📸 Photo

species. Following the descriptions in the travel journal, it was not difficult to recognise the San Pedro cactus. Some of the stumps were carved with names and dates. I looked around for a nice, clean specimen and found one to my liking. I checked out the seven ribs and the spacing of the thorns. Everything was exactly right. I cut off about a foot and a half of the trunk with my pocket knife. Dede put it carefully in my pack, and off we marched.

We climbed a hillside covered with eucalyptus and were alone up there among the trees, the eerily beautiful valley stretched out at our feet.

‘I’ll get the cactus ready,’ I told Dede, ‘while you put up the tent.’

I sat down to concoct the drug. I pulled the thorns out with my knife. Then I peeled the rind. There were two layers: one, very thin and green; the other, white and containing strychnine. After carefully separating them, I finally had two big cups full of green pulp. I lit the burner and put a small amount of cactus in the pot to cook. About fifteen minutes later I emptied the pot into a cloth and squeezed out all the liquid. My efforts were rewarded with hardly more than an ounce. Would it be enough? Perhaps I had misunderstood the instructions.

It was already dusk, and I decided that we had no choice: we would eat the cactus raw. We found a comfortable place to sit on the edge of the hill. The view was fantastic, other-worldly. We sat with