and step amongst the ruins myself. It never crossed my mind that South America was around the other side of the planet and a long way from my safe little box at home.

I was fifty eight years of age at the time and working forty hours each week at a job which I had been doing for twenty four years. Somehow, I found the courage to begin planning a trip to South America. It was the year 2006 when I decided to take six weeks of my accumulated leave and go to Peru to walk the Incan Trail to Machu Picchu and visit the world’s largest plant medicine pharmacy; the Amazon jungle. This would be the highlight of my trip seeing as I was a herbalist by trade. Yes, believe it or not, I really was a qualified herbalist with a chronic passion for plant medicine.

Bolivia was the home of the Kallawaya Medicine Men who were renowned for their knowledge and application of plant medicine and healing ceremonies so I added that to my itinerary. A quick diversion to the Iguassu falls in Brazil seemed like a good idea too. Can you believe that? Little old ‘scared of everything’ me just doing it! I had only been to Bali twice in my lifetime. Oh, and a small island called Rottnest which is about twenty kms off the Western Australian coast - well that’s overseas isn’t it?

I planned to go on my own. It didn’t enter my mind to ask anyone else to come with me. I didn’t know much about South America except for a bit about festivals in Brazil and the song ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ about the famous president of Argentina, Eva Peron.

Anyway, off I went and after thirty hours travelling from Perth I finally arrived in Cusco, a city high up on top of the Andean Mountains in Peru. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. The surrounding mountains seemed to cradle the city which was in a large valley with snow capped mountains in the distance. After a short wait on the plane, we were in the air again going to Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon jungle. Once clear of the snow capped mountains we descended into the lowlands of the Amazon Basin. Everyone in the plane fell silent in awe of the vastness of the jungle below. There was nothing but green for as far as the eye could see with only large brown rivers zig sagging through it. It was more spectacular than anything I had imagined.

As the plane began its descent, large open expanses of mud became visible. It did not look natural and was always near the rivers. Large areas of cleared land became visible too, obviously cleared by people because the areas were square or oblong. As the plane descended more destruction was visible and I worried about what I was going to see when we landed.

The first sounds I heard after we landed in Puerto Maldonado were chain saws from a nearby timber mill. I thought I would see lush jungle, brightly coloured birds and monkeys which really was an unreasonable expectation. This is not what I expected at all.

I found out that the muddy areas visible from the plane were illegal gold mining activities which totally destroyed the jungle by removing vegetation and soil many metres deep. Then it was just clay exposed to the elements. This was my introduction to the Amazon jungle.

An open truck with timber plank rails around the outside was my transport to the Madre de Dios River where a motorised canoe took me down the river through to a beautiful jungle lodge on the river. This was more like what I had imagined! The lodge was situated in a thick, lush jungle with large Macaws in the trees and not a hint of noise from the town. I was allocated a small thatched roof hut with a private shower and toilet. The large wooden bed had pure white linen and mozzie nets, a few kerosene lanterns and a hammock on the veranda. Yes, this was the real deal! This was everything I had imagined. I chose an afternoon visit to a plant medicine garden run by a shaman just downstream a bit. It was so surreal for me to be sitting with a shaman in the jungle talking about and tasting his plant medicine. If there is a place called heaven then this was it for me. I did not want to leave and I was sad as we headed back to the lodge in the canoe as the sun set. Even at this time I knew I would return to the Peruvian jungle one day.

Early next morning I went on a group trip to Lake Sandoval which had an interesting history. I met a local man who told me that the original settlement at the lake was built by the Spanish priests who were supposed to preach the good word to the indigenous people. Apparently, some of the priests did more than spread the word of god; they spread their seed and impregnated many girls. They explained the babies as gifts from god and should consider themselves blessed. This was OK for a while but then the local men decided that it was not OK and kept their females away from the priests. The Catholic Church then organized nuns to be posted to the region which presented another problem. Babies from the nuns became an issue so they built a small community at Lake Sandoval to house the pregnant nuns and to care for the babies.

Believe it or not! Yes, it was hearsay but it came from a local man so I am inclined to believe it. It also explained the different shades of skin in different areas of the jungle. There were some lighter shades of coffee brown skin which prompted me to ask the question.

I asked if the dominant religion in the jungle was Catholicism. The answer I received was interesting. He said that if it was beneficial to them, they were Catholic but they still adhered to their own beliefs which were their intimate connection to nature. He said they did not celebrate Christian holy days such as Christmas and Easter; they just passed as any other day. I did not see any animals at the lake which was disappointing. However, I appreciated the fact that it was not a zoo. The animals did as they pleased. The only thing I did see were lots of large tarantula spiders everywhere in the jungle.

