Lost in Peru

I arrived in Lima. I’d had the visions of the jungle. I’d sat with the tribe drinking ayahuasca. And I’d fought through depression and Covid travel restrictions to make it this far. Now what?

I was considering a few different options as I sat in a cheap, hot and noisy hotel room in the wrong part of the city. There was another upcoming ayahuasca one-month dieta with the shaman I’d sat with back in Wales. It was in Acre, deep in the jungle over the border in Brazil. The tribe had announced it as a short notice unscheduled offering before she went into a two year process of her own.

There was something that still spoke to me about it. It was an Amazonian tribe. A female ayahuascera is a rare thing, and having been raised in the tradition since childhood, she felt like everything I’d imagined would be the antidote to my own Nike and MTV tainted upbringing. There was also something that didn’t sit well with me though. I felt like I’d picked up on some nefarious magickal dynamics coming from certain individuals in those ceremonies, and I was struggling to reconcile whether I was imagining it, or whether she’d just allowed it to happen, or whether indeed she was part of ‘it’. Regardless, something felt off.

A few months before, after my first weekend of drinking ayahuasca with them, I'd come down with the worst depression I've ever encountered. I’ve never been someone who’s had it that strongly, never considered medication or anything. And there I was, couldn’t get out of bed for weeks. I wasn’t sure if it was the Covid, or the medicine purging my system or the weirdness I sensed taking place in the ceremony, but if it was the latter, I didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of the jungle making it worse.

So I was looking on the ‘Workaway’ website for alternative ways of living I could afford. Maybe I could volunteer somewhere and work out my next move. There was a place in the jungle two hours south of Pucallpa where they were building a healing center. There was nothing about ayahuasca, and that actually felt like a relief. I wasn’t just chasing it for the sake of it. Right then I got a call from a friend who I rarely speak to, who knew the medicine space and people who had drunk with this tribe. She planted enough doubt about them in my mind based on other anecdotes to seal the deal. So that was that. I was off to this Workaway place.

I booked a bus ticket and took the ride which lasted maybe eight hours. I got to the destination and was greeted by my host with a warm hug, and by his father. We had to drive on a further few hours into the jungle and in the car he spent a lot of time convincing me of how spiritual he was. We still hadn’t arrived at the actual place. Instead, he’d booked rooms for us in a hotel in a nearby town for a night or two, as we were meeting another volunteer – a nineteen year old Danish girl. For some reason it felt like he wanted to delay us. We spent the day in the local town and tried some of the food, and let him prattle on pretending to be a guru. Then finally, we headed to the place.

A young French family with two boys had been staying there a week and they seemed a little cautious around us as we arrived. The place itself was incredibly basic. It didn’t have electricity, walls, or much in the way of furniture. A basic kitchen, yes. And a roof. But that was about it. I wasn’t expecting a palace of course, but it was quite a shock. Then he started getting not just weird, but downright creepy. Trying to offer us massages. Making strange comments about me and her hugging – the old ‘if you hug you need to make sure all your chakras are touching’ line – exactly the same sleazy line as my narc in Findhorn had given me. I’d finally had enough. To confirm my instinct to leave, the French guy sneaked up to me and told me he’d sexually assaulted a couple of the girls who were there last week. I grabbed the Danish girl and belatedly said ‘we’re leaving’.

I had no idea where we were going, but there was a small road that led through the jungle and houses along the way so we just walked till we got to a little village. He’d mentioned an ex-girlfriend he’d fallen out with who lived nearby, so I asked around, and there she was. An Amazonian bruja (witch). Not sure this was going to be much better. Wary, we went into her modest home and sat down for a chat. I tried to explain the situation, and asked if she could help us get into town. She offered us tea but no way I was touching that.

We got away. A relative of hers gave us a ride into the town and we checked into a nice clean hotel. I felt weird though, I could sense the witchcraft in the air all around there and was worried she’d put a spell on us. The only obvious immediate outcome, though, was that somehow I’d been badly bitten by ants. I hadn’t noticed. But now, the bites were flaring up all over my feet and I was in severe pain. I couldn’t walk for days. Yikes. The jungle.

