El Señor de Sipan (Drive Day 159: December 5th, 2003)

After turning down a baggie of hallucinogenic San Pedrillo cactus from a vendor in what the guidebooks claim is one of the largest witches markets in South America, we make our way to another set of ruins.

[image error]Photos by Gary Geboy

This time we are met by human guides but they’re kids. Who want to sell us bits and pieces of pottery they’ve scavenged from the ruins of Sipan. Twice in one day we’re declining things apparently most visitors don’t.

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But who needs hallucinogens when sunsets look like this in the magic hour of sunset and when, surely, taking anything other than photos results in some seriously bad karma. So instead, we buy the disappointed kids a round of foosball in town and inadvertently set off a stampede of would-be players.

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Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.