Is it true that Bob Dylan ate hallucinogenic mushrooms in Ecuador?

An 80-year-old lady who lives in a lost town in the Andes assures that the king of folk was in a psychedelic trip at the backyard of her home.

Without hesitation and in a trembling voice, Aida Buitrón, 80, recounts that Bob Dylan was in the backyard of his house located in the town of La Esperanza, in the north part of the Ecuadorian hills. According to her, in 1976 Dylan - all bearded, longhaired, and dressed in a poncho (Andean coat)- sat at night in front of a bonfire surrounded by a bunch of dirty and smelly hippies playing guitar while everyone was in wild dancing.

Probably, the myth that Bob Dylan ate mushrooms in Ecuador is the best-known story within the rock culture of the country. Media such as La Hora newspaper, SoHo magazine – one of the most important of the region-, and television channels such as Ecuavisa -one of the biggest of the country-, have replicated the story several times without a single concrete evidence, and have expanded the rumor that has rumbled the heads of obsessive fans. Some news has even said that Pink Floyd and Manu Chao were also “mushroom” tourists of La Esperanza.

Highway in the middle of the Andes that leads you to La Esperanza. In the back, the Imbabura Volcano. Photo: Sol Freire Figueroa. 

La Esperanza is a town with only one street. Instead of a central square, it has a broad avenue, with adobe bricks and cement houses that cut the mountains. To get there, you have to drive an hour and a half from Quito through the north highways in the direction to San Pablo Lake, located in the province of Imbabura, one of the towns with the most significant indigenous population of Ecuador that lives from tourism and fabrics and furs commerce.

From San Pablo Lake you have to travel 45 minutes more while you surround the colossal Taita Imbabura, a vast and mystical mountain considered a God by the native Otavalo culture during the pre-Columbian era. Today, it is a destination for climbers and a well-known place for the sighting of UFOs, Chupacabras, green goblins, and other fantastic creatures.

As you invade the Andes towards La Esperanza, the road becomes narrower, and the smell of wet soil surrounds you. Among the mountains, a whole palette of green land fuses with fields full of golden crops and one or another indigenous child that walks along a herd of cows at the foot of the road. Now, the access to this area is not complicated, but in the seventies, there were no roads. How the hell Bob Dylan went through here? How did he travel from Quito without being recognized? Where did he stay? How did he have to know about the mushrooms and how did he face the odyssey of climbing more than 1800 meters?

The highway between the mountains flings you directly into the main street of La Esperanza. There is `La Casa de Aida,' a rectangular orange house located in the center of the avenue. With her tanned and mestizo face, Aida looks out from the main entrance. Her sight follows us (me and the photographer), and she awaits our arrival with solemnity.

Casa de Aida in La Esperanza. Photo: Sol Freire Figueroa. 

With 80 years over her and a carved face with wrinkles, she happily opens the gate with the same sweetness of a grandmother who attends the arrival of a grandson. Her eyes are large, and her pose is upright. Her hair holds in a bun, and her body emanates flowers perfume. A lilac-colored prominent shoulder pads suit completes her elegance.

- “Come in, come in,” she said.

Carefully she takes us to the hostel's dining hall constructed of brick walls, wooden beams, and a large firewood oven used to cook and to counterstrike the Andean cold. Over the walls hang a framed stewardess title and several newspaper clippings with headlines such as "Hippies left a tourist footprint" and "Hippies left their touristic footprint."

Article published in La Hora Newspaper about "the visit" of famous hippies. 

Before Aida arrived in La Esperanza, she worked from 1957 to 1961 as a stewardess in Panagra, an American - Peruvian airline that operated flights from the United States to South America. After getting married, she quit her show and years later she ended up with three children, an alcoholic husband, and economic problems. As she decided to leave her husband, Aida went to work as a handicrafts saleswoman at the US Embassy in Quito. The business was going well, but it was not enough. She left the job, and with some savings, she began to make tea tables with the help of a couple of artisans.

The business was great, and she decided to expand it. One day she saw an ad in the newspaper: "Jaime Jara Tobar sells a house in La Esperanza, 45 minutes from Ibarra." She thought about moving his workshop there. Finally, Aida bought the place and arrived there in 1974.

In the end, the plan did not work. The artisans gave up, the business stopped, and she ended up with a house debt. To make some profits, she started selling hamburgers at a stand in the city of Ibarra, 30 minutes away from the town. She worked on this for months, until one night on her way home, she saw a dozen of noisy white-bearded young men with backpacks. The foreign buzz was an elegy.

"They were shouting in Italian. I just recognized that they were hippies. What are you doing here? I asked them. They replied that they were looking for a place to rest because the next day they would go climbing the Imbabura. At that time, no hotel in Ibarra received them. People were afraid of their long hair and their look, so they were marginalized.”

