The Peyote Experience
While traveling around Mexico, several friends I met along the way told me about a place called Real de Catorce - a hidden old traditional mountain village carved in rock and outlined by its hills, off the beaten tourist tracks, in the northern Mexican state San Luis Potosí. Just with this description that place had already caught my attention. But, in addition to the natural beauty and the tranquility the village had to offer, there was even something more to it: Real de Catorce is known as THE destination for a peyote experience (at least amongst the alternative crowd that's into these kinds of things).
Already the way to Real de Catorce felt like a little adventure. It started slowly and comfortable, in a big and spacey bus, leaving from the main bus station of San Luis Potosí, the capital of the state of the same name. After a 2 h bus ride the bus arrived in Matehuala, where I had to get off to get on another bus that would make his way towards Real de Catorce. After waiting some extra time for the arrival, as usual, everybody got on the bus and all the seats were taken. School kids in uniform, workers heading back to their villages, elderly Mexicans who bought essentials they need for their homes, all kinds of people were on the bus.
The first hour this bus took the main road we have been on before, but then we made a turn off the main road, onto a smaller road towards the mountains. The landscape changed quickly. The bus slowly but surely made his way further up the mountains, and as soon as we reached the first settlements of houses, I realized that I was getting to know a new face of Mexico again: cactuses growing in between the houses, whitish and yellowish dust covering the streets, fitting the color of the houses. There were no shops or supermarkets, just some people selling stuff out of the window of their living room. In every village there was plaza, an open space, where the buses would stop and where you are very likely to find a stand selling cheap and excellent Tacos, Gorditas or Quesadillas.
Many of the school kids and other passengers one after another got off the bus along the way, by telling the driver where he should drop them off. After 2 hours driving the bus stopped and all of us who were left on that bus had to get off again, as the bus wouldn’t go any further. The reason for that was a tunnel, too small in height to let the bus pass. There was a “colectivo”, a somewhat bigger van, waiting for us, where everyone had to squeeze himself in. There were still some people on the bus before and so the “colectivo” was overfilled with people quickly. Luggage was passed over the people’s heads that were standing in the aisle between the two rows of seats, to fill up every centimeter of free space. A few passengers were a bit unlucky, as some of the rain that fell by then made his way through the roof of the old van onto the people’s heads.
After squeezing everybody and everything into the van, which took some time, the van finally took off, but just to stop after 1 minute at the entrance of the tunnel again. We were waiting some time and I began wondering for what. So I asked someone what the reason for this was, and the answer was simple: the tunnel is a one way tunnel. It’s not only small in height, but as well it’s not wide enough to let cars from both directions pass each other. As the last car of the opposite direction made his way out of the tunnel (a car of the municipality, signalizing that the last car of the other direction passed), we finally started going again. Right to Real de Catorce, which is located just after the tunnel and where the road comes to its dead end. For all the cars (which were not many) there is only this same way in and out of the village. All cars had to park at the open space behind the tunnel, because the streets of Real de Catorce are not wide enough to let them pass.
I started walking through the streets to find something to eat. I was stunned by what I saw. Tight cobble stone paths winding through narrow lines of houses, built of big natural stones. People riding on the back of horses or donkeys through the streets, as a mean of transportation. It goes steep up and down while you walk through the streets.
Before getting to Real de Catorce I read on the internet that it’s permitted to camp free next to the graveyard of the village and so I had brought my tent with me. After eating some Enchiladas and drinking some Champurrado in the village I asked for directions to the graveyard and quickly found it. The “Plaza De Todos”, how the open space next to the graveyard is called, was totally empty, no other people were camping there. I set up my cheap 300-Pesos-Walmart-Tent (15 €) under some kind of bush or small tree, to get at least some protection in case of rain.
The night was freezing cold. At late evening the temperature was still fine, so I got into my sleeping bag just wearing boxers and a t-shirt. When I woke up again in the middle of the night I was shaking. I put on socks, my jogging pants, a jumper and my woolen hat. Then I pulled my sleeping bag as far over my head as I could, got into fetus position and at some point fell asleep again. Camping at 0-5 degrees when you don’t have the adequate gear isn’t that comfortable, I learned.
