What happens when a vegan chef spends three months travelling through Peru, exploring food, slow travel, the Amazon, and the deeper relationship between plants and healing?
In this episode of The World Vegan Travel Podcast, Brighde chats with Ben Riddle, also known as Your Friendly Vegan Cook. Ben is a vegan chef, author, and musician who has spent nearly 15 years cooking for retreats, private clients, and events around the world.
His journey through Peru was not a quick sightseeing trip. Instead, he chose to spend three months in one country, allowing the experience to unfold slowly. His travels took him from Lima’s colorful streets and vegan cafés to Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and eventually deep into the Amazon jungle, where he spent a month at a plant medicine retreat.
This episode is for anyone curious about vegan travel in Peru, conscious travel, ayahuasca retreats, plant medicine healing, slow travel, and how food can become part of a much deeper personal transformation.
Meet Ben Riddle: Vegan Chef, Author & Musician
Ben Riddle is a vegan chef, author, and musician working under the name Your Friendly Vegan Cook. He has cooked for retreats, private events, and clients around the world, with much of his work now based in France.
Food has always been central to Ben’s life. In the episode, he shares how his earliest memories of cooking were rooted in family kitchens, where smell, taste, color, and memory all came together. For Ben, food is not just something to eat. It is creative, sensory, cultural, and deeply connected to how we experience the world.
That love of food eventually became a career in vegan cooking, but it also became a way for him to understand travel. Wherever Ben goes, he heads straight to the markets, local cafés, and places where he can discover what people are growing, cooking, and sharing.
“When I like to travel, I like to take my time. I like to not really plan it so much either.”- Ben Riddle
Why Peru? Choosing Slow Travel Over Checklist Tourism
Many travellers with three months available might try to visit as many countries and destinations as possible. Ben chose the opposite. He spent all three months in Peru.
For Ben, slow travel allows a place to reveal itself more naturally. Rather than arriving with a rigid itinerary, he prefers to let travel unfold. He spoke about arriving, taking time, feeling the energy of a place, and allowing the next step to become clear.
Peru became the setting for a very intentional journey. One month was dedicated to a jungle retreat near Iquitos, where Ben worked with a shaman and explored plant medicine. The time before and after gave him space to prepare, travel, integrate, and experience the country more fully.
This is what makes his story so interesting from a vegan travel perspective. It is not only about where to eat, although there are plenty of vegan food recommendations in the episode. It is also about what happens when travel becomes slower, deeper, and more reflective.
Lima’s Vegan Scene: Raw Desserts, Sprouted Foods & Surf
Ben began his Peru journey in Lima, the capital city and a major destination for food lovers. He describes Lima as vibrant, colorful, full of street art, murals, markets, and movement.
He spent time walking through neighborhoods like Miraflores and Barranco, discovering ethical cafés, vegan-friendly restaurants, and health-conscious spaces. Lima also surprised him as a coastal city where people can swim and surf, something he enjoyed as an Australian who grew up around surfing.
For vegan travel in Peru, Lima offers a strong starting point. It combines creative food culture, local produce, modern cafés, and a relaxed coastal energy.
Raw Café Lima
One of Ben’s favorite places in Lima was Raw Café. He mentions it as a great spot for raw desserts, fresh ingredients, and affordable vegan food. It became one of his regular places for breakfast, lunch, and dinner while he was staying nearby.
Germinando Sprouted Foods
Ben also talks about Germinando, a place focused on sprouted foods, homemade sauerkraut, microgreens, kombucha, kefir, and fermented ingredients. For vegan travellers interested in health-conscious food, probiotics, and creative plant-based meals, Germinando stood out as one of Lima’s memorable stops.
Other Lima Food Mentions
Ben also provided a few other Lima recommendations that may be useful for travelers planning a vegan food route in the city.
Kjolle is not a fully vegan restaurant, but it is known for high-end Peruvian gastronomy and creative use of local produce. For travelers interested in the fine-dining side of Peru, it may be worth researching their current plant-based options before booking.
Cusco’s Andean Vegan Hubs: Permaculture & Fine Dining
After his month in the Amazon jungle, Ben travelled to Cusco. He describes the transition from the jungle to the city as unusual, but Cusco itself felt beautiful, high in the Andes, and full of stone streets, mountain energy, and vegan-friendly food.
