I first heard about ayahuasca years ago when I read the now-famous National Geographic article in which a journalist drinks a mystical Amazonian brew that changes her life and cures her depression. I wasn’t looking to be cured of any illnesses or ailments, though many people report being healed of numerous addictions and diseases, including various forms of cancer, after drinking ayahuasca. The thing that stood out for me – beside the writer’s descriptions of facing her own personal hell – is that in her final ayahuasca ceremony, she vomits up a black snake. I’m sitting in my friend’s college apartment, and I’m reading in National Geographic that a journalist actually vomited a snake.

My first thought was, NO she did not.

My second thought was, I HAVE to try it.

Fast forward to 2010 and I’m living in an apartment with three strangers in Ecuador, doing a little thing we like to call Jet Set Zero. Laurene, fresh from volunteering in the Ecuadorian Amazon, asks if I want to try ayahuasca in probably our second ever conversation. That was my first lesson in learning that the French don’t mince words. And as she talks, I remember: Ayahuasca. Just the name conjured up visions of jungles, shamans, and encountering my inner demons, exploring my subconscious, pushing back the veil of our modern-day blinders and reconnecting with an ancient, spiritual past. Let’s be honest- I was mostly wondering if I, too, was going to vomit a snake.

I wasn’t always fascinated by the prospect of drinking an Amazonian plant that had been boiled and prayed over for hours and hours. I wasn’t always intrigued by the thought of confronting my worst fears or exploring other dimensions. Nor do I recall ever wondering what I would find deep within me- after every shred of vanity, ego, and finally, dignity, had been torn away. But the more time I spent in Ecuador, the more I found myself researching everything I could about ayahuasca and the knowledge it imparts to those who venture down its path.

I do find shamanism interesting- mostly because I am fascinated by indigenous cultures and the way they hold on to beliefs that are so ancient compared to ours. And I seem to be drawn to countries where aboriginal or indigenous cultures still exist. My favorite places to travel to are the ones that are the most different from home.

Give me Papua New Guinea over Paris any day. While we’re moving on to touch screen this and high def that, other cultures are practicing the same beliefs that their ancestors have for the last several hundred years. I’m all for progress, but I find meaning in the fact that these societies’ customs have been fostered by centuries of learning and experience, as opposed to modern-day worship of the latest, greatest iPhone app.  The irony is that as technology increasingly connects our world, it also drives us further from the basic experience of face-to-face interaction.  Technology may make life easier, but it also weakens meaningful connection as interpersonal contact is diluted by texts, emails, and Facebook messages.

The more I travel, the more I encounter firsthand the glaring disconnect between hyper-materialistic America and the rest of the world. In the U.S., we are consumed by our consumption and our belief that “he who dies with the most toys wins.”  To me, mobility – not money – equates to freedom and I believe that the more things you own, the more things own you.  Living in South America, I felt more grounded, more in tune with what really matters in life. As a result, I felt surprisingly comfortable seeking answers and exploring spirituality through shamanism and ayahuasca, practices that indigenous people have honored for centuries.

The biggest obstacle to partaking in ayahuasca was finding a shaman- a legitimate shaman.  The shaman is perhaps the most important part of the experience, because if ayahuasca shows you your worst fears and demons, you are going to want someone skilled in navigating the spiritual realms to make sure you come out on the other side.  The ‘work’ you do on yourself with ayahuasca is personal in that it does come from you (and it is work), but the shaman plays a vital role in facilitating your journey.  The shaman also administers special healing songs, called icaros, that heal the spirit and in turn, the body.

People say ayahuasca gives you exactly what you need and never more than you can handle.  There were times when I would beg to differ on the latter though, times when I felt ayahuasca gave me way more than I was ready for and I questioned whether I would come out on the other side.

Australian journalist Rak Razam summed it up when he said something like, “Sometimes ayahuasca breaks you apart and afterward, the pieces fit together in a different way. You’re broken, but stronger in the broken places.”

