I arrived in Villagarzon, taking a flight from Bogota Colombia. It was a smaller airplane and it seemed like all in the airplane were on their way to the place to experience Yage. I had never met the owner of the hostel so I had shared my picture with her prior to flying there. Once picked up, the drive was about 30-40 minutes from the airport to the hostel. The scenery was beautiful with lush green trees on both sides at times, while at times trees on one side with valley on the other.

This was the first time I was staying at dorms of a hostel. Let alone in USA where I would feel safer, this was in Colombia. But it was by the word of mouth that I had chosen the place in Colombia and that gave me bit of security. As I arrived at the hostel I was taken upstairs to the second floor to the dorm. It was scary that I was the only woman among the other men in the dorm. But with the owner being a woman made me feel a bit safer. There was no fan in the room and my biggest concern was mosquitoes at night. There was a common toilet and shower that I would have to share with other men. This was all something I was doing the first time.

The owner showed me around the hostel, that also had a kitchen where I would need to cook my own food. Then she took me to a pathway down to the river, which was through a thicket of Amazonian flora. So before the day ended, I would have to get groceries from the market which was about a kilometer away. It was about 3:30pm, so I decided to explore the river, before going to the market. As I reached down to the river, it reminded me of walking the river in Zion national park. Except here I was alone by myself and could do what felt like. So I took some time to soak in the beautiful scenery around. Around 4:15 or 4:30 I decided to head back up. Only I forgot the point from where I had to ascend up to the Hostal. At this point I found myself climbing up and walking through some of the most damp areas. At one point my feet kept going into the ground in a ditch and with great difficulty I pulled up both my feet, with one leg knee deep inside the swamp. It took me about 10mins to find my way to the pathway going up, but it seemed like eternity. As soon as I found the pathway, I sat down to find my lost breath again. When I checked watch my heart rate had gone up to 172 at one point and I could feel it very in my breathing.

After I returned up to the dorms, I changed my clothes, washed my pants and shoes and found directions to the market and up I went to buy groceries.