She received the hippies and placed them in the courtyard of her house. She was amazed at how the group was preparing and fixing their tools and technological stuff to climb, and how, little by little, the climbers mounted their tents. "They stayed that night. I remember that they were not poor people, they were educated and had knowledge. They gave me some money and the next day they left."

- In one of those visits Bob Dylan arrived?

- “Wait, I'm telling you the whole story. Do you want to know the place?” Aida asks me while her agitated voice reveals that she wants to show the rooms that forged the myth.

By 1976, "La Casa de Aida" had become a hostel for hippies and climbers from all over the world who were looking for a place to rest. More and more young people loaded with backpacks and dressed in colorful and extravagant clothes, came fascinated to this place recommended by word of mouth. "I did not know why they came here because not all were climbers. I thought that they had found a gold mine, so I used to walk around the terrain to see if there was something but no. I did not understand what brought them here. "

Aida in the backyard of her hostel where, supposedly, Bob Dylan passed the night. 

In La Esperanza, cow excrement is sacred. From them, there sprout unique and powerful brown fungi that need from grass, rain, and moisture to grow. During pre-Columbian times, shamans consumed these fungi at spiritual rituals, as they believe they helped them to connect with their Gods and the forest spirits. "The magic mushrooms" are bitter and belongs to the psilocybin family. They have doses of psilocin and psilocybin, two hallucinogenic substances that would shake your head in a trip for about 8 hours. You have to eat them with water while walking through the forests and plains, so they can "show you their power."

-    That's why Bob Dylan arrived? I asked.
-    Yes, I imagine. He came among those groups of hippies. He was all bearded, with long hair, and a ´poncho.'
-    In what year did he arrive?
-    It was like, hum...probably in 1976. I do not remember the month.
-    How did he look?
-    He was an attractive man. The hippies were lovely people. I didn't know he was Bob Dylan until later when I saw him in the news and the press. At the time he came, he was not famous. Then, the foreign travelers that came here told me that he was here.

I doubt about Aida's version. At that time, Bob Dylan was already a big star. Also, how accurately recognize a specific guest between hundreds and hundreds of hippies? How to forget something like that? She tells me no more details about the day of the meeting, as her memories get blurred and porous.

There is something that does not fit her description. The same portrayal could be used to define any hippie. There is nothing precise and specific about the mythical musician. Moreover, I had never seen a "hippie Bob Dylan." I always imagine him with his messy rocker hair, dark pants, jacket, and leather boots while prowled through the bohemian streets of Greenwich Village in New York.

As I dig between the albums produced by Dylan of the second half of the seventies, I am surprised: his aesthetics and sound changed radically. He moved away from the Ray-ban glasses and the protest songs toward a more devoted and introverted musical production. Is there any chance that spiritual experiences could empower that new sound? Could it be the result of Ecuadorian mushrooms? These questions led me to the cover of Desire, the 1976 album that shows a Dylan that is more close to the physical description in Aida’s version.

"Desire", Bob Dylan. 

Desire is an exotic production in which Dylan tells stories about gangsters, boxers, and personal experiences. Jacques Levy, the same guy who wrote songs for The Byrds, drove this introvertive album and helped Dylan to compose several songs. I listen to the tracks, I search for their lyrics, but I found nothing. There are no mushrooms, there are no mountains, and there are no outlandish experiences that reveal a psychedelic trip through the Ecuadorian Andean region. Even, some songs of this album were inspired by a trip that the musician had to the south of France, where he attended a gypsy festival during his birthday.

Although I want to continue believing in the myth, I'm disappointed. I feel that Aida's story is a lie, but before confirming my bad feeling, I decide to look for more evidence. I guess the trip to La Esperanza did not influence Desire because its publication was on January 5, 1976. I look for the next production and find that in 1978, Dylan release Street Legal, an album full of musical renovation that sounds like a strange mix between Polish pop and Gypsy flashes. There is also no Andean music or shamanic songs. The presence of fungi and Ecuador in Dylan's music during those years does not exist.

"Street Legal", Bob Dylan. 

While we are talking with Aida, her two daughters are approaching. Both are around 40 years old, and their faces are tired and wet with sweat because they were working in the kitchen of the hostel. Both stay and listen carefully to the questions that their mother is answering. 

- Do you not have any proof, pictures, or autographs from Dylan?
- By that time, I did not have any camera or something to register the moment.
- What about Pink Floyd and Manu Chao?
- No, Pink Floyd did not come. But Manu Chao sent me this shirt.

Aida stands up, and her voice gets lost as she enters in a back room. She keeps telling me the anecdote, but I cannot hear it. A few seconds pass, and her voice comes back to say:

- Look, Manu Chao sent me his t-shirt with a friend. He stayed here for months.

