I stayed in Lima, Peru for the month of May and limited my side trips to a single weekend adventure to the Peruvian Amazon. The last time I was in Peru was about five years ago to white water raft and hike the Inca Trail; it was nice to not have the obligatory visit to Machu Picchu hardlined onto my monthly itinerary. Instead I opted for a weekend getaway outside of Taropoto – my destination being a Shaman that was a plane, car, boat and hike away secluded in the Amazon. I spent a weekend preparing for and taking Ayahuasca a traditional, psychoactive, entheogenic brew that the Peruvians have used ritually for thousands of years.
As a native Coloradan who doesn’t even smoke pot, drugs have never appealed to me. You might be skeptical when I tell you that ayahuasca is not a drug — it’s medicine. Perhaps the distinction is semantic to hear but to me it creates an important distinction between what the experience entails and what drugs entail. People take drugs to feel better — people take ayahuasca to become better; at least that’s my personal experience. I became better.
Ayahuasca is the closest thing to magic I have ever encountered. I will avoid overstating my experience to instead assert that it changed me. I discovered latent truths within myself and came to understand better and more effectually those things I already knew. There is a multitude of information on the web about people’s experiences taking Ayahuasca so I won’t repeat mine here; however if you would like to hear a story I’d love to share it with you personally the next time we meet; that’s all I’ll say about it here.
The rest of my month in Lima was spent working, eating ceviche twice a day, surfing and training in the gym I joined in Mira Flores. Aditionally I put a lot of energy into preparation for my continued travels moving forward; as of now I’m booked through the beginning of October with fine estimations of continued travels thereafter. I started this year committing to an entire twelve months of working remotely while travelling the world. It became immediately clear once I began this year that I was really good at balancing work with continual exploration. From here on out I have the intention of continuing my travels through 2016 but we’ll see how I feel once summer ends.