For the morning I had put my alarm to wake up on time to see the sunrise. I had problems with getting up, but I somehow managed it. And I got rewarded. A big reward. I hurried up a hill in that mountain plateau and just while reaching the top I saw a big and thick cloud of fog coming up from the valley deep down below. I managed to take some pictures before I was covered in fog. And after some time, looking around and not seeing anything far in either direction, I suddenly saw the top of some surrounding mountains, which just got hit by the first rays of sun, marking the start of the day. Soon the fog got thinner and thinner and what was left was a stunning view into the deep valley.
After seeing this natural show in first row I started hiking on some random paths that led along the mountainside. Stunning views into the valley below revealed themselves, far away in the distance you could see the plain part of the Warakuti desert, where the peyote grows. Every now and then the natural show from before repeated itself, fog or clouds were coming up from the valley, first “swallowing” everything around and then slowly thinning out and disappearing, as the sun soon got stronger any minute, passing its heat to everything (including me, fortunately).
While hiking along the mountain paths it felt like as if at some point time stopped running in these mountains. People on horses came my way, heading for Real de Catorce. Others walked next to their donkeys, on which they had towed all their stuff they wanted to bring to the village. I found all kinds of cactuses and agaves growing in these mountains, wild horses wandering completely free, and after every turn of the path waited another breathtaking view into the valley. It was a beautiful morning. And it was to become an even more beautiful and memorable day for me.
After walking around for some hours I got hungry and so I went back to the village to get some breakfast. I found something great and ate a lot. Having eaten some great food, having seen this beautiful sunrise and having had this beautiful morning in general I felt it was the perfect day to try something I was curious to try for a long time: the peyote cactus.
Friends told me before that if you want to try the peyote cactus, Real de Catorce is the place. But actually (I learned after getting there) the peyote isn`t growing in Real de Catorce itself, it’s growing in the plain part of the Warakuti desert, at the foot of the mountains in which lies Real de Catorce. To find the peyote, you have to make your way down the mountains and into the plain desert.
But how to get down there? While I was wandering through the streets of Real de Catorce the day before I saw some alternative looking Mexican hippies, sitting by the side of the street, selling their hand made bracelets and other hand crafts, smoking cigarettes and other stuff. I went over, said hello and asked if they knew how to get to the Warakuti desert. Of course my hippie friends could help me straight away and provided me with all the information I needed.
So I took my tent and my small backpack and headed off to “Estación Wadley”, the place from which you can start you walk into the desert. I had to get on a jeep with two rows of seats in the back and some kind of small cage on the roof of the jeep. The rows of seats on the back of the jeep are reserved for elderly people, traveling back to their villages at the foot of the mountains. The young and/or fit people had to climb up onto the roof of the jeep, had to get very good hold on some bar and had to make theirselves comfortable, or at least we had to try to do so.
The dirt road was steep and bumpy, in many parts not wide enough to let two jeeps, coming up and going down the mountain, pass each other. And awaiting right next to the road: a deep fall into the valley, that surely nobody would survive. You really have to trust these drivers!
The following video can give you an impression of how the ride down to the Wirikuta desert on the roof of this jeep was like. Especially during the first part of the ride we were literally close to dying, close from falling into the canyon.
After like 60 minutes we arrived in Estación Catorce (the village at the end of the video above), from where it’s another 10-15 minute drive to Estación Wadley. Estación Wadley mainly is just a collection of houses on both sides of a highway and a train rail road which is leading through the desert. It’s not beautiful at all and doesn’t have nothing of the relaxed and peaceful atmosphere of Real de 14. The only reason to go to Wadley is the hiking trail that leads into the desert where you can find the peyote.
As soon as I arrived in Wadley I saw a group of Mexican hippies and I asked them where there was a place to stay, as I thought that this is the thing to do: eat the peyote and stay in Wadley. They told me that there’s a cheap motel on the other side of the rail road and so I went to look for it. I found it, a kind of big place for a village as small as this, and it was really ugly. No light in the room, no windows, paint everywhere and a squealing and really uncomfortable bed. But because I was eager to try the peyote and I didn't want to lose any more time I payed for a bed for one night. The owner asked me straight away if I was looking for the peyote. He explained me how to get to the open part of the desert, where the peyote grows wild and free for everyone. He even had a peyote cactus himself which he showed me. It was the first time I ever saw the cactus in real, before I had only studied the look of the cactus on Google. I just thought afterwards that it could have been an interesting experience to go to the desert, pick some random cactus which I thought would be the peyote and then dye painfully in the desert because I chose the wrong toxic desert cactus...
