Hello fellow Nexians!

MODS: Sorry if this isn't the most proper forum for such questions, please move if needed.

This great friend of mine has some old B. caapi plants growing at his farm, and he got me a bunch of vine stems, but fresh.
Does anybody out there has any idea of how much water is there present in the vine, in percentage, so I can know when its fully dried out?
I had it chopped, my back hurts off spending a whole day cleaning and shaving vines, its heavy work.

I have also added some new strains to my garden, but I would like to know how the brazilian strain names relate (or not?) to the spanish countries colour classification, or anything at all about these strains that anyone might want to share, how they compare to each other, and to the 'standard' Caupuri strain.
So far I got these strains, so called (portuguese classification) - Caupuri, Tucunaca, Ourinhos, Pajezinho - so far, I only have experience with Caupuri and Tucunacá.
This friend has told me briefly, that the spanish classification is done accordingly to the color of the brew, is that considered accurate?

I find the Caupuri a bit stronger than Tucunaca, but Tucunaca lacks the very many tough knots so present in Caupuri vines.
I know not much about Pajezinho and Ourinhos, except for the fact that Pajezinho is supposed to look like Caupuri (with knots) and Ourinhos looking more like Tucunaca, without all those big round knots, and that the ones with the knots are the strongest, or at least more purging ones, while Tucunaca and Ourinhos would be kind of lighter experience on the cleaning side for unknown reasons (AFAIK, who knows if its because of tannins or other compounds?), but besides that I would like to know more details about them if possible, where they're mostly used, what for, and why.
Sometimes I believe that people who are starting in Ayahuasca often get given the most purging types, for an initial cleaning, along with chacruna of course.

I have already tried Ayahuasca made only with the vine, and its a very different experience.
It can make things look very interesting, but also sort of feels like its lacking in something, this is why I consider Ayahuasca to be the perfect marriage of two different plants, whose territory actually doesn't overlap each other too much (not nearly as much as I initially thought), that means it is the fruit of an encounter, between a plant of the North of South America and another one from the south of South America, and it is probably the only, or one of the very few preparations that must include a MAOI in order to activate other actives.

How did the natives found that if they use a MAOI plant they can activate others? I mean, there are petrogliphs, many thousands of years old, related to Ayahuasca use, despite they had no 'written language', there are petrogliphs everywhere, many are nowadays disturbed by the action of man in nature, and the expansion of big centers, as well as archeological evidences of utensils and awesome pottery (like Marajoara) show they were pretty inovative, creative societies have been trading good through long distances throughout a great length of time, and those traditions stuck up until nowadays, surviving the repression of the colonizers and the catholic church (as well as others nowadays).
Perhaps that is why a lot of it happened in a secretive fashion and the infomation ended up being held by masters and shamans often gets out of the way of the science, and they take their secrets to the grave, or those secrets become so very shrouded in the religious medium that it sort of gets lost just as well, for its no passed ahead to people outside that small circle.


Har

I think it's pretty simple:

You're living in the jungle. You are trying out different plants to see what the effects are. Because you're living in the jungle, close to Nature, your intuition is heightened, and your sense of plants around you is heightened.

You try the Ayahuasca vine. You notice that it opens you up to an even deeper intuition and receptivity. You notice that other plants you take have a more pronounced effect while on Ayahuasca vine. So you eagerly try different things.

Then you try the chacruna plant. Then you're like "WHOA." And you run back to the village, and tell your people, "You got to try this!"

They were probably nibbling plants. There are sensitive, curious people out there who do this still to this day.

Dear RhythmSpring,

You are probably right, my friend.
To my reason, it is somehow a bit fantastic, or increible how we can connect to other living beings, and perhaps there are indeed special places (power places) in the nature, where we get an extra benefit for connecting with oneself and the universe itself.
I am not doing something too different from nibbling leaves and barks and bringing the news back to my community, in the end, I believe.

It is very satisfying when I get to bring some usable knowledge or anything that can benefit others as well.

I believe its not an uncommon call for people who do Ayahuasca, to get an experience similar to that of Mestre Irineu, I know I did have a very similar experience, in which, it became very clear to me that I should, or, was expected to, introduce more people to Ayahuasca.
For people 'in my village' must know it for its incredible!
And its healthy.

Perhaps, here from 'the jungle', I sort of feel like I'm faded, or diluted in here, before you say, it has ocurred very little to me that there was indeed a communication of some sorts going on.
A day by day thing, things we don't perceive for we're so used to them, perhaps.

Thats a very cool contribution, thanks for shedding your light!



Har

Still, I would like to know, if there already is something like a table of equivallence table, about the equivalent Caapi strains in
portuguese and in spanish, I have just learnt there are many substrains of Caapi, for example, there is the Caupuri strain, there are
Caupuri strains with different knots/'ball' shapes, and probably the same goes for other knotted strains as well for the less knotted
strains of B. caapi, I believe.

I remember reading about the different kinds of caapi in spanish terms (if my memory serves me well), in a very old text that ran across
the Ayahuasca and Psychedelic community, it also mentioned many different preparations and their purpose, and there were very odd names
(probably local names, indigenous names perhaps), I'd like some help on finding more Ayahuasca material, for I cannot find it in my current
hard drive, although, I am sure it must be around here in some old HD (certainly an IDE HD), which I am hardly going to find.

I can't find such document on the most popular Psychedelic sites, if anyone could help me, it would make me the happiest camper ever.