“OK, time for a plant bath, while the sun is shining.”
They went into the kitchen and Molly boiled water in two large pots. Beside her were the fruits she had bought in the market. She turned the flames off and dropped the fruits on the tiled floor, where the shells cracked cleanly open. The dark pink fruit inside was perfumed and smelled sweet, and Jonathan reached out to taste it.
“Wait! These are for something else,” she said, as she scooped out the pink pulp, added it to the boiling water and stirred. Molly placed one of the steaming pots on the floor.
“It’s the fruit of a huge, strong tree, the Ayahuma. You can see why they call it the cannonball tree! It’s for a vapor bath. Take your shirt off and sit down in front of the pot. I’ll cover you with the blanket. Careful to keep your legs away from the side of the pot. It’s hot!”
“How do you know all this stuff, Molly?”
“Well, I lived here for quite a few years of course, and I just picked up some of the ways they do things. There are so many plants, fruits and medicines that became common around the world once the Amazon resources were organized better. But these are things we always used here. It’s coming back to me. It’s like I never left.”
He sat on the wooden floor in front of the pot as Molly covered him with the blanket. He heard her place the second pot of steaming water with fruit on the floor next to him and cover herself with a blanket. At first the perfumed steam was pleasant. But, before long, the combination of the steam and the tropical heat grew intense and Jonathan felt streams of sweat pouring over him. It was getting uncomfortable.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“Just concentrate on the plant. It’s for protection.”
“Protection from what?”
“Could be anything my dear, could be anything” he heard the muffled voice from under the blanket sauna next to him.
Jonathan started to relax. He concentrated on the sweet perfume and absorbed its energy. He had known from the moment they packed the bags that this was a journey to a place well outside his experience. Sitting in the steam, he began to feel the protection soaking into his being, covering him like the hard shell of the fruit of the Ayahuma. They must have sat for 20 minutes, or so, before he heard Molly emerge from her steam tent.
She pulled off his cover and took both pots over to the sink, filled each with cold water, and checked the temperature. “OK. Now we’ll go in the garden and rinse off with the mixture.”
They poured the sweet-smelling liquid over themselves, and wearing just their underclothes, stood in the sun and let the plant bath dry naturally. The garden of the hotel was beautiful, and they watched a hummingbird taking nectar, and pale blue birds flitting round the trees. They heard a rustle at the end of garden and saw an iguana, nearly a meter long, crawling through the undergrowth.