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PERU - ESCAPING THE KRISHNAS


My friend Cristina and I went to Peru on a whim, where we planned to hit ceaseless exotic scenarios for nothing more than the $400 we each paid for a ticket. Cristina just graduated from college in Vermont, where she discovered the joys of couch surfing, so she was convinced that our entire time there would be totally free. We wound up arriving at most places around 3 AM, thanks to poorly planned overnight buses. We traveled up the coast instead of going directly to Machu Picchu, so we were the only non-locals. As an extra bonus for potential weirdos, we kind of look like children. Everyone thought it was really funny that we had come from America to some of the most dangerous cities in Peru just so we could go to the beach.

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One of our couchsurfing.org pit stops was going to be to work on an eco-farm right on the ocean. The farm's profile showed photos of teepees and peacocks, so I thought it was going to be paradise. And it sort of was… actually the word "paradise" comes too close to its actual intent.

The "eco-farm" is glorious haven for Peruvian Hare Krishnas who live there year-round. But the site didn't mention this; they trust you'll figure it out once you've arrived. As soon as we got there we were listening to this guy tell us about the power of Krishna in relation to grains of sand. Everyone there is really young, so they sort of listen but then ADD takes over and someone throws something into the air. There was very little hierarchy or coordination within this place, where it seems that even the members take what's going on too lightly for it to be a real cult—I think they get that they live better than 90 percent of their fellow Peruvians and so will gladly put up with a bit of religious indoctrination in exchange for the good life.

Most of the time on the Krishna farm is spent eating. There's a huge kitchen where one old woman toils. It is her job to feed 30-plus people three meals a day, in addition to providing the food for the attached restaurant. Yes, a restaurant. There's also a gift shop--it's a for-capital kind of enterprise. I was fairly wary about what they were feeding us, and although everything is prepared through filtered water, I trusted little of it. I kept thinking really innocuous things were going to kill me /give me dysentery, so I basically lived off Snickers bars, beer, and Coke the whole time we were there. This made adjusting more awkward; the first part about cult life is eating together, which I refused.

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The first night we were there they threw a party. Though Krishna seems like an afterthought, they don't forget the part about singing his name. Nonviolence is forgotten--they got really aggressive and shoved cake into one another's faces--but if there's one thing that these people realize about where they are, it's the importance of the repetition of the word "Krishna." Or maybe they just really like to sing. A soundtrack of Krishna music plays almost 24 hours a day, but it's not the 70's George Harrison variety, it's more in the Akon/reggaeton vein.

This Krishna chapter was founded by a German man who spoke in poor English, though everyone else there only spoke Spanish. Because this is the religious experiment of a European, other Germans seem to know about it. They routinely come for extended male escapist fantasy stays, partially motivated by the possibility of a foreign bride.

Luckily, Cristina and I shared an adobe hut with a fellow American. She had gotten there earlier so she knew the ins and outs of the Krishna Farm. She was extraordinarily tolerant, and our arrival was sort of fucking that up. She had decided to stay there because her boyfriend left to slide down a mountain or something, and she thought it was better to reckon with the Krishnas than the elements, but she was starting to hate her boyfriend.

On the other hand, I will make a boyfriend regardless of where I go, as long as I don't have to keep him. The Krishna abstinence-only convent was no exception, especially since a hot German guy showed up after two days. We fell in love at the beach, which was accessible through this intense gate at the foot of the farm, where they sold beer! The whole thing was such a façade, that you could actually spend the entire day drinking and frolicking, and be back in time for rations. There was no discipline, at least within the first week.

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And we didn't want it to get past that point. I think the Krishnas had had enough of our vintage Paris and Nicole antics, and we had tired of them. Cristina was beginning to go insane—she had burned at the beach worse than she thought, to the point where it hurt to breathe. I was itchy and feared Malaria. The nonstop music, sun, and strange interactions had started to take toll, so we fled. We realized that the Krishnas were sneakily charging everyone for their stay as they were about to leave. The condition to stay there was to work, which we avoided at all costs, but we didn't want to give them any money. So we tried our luck with a hole over a sand mound in some back bushes and ran till we found a guy in a car.

Anyone will drive you anywhere in Peru, so he put his kids up in the front and we hopped on another night bus to nowhere…

EMILIE BRANCH