A single ayahuasca ceremony can be so powerful that it can equate to years of self-development in terms of the issues you can work through and the new perspectives you can reach.  You do not need an illness or crisis to benefit from ayahuasca.  Not everyone drinks ayahuasca because they seek healing, though it is hard not to feel that you have been healed afterward.  Simply look around to observe how much healing our world needs.  Symptoms of our Western malaise are evident: a mass mentality of material accumulation; a society that would rather type an email than knock on their neighbor’s door; an entire generation who doesn’t know what to do with their lives.

Ayahuasca holds the space for undertaking a journey deep within your psyche and has the potential to shatter all the beliefs you hold about how the world works.  It can be hard to feel that you are the same person afterward.

No one wants to vomit snakes, but then again, think about how much better off we would all be if we purged the equivalent of a spiritual black snake.  Ridding ourselves of negativity in the form of old belief systems, self-defeating or addictive behavior – consider the collective healing our entire planet would experience if we each relinquished some of the toxic debris we carry around.

Food For Thought – Some things I read while researching ayahuasca

• Jet Set Zero in Quito: Episode 6
• National Geographic article
• One person’s account of 18 ayahuasca ceremonies
• Excerpt from Rak Razam’s book Aya: A Shamanic Odyssey

EATING (and then trying to cook) while traveling with your best friend.

When Amy Cao visited me in Quito and brought our replacement video camera after the first one became a casualty of bus robbery, it was a bit of a working holiday for her. Amy’s a non-cooking food-writer-turned-food-show-host who produces charmingly comedic Stupidly Simple Snacks videos for the many of us who, like her, are handicapped in the kitchen.

Since Amy’s life and profession revolve around food (as have many of our best conversations in the eight years we’ve been friends), we spent a lot of time eating.

Eating our way through Ecuador

We toured Quito by day, ducking into tiny mom-and-pop restaurants for set lunches that cost $2. If we were feeling really good about ourselves, we’d splurge on $5 ceviche. At night she’d visit me at work at Uncle Ho’s to dine on fresh shrimp rolls and Vietnamese coffee as she kept up with her website via MacBook.

The professional version

We wandered through local markets drinking exotic fresh fruit juices like taxo, naranjilla and tomate de arbol. We devoured regional dishes like shredded pork with buttery mashed potato cakes topped with a fried egg, not caring that our lunch’s source (a giant fried pig’s body) was staring us in the face. We ate 50 cent cheese empanadas on the bus and sampled $20 guinea pig at a 5-star hotel. In short, we did what we do best: talked at length about the world and the lives we spend traversing it over a long, lovely meal.

It wasn’t all mangos and banana smoothies though. On Amy’s last night in Quito, we decided to roll up our sleeves and take over the kitchen in my apartment in Quito (although, good roommate that I am, decided not to “borrow” Freddie’s orange for our recipe). We filmed the debacle – ahem, culinary success – and Amy created a video so you can laugh along as we endeavor to make Ecuadorian ceviche. And yes, we’re in our pajamas at the end of the video (and yes, we have matching shirts that say Up with Life/Down with Oil in reference to Ecuador’s endangered Yasuni rainforest) because we went out for a celebratory dinner at a hillside hacienda for Amy’s last meal…and then she dragged me out of bed at 5am so we could taste our masterpiece and film ourselves eating raw fish at dawn before she flew back to NYC.

Armed with our ingredients

See what we concoct in an unexpected culinary comedy when this Jet Set Zero cast member stirs the pot with Amy Blogs Chow.

Amy and I met at Boston University when we were college roommates nearly eight years ago and quickly became inseparable. Between our bicoastal lives and global travels, time and distance eventually caught up with us. Neither of us could believe that 2 years had passed since I had last seen her during my first trip to South America when we traveled together from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro.

It’s hard to explain the incomparable feeling of sharing a travel experience with someone you love.

