Iquitos, Loreto · Ninety minutes upriver · Twelve guests
About Us
We are new, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What is not new is the lineage in the ceremony room, and here it is not visiting.
Guests per retreat, never more.
From cut vine to our own cooking fire.
Applications declined, with the reason in writing.
Months of integration, included in the price.
Our Sacred Valley house admits it sits in a Quechua valley. Here that gap does not exist.
We say the same thing on our Peru site, plainly: the valley is Quechua, the medicine and the icaros are Shipibo. It is an honest sentence and it costs that house something to write. This house does not have to write it. The maestros come from communities on the Ucayali, the river that joins the Marañón to form the Amazon a short way from this dock.
The maestros are in their own watershed
Paoyhan and Nueva Betania are Ucayali communities. The maestros are not flown to a week here and flown home; they are working on their own river, in their own language, on their own ground.
The plants are cut an hour away
Banisteriopsis caapi and chacruna, cut within an hour of the maloca and cooked on site over two days. A highland center can control almost every part of its week except this one.
There is no altitude to recover from
Roughly 100 metres, so you are ready to sit on the second night instead of spending two days adjusting. What you do adjust to is heat, humidity and the forest after dark.
And what that costs you
Ninety minutes to a hospital in Iquitos, thirty of them on the river. That is the honest number, and any lodge quoting under an hour has not timed the boat. It is not a footnote to this page — it is the reason our screening is stricter than a city center’s needs to be, and the reason we decline applications a more convenient location could safely accept.
Iquitos is also the largest city in the world with no road to it. Getting to us is a genuine travel day: Lima, then about two hours north, then an hour by road and thirty minutes by boat. If that logistics chain is the wrong shape for your life, one of our Andean houses will suit you better and we will say so.
02 · From the founder
I could not find a retreat I would send someone I loved to.
Plenty were beautiful. Almost none would tell me who was in the room at four in the morning, what happened if a guest’s heart rate climbed, or how much the maestros were actually paid.
So I built the answer to those three questions first and designed the retreat around them second. A licensed physician reads every application before anyone takes a payment. A doctor stays on site through all seven nights and is awake through every ceremony. The maestros are named on this website, credited, and paid a full professional fee plus travel whether four guests come or twelve.
Iquitos was not the easy house to open. The Sacred Valley is an hour from a city with hospitals and an international airport, and guests can drive to it. Here the last thirty minutes are on water and there is no phone signal past the boat. I opened it anyway, because in eighteen months of visiting centers the ones that moved me most were the ones where the maestros were not guests themselves.
I will not dress up the fact that we are new. We do not have ten years of reviews here and I am not going to buy any. What I can do is publish the protocol, publish the price, publish the names, and decline the applications we should decline. Roughly one in five does not proceed, and that number is the one I care most about protecting as we grow.
If you are weighing us against a center with a longer history, ask both of us the same four questions and ask for it in writing. Then choose whichever answer you trust more. If that is not us, I would genuinely rather you went there.
Six commitments we would rather be held to than praised for
Written down so you can check them, and so we cannot quietly drop one as we grow. Two of the six read differently here than at our Andean houses, and those two are marked.
A physician decides, not a salesperson
Every application is read by a licensed doctor before a place is offered or a payment is taken. Medications are assessed individually and any taper is planned around your own prescriber’s timeline, never around a week we want to fill.
We say no about one time in five
Declined applicants are never charged, always get the reason in writing, and receive a referral list. Ninety minutes from a hospital, cardiac and blood pressure history is read harder here, so some guests are declined for Iquitos and offered a place in the Andes instead.
The maestros are named, credited and paid properly
A full professional fee per week plus travel and time away from their communities, paid whether four guests come or twelve. They are photographed only with permission, and we never reproduce Shipibo textile patterns as decoration.
Twelve guests, and two maestros in every ceremony
One maestro for every three guests. We run a limited number of weeks a year rather than filling the calendar, so that the team, the land and the maestros all recover. A bigger group is a cheaper group, and a worse one.
Integration is a year, and it is included
Four calls in the first three months, then quarterly for a year, with the same lead who read your file before you travelled. They call you rather than waiting to be chased, on your time zone, at no extra charge.
We make no medical claims
Ayahuasca is not a treatment for any condition. Guests who fly this far expecting a cure tend to leave disappointed and sometimes worse, so we say it on the screening call rather than in a footer.
If a center will not tell you who is singing over you, that is your answer
Shipibo maestros from the Paoyhan and Nueva Betania communities in Ucayali, a physician on site every night, and an integration lead who stays with you for a year. Everyone who touches your week is on this page.
Maestro Rono Meni
Paoyhan, Ucayali · thirty one years in lineageOur senior maestro. Leads the first and fourth ceremonies of every week.
