The Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center - Shroomery

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expedition, so that in two days we had already set out on the next leg of the
journey to the south. Mrs. Irmgard Weitlaner Johnson, (widow of Jean B.
Johnson, a pioneer of the ethnographic study of the Mexican magic mushrooms,
killed in the Allied landing in North Africa) had joined us. Her father,
Robert J. Weitlaner, had emigrated to Mexico from Austria and had likewise
contributed toward the rediscovery of the mushroom cult. Mrs. Johnson worked
at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, as an expert on Indian
textiles.
After a two-day journey in a spacious Land Rover, which took us over the
plateau, along the snow-capped Popocatepetl, passing Puebla, down into the
Valley of Orizaba with its magnificent tropical vegetation, then by ferry
across the Popoloapan (Butterfly River), on through the former Aztec garrison
Tuxtepec, we arrived at the starting point of our expedition, the Mazatec
village of Jalapa de Diaz, lying on a hillside.
There we were in the midst of the environment and among the people that we
would come to know in the succeeding 2 1/2 weeks.
There was an uproar upon our arrival in the marketplace, center of this
village widely dispersed in the jungle. Old and young men, who had been
squatting and standing around in the half-opened bars and shops, pressed
suspiciously yet curiously about our Land Rover; they were mostly barefoot but
all wore a sombrero. Women and girls were nowhere to be seen. One of the men
gave us to understand that we should follow. him. He led us to the local
president, a fat mestizo who had his office in a one-story house with a
corrugated iron roof. Gordon showed him our credentials from the civil
authorities and from the military governor of Oaxaca, which explained that we
had come here to carry out scientific investigations. The president, who
probably could not read at all, was visibly impressed by the large-sized
documents equipped with official seals. He had lodgings assigned to us in a
spacious shed, in which we could place our air mattresses and sleeping bags.
I looked around the region somewhat. The ruins of a large church from colonial
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