"The Way Inn" Lodge

Evening at The Way Inn Lodge.

I spent the last 4 days staying at the best guesthouse so far in my trip. The place was call "The Way Inn Lodge", and it is located 3,700 metres high, nearest town is Huaraz to the East. The lodge is set in a magnificent location. It is owned by an Englishman name Alex, whom hires a bunch of locals and foreigners to work for him.

When I was there, the manager was a 25 year old kiwi name Peter. And there was also a German, an Aussie and an American working. Up on the lodge you pay 28 sols (approx $8.50USD) for a dorm bed in a "cave", basically a room built into a rock with a very comfy bed, and breakfast.

I spent my days reading in the hammock, hiking up the mountains, bouldering on the many big rocks around the guesthouse, climbing on the artificial wall and on our last day. We tried something very cool call the San Pedro cactus. San Pedro cactus is an interesting hallucinogenic drug. It comes from the bark of this particular cactus, and is sold legally around town. Apparently the shamans in Peru uses it to induce their patients into a trance. But the group of us did it yesterday for fun and to discover it´s potent effect. Prior to consuming this we spent 2 nights preparing the plant, starting off with chopping up the bark, peeling the flesh from the bark, then boiling the bark for 24 hours, before separating more flesh from the bark, and re-boiling the lot for another 12 hours.

It was finally prepared yesterday afternoon, the substances remain from it is a nasty looking smelly sticky greenish goo. And man can I say this is the most disgusting thing I have ever tried in my life! Just sipping the goo made me want to throw up. And after drinking the content I had to lie down for 2 hours, listening to music and sniffing my tiger balm to stop me from wanting to throw up. Some other guest did threw up, but we were told the effects would be weaker. Within an hour the hallucination started. It came on pretty strong and I was seeing all kind´s of pictures with my eyes.

The colours were vivid, everything was rich with texture and swivelling in my head, kind of like looking at a magic eye. Other effects were talking nonsense and laughing at the tinniest thing. So as expected, everybody had a grand time! :) Peter and Alex were out on the field throwing javelins at each other and doing all sort of kong fu moves. An Alaskan couple checked out the hot sauna, whilst Laird and I went hiking around the bush for the beautiful scenery. I also tried noting down the experience into my journal, on an hourly basis. But I only manage to get up to the third hour before needing to stop, as by then I was having trouble trying to write in a straight line, the letters and the page were all jumping out at me! Heheheh it was all very funny indeed.

The trip lasted till night time, and I must say the sun set yesterday was one of the most impressive I have seen. The colours on the skies kept changing colours, the snow cap peaks grew pink, and the city lights in the valley below lit up like a dancing with lights seen from shore. We started a fire and basically chatted until the effects went off. In the end he trip lasted almost 10 hours. What an amazing experience it all was!