High in the mountains

2006-12-07 09:21

Georgina Guedes

A few shops and travel agencies around Cusco in Peru offer San Pedro journeys on their advertising boards, among promotions to do the Inca Trail, travel to Machu Picchu or buy baby alpaca wool jerseys.

San Pedro is a type of hallucinogenic cactus, used by shamans in journeys of self-discovery and healing since pre-Incan times. Peruvian society is still very open-minded about the spiritual world, and people will visit both doctors and shamans when they are ill. And on Sundays, they are Catholic.

For our time in Cusco, we were staying at a guesthouse owned by Lesley, a South African woman who is slowly taking over Peru. In the twelve years that she has been here, she already owns two guest houses, a restaurant and a travel agency. Although she seems an unlikely candidate, Lesley is a trained shaman who offers healing San Pedro journeys as part of her portfolio of travellers' services. My boyfriend and I decided that this would an interesting tour to take.

The day of our journey dawned sunny and bright and Lesley took us and the rather motley bunch that had assembled up the mountains behind Cusco. Upon arrival, she sat us all down in a circle, and told us that San Pedro is so named because, like the cactus's namesake, St Peter, it holds the keys to heaven.

She unfolded a square of cloth containing sacks of stones and crystals. She explained that this was her "mesa", which means table, and that all the objects there have been given to her by her teachers. It was possible, she said, that we would feel pain or discomfort in certain areas of our bodies, which would be where we were holding our negativity. We were welcome to use any of her stones or crystals to relieve the pain.

We were then required to drink a cup of possibly the foulest substance in existence. Some preparatory reading we had done described the cactus juice as having "all the appearance, consistency and appeal of a liquidised frog".

This was not an exaggeration. Lesley suggested that we drink it down as quickly as possible, and I watched in astonishment as Ter tilted his head back and drained his glass.

I was only able to manage small sips at a time, because every time the luminous green slime passed my lips, I started gagging.

Finding the answers

We were then all encouraged to pass the time by telling everyone a little about ourselves. Although the process is supposed to be one of self-analysis and healing, it was clear that a number of our companions were on the adventure solely for the hallucinogenic ride.

But for each of them, there were also others who were taking it very seriously. Lesley encouraged all of us to use San Pedro to find the answers. She then completely took the spiritual edge off this by telling us that she had been asking San Pedro for a Jacuzzi for years.

The first part of the journey is marked by extreme nausea. Some shamans even say that the purging of the negative - that is, puking your guts out - is done in order to prepare the body for the state of enlightenment that is to come.

After managing to keep the green stuff down for the obligatory minimum half an hour, one of our number could maintain no longer, and lost his stomach in a particularly picturesque corner of the garden. Like dominoes we fell, until there were more of us trampling in the flowerbeds, retching, than sitting peacefully on the veranda above.

Whilst a number of us were fertilising the garden, Lesley's landlady arrived to chat about the renovations. Lesley was understandably not delighted to see her at this juncture, but rental agreements are different in Peru, and owners continue to have the right to visit their property at any time.

"Excuse my guests," she said to the landlady. "They've just drunk San Pedro."

"They've drunk San Blas?" the landlady asked in amazement, naming the arty suburb down the hill in which Lesley runs her guesthouse.

It was around about now that I started to notice the truly extraordinary behaviour of the clouds. Their usually chaotic forms were taking on actual shapes, their edges moving with purpose to form flowing fractals in the sky. As birds fluttered across this heavenly panorama, they would leave trails of sound and colour behind them. One couple was lying on the lawn, embracing passionately. A very colourfully dressed Scotsman was praying to the Goddess, arms outstretched.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" Lesley asked, having dispatched of her startled landlady.

We must have all looked a little dubious, because she added, reassuringly, "Miguel will go with you."

Getting lost

Miguel is Lesley's Peruvian assistant who looks like an out of work rock star. We all dutifully followed Miguel out of the gate, leaving Lesley behind with an English couple who were unable to separate themselves from their mattress. "Don't get lost!" Lesley called after our retreating figures.

We managed about ten steps along a mountain path before our crowd lost its cohesion, and wandered off aimlessly in every direction. Miguel, seemingly not too perturbed, ran back and forth between little clusters of us making sure we were OK. At one point, he came back and told us, "we are very lucky, today it is open."

We followed him uncertainly, trying to work out how exactly a mountain could be open. We finally came upon a narrow cave in the rock, which had clearly been bricked up by a little wall, which was now partly destroyed.

At this point it occurred to me to wonder whether "we are very lucky, today it is open" actually meant, "we are very lucky, today there was no one around, so I kicked it down."

We eased our way into the crack. Inside, in the murky swirling darkness, we were shown the altar of the Temple of the Moon, where llamas had been sacrificed to the Gods by the Incas. Grooves for the blood flow were carved into the floor. It was quite strange to think that hundreds of years ago, ancient people were conducting ceremonies in this strange space, probably in the same state as we were in.

We climbed all over the outside of the Temple of the Moon, feeling like we were scaling cliff faces and fording chasms while the clouds swirled beautifully above us. As the sun set and our water bottles ran empty, we finally decided to make our way back to the house. As I looked back, I was surprised to see that the mountain upon which we had passed our day was only half a storey high. Coming down, both literally and figuratively, had restored perspective.

While I experienced no groundbreaking moment of healing or oneness with the universe, I did, in a moment of selflessness, remember to ask San Pedro for a Jacuzzi for Lesley.

Georgina Guedes is a South African woman travelling the world. She thinks it's important to keep an open mind at all times.

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