Don't Stop Believin'

by Olivia Newton-John

  We are pearls.

  We are pearls.

  We are pearls on a chain.

  Looking back now, I see that John and I are on the same strand.

  The next day, John came to visit me at my hotel. I was at the pool in a bikini with wet hair stuck to my face and no make-up. Embarrassed doesn’t begin to cover it! (John now says, ‘I thought you looked radiant.’ No wonder I married him!) Sometimes you just have to live in the moment, though, so we had lunch and continued our conversation. He was a fascinating man who was consumed with health, wellness and doing greater good. Just like me.

  We talked about my mission when it came to the Cancer Wellness Centre, and how I was determined to find a cure. Hollywood chick? Please!

  At the end of the day, he suggested something that sounded extraordinary, and a bit frightening.

  ‘I’d really like to take you to the Amazon,’ John said. ‘I want to take you to Peru to meet the curandero healers. I go every June. I’d like to take you next June.’

  Wait – what? That’s a hell of a first date!

  ‘That’s . . . interesting,’ I said.

  He even had a calendar date in mind, but it was six months away! This was serious.

  ‘At that moment, I knew I had to connect her with the healers I work with in the Amazon,’ John recalls. ‘She said yes and I thought, I’m taking Olivia Newton-John into the rainforest. Now what?’

  After John left, I rang Nancy and she made this trip to the Amazon more of a reality. ‘We’re going next June with John to Peru,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a celebration of my sixtieth birthday. You must come with us and celebrate.’

  Were they all in cahoots? Did I really say yes?

  John came to Los Angeles on business one more time and we decided to go to Nancy and Jim’s for dinner (she’s a great cook) to discuss the trip. In the car on our way to dinner, he played the most beautiful music that was native to the Amazon, complete with that pure flute sound.

  ‘I’m working on a special drink I want you to taste,’ he said.

  He had this new Amazon herb concoction in a beautiful Peruvian cup specially created by his dear friend Pablo Seminario from the sacred valley of the Incas.

  ‘Was it a love potion?’ I asked him later.

  What I couldn’t know at this moment is that Nancy and Jim always felt that John and I would be a match. They believed that if they could get us to the Amazon, we would fall madly in love with each other for life.

  I wish someone had told me this was the plan! I thought I was just going on an adventure . . . But then again, isn’t that what love really is?

  As the time approached to travel with my friends and John to Peru, I was still hesitant. I had just been to Hong Kong on a concert tour and I returned home only two days before I would have to fly to the Amazon. Frankly, I didn’t have it in me to embark on another enormous trip.

  It’s funny when I think about it now. My life could have been very different if I didn’t summon something from deep within and push past my exhaustion.

  I’m so tired, my body shouted.

  But it’s Nancy’s birthday, my mind countered. You have to go.

  I shudder now to think I might have missed it.

  John met us at the airport in Lima, but that wasn’t the end of our air travel. The next morning, we were packing up again to catch a small plane that would fly us over the Andes and into the heart of the jungle.

  On that early morning flight over the snow-covered mountains, the view was so magnificent that I found myself holding my breath. I watched as the sun rose over untouched blankets of snow that sparkled like they were covered with millions of diamonds.

  All of a sudden, any tiredness on my part seemed to pass. There was a surge of adrenaline that made me feel like anything was possible.

  We disembarked at a tiny airport in the town of Pucallpa. We were met on the tarmac by an indigenous chief dressed in ceremonial brown and white hand-painted cushma (robes) and an elaborate beaded headdress. As we made our way through the airport, I began to realise that John was like the Godfather there! The locals adored, respected and honoured him. He had always given some of the proceeds from his herbal formulas to help with local education and health. In turn, the people found ways to make his trips easier and celebrated his returns.

  Heavenly blue skies with wispy white clouds drifted above as we puttered downstream on a peki-peki boat on the Yarinacocha Lagoon near the headwaters of the legendary Amazon River. We went all the way to a small bo-tel (like a hotel, but you could only get there by boat) on the banks of a tributary of the Amazon. Each room was a thatched hut with screens for windows. Yes, it was basic, but so beautiful as the huts blended into the environment. It was clean and gorgeous in its simplicity.

  ‘We have a generator and running water,’ John remembers. ‘It wasn’t hot water, but we had water. When the generator was on, it powered the lights and the water in those screened-in little cabanas. It was actually quite lovely.’

  ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to take you upriver to my property,’ John promised us. Nancy, Jim and I couldn’t wait to make the trek. Nancy would later tell me, ‘I saw the chemistry between you two from the start.’

  John told me that he had several hundred acres there on the banks of the river where he grew camu camu, a special fruit mostly grown in Peru and Brazil, where it’s always been used for health purposes. John told me that the fruit, the size of a large grape, starts out as green and then changes to red when mature. It’s filled with vitamin C, potassium and leucine to help with muscle and bone tissue growth while also acting as a natural energy booster and antioxidant.

  I was fascinated as I listened to him talk about his life’s work. He wasn’t just there to tell me. He would show me what he did as we embarked on a journey through the rainforest together.

