Preparing San Pedro Cactus!

Here you have stage one of preparing the San Pedro cactus. We had to cut them up to pieces, remove the sharp thorns on the bark, before separating the bark from the flesh. You can see James and Laird hard at work here, and you can see there are a lot more to do in the big pot below.

Stage two, after boiling the San Pedro cactus for 1 1/2 days, we remove the bark and seperate the soft flesh beneath. Afterwards we had to chop it all up to ensure that it is nice and gooey. Here you see Laird not having the patience for the next stage and wanting his mouthfull NOW. :b

And here you have Peter pouring the final product into our mugs for consumption. This final stage took about 2 days to prepare, as boiling up the bark to soften and release it´s chemical was one long process. I can tell you drinking the juice of the cactus is a mission. I have never tasted anything worst... except deep fried cockroach! :b

I took this picture of Alex, the owner at "The Away Inn Lodge" as he was about to drink his San Pedro. He seem like he was in a trance, or saying a silent prayer before drinking. It was hilarious watching his reaction afterwards, as like I said before, this green goo is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted!

And this is me, lying down outside of the lodge. I must have been in the same position for 2 hours, waiting for the San Pedro effects to kick in, recording the feelings on my journal, and to prevent myself from throwing up. I had my shades on, my Sigor Ros playing on the iPod, and my tiger balm handy to sniff on whenever I felt like chugging!