How the joy captured in the moment is joy doubled, and forever encapsulated in your shared memory.

By the same token, the tense moments, the will-we-or-won’t-we-make-the-bus/get-robbed-at-the-ATM/find-a-hotel-at-10pm-in-a-new-town anxiety, the clumsiness of fumbling through language barriers and cultural divides, are made much more bearable – and even laughable – when you encounter them with someone you know and trust.

When you return home and start to tell your stories, try to convey the places you’ve been and how they’ve changed you, you find that despite your photos and flowery adjectives, no one else will ever understand those moments. Stumbling across markets filled with acres of vegetables and babies playing on potato sacks, their angel faces caked with dirt. Riding in the back of a truck on a bumpy dirt road past cows and laundry drying in the sun on the way to somewhere beautiful. Smiling at an old lady whose twinkling eyes crinkle at you as they wonder what faraway land you come from.

No one else will be able to recall the wind in your face, the sun smiling blindingly upon you, the realization and absolute conviction that the world is, indeed, your oyster.

There is much to be said for experiencing that moment on your own, for feeling every ounce of your personal power, and knowing that you can take on the world – and succeed. And yet the more I travel, the more I find that there is to be said for stringing that moment between two souls, for allowing the bliss of traveling to expand as it is shared -  until it encases both of you in a memory that you will carry forward together.

Have a taste in Episode 4.

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When you return home and start to tell your stories, try to convey the places you’ve been and how they’ve changed you, you find that despite your photos and flowery adjectives, no one else will ever understand those moments. Stumbling across markets filled with acres of vegetables and babies playing on potato sacks, their angel faces caked with dirt. Riding in the back of a truck on bumpy dirt road past cows and laundry drying in the sun on the way to somewhere beautiful. Smiling at an old lady whose twinkling eyes crinkle at you as they wonder what faraway land you come from. No one else will be able to recall the wind in your face, the sun smiling blindingly upon you, the realization and absolute conviction that the world is, indeed, your oyster.

There is much to be said for experiencing that moment on your own, for feeling every ounce of your personal power, and knowing that you can take on the world – and succeed. And yet the more I travel, the more I find that there is to be said for stringing that moment between two souls, for allowing the bliss of traveling to expand as it is shared -  until it encases both of you in a memory that you will carry forward together.

Have a taste in Episode 4.

ast few weeks of June, fortune smiled up on me and I was able to share the incredible experiences that Ecuador has to offer with my longtime friend Amy Cao, NYC food writer and creator of Amy Blogs Chow.

It’s hard to explain the incomparable feeling of sharing a travel experience with someone you love.

How the joy captured in the moment is joy doubled, and forever encapsulated in your shared memory.

By the same token, the tense moments, the will-we-or-won’t-we-make-the-bus/get-robbed-at-the-ATM/find-a-hotel-at-10pm-in-a-new-town anxiety, the clumsiness of fumbling through language barriers and cultural divides, are made much more bearable – and even laughable – when you encounter them with someone you love.

When you return home and start to tell your stories, try to convey the places you’ve been and how they’ve changed you, you find that despite your photos and flowery adjectives, no one else will ever understand those moments. Stumbling across markets filled with acres of vegetables and babies playing on potato sacks, their angel faces caked with dirt. Riding in the back of a truck on bumpy dirt road past cows and laundry drying in the sun on the way to somewhere beautiful. Smiling at an old lady whose twinkling eyes crinkle at you as they wonder what faraway land you come from. No one else will be able to recall the wind in your face, the sun smiling blindingly upon you, the realization and absolute conviction that the world is, indeed, your oyster.

There is much to be said for experiencing that moment on your own, for feeling every ounce of your personal power, and knowing that you can take on the world – and succeed. And yet the more I travel, the more I find that there is to be said for stringing that moment between two souls, for allowing the bliss of traveling to expand as it is shared -  until it encases both of you in a memory that you will carry forward together.

Have a taste in Episode 4.