The motel owner showed me the start of the hiking trail, right next to the motel, saying that it’s around an hour and a half of walking, straight into the desert - away from the bit of civilization that there was in Wadley. I packed my bag with things I would need and hurried off, as it was already like 3 PM. In my bag I had a knife, some warmer clothes for the cold desert night and water.
I was told that the effect of the peyote can last between 8 to 12 hours, sometimes even more. The guy from the motel told me to eat 4 peyotes. I never talked with anyone about how many peyotes I should eat so I had no idea. Luckily I met an old Mexican farmer on the trail, the only person that came across my way in this desert. He accompanied me for some time and we kept talking, a really nice, honest and friendly guy, showing me in the distance his small corn field that he cultivated. I told him that I was looking for the peyote and he, like all the others before, said that there are many peyotes waiting for me in the open part of the desert. I asked him the same question I asked the motel owner: how many peyotes should I eat to have a good effect. He said one or two should be fine. I felt that this farmer knew much more what he was talking about, I trusted him a lot more. A farmer like him, living and working in nature, definitely knows better than some shady looking owner of an ugly and broken motel.
After around one and a half hours of walking straight into the desert without one single curve, the path suddenly made a turn to the left. I had reached the point where I was told I can find the peyote. I followed the path for some more time, not really knowing where to look for the peyote. Already for some time I was looking left and right of the path, to see if there was a small magic cactus waiting for me, but I didn’t see anything. At one point I decided that I had to leave the path and walk straight into the open desert, off the path, trying to make my way through all these plants and cactuses to find my peyote.
And really, these plants in this desert really don’t like humans or other big animals. There were spines on almost every plant, even my jeans and my shoes didn’t stop from fighting their way into my skin. Several times I had to pull out some really nasty spines out of my feet or leg. And when the spine is twisted backwards to intent to stay in your skin forever, this can be really painful. I walked for some time further and further away from the path towards the open desert, orientating myself by the mountain shapes in the back, far in the distance where I came from. I made my way through all these spiney plants, with my head turned to the ground, permanently looking for the peyote. I walked and walked but I didn’t find it. I was walking around the desert for almost two hours, the sun was grilling me, I pulled out several really mean spines out of my skin and I just wouldn’t get a reward for all this? I was almost getting sad and desperate. As it was already like 5 PM I decided that I had to head back to look for the path, otherwise I would have been completely lost in the middle of nowhere if I didn’t reach the path before sunset.
But I still had hope. While walking I was saying aloud the saying I got told by Mexicans several times before: “You don’t find the peyote, the peyote finds you”.
And suddenly, as if Mother Nature heard me and decided to fulfill my wishes, I saw something that looked like the peyote to me. A small round cactus, looking like the ones on the photos I had seen before. This was it! The peyote finally had found me. From that moment on I had a huge grin on my face. “Thank you, Madre Tierra!”, was what I thought.
The peyote is growing next to the roots of a certain plant/bush. Once that I discovered this, I saw peyote everywhere! There was plenty of peyote, hundreds of hippies could have come here to travel all together.
I took out the knife I had brought with me and cut the peyote above its root, so that after some years there will have grown a new cactus for another fellow “enlightenment seeker”.
The first peyote I picked was big and thick. The peyote cactus grows really slow, so it hadn’t been cut for many many years. While cutting the first peyote I still wasn’t sure how many I should eat and so, just in case, I cut 3 other ones, which were all a bit smaller. With these 4 peyotes in my pockets I headed back to the path, feeling like coming back from a successful mission.
As soon as I reached the path I sat down on the ground right where I was to prepare my dinner. By the time I had decided to only eat the big peyote I cut first. He was a lot bigger and thicker than the other ones, so I thought I should be fine with that one. And if I don't have any effect at all I could still eat the other ones later on, I thought.
Before eating the peyote I cleaned it, by pulling out the hair-like flower and cleaning it with water from dust and sand. And that was it. Dinner was served. I bit into the raw flesh and was surprised that it didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would. Of course it was no gourmet stuff, but it’s possible to eat it without vomiting straight away. Just sometimes there’s a bitter taste coming that makes you shake a bit, but you know what you’re doing it for and so I still enjoyed it.