Cusco and the Sacred Valley have become important places for travellers interested in wellness, spirituality, plant-based food, and Andean culture. Ben mentions that the area has strong vegan and eco-conscious food options, including restaurants that work with local ingredients, permaculture principles, and ethical sourcing.
Cusco Vegan Restaurants and Sacred Valley Recommendations
Ben shared several recommendations for vegan travellers heading to Cusco, Pisac, and the Sacred Valley.
These places are especially relevant for travellers looking for plant-based meals, retreat-friendly food, and restaurants that understand the needs of people coming into or out of wellness and plant medicine spaces.
Central and MIL Centro
Ben also talks about Peru’s fine-dining world, including Central in Lima and MIL Centro in the Andes. These are not vegan restaurants, but they are known for showcasing Peruvian biodiversity, altitude, ingredients, and culinary innovation.
Ben describes this kind of food as almost like eating art. For a vegan chef, Peru’s enormous variety of potatoes, grains, tubers, and local produce becomes a whole universe of texture, flavor, and possibility.
The Ayahuasca Journey: Preparation, Ceremony & Integration
A major part of Ben’s Peru journey was spending one month at a plant medicine retreat in the Amazon jungle near Iquitos. This is where the episode moves beyond vegan food and into a deeper conversation about healing, preparation, ayahuasca, and integration.
Ben is clear that this kind of experience is not for everyone. He spent years exploring meditation, detoxing, plant-based living, and spiritual practices before deciding that the time felt right.
He also emphasizes the importance of working with trusted, professional, experienced people. In the episode, he talks about being guided to a particular shaman and retreat through friends who had long-term experience in this space.
For anyone researching an ayahuasca retreat vegan travellers may be drawn to, Ben’s story is a reminder that this should not be approached casually or as a trend. Safety, preparation, trust, and proper support matter.
The Wi-Fi Metaphor: Clearing the Connection
One of the most memorable moments in the episode is Ben’s explanation of why preparation matters before working with ayahuasca.
He compares the body and mind to a Wi-Fi signal. If the signal is clearer, the connection with the medicine may feel clearer too. For him, preparation was about removing distractions and purifying the body so that the experience could be more grounded and meaningful.
The Dieta: Purifying the Body Before Plant Medicine
Ben explains that preparation for ayahuasca involved a strict dieta. This included avoiding alcohol, sugar, highly processed foods, salt, and sexual activity.
From a vegan chef’s perspective, this is especially interesting. The dieta strips food back to something simple and minimal. Instead of relying on salt, fat, and stimulation, the focus becomes cleaner, simpler, and more intentional.
This connects directly to Ben’s work with food. As a chef, he is used to flavor, creativity, and abundance. But in the jungle, food became quieter. The process became less about performance and more about purification, presence, and listening.
For vegan travellers interested in plant medicine healing, the dieta is an important part of the conversation because it shows how food, body, and ceremony are connected.
Inside the Jungle: Bamboo Huts, Flower Baths & Shamanic Songs
During his month near Iquitos, Ben stayed in a small retreat setting with around 10 to 15 people at a time. Accommodation was in individual huts made from bamboo and materials from the land.
Daily life was slow and reflective. There were communal meals, time alone, journaling, reading, yoga, swimming in the river, and resting between ceremonies. Ben wrote poems, music, and reflections during this time, some of which later became part of his book, A Song Is a Seed.
Flower Baths & Palo Santo: Rituals of Cleansing
Ben describes the ceremonies as deeply beautiful and ritual-filled. Before ceremony, there were flower cleansing baths by the river, using flowers, herbs, leaves, and aromatic plants.
Later, the space would be cleansed with plants such as palo santo and sage. The shaman would sing to each person individually, using songs as part of the healing work. Ben describes these songs as almost like keys that help unlock the medicine within each person.
The Healing Process: Purging, Crying & “25 Years of Therapy”
The episode also touches on the more difficult side of ayahuasca. Ben explains that the medicine can bring a physical purge, which may happen through vomiting, sweating, crying, or other forms of release.
He also shares something the shaman told him: that one ayahuasca session can be compared to many years of therapy. This is not presented as a simple claim that applies to everyone, but rather as part of how the experience was framed within that retreat setting.
