POTENT POTION
Hallucinatory drug fuels an offbeat tourism boom,
Dressed in a parrot-feathered headdress and a collar strung with the teeth of pumas, crocodiles and bears, shaman Juan Mutumbajoy sings incantations over a row of shot glasses filled with a murky infusion he has made from two Amazonian vines.
He is about to administer a concoction called yage to nine mostly young visitors huddled around a fire under his maloka, a barn-like structure in the Sibundoy Valley, a verdant high-elevation plateau in southwestern Colombia. They have travelled from as far as Spain or the U.S. to take the potion, a hallucinatory drug that some compare to LSD or peyote.
Six decades after Beat writer William S. Burroughs came to the region to experience the mind-expanding powers of yage (pronounced yah-HEY), the visitors are the latest in a growing number of seekers who have fuelled an offbeat tourism boom in this out-ofthe-way corner of the country.
After chanting and spreading a pungent incense, Mutumbajoy warns the celebrants about some sideeffects of the “purification” ritual. Drinking the liquid may lead to intense nausea and diarrhea. They may experience scary visions of snakes, jaguars and insects. But if they stay “concentrated and confident,” they will be fine, he assures them.
One by one, the participants approach a makeshift altar covered with the skins of leopards and snakes and drink the potion.
Made from the Amazonian vine known as ayahuasca ( botanical name: Banisteriopsis caapi) in combination with chagropanga or other jungle plants, yage’s potent hallucinatory powers were described by Burroughs, who visited in 1953, and poet Allen Ginsberg, who in 1960 tried yage in Pucallpa, Peru.
Some say their book The Yage Letters, a compilation of the two writers’ letters, diary entries and essays, has done for yage what the books of Carlos Castaneda did in the 1960s and 1970s to popularize peyote.
“In two minutes, a wave of dizziness swept over me and the hut began spinning. It was like going under ether or when you are very drunk and lie down and the bed spins,” Burroughs wrote. “The hut took on an archaic far-Pacific look with Easter Island heads carved in the support posts . . . Larval beings passed before my eyes in a blue haze.”
Mutumbajoy insists that yage is not meant to be some mental magic carpet ride but rather a sacred cure, be it for depression, kidney stones, high blood pressure or satanic possession. He says he regularly turns away people who come looking to take yage — he charges $25 per cure — strictly for recreational use.
Taking yage is not without risks. In April 2014, a 19-year-old British tourist died after consuming the drug in Mocoa, not far from Sibundoy.
Mutumbajoy says that deaths happen only when yage is administered improperly or by “charlatans” trying to get in on a growth industry. Locals say that increasing numbers of people, inspired by tales of miraculous cures and self-enlightenment, are willing to travel great distances to drink the potion.
About 2,000 tourists came to Sibundoy last year — twice the number in 2010 — to take yage from one of a dozen taitas, says Henry Mavisoy, who is chief of the Kamentsa indigenous council.