The Psychedelic Mountain Village of San Jose Del Pacifico, Mexico

Sep 6, 2022 • By Leonidas K. • 6 min read

Mexico Travel

A Psychedelic Backstory

Near the tail end of my living adventure in Mexico City, I began voraciously consuming content about psychedelics, in particular, mushrooms, DMT, and ayahuasca, among others.

Listening to dozens of psychedelics-related podcasts, as well as rapidly consuming audiobooks, I gained a general, although passive, understanding of psychedelics.

This ranged from psychology, sociology, biology, and chemistry, all the way to the legal systems of various countries, the histories within indigenous cultures, western society and western medicine, and various conspiracies that involved experimenting on people passively, as well as, actively to see if they could give special powers (hint: the answer is no).

Nonetheless, Mexico has a deep and rich, yet secluded culture of using psychedelics as an indigenous medicine.

San Jose Del Pacifico was a name of a town in Mexico that came up several times throughout learning about psychedelics. In a sister town several hundreds of KM away, a scientist from the USA arrived in the 1950’s, and began experimenting with mushrooms.

He arrived back in the USA, and slowly the message spread of a substance that can ‘open your mind’, thus leading to the first ‘psychedelic tourism’.

By the 1960’s and 1970’s, this tourism, started to corrupt the towns with money, and thus began a decline in indigenous traditions, and a rapid rise in hippies who simply wanted to get high, with no regard to anything else about the cultures.

A Road Trip To San Jose Del Pacifico

Fast forward to 2021, and I thought this would be a fun little journey to make go on, both physically and eventually mentally.

I even made the long journey to Real De Catorce, deep in the mountains of Mexico, to find some Peyote.

Although in the last minute, I decided against doing the actual peyote.

Taking a bus from Mexico City, I traveled several hours and landed in Tehuacan for a very brief walk around, just to see the layout of the city, before continuing my journey to a magical city called “Oaxaca”.

I was in Oaxaca back in 2018, so I didn’t stay too long or take many pictures this time around, instead getting some rest, and continuing to my desired destination of San Jose Del Pacifico.

Because we were in a very high altitude, you are pretty much inside the clouds in San Jose Del Pacifico

San Jose Del Pacifico is a very small town. In front is the bus station

This town revolves mostly from psychedelic tourism that drops in for a day or 2, before continuing on their journey

A house that acts as a hotel for tourists in San Jose Del Pacifico

Graffiti with mushrooms in San Jose Del Pacifico

Psychedelic tourism is very prevalent here, but some just come for the cool weather, and great view of the nature

You can buy weed and mushrooms pretty much everywhere

Clouds overtake the mountain, and rain starts

Clouds overtake the mountain, and rain starts in San Jose Del Pacifico

Wooden mushroom statues in San Jose Del Pacifico

Various contemporary mass produced souvenirs for your psychedelic trip in San Jose Del Pacifico

I enjoy a nice Cafe de Olla (cafe from the pot)

The following day, the clouds cleared up, and revealed the surrounding landscapes in San Jose Del Pacifico, Mexico

But later that night, the clouds dropped back down to mask the surrounding area

Walking through the narrow streets in the core of San Jose Del Pacifico

Rain starts to overtake San Jose Del Pacifico

Arrived, But Decided Not to Disengage

While I did make the long trek all the way to this small town deep in the mountains of Mexico, I decided to skip out on any mushrooms or even weed.

I felt that I didn’t want to tamper with my ego at this point in time, and also my hostel, which was only $10 or $15 a night, wasn’t suited for the experience.

I could have spent a bit more, to get nicer accommodation, but that didn’t happen, and I was pressed on time to get to the second leg of my journey.

Also, my ego probably wasn’t in the mood for a mind-opening experience.

For sale in almost every location, and extremely inexpensive

A beautifully designed hostel, but the rooms were subpar for a good 8-hour long experience.

After skipping on psychedelics, I climbed up the hill in town, and enjoyed the view

Small shacks and houses creep up the hill side of San Jose Del Pacifico

The surrounding mountains give way to a flat coast in the distance. My next destination

The town of San Jose Del Pacifico, Mexico from the hilltops

San Jose Del Pacifico, Mexico Conclusion

I was enchanted by various ideas of disengaging from old beliefs and mental systems and re-engaging or even restarting the junk that has been accumulating within my mind over these many years since doing psychedelics.

But, while I didn’t disengage my mind with psychedelics this time around, I did enjoy the journey coming here. The tall mountains and hills which have extremely winding roads carved into them were a blast to ride through on the bus.

From Oaxaca you climb into the mountains, and once you finish up with San Jose Del Pacifico, you ride down hours of snake-like paths to the coast of Puerto Escondido.

A beautiful and mesmerizing journey either way.

As always,

Cheers & Salud

Leonidas 🙂