Nine months with Jet Set Zero already. It’s been a wonderful experience in countries I had never been to, with people I had never met before. A truly rewarding experience. I have proven to myself I can do it, so it’s time for me to hit the road on my own. I’ll be in South America a few more months, heading south.

And I’ll be blogging: photos, videos… Come check it out: http://laureneworld.wordpress.com/ And please leave comments, questions or suggestions!

Here’s a short video to remember the goods moments in Quito and Ecuador. A compilation of photos you have seen, and others you haven’t- yet.

Traveling is a fulfilling experience. Make it your own.

Peace

Laurene

* * * * * * *

C’ETAIT BIEN, VRAIMENT BIEN

Déjà neuf mois passés avec Jet Set Zero. Ce fut une magnifique expérience, dans des pays et avec des compagnons de voyage qui m’étaient inconnus auparavant. Une expérience vraiment enrichissante. Je me suis prouvé que oui, c’est possible, alors voici venu le temps de prendre la route en solitaire. Je vais pousser un peu plus vers le sud, en Amérique latine.

Et je conterai en photos et vidéos mes aventures sur mon blog: http://laureneworld.wordpress.com/
Venez y faire un tour et laisser vos commentaires, questions et suggestions!

Voici une courte vidéo pour se remémorer les meilleurs moments à Quito et en Equateur. Une compilation de photos que vous avez déjà vues, et d’autres inédites.

Voyager est enrichissant. Faites de vos voyages une expérience unique.

Peace

Laurene

Mindo’s fresh air made us thirsty for adventure. Setting aside our fear of heights for the exhilaration of gliding above the cloud forest, Laurene and I set out early to go ziplining.

Making our way through the cloud forest

A local named Giovanni picked us up in his truck for the winding drive up the hill. We were racing against time since I had to return to Quito to work in the afternoon so I was glad we had decided to fork over the $3 for the lift up the road.

Learning the important safety rules - in Spanish

That daring Laurene on the flying trapeze

The views were vast and endless. It was hard to imagine that just over the mountain lay Quito in the distance. Mindo was a world away.

My friend Amy arrived with our new video camera the night before and I had been carefully observing her to see whether she was experiencing any signs of altitude sickness or jet lag (and nagging at her to keep drinking water). When she professed that she felt fine, I set our Mindo plan in action. Amy, Laurene, and I raced to find a bus to take us the 2-hour drive to Mindo.

The bus ride to Mindo was nearly as beautiful as the town itself: a windy hilltop road snaking through the lush forest. The surrounding mountain range was draped in fog.

Mindo is a small one-street town with rustic guesthouses open to the forest and the incessant wake-up call of roosters shrieking long before dawn. Children race bicycles through the town’s small plaza and babies climb in the trees.

We stopped by an orchid farm specializing in minuscule orchids and strolled through the grounds as the owner used a magnifying glass to describe a few of the 200 various species on the farm. He informed us that Ecuador is home to an astounding 4,000 species of orchids.  Although the tiny country covers less than 0.2% of the planet’s surface, it is home to 18% of the world’s bird species and orchids.

The next morning we woke to the sound of roosters imploring us to get out of bed. We tried to ignore them but finally decided they were right, so we rolled out of our colorful $4 guesthouse and into the verdant world of Mindo.

Gazing at the scenery from the open-air loft of our guesthouse

Select photos contributed by Laurene and Amy Blogs Chow

You can probably imagine that it’s kind of hard to make a show about living abroad without a video camera.

And so much has happened! Laurene quit her job, Ryan and I took a boat ride on a lake named after a guinea pig, Ryan and Freddie went to the coast, I found a job, Laurene started looking for other jobs, Ryan got thrown into a jail on wheels, the boys went on an Indiana Jones adventure in the jungle, the World Cup began. And so on. All those little things like Life.