Ben is careful to explain that ayahuasca is not suitable for everyone. He mentions that people taking certain prescription medications or antidepressants may not be suitable candidates because of possible interactions. He also stresses that proper screening, preparation, and trust are essential.
This part of the conversation is especially important because it avoids romanticizing ayahuasca tourism. Instead, Ben speaks about respect, responsibility, and the need to avoid large, commercialized settings that may not offer the level of care and safety people need.
Integration: Returning to Cusco After the Jungle
After a month in the jungle, Ben returned to the wider world through Cusco. Integration became one of the most important themes of the episode.
He explains that the experience itself is only one part of the journey. What matters afterward is how you take what you learned and integrate it into your life.
This is a powerful reminder for anyone interested in Peru jungle retreats, plant medicine, or transformative travel. The deepest travel experiences do not end when you leave the destination. They continue in the way you live, create, eat, work, and relate to others afterward.
Beyond Ayahuasca: Vipassana & A Song Is a Seed
Ben’s journey with ayahuasca is also connected to his long-term practice of Vipassana meditation. In the episode, Brighde and Ben talk about the intensity of a 10-day silent Vipassana course and how challenging that kind of inner work can be.
Ben says that Vipassana was one of the hardest things he has ever done, even compared with a month of ayahuasca ceremonies. For him, both practices opened different doors into self-reflection, healing, and transformation.
These experiences inspired his book, A Song Is a Seed. The book brings together journaling, poetry, photography, music, and reflections on ayahuasca and Vipassana. Ben describes it as a multi-sensory creative project, connected to both his spiritual journey and his life as a musician.
You can find Ben’s books here
Vegan-Friendly Accommodations & Retreats in Peru
Ben also provided a couple of retreat and accommodation recommendations for travellers interested in wellness, vegan food, and the Sacred Valley or Amazon.
Willka T’ika is a wellness retreat in the Sacred Valley with organic gardens, while Treehouse Lodge may be of interest to travellers heading into the Amazon who are looking for a more immersive jungle stay.
Iquitos and the Amazon: Vegan-Friendly Food Mentions
For travellers heading toward Iquitos, the gateway to the Amazon, Ben also shared a few food recommendations that may be useful for people before or after a retreat.
These are especially relevant for travellers looking for plant-based, simple, or retreat-friendly meals in the Amazon region.
Final Thoughts: Vegan Travel in Peru as Inner and Outer Journey
Ben’s story reminds us that vegan travel in Peru can be about far more than finding plant-based meals, although this episode offers plenty of food inspiration.
It can also be about slowing down, listening more deeply, exploring the connection between plants and healing, and allowing a destination to shape you in unexpected ways.
From Raw Café in Lima to vegan hubs in Cusco, from the mountains of the Sacred Valley to a month in the Amazon jungle, Ben’s journey shows how travel can become both an outer adventure and an inner transformation.
For vegan travellers, chefs, seekers, and anyone curious about ayahuasca, Vipassana, plant-based living, and conscious travel, this episode offers a thoughtful and deeply personal look at what it means to be nourished, not just full.
Listen to the full episode of The World Vegan Travel Podcast to hear Ben Riddle share his story in his own words.
Learn More About What is Discussed on the Podcast
- Vegan travel in Peru and how to find plant-based food in Lima, Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and the Amazon region
- Lima’s vegan and health-conscious food scene, including raw cafés, sprouted foods, kombucha, and local produce
- Cusco and the Sacred Valley as hubs for vegan food, wellness travel, and eco-conscious restaurants
- Ben’s experience with ayahuasca, plant medicine, and the preparation process known as the dieta
- What life can be like at a Peru jungle retreat, including quiet reflection, ceremony, journaling, and integration
- The connection between vegan cooking, healing, creativity, Vipassana meditation, and Ben’s book A Song Is a Seed
Other World Vegan Travel Content Connected With This Episode
- Vegan Lima Guide | Markets, Ceviche & Local Life
- Vegan Travel-Inspired Recipes with Chef Adina
- How to Meaningfully Elevate Your Travels | Claire Burt | Ep 103
- Adventures Volunteering Around the World with WWOOF and WorkAway | Carla Bragagnini | Ep 119
- Vegan Solo Travel | Seeking Peace Across 11 Countries