After about five days I was ready to leave. We took a bus a few hours to the city of Pucallpa and, with no signal, asked the taxi to drop us off somewhere. He took us to El Delfin II. It was a hostel that was well-known as a place people go between ayahuasca retreats and dietas. I checked into my room, grateful to be back in civilization, only to find maybe twenty huge cockroaches in there. I’m typically ok with bugs, but cockroaches freak me out like nothing else. I killed and chased out some, but I didn’t sleep the whole night worrying about them crawling on me.

Next day we were chatting to some of the other guests. There was a really lovely woman who had travelled around a lot and recommended I go to a little town called Pisac in the Sacred Valley . I hadn’t heard of it but I’d had some friends who’s spent a long time in the valley, so it sounded promising. Also, after all this weirdness I just wanted something normal. Mountains. Hiking. And Macchu Picchu. As touristic as it is, I was fascinated by it and had this strange feeling that kept coming up – ‘I need to go there before I die’. So I said goodbye to my Danish friend and booked a flight to Cusco.

At eleven thousand feet, the arrival into Cusco was a shock. I became pretty anxious over the shallowness of my breathing but it cleared up the following day as I headed into Pisac. As I pulled in to the little town I had a strong feeling that it felt like home. I stayed in a simple hotel in town for a few nights and enjoyed wandering around the charming little streets laced with crystal shops, shamanic stores, and plenty of restaurants that cater for westerners. It was a relief to be there but I was also unsettled. What the hell was I doing?

I went on Workaway again, hoping this time would be better. I found a place that worked with organic heirloom seeds – being a storehouse for them and growing plants from them – and it sounded really lovely. It was in a town about an hour away in Calca and I could stay there and work and have basic food expenses covered. I arranged to start after a trip to Macchu Picchu, so I began hopping from bus to bus, town to town, staying overnight at a couple of places along the way.

I was listening to the Tibetan Book of the Dead on audiobook for some reason, becoming a little obsessed with death. I later learned that Macchu Picchu was indeed known as a place people would come to in their final days, making the arduous trek, so that their souls could pass on free into the afterlife. I didn’t do the whole mountain trek or anything – it was expensive and didn’t feel necessary – but I am definitely so grateful I visited it. Despite the tourists and all that.

I kept bumping into a young couple who ended up also staying at the place in Calca with me. I arrived at the place and it felt less weird. Hopefully. No talk of lining up chakras which was a start. And the first few weeks were ok, but pretty heavy. The woman who was managing the place had been through really terrible abuse and trauma and she shared a lot about some of the dark things she’d had to witness and experience. And the owner also, had been through a lot of darkness in his past. I respected them for getting through what they did, but also started to feel overloaded by it all.

I’d been having visions of doing a Huachuma ceremony on a mountain. These guys worked regularly with this medicine, also known as San Pedro. It was supposedly all about love and connection with nature which sounded really pleasant. But for me also I knew it was an initiation of sorts. I arranged for their shamans to come and host a ceremony for me, and everyone else jumped on the bandwagon and joined in. I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with that but it was done.

The night before the ceremony I had a really strange dream about the woman where she was the driver of my school bus and she turned to me and said ‘you asked for this’, in a really sinister way. I remembered a time when I was in my twenties, sitting bored in an armchair in my house in the wealthy suburb of Hampstead, and something in me said ‘take me to the darkest corners of my mind’. Whatever made me think that, it was coming back to haunt me. I felt off. Really off. The dog wouldn’t go near me. But I didn’t want to cancel either. So I went for it. Drank a cup, felt good and saw some beautiful geometric patterns all around us, then, stupidly, decided to go for a second. I underestimated the medicine.

