Eating cactus in the sacred valley
South America's natural hallucinogenics are legendary. From Carlos
Castenada to Aldous Huxley, they have inspired and terrified numerous
outsiders. But what are they really like?
I looked down at the contents of the plastic cup
my host had just handed to me. It was vile looking stuff. Thick, green,
gelatinous and ever so slightly warm, it bore a striking resemblance
to a giant blob of mucus. But for the large quantity of the stuff,
I could have believed that my someone had coughed it up in the back
room shortly before my arrival.
My companions were first to drink. They gagged and
belched, pouring the unpleasant concoction down their throats as our
hosts watched and laughed. Finally, it was my turn. With no little
trepidation, I lifted the cup to my lips and poured the green slime
into my poor unsuspecting mouth.
An nauseating taste, something like putrid gravy
seasoned with fresh cut grass, flooded over my tongue. I did my best
to coax the green goop towards my stomach, but such was its viscosity,
the little I had already swallowed remained firmly attached to what
was left in the cup. Like a piece of taut elastic, it threatened to
rise back up my gullet if I made the slightest hesitation.
After a gargantuan struggle, I finally got all the
stuff down. Immediately, it began to churn through my guts, sending
waves of acid to burn my ribs, weighing me down and sapping my strength.
I slumped into the corner and began to wonder what the hell I had
just got myself into. I felt like I had a blob of pure evil festering
in my stomach.
“Tired already?” asked Jose, slapping
me on the back. “We haven’t even started yet. Just wait
until San Pedro arrives; then you’ll really wonder what’s
hit you.”
"You'll never be the same again..."
It all began innocuously enough. Leaving a café in the city
of Cuzco, Peru, I noticed a small flyer in the corner of the window.
It was not particularly remarkable - a picture of a cactus against
a vaguely psychedelic background. The slogan, however, got my attention.
“Take a glass of San Pedro in the Sacred Valley of Urubamba,”
said the spidery writing encircling the cactus, “you will never
be the same again.” Along the bottom of the card was a six-digit
phone number and the name Armando. Nothing more.
San Pedro (and its North American relative Peyote)
is perhaps the most infamous of the cornucopia of New World psychedelics.
Native cultures used it for thousands of years before the arrival
of Columbus. Images of the San Pedro cactus have been found inscribed
on stone tablets dating back to 1300 BC; it is still used today in
healing ceremonies and to communicate with spirits. Even the powerful
Roman Catholic Church could not eliminate its use in heathen rituals;
they only succeeded in convincing the shamans to give it the name
of a Christian saint.
San Pedro’s main ingredient is the powerful
hallucinogenic mescaline, famously described by Aldous Huxley in The
Doors of Perception, but the cactus contains many other psychoactive
compounds that complement or amplify its effect. A single dose can
produce an intense experience of vivid hallucinations lasting up to
14 hours.
Ever since I first read the hallucinatory adventures
of Carlos Castenada, I had wanted to try these New World psychedelics
for myself. During my months of travels through South America, I had
heard numerous strange stories about San Pedro. They were usually
colourful tales beginning “this guy I met…” or “a
friend of a friend…”, but always lacking hard information.
Short of wandering through the Peruvian Andes and munching on cactus,
I had no idea how to have such an experience. The flyer I had found
was pretty enigmatic, but it was still the first time I had come across
something concrete.
My travelling companions – Gus from Sydney,
and my girlfriend Jerica – were equally intrigued, so we called
the number at the bottom of the poster and nervously asked to speak
to Armando. It turned out that Armando was out of the country on “business”.
However, his son Jose was there to answer our questions.
It sounded like rather a strange setup. They touted
themselves as a psychedelic meditation retreat, a place to study eastern
religions coupled with New World mysticism. In all honesty, it just
sounded like a place where tourists pay $180 to spend two days getting
high. But it seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity, so we coughed
up the cash and started packing.
Into the sacred valley
Early next morning we took a taxi from Cuzco to the address in the
Urubamba Valley. We followed a narrow, winding road amongst endless
fields of maize and potatoes. The patchwork of brown fields stretched
out as far as we could see, only ending where the ubiquitous white
caps of the Andes rose up to breathless heights.
It was an hour before we arrived at the village.
We honked our way through the busy market, cruised past the whitewashed
church and followed a maze of twisting lanes until we came upon a
small white house standing beneath a low hill. It looked inconspicuous
enough. But for the ‘Ohm’ symbol painted on the door there
was nothing to distinguish it from every other building in the town.
We knocked on the door and a clean-cut young man
opened. It was Jose, son of Armando, who greeted us with a broad grin
and invited us through the gate. The interior of the house was more
along the lines of what I had been expecting. Alternative literature
packed the bookshelves; brightly coloured tapestries depicting Hindu
deities draped from floor to ceiling; mysterious paraphernalia littered
the living room floor and interesting odours wafted from the kitchen.
Of course, tall cacti sprouted from every available space in the garden.