  I had been to the rainforest before when I’d travelled to Belize to film a program about saving the native howler monkey. That didn’t prepare me for the splendour of spending time with John in the jungle that day, though. Everything about it was extraordinary. This was a private trek with the best personal tour guide.

  We took a small boat to his plantation. This was a new location for me, but John was the perfect tour guide and pointed out various surrounding sights, including the Ucayali River. It wasn’t long before we were met by Alicia, a curandero or traditional healer. We hiked deeper into the rainforest with Alicia and her husband, Alberto. She waved a smoking device as we walked and had bells attached to both of her ankles.

  ‘What is she doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Keeping the big snakes away,’ John told me. ‘The number-one cause of death here is poisonous snakebite.’

  We sat down on a log and John launched into a story about another visit during which he’d also rested on a log – and then it moved.

  ‘Moved?’ I said, swallowing hard.

  ‘It was dark. I sat on an anaconda,’ he said with a laugh.

  John had talked to me about doing an ayahuasca ceremony involving drinking a hallucinatory plant/vine blend under the guidance of an experienced shaman. ‘It’s a very special medicine and quite revered,’ John said. ‘It can create a mind-altering experience if you do a full-on ceremony with it and drink more of the vine mixed with the psychotria leaf that’s boiled down to a concentrate.

  ‘Prayers are said over this medicine,’ he told me.

  This process ensures a long night connecting with your higher self. At the time, I said I wasn’t interested.

  The truth was, I was afraid to do anything with mind-altering results.

  ‘I understand. This is not enough for a full experience. This is just a taste so your body can receive the energetic imprint of this important medicine,’ John said.

  I was offered a small capful of the liquid, poured out of a water bottle.

  ‘Oh John,’ I said, sipping the thick, dark liquid. ‘It tastes really good.’

  ‘I just wanted Olivia to taste it, which should have ha
d a minimal effect on her,’ he says now. ‘I knew her body would understand what it was, and it could be quite clearing for her, which is why I gave her that just a little capful.’

  The ayahuasca explanation continued with Alicia singing a beautiful icaro, a deep and seductive Shipibo song of connection. John asked me to also sing a song and I felt the perfect one was ‘Grace and Gratitude’ because I had so much in life for which I was grateful.

  There I was singing the song of gratitude in the middle of the Amazon rainforest!

  Definitely a highlight of my life.

  Thank you for life

  Thank you for everything

  I stand here in grace and gratitude

  And I thank you

  We spent a little more time in the rainforest and hiked back to the river where indigenous Shipibo artisans were waiting with their wares to sell, including beautiful hand-painted clothing and tablecloths, artwork, pottery, and jewellery made of shells and beads. After this wondrous day, we went back to the bo-tel by the river for a delicious dinner of fresh fruit and fish cooked on an open fire because there was no gas or electricity. We ate by the amber light of the candles on our table and talked about the day and what it meant to each one of us. I told my friends how amazing it was for me to truly experience a place that was so wild, free and in balance with nature.

  Of course, all good things must come to an end, and by ten that night, I was yawning. I needed to get some rest. John walked us back to our huts, which were perched right on the edge of the river. Nancy and Jim were right next to me, and John opted for a hut about 100 feet away behind us in the jungle area. The hum of the gas-powered generators went silent and the lights blinked out.

  I drifted off quickly, only to wake up around midnight feeling so sick that my eyes couldn’t focus and I could barely stand.

  We were supposed to leave at four in the morning for a river trip to a Shipibo village to meet up with John’s indigenous friends. I knew John had planned a predawn breakfast for us, but even the thought of food was making my stomach churn. Feasts! Boats! River! Someone make it stop.

  I raced to the bathroom to throw up. Thank goodness my hut had a working toilet.

  What is happening to me?

  Somehow, my feet forced my flip-flopping stomach and hazy brain out into the open in the middle of the night. It was so dark and I could barely summon the energy to knock on Nancy and Jim’s hut door.

  ‘Oh guys, I don’t feel well,’ I told them. ‘Would you please go tell John that I can’t go on this trip down the river? I’m really sorry. But you guys should go and just leave me here.’

  I crawled back to my hut, and it wasn’t long before John was knocking on my door and his hand was on my forehead. I knew that Nancy had run to get him.

  ‘I know what’s going on,’ he said.

  I didn’t know. But I wanted whatever was happening to, please, God, stop.

  ‘I feel so sick, John,’ I moaned.

  ‘It’s not that you’re sick,’ he promised me. ‘You’re just so sensitive that you’re integrating with the rainforest and the animals.’

  ‘I’m not integrating,’ I groaned. ‘I’m disintegrating!’

  ‘Wait here,’ he said in the predawn darkness. Where in the world did he think I could go? I could barely make it back to the bed without the room spinning.

  John raced to his hut and came back with a portable record player and some of his favourite healing music. I’d always thought that music was my medicine and now that theory was really on the line, in the middle of the rainforest, in a hut.

  John kept the deep chanting music on low and lay gently next to me in the bed. I wish I could say it was romantic, but I was on the verge of kneeling in front of the toilet. When he put his arms around me, though, it did feel really good to be held in the strong embrace of this adventurous and mysterious Amazon man. But then I had to detangle myself to jump out of bed and throw up again. It was so horrendous and I was so weak, but I still mustered up the voice to tell him, ‘You really need to go. Just leave me here.’ I was so embarrassed.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said.