While the powers-that-be behind Jet Set Zero have been researching every possibility to get us a new camera as soon as possible, they’ve encountered headaches and hurdles like customs, duties paperwork, and exorbitant shipping costs.

Enter creative solution #1: Find a courier to fly down with the camera.

I jumped on the horn (ok, the internet) and contacted my best friend Amy Cao, a food writer and blogger in NYC. Would she be available to fly down to Quito with the camera on a moment’s notice? An email response from her later, it was a done deal.

She arrives tonight into Quito, and the show will go on!

Food writer Amy Cao arriving in Quito soon!

If you don’t have one, get one. Find one.

As I mentally reviewed my friends, acquaintances, and past travel buddies, I realized that I didn’t really know anyone in Ecuador before I moved here. In order to find contacts and job prospects, I put the word out to my friends and hit the Internet. I perused the Lonely Planet forums by searching for jobs in Ecuador.

I signed up for Couchsurfing, not because I was looking for a place to stay, but because I’ve heard it’s a great resource for meeting people on the road. I joined a few groups based in Quito and signed up for email updates. Every day my inbox is full of Couchsurfing messages from travelers or locals looking for like-minded people who want to take salsa lessons, go bar-hopping, or take weekend trips together.

When reading through past queries of travelers looking for work or volunteer opportunities, I noticed that one guy in particular seemed to have all the answers for people looking for housing, jobs, or fun times in Quito.

So I contacted him. Jon has been living in Quito for a few years and suggested we meet up the next day at a local Vietnamese restaurant called Uncle Ho’s. Right off the bat he was friendly, easy-going, and unbelievably helpful.

I explained that I was looking for short-term or even volunteer work and he gave me a rundown of options off the top of his head: he knew of a lovely hostel in the mountains who was looking for a volunteer in exchange for room and board, he could point me in the direction of the better-reputed English schools, and could suggest any number of volunteer options within Ecuador.

Literally two days later, he messaged me saying that the owner of Uncle Ho’s, a fun-loving Irish expat named Kevin, was looking for a new waitress. I went in to talk to Kevin the following day and he gave me the low-down.

It appealed to me way more than grading papers and prepping for English classes. Don’t get me wrong – I taught English in Korea and loved it. But getting to eat mouth-watering Asian food, listen to awesome music, and chat with fellow globe-trotters sounded way more appealing this time around.

Voila! A few days’ worth of emails and conversations scored me a job in Quito. Don’t underestimate the power of networking- it can land you a lot more than a couch to crash on!

Kidding.

Kind of.

The hunt is on for a job in Quito. After applying for a mysterious Magician’s Assistant post found under Quito’s Craigslist, I sat back and tried to work some mental magic and will the magician to respond. Laurene and Freddie have both gotten jobs teaching English, but try as I might, I couldn’t motivate myself to apply for teaching jobs. We recently met a bartender who had partied with Guns N Roses when they played in Quito recently, and I had seen some places who were hiring bartenders. Except I don’t know how to tend bar. Right.

Rabbits out of hats, Getting sawed in half = I'm in!

My day had started out pretty good- I slept until noon since I have become an insomniac since living here (along with half of our apartment) and have trouble falling asleep before 2 or 3am. My recent obsession has been researching shamans in the Amazon and contemplating going to live in the jungle to learn from them. Other than that, I had lunch with a new friend who took me to a local hotspot for wealthy Quitenos and we feasted on the Ecuadorian version of sushi. Things were looking up.

I’d been dragging my heels about going to Laurene’s school to meet her boss – a position opened up at her school to teach some evening classes at $4/hr. But for whatever reason, the thought of teaching for a few bucks an hour made me cringe, even though it would actually be enough to live on.

What really made me hesitate was imagining spending another two full months in Quito, choking on the pollution and constantly watching my back. But I bit the bullet and went looking for Laurene’s school at dusk, couldn’t find it because it was so far, and felt the whole time like I was going to get mugged. I hated the feeling of having to be hyper aware and suspicious of everyone that passed me. It started to sprinkle – naturally – so I finally called her and she gave me directions. But after a few more minutes, I just gave up and decided to retrace my steps back to the apartment.