As we chatted with Jose, it became apparent that
he was quite the psychedelic Renaissance man. He had travelled extensively
in India, studied with some of the world’s most respected spiritual
teachers and, despite his youth, professed to have been taking San
Pedro for decades - literally eating it for breakfast every morning.
His sole companion was a multiply-pierced guy named Riley. He was
the resident expert on Ayahuaska, a jungle vine Amazonian tribes use
to communicate with their ancestors. Along with a very mellow dog,
named Arat, they would be our guides for the coming trip.
They wasted no time in beginning the experience.
Shortly after the tour of the house, Jose emerged from the kitchen
with the large jug of green fluid that turned out to be the first
dose of San Pedro. Ingesting the stuff was an ordeal in itself, but
the effect on our digestive system was almost as bad. Our hosts did
their best to get us through the first, uncomfortable stage of the
experience, distracting us with massage, singing and music. But it
did little to ease our digestive turmoil. For at least half an hour,
I could think of nothing but the horrible sickness that was gripping
my stomach. Gradually however, the pain subsided and I began to notice
a subtle change in my surroundings.
The hard edges of reality seemed to soften a little;
everything became smoother, more fluid. Shadows on the wall began
to move. At first, they just wobbled a little in the corner of my
eye, returning to their normal shape under my direct gaze. But as
time drifted past, they movements became ever-more brazen - openly
quivering and wobbling in front of me, growing out from their dark
corners like a spreading infection.
Soon, the whole wall was rippling back and forth
like the skin on a glass of warm milk. I thought at any moment it
might rupture, flooding the room. But it wasn’t just the wall
that came to life. The Hindu deities that hung their in decoration
began to blink their eyes, stretch out their arms and move their legs.
Swirling patterns spread over the white wall as the colourful gods
reached out into the room, looking slowly from side to side as if
awakened from a long slumber. I sat enthralled; my physical problems
all but forgotten as every inanimate object in the room slowly began
come to life. I didn’t even notice that the music had stopped
and Jose was opening the door to the garden.
San Pedro arrives
The three of us stumbled blinking into a new and alien world. The
sun blazed down from the sky with unprecedented intensity, surrounding
everything with a halo of heavenly light. The flowers and plants dazzled
us with impossibly vivid colours; every petal and leaf revealed a
previously unseen level of complexity and delicacy. We wandered about
in a blissed-out haze, gawping like goldfish at anything and everything.
Pretty soon, it all got too much for us, and my girlfriend and I retired
to a couple of hammocks strung between the trees at the centre of
the garden.
As the hammocks gently swayed in the breeze, scintillating
a rainbow of colours, the world slowly began to melt away in the dazzling
sunshine. The trees around us grew taller, sprouting palms at their
tops. The blue sky melted down to cover the ground until we were sitting
on a small, sandy desert island surrounded by warm, turquoise waters.
Warm sun caressed my skin and fresh air cooled my frenzied mind as,
from somewhere deep inside my head, I heard the soft sound of waves
crashing on the shore. The only reminders of my true physical location
were the barks of dogs echoing through the palms and the tracker full
of Peruvian peasants that chugged its way slowly through the blue
sky above. Sadly, just as I was getting comfortable, reality jealously
pushed its way back into the scope of my attention and I returned
to the earth with a bump.
My girlfriend left to return indoors and I began
to get a little more introspective. I intently studied my hands, watching
the skin become transparent as dark veins bulged a pulsed beneath,
wrapping themselves around the now clearly visible bones of my hand.
The fine hairs on the back of my hand began to grow thick and long,
gradually turning white as my skin began to wrinkle and…suddenly
Jose was next to me with a cup of tea and a handful of dried brown
cactus skin. It was time for the second course.
Unable to cope with so many objects in my hands and
the increasingly unstable hammock, I went over to sit on the ground
next to Gus, who by now was rolling around in the dirt with the dog.
I tentatively chewed a few pieces of the cactus skin, but it was not
an easy task. My jaw and tongue flailed around in confusion, apparently
having suddenly forgotten how to chew after all these years. The way
the stuff wriggled around like a handful of maggots didn’t make
matters any easier.
Once that gargantuan task was over, I laid back on
the soft earth and relaxed. As I watched the grass grow up between
my toes, Jose’s pet cat approached me slowly, crawled over my
legs and settled down on my chest, its face inches from mine. The
evening air was beginning to cool, and it probably just thought I
looked like a warm and comfortable place to lie. Little could it have
known the rather large impact its presence would have on my deranged
psyche.
With every breath, waves of colour washed over the
cat’s fur, from black to white to ultraviolet. Its shining golden
eyes occupied my whole field of vision as its face contorted repeatedly
from a snarl to a sultry gaze. Its body grew and grew until it was
as big as a lion, pressing me down into the ground, immobilizing me
completely. Even more disconcertingly, the hair on its lower body
shrank back and disappeared, leaving smooth pink flesh in its place.
I stared in disbelief as a naked woman with the head and paws of a
cat appeared on my chest, fluttering its long eyelashes enticingly.
Even at this stage, I was not so far-gone as to have an erotic experience
with a cat, so I fled back inside in search of some sanity.
