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Porto Velho: Trippin' in the Jungle

Ayahuasca - A psychedelic religion in the Rainforest

Words by Adam Hirst
featured on JungleDrums issue 57 May 2008


Uncle Mad lives in Crazy Town. When you have somebody who lives on the edge of the Amazon Jungle and thinks he owns it all, it would be stupid not to pay him a visit. It sounded like it could be an adventure. The journey there from Manaus was either a four-day boat trip sleeping with the goats, or a flight for about thirty quid more. Cowards that we are, we flew.

Money well spent. Flying over the Amazon rainforest is something special. It isn’t called the rainforest for nothing though, but when all those clouds clear the view of nothing but green trees all the way to the horizon, very occasionally slashed by a winding silver river can´t be described in any lesser terms.

Crazy Town

Porto Velho is one of the furthest navigable point on a major tributary of the Amazon. It started with the crazy idea of having a train station that was supposed to bring rubber down the line from deep in the interior, avoiding rapids and waterfalls, to send it all the way to Europe. It didn't last long.

It was only a week or two but the area left an impression on four of us that will last a lifetime. We met the family of Uncle Mad, who bizarrely all seemed sane. He had downsized from living with three women as his wives to just one, but children from these and other women kept appearing at the house - “My son!” (Another?). We went to school, we went to church, we went driving, we went camping, and we went out on a boat. If it all sounds like a Surrey Sunday School outing, it was about as far removed from that as possible.

The oldest son drove us around Porto Velho in a friend’s Beetle, we did some off-roading along the historic tracks and stopped to look at some of the rapids that made them necessary. We were joined by three women of various ages who lit candles, chanted a little in some strange language and threw offerings at the water. They left food, drink, gifts and incense behind, possibly for Iemanjá, the goddess of the sea. Crazy Town is a whole long way from her home, but I guess people have to make do as best they can.