Lucy and Ais have a date with San Pedro

Before we left Australia, I decided that I'd like to embark on some sort of 'spiritual ceremony' during our time in South America, and after a San Pedro experience in Cusco was recommended to us, we booked a day in the Andes where we would hopefully reach a 'higher plain' and find our inner selves.

Neither of us was brave enough to sample ayahuasca, the famous Amazonian hallucinogen plant that is commonly used by indigenous tribes, and now increasingly by tourists looking to get high, but after reading about the more gentle experience from the cactus San Pedro, we decided to give it a go. San Pedro has been used by Peruvians for thousands of years and forms a significant part of their history and culture. Administered by shamans it is known for its healing qualities and has been attributed to curing some cancers, motor-neurone diseases and mental health problems. It has shaped stories about Peruvian history, from the creation of the earth to their relationships with the sky and the land. It is still used regularly today, although I get the feeling some of its significance has probably been lost, especially when foreigners can experience their own San Pedro day out. 

San Pedro is not particularly hallucinogenic. It is meant to let you look inwards and gain understandings about yourself and the way you view the world. It then challenges these perceptions and enables you to see your life with fresh eyes and a new appreciation for the world around you. Or that's what it's meant to do anyway. Completely natural and legal, San Pedro lasts for 10-12 hours and leaves you with no hangover.

So, in light of the above we were pretty excited, if not a little sceptical, about our day away with the Peruvian fairies. We rocked up to a very hippy hostel where we sipped chamomile tea and met our fellow 'San Pedrans' for the day. Everyone looked a little serious for our liking, and we began to feel that maybe we were weren't quite the right candidates for this spiritual adventure. Surely it's meant to be fun, right? We had been good and followed the requested diet of no alcohol, meat and fat the day before, so were feeling as pious as we possibly could under the circumstances.

We were driven into the mountains and met by Leslie who would be our shaman for the day (I know, typical shaman name). Leslie is a South African lady who has been administering San Pedro for over 20 years, after getting off-chops, sorry, I mean finding her spiritual path, with her guru in the Andean mountains. Leslie lives in a lovely house complete with wind chimes, hammocks, a round-house for administering ceremonies, a lovely garden for laying and throwing up in, and two very confused-looking dogs who wander around staring aimlessly at wasted people lying on the grass.

After the meet and greet we were taken into the ceremony room where we sat in a circle and each given a glass of gloopy syrup, which was our golden ticket to a higher plain. We then had to give thanks to pacha-mama (mother earth) and state our hopes for what we'd like San Pedro to do for us. All of this had to be done while holding a stick with a large crystal stuck on the end (as you can probably tell, we were really getting into it). There were nine of us in total at the ceremony. We took it in turns to drink our San Pedro and dutifully waited for the fun (I mean transcending experience) to begin. 

San Pedro doesn't taste bad, it doesn't smell bad, it is just quite possibly the thickest 'liquid' I've ever put in my digestive system. Something that thick should surely only ever come up, not go down. And for a few people, come up it did. Although not as vomit-inducing as ayahuasca, it still doesn't sit particularly well in the stomach and after 40 minutes or so individuals started running for the flower beds to 'purge themselves' as our shaman liked to put it. I, however, was determined to keep my $80 worth of cactus on the inside, and experience the full effects.

After you have consumed, and hopefully digested your San Pedro you are invited to take a mattress outside, be at one with the nature around you and let your inner journey begin. You're also not meant to talk to each other for the day, as this could interrupt the spiritual process, which meant Ais and I had to keep ourselves apart to avoid any giggling or disruptive conversations.

As I started to feel a little light-headed I looked around me and realised the other people on our group seemed to be having a slightly different experience to me. One poor girl was sobbing her heart out into a blanket, one guy was chanting Chantras while jumping up and down and waving his arms in the air, and another woman was alternating between sleeping and checking her emails. I looked over at Ais who was purposefully looking away from me, which I took as a sign she was probably thinking the same things. So, I sat still and tried really really hard to think about some of the significant things that have happened in my life, how I felt about them now, and what I could learn from them. Could San Pedro give me a different perspective on my insecurities and problems? Would I appreciate the people and world around me differently? Would I open my heart and my mind to a more holistic way of  perceiving the world? I put my iPod on to drown out the ohms coming from the nearby sound system, closed my eyes and concentrated on my inner self. Now, I do consider myself to be a bit of a hippy, and I would honestly love to find something that changes my perception towards my tendencies to negativity and over thinking. Would San Pedro provide the cure?

Possibly not. I finally lost my shit when I looked over at one guy who looked remarkably like Woody Harrelson complete with dodgy orange-tinted sunglasses. He was swaying to the 'music' with an inane grin on his face while holding his hands in front of himself which made it look like Woody was playing with his woody (thanks for the quote, Ben). This was all too much for me and I started laughing uncontrollably, which brought me out of any spiritual process I was going through. Ais caught my eye and it was game-over for both of us. We were sitting on our respective mattresses silently crying with laughter, desperately trying not to ruin the serenity for everyone around us.

Try as I might I just couldn't get in touch with my inner soul, and we were both clearly way below the spiritual plain of our fellow San Pedrans. That's not to say we didn't feel the effects of San Pedro; the world around us felt soft and squidgy, flowers and plants were fascinating to look at, and I think I spent at least three hours staring at the clouds, which seemed to morph into dragons, butterflies, demons and faces at every second given opportunity. I remember thinking I would love to see clouds in this way every day for the rest of my life, but I can unhappily confirm that they have converted back to their usual white fluffy pillows in the sky, and it was definitely the effects of San Pedro I was experiencing.  

By lunchtime we felt the effects starting to wear off; this, coupled with the fact that neither of us can say no, meant that we went in for round two. Excellent. Four more hours of staring at the sky and trying to be serious. I can safely say that at no point during the day did I ever experience an inner awakening, nor did I realise a different world perspective. From this, I can only conclude one of two things: I am either dead on the inside, or there is actually nothing wrong with the way I view my life and the world around me. I think I'll go with option two, even if it is a little self-indulgent... Maybe we would have a different experience if we took San Pedro more regularly, or maybe any problems we have are buried so deeply that no amount of San Pedro will ever bring them to the surface. In a way, I am quite sad I didn't feel something more, but hey, maybe I am just awesome after all!

The day finished with us sitting around a fire waiting for our taxis to come and collect us, while we sat next to a fat old Australian, who I swear kept morphing into Ursula the octopus from the Little Mermaid. Maybe San Pedro is hallucinogenic after all! As we left Leslie's garden we turned around to see three people from our group performing a cleansing ceremony on a girl who appeared to be convulsing and literally shaking her demons from herself. As the Chantras got louder and the sounds of dry-wretching became more frequent, we knew it was our cue to leave behind our path to enlightenment, and head back down the hill to normality and beer. 

Thank you San Pedro for a great day out and teaching us the wisdom that cynicism and a sense of humour are not so bad after all!