When I returned to my bungalow, I took a lantern and checked under my bed, in the bathroom and zipped up my bag just to make sure I did not have company. I climbed into bed and made sure the mozzie net was tucked in tight all around and laid there contemplating my days in the jungle. There was a full moon that last night. It illuminated my bungalow and I felt fortunate to be there at that time. I felt sad to be leaving the next day but enjoyed the last night listening to the bugs and other noises from the jungle and there were many.

It was sad to leave the jungle. I loved it! As we canoed back up the river to the township of Puerto Maldonado, reality struck. The forest became less dense; the banks of the river were eroded by illegal gold miners who used small dredging type of rigs which moved along the banks forever changing the structure and stability of the river banks. The sound of timber mills made everyone on the canoe fall silent. The realization of the direction the planet was headed in the hands of the ‘civilized human race’ had struck everyone.

The Amazon basin supplies more oxygen to the planet than any other place on earth and we are destroying it at a rate of 200,000 acres each day. What is wrong with us humans?

I left the jungle after four days with the desire to learn more about the Amazon plant medicine. Little did I know that I would have lots of time in the future to explore the medicine, local ideas and beliefs?

My next adventure was to walk the four day Inca Trail which was accessed from the city of Cusco. I felt like I was in a town in Spain, not that I had ever been to Spain. The Spanish influence in Cusco was overpowering with large, ornate cathedrals and plazas. The small hostel where I was staying was a huge letdown after the beautiful lodge in the jungle. The sewerage system in Cusco did not cope with toilet paper or tampons so everything had to be put in a bin. Yes, even your used toilet paper — nice! I did wonder how a huge man-sized turd would go down the pipes if paper did not. Maybe it breaks up on the way down or something?

Cusco city sat in the base of a valley with layers of residences all the same shape and colour climbing up the sides of the mountains. The huge cathedrals in the Plaza dominated everything and all other structures appeared to be subservient to them. Years had turned them almost black with accumulated pollution. The decorative bits on the cathedrals were creepy looking statues that looked down over the Plaza. Big Brother is watching stuff! I was curious about the very high windows which were totally inaccessible from outside and they had bars on them. They could only be to keep something or someone from getting out. Ain’t religion wonderful?

I was soon brought back to reality when I started to feel a bit nauseous, breathless and had a bit of diarrhoea. Then I remembered - altitude! The receptionist at the hostel recommended drinking lots of coca leaf tea. The hostel didn’t have facilities to make tea so I went to cafes for coca de lattes where I befriended a young guy selling paintings on the street and I mentioned my sickness. He recommended chewing the coca leaf and a special resin which was available at San Pedro markets which was many blocks away. He showed me how to use it by taking six leaves and putting them on top of each other and then scraping a small amount of the resin onto the leaves. Then wrap the resin in the leaves to make a small parcel which is then put in the back of the mouth between the big molars. The trick is to put pressure on the parcel with your teeth and suck.

As a matter of interest: the coca leaf available in the streets is grown at a low altitude. The leaf used for cocaine is grown at a higher altitude which makes it very potent. The resin used for chewing the leaf is an ash residue from burnt lime. This is interesting because lime together with kerosene and other toxic additives is also used to extract the potent constituent from the high altitude leaf to make cocaine. Kerosene is illegal in Peru because it is used to make cocaine. However businesses like the lodge in the jungle have permission to use kerosene for their lamps but the use is highly regulated.

I had one day in Cusco before heading off to Ollantaytambo to begin the four day walk on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. I found my own way to Ollantaytambo where I met my porter Larry and a group of eight other people. We bought walking poles from the local people who made a few sols from tourists like us. As soon as we had finished lunch, we headed off to the swing bridge where we had to register and show our tickets to a government officer. They only permitted five hundred people each day to be on the track from start to finish and closed for two months every year to give the environment a chance to rejuvenate and make repairs to the track.

Before we knew it, we were off, across the wooden walk bridge which crossed the Urubamba River and started our four day trek to Machu Picchu. We camped three very cold nights in the mountains before Machu Picchu was in our sights but the true heroes were the porters. Can you believe they carry six or seven trays of thirty eggs each, held together with plastic bags and string wrapped around them all the way over these mountains? They carry a large gas bottle, cooking stove, crockery, and cutlery, fold up table and chairs and a large tent so we can eat out of the weather. They set all of this up three times a day and also carry tents, sleeping bags and our backpacks for us and then pack it