  It wasn’t long before I started seeing very odd visions. ‘I really don’t know what’s going on with me,’ I said as these strange sights continued to play in my mind.

  ‘Tell me what you’re seeing,’ John said, calmly. We were back on the bed and he was holding me again in those supportive arms.

  ‘I’m seeing you,’ I cried.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You are standing above me and I’m on the ground. It feels like I’m in the inside of something like a pyramid. There is stone behind you and you’re standing on a platform. There are other big chunks of stone are everywhere. And you have this robe on . . . I might be losing my mind!’

  I waited for him to tell me I was indeed crazy.

  ‘What colour is the robe?’ he asked. ‘Describe it to me.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it has geometric patterns. It’s dark with a red pattern on it. And you have an unusual hat on. And you’re commanding your people.’

  He fell off the bed. Literally. What I said freaked him out.

  ‘I did fall on the floor when she described me in that tunic,’ John says. ‘That night, we just tumbled back in time and space.’

  John proceeded to tell me a story about his life.

  He had been on several archeological digs. One such dig, at a pre-Inca Chimu site, yielded an ancient tunic. He kept it for a time and considered giving it to the Smithsonian Institute, who were quite interested in purchasing a piece of history. He showed the piece at galleries in New York and at the Pre-Columbian Show in Santa Fe. John wasn’t sure what to do with this textile because each time he’d unravel it to show it to someone, he would get feverish and his heart would race.

  ‘My hands would shake and I’d just have to lie down,’ he said. ‘I felt like I had the worst fever.’

  My own hands were trembling and I felt freezing cold as he told his tale.

  ‘There was just something about this textile that made me ill,’ he said.

  Then he told me that he had a realisation that he needed to bring it back to Peru and re-bury it. The only solution was to allow it to rest where it wanted to remain eternally. This wasn’t an easy task. John had to basically smuggle the tunic back into the country, and that was just the first step. He had to retrace his journey back to a remote place and bury it again. Since the original site was now an official archeological dig, he had to find another site to bury the tunic.

  ‘There are certain things on earth that should never be disturbed,’ he said.

  That wasn’t the end of the story.

  ‘Something happened after I put the textile in the ground again,’ he told me.

  I was so engrossed that I forgot about throwing up.

  ‘After I buried it again, I was leaning over to put the earth back in place and a condor flew over me. The shadow of his wings touched my shoulder and then it flew up off again,’ he said. ‘When I looked up, it was gone.’

  ‘I’ve never had that sickness again,’ he told me.

  Cut to me lying on that bed with my teeth chattering. For some reason, I was having visions of John wearing that exact textile that he buried.

  ‘Now, I’m seeing an opening in the stones,’ I told him, describing my continuing vision. ‘I can see a blue pool of water below me.’ I had the feeling I would be thrown into that water.

  ‘I can see it, too,’ he said.

  ‘It feels like we’ve had a life experience before – together,’ John said.

  It felt so real.

  Because it was.

  That night, in this faraway place, deep in the Peruvian rainforest, John didn’t leave my side. He held me gently, played soft music and took care of me. He stayed the entire night. By the next morning, I felt not just better, but clear-headed, too.

  It’s hard to describe the feeling, but it was as if someone had lifted a grey veil that had
been hanging over me and I finally shook off all of the stress and self-doubt that had been plaguing me for a long time. I had been on antidepressants for about six months prior, but from that day on I didn’t need them anymore.

  All that weight had suddenly evaporated and my brain felt crystal clear. My entire body was at peace. It was amazing that someone could go from sick as a dog, throwing up all night, to a feeling of euphoria. When I stopped to think about it, it was abundantly clear that I had indeed purged much more than what was in my stomach.

  As I began to feel better, John and I decided to sit outside. We watched the sun rise and talked for a long time.

  I knew that there was something much deeper here. I thought he was feeling it, too.

  We literally missed the boat that morning and John sent everyone away. I felt badly that he missed seeing his friends in the tribe, but John was fine with it. Instead, he planned for us to spend the day together quietly resonating, our frequencies melding into one, deep in the womb of the rainforest.

  I knew this was a new beginning. As the sun was setting, he promised to take me into the Andean highlands to a special Inca site where he buried the ancient textile robe.

  The next day, we flew out to Cusco and John took me to a place he said was very special to him. We drove quite a way out of town and hiked out to a rocky perch where two hills met. We sat high up overlooking the beautiful ruins of an Incan tambo (place of rest and renewal) complete with fresh water from an underground spring gushing out of a stone wall.

  ‘This has always been a special place for me,’ John said. ‘It’s where I come to make my annual decisions and affirmations for what the next year will bring.’

  ‘Can I be a part of that?’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Yes,’ he said without any hesitation. (Later he would tell me that he was shocked to say it, too.)

  We sat, meditated and prayed. Words weren’t necessary because there was a sudden knowing between us. At one point, John asked me what I wanted from my future. I talked about my precious Chloe and how what I wanted most in my life was for her health and happiness.