Day 14

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With a free day in Cusco, which by now I knew very well after venturing around by myself for a few days, I couldn't wait to show dad a few places. We began with a superfood green smoothie at my mate Pedro's raw organic cafe then headed to the 'Museo de Plants' or something along those lines. We spent an hour there learning about the interesting history of coca, which actually has several health benefits. It's a shame we can't bring any coca leaves back into AUS. The historical dispute over coca's notorious use in the form of cocaine was interesting also, along with the history of coca-cola. On the bus back to Cusco the previous day I met a like minded girl from Canada who was a holistic nutritionist. She explained how she had been to a healing shamantic retreat just outside of Cusco in which she participated in a four hour ceremony where they drink one of the worlds most powerful medicinal herbs from the Amazon called ayahuasca. This experience is apparently cleansing and releases all negative energy. Billie explained that within ten minutes after ingesting the herb they were all vomiting and purging, and then go into an altered mental state. She had a cut lip and bruises when I met her as she had attacked herself during the experience and had to be restrained by the Sharmans who said this was normal for a first time as she obviously had plenty that needed to be released. I am no expert on this herb so I suggest looking it up on google it is very interesting. It made me curious and I had a good chat with Pedro (raw food guy) about it and he explained that it is popular among people with terminal cancer as a last resort, and has a very high success rate. Dad and I couldn't understand how something that makes you almost immediately vomit can be beneficial, however it is apparently a very common ritual in Peru that has become more and more commercialised with people from all over the world coming here to seek its medicinal, spiritual, and physical benefits. There was copious amounts of information in the plant museum on this Amazonian herb as well and I am glad we visited this museum as South America is known for all of its medicinal plants and Andean grains such as quinoa and amaranth. I then took dad back to the cacao (chocolate) museum where we witnessed the staff making new batches of their organic dark chocolate. We purchased some dark choccie with ginger to help with the 6hr bus ride today. After this we simply roamed the streets and bought a few pieces at the Artisinal market, soon returning to the raw food bar for another organic meal meticulously prepared by Pedro from scratch right in front of us. Later Ollie had organised a taxi to pick us girls in the group to take us up to the top of a hill where there was a silver jewellery workshop and shop. I purchased a silver ring with a special lime green stone (can't remember the name) and a similar one with an apricot stone for Jess. As a group we all headed out for tea which was a disaster. I wont go into details, however let's just say none of us left satisfied, dad refused to pay, the owner tried to pretend one of the girls hadn't paid and so on. So myself, dad, Linda and Sue (the elder sisters from Queensland who are adorable) sought out Sara's Organics for a real hot chocolate to finish the night on a better note.

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