I've started a series on my experiences with ayahuasca, you can check it out if you wish:

I wanted to release one post a week in this series until I feel the story is complete; however, it's been 7 days since my last ayahuasca diaries entry, and I'm still not quite ready to share part 3. 

Nonetheless, this has me in a Peru mood, and various projects have me super deep in photography this week as well.

Between corrupted harddrives, magically erased SD cards, and the censorship of fascistbook, I've already lost thousands of the photos I took during the year I lived there. 

The point of this post is to migrate some of my Peruvian FB photo album to the immutable blockchain before fascistbook erases them all. 

 Enjoy! 

I started in Lima. It was grey, dirty, and ugly, and I immediately questioned what the hell I was doing in Peru.

I went to the market and took some shitty pictures of fruit,

and some slightly better photos of stalls of grains, beans, and goods, 

and walked around the grey, dirty city. Between boring ass plain old modern structures, Lima does have some really sweet architectural gems. This one was for sale! 

I happily left Lima after only a few days and went north to an organic farm & Hare Krishna community called Eco Truly. This is the temple; it's made of dirt. The structures are called trulys. 

Their gardens and crops were well established. 

One day, a monk chased me down to give me a piece of cake. I think it was the first time I laughed in Peru! 

It was super cold and damp there. I assume that's why they put blankets on the statues, but I didn't think to ask. I didn't speak Spanish at the time and it was a pain in the ass to try to communicate anything beyond basic questions and sentences. 

I took yoga classes there. according to my understanding, the Spanish speaking instructor told us to, "Grab your tomato pants and let's party with double Rodriguez." I laughed hard that day. 

They had peacocks! Again, I didn't ask why.

Even though it was on the beach, as I say it was cold AF.

But I played on the cold, grey beach anyway.

I had a GREAT time! 

I had planned to stay at the organic farm for many months, but after a very short time there they announced they were hosting some huge festival for their founder's birthday and wouldn't be able to host us volunteers any longer. I silently cursed them and wondered why they hadn't told me that before I made arrangements to be there.

It worked out for the best of course, because I buddied up with some British chicks and we hightailed it northward still, to a much higher elevation in the Andes Mountains called Huaraz. 

We hiked in the Cordillera Blanca range, and finally finally finally I felt some peace in my heart.

Nature is magic like that. It was glorious, gorgeous, majestic, and profound.

From Huaraz, we took a bus to visit the Pastoruri Glacier. That's it between the mountains! 

We stopped here because there was a Spring of Eternal Youth. The water tasted like iron.

We got to see these epic bromeliads! They only grow in Peru, live to be 100, and bloom a mere 2 months every 5 years. I got to see one in bloom :)

The bus dropped us off in some parking lot, and it was a shortish hike up to the glacier itself. I played around some more, as I like to goof off a lot.

It was an incredible place, and I found my years of bitterness melting away despite the frozen landscape.

I went to Peru to transform, and this was only the beginning. 

It's really meaningful for me to be able to look back on that time in my life with my current perspective - amazing how life comes full circle and times and spaces overlap! I am still integrating lessons from that incredible country and significant opportunity. 

This post is meant to be a short reminder to myself of where I've come from, but I sincerely hope that it entertains and inspires you too! I certainly entertain myself, but it would be especially great if my experience improved your life in at least some tiny way too.  

💛 Sara!