By the time I finished eating the peyote I checked the time, it was 5.30 PM. I started walking back the direction I came from. I remembered that I passed a dried out riverbed on my way where I could lie down a bit, relax and wait for something unknown to come. Once I reached it, it was 6. I lied down and watched the few thin clouds moving in the sky. I concentrated on my feelings and on the clouds I was looking at. Sometimes I had the feeling there was some effect, some patterns in the clouds which seemed to be too crazy to be natural. But then I looked again and all seemed normal. So I stopped focusing and trying to feel something, I just thought of something else, enjoying being in nature. The first certain effect that was not part of my imagination was a kind of sickness that I felt in my stomach. I knew that this was part of the trip, several people had told me before. But still, after checking the time again at 6.30 and still not feeling something else besides the sickness of my stomach, I started thinking things like “shit, I should have eaten more than one”. I started moving again, walking back to the direction of the village, taking it really slow. And then suddenly, while I was strolling through the desert, there came an effect, something soft and subtle at the beginning. It felt a bit like being drunk or something, it was a pleasant feeling. I was smiling and happy, watching the sun slowly setting and taking in the surroundings. I thought: “At least I feel something and didn’t do all this walk for nothing.” I still was waiting for some optical effects and some special feeling that I was expecting the peyote to give me.
And then it happened: while walking and watching the plants surrounding me, I saw their color suddenly changing from bright green to dark green. I immediately stopped walking and turned myself towards the plants. And it happened again, their color changed another time. Then I looked to the ground, at my feet, and what I saw made me giggle: there were waves in the ground. The ground was moving. The ground at my feet was dividing itself into smaller parts and these parts were shifting and moving themselves on top of one another. One last time I checked the time, it was 7 PM. It took 90 minutes for the effect to kick in, but now it was completely there.
I was stunned by what I saw and felt. The strongest and most spiritual drug I ever took. After eating the peyote you feel such a strong connection to nature. With the effect of the peyote working in me, I understood straight away why the “Huichol”, an indigenous people living in the area of the Warakuti desert, call the peyote “medicina” and use it ever since in curing rituals. With the peyote you’re feeling the vibrations and the energy of the place you’re at. It really is like that, you feel the energy of the place you are. At some point I just laid down on the ground straight where I was, with my arms spread out, taking in the beautiful energy of this lonely desert. No cars, no machines, no other humans, no artificial sounds. Just the sound of a soft breeze blowing through the few leaves that were there and the undefinable animal squeals of some small rodent I guessed. With the last sunlight disappearing, the optical effects like seeing changing colors and moving patterns in the ground stopped, because in moonlight you don’t see that many colors. But what happened then was not less magical: the journey turned into a trip within my mind. As well, the sense for hearing got much more sensitive. All the animal squeals and the light breeze entered into my body like waves. When I closed my eyes it was almost like an explosion, I never saw so many patterns and colors. I saw something like a fast moving, rushing and turning mandala, with so many so bright colors! I still remember this moment so clearly in front of my eyes. Every time I opened my eyes my head shot up, like waking up from a crazy dream. It was beautiful.
In the following video I recorded the sound of the Wirikuta Desert at night. I just put the camera next to me, while I was lying on the ground. With the peyote, everything felt and sounded magical.
Being in nature after eating the peyote is the best thing you can and the only thing you should do. Unfortunately I didn’t know that before, that is why I had rented this room in this ugly motel. At one point I had to head back there, as it was getting colder and colder in the desert at night. When I got close to the motel I immediately felt that the energy of this place wasn’t even comparable with the one in the open desert. I heard a couple at home shouting at each other, aggressive dogs were barking, TV’s were on full volume. I tried to lie down in my bed in this run-down room, but when I closed my eyes I saw images like in a fantasy horror movie. It was bad, I couldn’t close my eyes. Maybe this is what you call a horror trip. Luckily the ugly motel had a stair that led up to the roof of the motel. I took my blanket and pillow and laid down on the roof, looking into the sky and the stars for hours, without closing my eyes at first. At around 4 AM I finally fell asleep.
Waking up the next morning everything felt so unreal at first. The night before I had been on this spiritual journey, in some distance place, and now I was back in civilization, back in the normal world. I hurried to finally leave this ugly motel and headed back to Real de Catorce, really happy and satisfied with this crazy experience I made.
After eating the peyote I surely consider myself as more spiritual than before. This experience changed something in me, in my way of thinking maybe. If you want to discover something new about yourself, about energy and connections, you should definitely try out this little cactus for a spiritual peyote journey.
Thinking about the peyote cactus some time afterwards a thought came to my mind that I found so symbolic: the peyote is a cactus, but unlike other cactuses, the peyote doesn’t have any spines. Peyote doesn’t want to hurt you. It wants to be eaten :)