Disintegration
Inside the house, things were getting very intense. Jose and Jerica
sat inside the darkened living room chanting along with some loud
Indian music. Riley sat, eyes closed, tapping out a rhythm on bongo
drum with intense concentration. All around them, the room exploded
in light and colour.
A curving grid of neon lights emanated from the drum
between Riley’s knees; with every beat it a dazzling rainbow
bounced from the drum like laser beams. The ceiling, walls and floor
pulsed and swirled with 3D fractals. The darkness began to turn into
a blinding white and everything around me began to disintegrate into
shards of light. My formerly concrete world had become as insubstantial
as the colours that dance inside a soap bubble - dazzlingly beautiful,
yet totally unstable. I felt like I was standing at the edge of the
precipice of unreality and was very much in danger of falling in.
It was at this point that Jose stopped the music and announced that
it was time to go climb the mountain.
Our experience as we emerged nervously into the town
of Urubamba was truly astounding. All around us, everything was growing
before our eyes. Branches sprouted from every plant and tree, unfolding
thousands of leaves and sprouting huge purple flowers that popped
open like fireworks. Ivy squirmed out from the cracks in the walls
and the ground until every inch of stone was covered in a writhing
carpet of green. Grass grew frantically in the fields and trees rose
hundreds of feet skyward.
I lay my hand on a nearby trunk as its girth increased
by over a metre in a couple of seconds. Suddenly, the veins in my
hand pushed their way through my skin and began to grow into the tree
like roots. My skin took on the texture of the bark and my whole body
began to merge with wood until I snatched my arm away in fear.
We walked along the quiet street towards the menacing
shape of the hill before us. The sun was setting and the red sky bled
over the dark town beneath, pouring down the narrow streets and alleys
toward us. A crumbling dry-stone wall lined the way. Inside each brick
danced a delicate pattern of swirling pink and blue lights, tiny galaxies
that lit our way as darkness fell.
I have to admit, I was pretty scared of the creepy-looking
woods that covered the lower portion of the hill. I felt very unsure
of myself. I didn’t want to go on, but I didn’t want to
be left behind by our guides, who were already some way ahead.
Once we were under the canopy of the forest, it got
seriously dark. That is to say, the sky was dark. The ground, on the
other hand, was a few orders of magnitude brighter. Every leaf on
every tree sparkled like a glitter ball; the veins on their surfaces
carried tiny pulses of rainbow light like fibre optics. The detritus
on the ground wriggled and squirmed whilst the gnarly roots of the
trees reached out and grasped at my feet. None of this helped us to
navigate along the path. Even with the help of a torch, walking was
damn near impossible. If the tiredness, the nausea and the intermittent
urge to pee but total inability to do so weren’t troubling enough,
I just didn’t know which way the ground was going to move next.
Thankfully, after about an hour of very little progress, our hosts
finally realized that we weren’t up to the task and turned back.
Most likely, we took just the same route back to
the house, but in the newly fallen darkness it looked very different.
We appeared to be walking down a narrow, dimly lit street surrounded
on both sides by high walls. Ahead of us was a long glittering bridge
stretching across a dark river. We could have been walking the streets
of Venice, or Victorian London, except for the tall, snow-covered
volcanoes that glowed softly on the horizon.
By now, I was so accustomed to the vivid hallucinations,
I barely noticed the way the stars swirled like grains of sand in
the wind, forming themselves into an endless succession of geometric
patterns; or the way the ground beneath our feet became rough and
scaly dinosaur skin, moving gently in and out as if taking long, deep
breaths. What seemed bizarre was the sight of the Urubamba townsfolk
walking down the street towards us, returning home after a day’s
work. I could no longer relate to the normal world. It was my former
reality, not my current strange wanderings, that had become the alien
world.
Once we reached the house, and the stress of dealing
with the outside world was over, everybody relaxed and enjoyed the
rest of their experience. Jose led a long ‘Rainbow Meditation’,
although I have to say the meaning of the words was lost on me. The
chaotic mess of my brain was filled with runaway trains of thought,
crashing into one another, or spectacularly derailing in a way that
made it impossible to follow anything for more than a couple of seconds.
After a dinner of very wriggly vegetable and noodle
soup and a delightfully sweet fruit salad, Jerica and I left for a
final wander in the garden. The moon was large and bright in the sky,
seeming almost close enough to touch. Its long shadows transformed
the trees into witches and goblins whose gaze followed us around the
garden as we walked. Arat, who was no longer a dog, but a sleek black
panther, paced around us, but with little menace. Finally, as our
fevered imaginations began to quiet a little, we cuddled together
on a bench and watched the shooting stars whizz between the delicate
cupolas and minarets of the tall Persian towers that were growing
out of the garden wall.
Riley emerged from the house and sat next to us.
“How was your trip,” he said, with a broad grin on his
face. We smiled and nodded, but speech deserted us. Nevertheless,
Riley seemed to understand.
“Get some sleep,” he said, as he stood
up to leave. “You’ll need all your energy for tomorrow.
San Pedro is nothing. Ayahuaska’s really going to blow you away.”