I look at it. It’s a faded black M size shrunken T-shirt, it smells like a closet and has the edges are unsewed. In the center is stamped the logo of "Next Station: Hope," the second studio album of the French singer published in 2001. "Yes, this could belong to Manu Chao," I think.

According to Aida, this t-shit belongs to Manu Chao. 

After showing me "the proof," she reveals to me something more valuable: "I have a notebook with writings and signatures of all the people who have passed through here," Aida says with a tone of confidence and joy, the same with which a child shows his parents good grades in school.

The notebook is like a family album, a thick one with discolored sheets, and full of footnotes, photos, and scandalous drawings. There are disfigured faces, unicorns, fairies, rainbows, and pictures of Caucasian men and women with tousled hair. It is as if the same people impregnated their psychedelic mushroom trip in the notebook. Indeed, there is no doubt that "La Casa de Aida" is an inn for hippies.

At that very moment, the eldest of Aida's daughters, who owns a thick build and black amber wavy hair, throw an anecdote about Dylan. “Yesterday, a man came on a motorcycle and told us that he had come here long ago and that he had seen the signature of Bob Dylan in this book.”

Just yesterday? I doubt about the surprise and the quick visit of the motorized stranger. I ask about the evidence.

-    No. The issue is that my mom tent to borrow the book to anyone. There are a lot of sheets torn, and I know that the Bob Dylan signature was in one of those.
-    Yes, most of the hippies have signed this book. I started asking for names when the police and the people from the town told me that I was selling drugs. "Aida share with a frown.

The people began to worry when they saw how "La Casa de Aida" became a field full of colorful tents with bearded and longhaired people dancing uncontrollably around the fire. To have a reference: during the 80s, metalheads used to be stopped by the police, as some people of Quito were shocked just for their look. Imagine the same weight of prejudice, but in a lost Andean town as La Esperanza. "People told me that I used to traffic mushrooms. The police came several times to visit me to see what I was doing." Although the police control and the commotion of the town by the new visitors were constant, finally they finished getting used to them.

We left the dining room by a corridor in the direction of the same ground where once, several hippies hallucinated by eating “magic fungi.” Aida takes a seat on a yellow swing and points to the very place where the mythical musician was. I imagine him eating his mushroom in the center of a sea of unwashed heads, body steam and stale smell from lack of shower. I see him in a scene of love and folk music, of uncoordinated movements and moans. But since there is no evidence, there is no Dylan, and although my doubts grow and my faith dissipates, I decide to track down Dylan where I have not done it.

***

Upon my return to Quito, I contacted the US Embassy and sent a request to access US citizens' entry records from 1975 forward. I assume that with so much technology and resources, they surely have all this information digitized. I'm dying to access their records, and the impatience makes me sweat. I'm excited to think to see a registry where Robert Allen Zimmerman, born on May 24, 1941, entered the far South American country of Ecuador. 48 hours later, the only thing I receive is this: "We are not able to give information on any US citizen without the authorization of the interested party. You may be able to contact the Migration Secretary in Ecuador for it. " I already did it, and the moody representative of the Ministry of Migration closed me the phone after saying: "We only have that kind of records from the year 2000 onwards".

The last resources are books. I read all volumes of  "Chronicles," "Behind The Shades," "Down The Highway" and other authorized and recommended biographies. They don’t help. None says anything about Dylan’s Andean trip, and surely the authors do not even know the word Ecuador.

***

After the tour around the hostel, we returned to the dining hall to finish the interview. Aida's daughters serve us lunch, she sits down, and we talk about everything except Dylan. She makes comments about how the crisis of the country has beaten everyone, but they have work, and their family survives only from the hostel profits. Aida tells me about UFOs and how the climbers share stories about strange lights passing around the Imbabura Mountain. I still have the signature book in my hand without finding any trace of the adventurous musician.

- When did people first sign the book?
- There it is, in 1983.

She shows me the first page of the album and confirms, without knowing it, that everything is a lie. The dates do not match. If Dylan arrived in 1976 he never signed the album, so he never danced with his pupils dilated while traveling between the labyrinths of his subconscious.

Aida stands firm in her version, but for the moment, there is no concrete evidence. Maybe she was wrong of person, and the confusion grew when the myth sprayed with the “blah blah “of the hippies. Probably, Bob Dylan indeed visited La Esperanza, but that is something that only he could testify.

Why not Charly García, Fito Páez, Cerati or some other Latin American rock icon? Why using Bob Dylan for this story? He is the perfect character in a plot written by the hallucinogenic trip of hippie rock fans. Although it could be one of the biggest lies in Ecuador, people still love to listen to it, and travelers from all over the world will keep on visiting “Casa de Aida” attracted by the story of how one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century got high Ecuador.  The fable feeds the myth, and now, a bearded, longhaired Bob Dylan dressed in a poncho is as Andean as the Chupacabras.