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One's own --and other people's-- estrangement is a valuable topic in Anthropology when we explore new habits and scenarios: this article raises awareness of the critical abilities of those people who, being unfamiliar with their cultural surroundings, plainly criticize what they observe. In November 1996 the Casa de América in Madrid held a seminar on indigenous medicine together with a Kallawaya master, my friend Germán. His accurate analysis of the situations he experienced, not as much at the seminar as on the streets, is a valuable cognitive testimony of the expectations that a sage like him has when doing their trips and consultations in Bolivia. His observations are close to what would be expected from a "redneck", villager or parochial person in Madrid, Spain's capital, but I argue that this is just a reflection of how uncomfortable those ones entrenched in their "urban" values can feel before Germán's deep comments: in this situation the "redneck" is not the person expressing their surprise and discrepancies with their own --supposedly rural-- worldview, but the one who cannot provide convincing arguments on the things being discussed and apparently misinterpreted by the "other". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]