Run-in with Wayra

Four years ago, I drank ayahuasca with a shaman named Wayra, in an apartment in Arequipa. I'd had a very positive experience with ayahuasca just a week earlier in Iquitos, so I was overconfident. I wasn't adequately prepared. I hadn't followed the prescribed diet. On the contrary, I was coming off a week of debauchery. Also, earlier that night I'd witnessed a woman get robbed and chased the thief on foot for several blocks before I lost him. It was a dark apartment full of strangers. I was on edge.

No surprise that it turned out to be one of the most terrifying nights of my life. Ayahuasca is kind of a garbage-in, garbage-out experience. I was reduced to a sobbing, whimpering, vomitting mess. Through the night, Wayra chanted tuneless, aboriginal sounds that disturbed me deeply. I begged him to shut the fuck up (fortunately he spoke no English). He blew smoke and fanned it over me with a condor feather and tried to bring me down from the emotional extremes I was reaching.

With the rising of the sun, my horror gave way to peace. I stared out the window and wiped tears from my eyes and smoked half a pack of cigarettes. Wayra continued to sing, and by now my body seemed to sway uncontrollably to his sweet, light-hearted melodies. My Spanish came back to me. Wayra and I both concluded that "the earth was full of beauty." I spent the following day getting to know the family who had loaned out the apartment for the session. I found out that we were across the street from a mental hospital.

Important detail: Wayra was the brother of a woman whom I had dated. Things became complicated between me and her family. For this and for my experience with him, I never intended to see Wayra ever again.

***

Four years later, on my ninth night back in Perú, I walked into a restaurant in Cuzco, hundreds of miles from Arequipa. There were only two customers--a couple having dinner in the corner. One of them was Wayra.

Ginny, Brendan and I sat at a booth on the other side of the restaurant. They  perused the menu; I sat transfixed in my seat, staring at the menu and seeing nothing. They asked me what was wrong. I told them Wayra was here. They stole glances over their shoulders. They were doubtful. The man had severe Andean features, a prototypical Native American handsomeness. They were right; he looked like a lot of people. No, that's him, I told them. I'm positive.

I walked over to their table. "Excuse me," I said in Spanish. They turned to me. I addressed the man. "Do we know each other?"

He looked at me calmly, quizzically.

"Are you Wayra?" I said. The man and the woman looked at each other. He confirmed that that was his name. I told him my name. I told him we had taken ayahuasca together in Arequipa. Finally a spark of recognition came into his eyes.

"El amigo de Livia!" he said. That's the name of his sister, my ex-girlfriend, and that's how I know for sure that this was the same man that I'd spent one evening with, four years ago.

I told him about the trip we were on, through South America. He smiled warmly and said "Que bueno." I introduced myself to his companion, a European who did not speak a word of Spanish. Wayra greeted my brother and girlfriend from across the room. I told Wayra how good and how strange it was to see him here, and then I quickly let him get back to his dinner. I returned to my seat and ordered at random from the menu, still not able to focus on food.

It was a long hour before either party in the restaurant finished their meal. I kept Wayra in my peripheral vision. I couldn't let him leave without saying one last thing.  

Finally they stood up from their table. Wayra graciously came over and shook our hands, told us mucho gusto with a tranquil smile on his face. As the couple moved toward the door, still looking in our direction, I asked Wayra to please say hello to his family for me. To his parents, to Tony, to Livia. To please tell them I said thank you for everything. He nodded, said adios, and walked out the door.

Maybe that was why I got to see him again, so I could send this message to his family. They were so generous to me when I was here, and in return, I was kind of a disgrace, a wreckless child. I've always assumed that they never wanted to see me again. 

I guess the strangeness of the coincidence is mitigated by the fact that the encounter happened in a vegetarian restaurant. Ayahuasceros are urged to eat vegetarian in the days preceding and following use of ayahuasca.

But I can't get over the fact that I ran into Wayra almost immediately after I returned to Perú. And stranger still: I encountered my ayahuasca shaman the day after my first experience with the other grand Andean psychadelic: San Pedro.