I had walked farther than I thought and it was now dark. Walking alone in the dark is a big no-no here. I made my way to the grocery store near our apartment and spent $7 on ingredients to bake a chocolate cake, which I had been craving ever since Laurene made one for Freddie’s birthday. Spending seven dollars bummed me out even more though, since that’s the equivalent of 4 meals here and I clearly don’t have a source of income at this point.

After wandering fruitlessly in the dark, glaring at every stranger who passed with a “Don’t Mug Me” stare, and spending money I don’t have to make a cake, I couldn’t get my apartment key to work in the gate because it takes both hands and an intermediate level of coordination. Plus the overhead light is on a sensor and turns off after 3 seconds, so I’m fumbling with my key in the pitch black darkness with my arms full of eggs and groceries, cursing my non-luck. The key wasn’t cooperating and I couldn’t see anything so I was trying to picture the lock in my mind’s eye and mentally beseech it to open. Again my mental magic wasn’t working and I stood there in the dark struggling for several minutes.

The light that leaves you in the dark

It all kind of added up to one of those screaming-into-the-pillow moments. In fact I did consider screaming just to make myself feel better, but then I figured my neighbors would likely think I was being mugged, so I swallowed my angst. It occurred to me to be annoyed that I hadn’t bought more ice cream but since I had finished my last tub of ice cream within 2 days, I was trying to wait until next week to buy a new one. I eat grilled cheese sandwiches every single day (sometimes twice a day), put butter on everything I eat without fail, and eat ice cream by the tub, so it’s only a matter of time before I balloon.

I made the cake disappear!

The upside is that maybe the magician – if he ever calls – will teach me how to make the would-be muggers, exhaust-spewing buses, and extra pounds vanish into thin air.

Little did we know our luck was about to change.

On our way back from Baños, we split up and took two different buses. Laurene and Freddie needed to get back to Quito to work/find work the next day so they left after lunch. But I didn’t have any pressing engagements (let’s be honest, no job prospects in sight) so I was contemplating traveling further south for a few days. After much deliberation, I ended up going back to Quito, so I took an afternoon bus with Evan, our field producer and cameraman.

We were seated in the last row of the bus on the right hand side. On the left side of the bus there was one additional row of seats further back that were directly across from the bathroom. Our bags were under our seats, and our seats backed up against the bathroom.

The 4-hour bus ride had lulled me to sleep and by the time I woke up about 30 minutes from Quito, our camera was missing. We searched frantically all around us, on the top shelf of the bus and under our neighbor’s seats. They noticed us panicking and one young couple offered to help: the girl went to talk to the bus driver, who called the police.

Within ten minutes, our bus stopped on the side of the road and a police officer boarded to inspect everyone’s bags. Every passenger on the bus had to open their bags to prove that they hadn’t taken the camera.

The search was fruitless. The couple in the very last row across from us recalled a guy sitting next to them on a stool in the aisle who had gotten off the bus mid-way through the trip. He must have been the thief. He didn’t even take the whole backpack, but had the nerve to unzip it, remove the camera, and zip the backpack up again before high-tailing it off the bus.

We had all been hearing horror stories from the moment we arrived about theft and muggings in Quito. In all fairness (not quite sure how it’s fair though), it was probably a matter of time until we were robbed – in fact, Laurene was pickpocketed on the trolley a few days before.  Apparently our neighbors even had Laurene and Freddie over for a “safety talk” when they first moved in.

Of course I was incredibly bummed out, but that doesn’t even begin to describe how miserable Evan felt about the whole thing – and it wasn’t even his fault. That camera was his job, his livelihood, his passion – it was like someone kidnapped his dog, crashed his car, and forced him to watch Twilight on repeat – all at the same time.  And we all know there’s nothing worse than that.