The next moment I was plunged down into some incapacitated state where I was experiencing complete lack of free will. It was like everything that happened in my life had made this inevitable and every choice is an illusion. Meanwhile, I saw everyone else laughing at me, unable to hold the medicine like they could. They found it hilarious. As I came round a bit, I saw the shaman’s face flicker between human and reptilian, and I suddenly felt like they were all reptilians. Then, I started getting downloads from another planet. A data transfer of colours, patterns and codes so fast that I was completely overwhelmed. Next, the three shamans were trying to get me to release attachment to the past and enter a new reality. I felt the reptilians were trying to kidnap me into another dimension and tried to run away but couldn’t. A whole bunch of other things, which they completely left me to deal with on my own. The owner sat with me for a while chanting Christian stuff and I wished he would go away. I lay in bed and closed my eyes, anchoring to love, and repeating mantras to myself for hours.

The next day was very uncomfortable. No one spoke to me apart from when I said I thought I saw the shaman as a reptile and the reply I got from the manager was ‘you can see that, can you?’. I went off into the garden to get away from everyone and to try and center myself. I still felt like I’d been kidnapped. That I was in an alternative reality and that any resemblance to my old life was just a fake. I wondered if a part of me had died. I started trying to tell the owner I wasn’t ok, but he wanted me out. He thought I’d been possessed by genies and insisted I leave there and then. I had to scramble to get my bags, and he chased me out the door, wafting sage behind me.

Distraught, I took a bus back to my hotel in Pisac and tried to regroup. I was still really spun out. Then another thing. I had to go up high into the mountains. Another test. I took a taxi to Kinsa Kocha, and stayed in a tiny little homestay with a local family. I needed to walk the mountain and get to a lake. I could see the lake really clearly. Trouble was, the path was rough and there was a section of it with a sheer drop of I don’t know how many hundred meters, with a gap in the path I wasn’t sure I could jump or skirt without sliding. It was touch and go. Maybe others take that jump without even thinking about it. Maybe I was exaggerating it. But at that moment, it became a test of sheer faith. The cleanest one I’d had. Jump and trust. Or go back. So I jumped. I made it to the lake and bathed there. I felt some special magick or another working with me. Dragon energy. The vision had been fulfilled. But mostly I was just worried about having to make the same jump again. Thankfully, I didn’t end up splatted on the rocks.

Returning to Pisac, I found a cute place to stay outside of town, and I attempted to ground myself. I was still struggling to believe I was in the right reality. I decided that psychedelics probably weren’t a good idea and tried to come up with my next plan. I spoke to my mum on the phone, and she suggested ‘you know, all this spiritual stuff doesn’t really seem to be working out so well. Maybe you should think of something else.’. For the first time, I felt like she was right. But what else could I do? I thought maybe I could write children’s stories. Rent a cute little place across the mountain and just delve into words. It sounded quite nice.

But I had one more trick up my sleeve also. The Q’ero’s. The local indigenous shaman to the mountains in the area were incredibly spiritual but didn’t work with any psychedelic medicines. Only nature. It seemed safe, clean, grounded. I contacted a bunch of them and was interviewing for who would be my teacher. I found a guy I connected with, and he came to my place and we headed to the garden for an initiation ceremony. It was all wrong. A group nearby came and sat right next to us and began chanting Hindu mantras. He was competing with the mantras to be heard. And all I felt was, it’s not about him, it’s about the mantras. But what do Hindu mantras have to do with Peru?

I’d received two recommendations from the woman in Pucallpa for what to do in Pisac. One was go to Sacred Sushi – a Sunday event with food and live music where everyone goes. The other was go to a particular retreat center where they also offered yoga. I decided to check them out, maybe I could teach a few yoga classes again. I walked my way there, and on the way, I had an apparition. It wasn’t a vision like I normally have. It was like an actual sign in the sky. A gigantic vulva, and a sense that I was moving through it, like a baby being born. Very strange. ‘Why am I seeing a giant vulva in the sky?’, I thought. And carried on. I got to the center, and waited to speak to the shaman. As I was waiting, I overheard him talking to someone else about the exact concern I’d had about the ayahuasca ceremony I attended. He had a good answer. We connected.

They were running an ayahuasca retreat the next day, working with the medicine in conjunction with Hindu practices, and everything clicked. The next day felt too soon, but as I was walking along the river that afternoon, I bumped into him again, and before I knew it, that was that. I’d found the place where I’d be living and training for the next couple of years. And Pisac became my home.

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