Maestra Sanken Bea
Nueva Betania, Ucayali · twenty six years in lineageWorks with plant baths and the dieta alongside ceremony, and walks the garden most mornings to choose what is cut.
Maestro Inin Soi
Paoyhan, Ucayali · nineteen years in lineageSecond maestro in most ceremonies, and the one guests tend to talk to at dawn.
Attending physician
Iquitos · internal medicineReads every application, runs intake, and stays on site awake through all four ceremonies. Named to you in writing before you are asked for anything.
Your integration lead is introduced by name on your screening call, before you commit to anything, because they are the person you will still be speaking to a year later. Our boatman and landing crew are local to the river and on call around the clock; the boat is kept fuelled at the dock day and night.
05 · The house
An hour by road, thirty minutes by river, and then nothing
A screened property upriver from Iquitos, chosen for two unromantic reasons: the plant garden the maestros walked before we signed anything, and a landing that a boat can reach in any month of the year, including the ones that rain hardest.
One maloca, twelve rooms nobody shares, a dieta kitchen with a nutritionist, and a garden thirty yards from where you sleep that the plant baths are cut from that morning. Every room and the maloca are screened. We supply nets and unscented repellent, because the dieta rules out fragranced products.
Loreto is roughly 88 degrees and heavy humidity year round, with rain in any month. We are not going to sell you a dry season that does not exist. There is also no phone signal past the boat, so somebody at home should know your dates. That is not an atmospheric detail; it is a thing to arrange before you fly.
What we cannot offer you yet, said out loud
Every center our age has these gaps. Most hide them behind stock photography and borrowed testimonials.
Not years of reviews
This house opened in 2026, so there is no decade of guest history to read, and we will not buy or borrow any. What we publish instead is the protocol, the price and the names, all checkable before you pay.
Not an easy trip
Iquitos has no road. It is a long travel day from most US cities and the last leg is a boat. If you need a retreat you can drive to, we are the wrong house and one of our Andean locations is the right one.
Not a cure, and not treatment
We make no medical claims and will say so on your screening call if you are hoping for one. Guests who arrive expecting a fix tend to leave disappointed, and occasionally worse.
Not comfortable, in the resort sense
Heat, humidity, insects and rain in any month. Screened rooms and nets, not air conditioning and a spa menu. Guests who cannot tolerate that load are better served in the Sacred Valley, and we will tell you so during screening rather than after you have paid.
Not available next month
Screening takes about two weeks and the dieta takes three more. If you want to sit in four weeks, we are the wrong center and we will tell you in the first email.
Not a fifty week calendar
A limited number of weeks a year, twelve guests each. If you need a specific week at short notice we will often be full and we will say so rather than squeezing you in.
Iquitos or the Sacred Valley
We run both. There is no wrong answer here, only a wrong fit, and we would rather move you between houses than sell you the one you clicked on first.
| Iquitos, Loreto | Sacred Valley | |
|---|---|---|
| The medicine | Cut within an hour, cooked on site | Sourced from the lowlands and brought in |
| The lineage | Shipibo maestros in their own watershed | Shipibo maestros in a Quechua valley |
| Altitude | About 100 m. Sit on night two | Low for the Andes, but still an adjustment |
| Nearest hospital | Ninety minutes, thirty by river | About an hour, by road |
| Getting there | Lima, flight, road, then a boat | Cusco, then a drive |
| Climate | 88°F and humid, rain in any month | Dry, cool nights, high sun |
| Screening | Stricter, particularly on cardiac history | The group standard |
| Choose it if | Provenance and lineage matter most to you | Access, climate or a medical margin matter more |
A short history, honestly dated
We will keep adding to this rather than quietly rewriting the beginning.
Michael visits retreats across Peru and Costa Rica as a guest
Fourteen centers. Four would put their medical protocol in writing. The lowland houses were the ones where the maestros were not visitors.
The screening protocol is written before any property is signed
Thirty four questions, a medication list, and the conditions we cannot hold. The evacuation timing for a river site was calculated at this stage, not after opening.
The group opens with the Sacred Valley house
Applications open for the first weeks. The Iquitos property is already found and the maestros have walked its garden.
The Iquitos house opens upriver in Loreto
Same protocol, same pay standard, same twelve guest limit, with screening tightened for the distance to a hospital.
Sister houses in Cusco, Pisac and Costa Rica
Every location published with its own honest travel time to a hospital, rather than a group average.
09 · Questions
About us, specifically
How long has the Iquitos house been operating?
Why build in Iquitos rather than the Sacred Valley?
Should I be worried about booking a new center?
Who owns Iquitos Ayahuasca Retreats?
How are the maestros paid?
Why only twelve guests?
Does being ninety minutes from a hospital change how you run?
Are you connected to the other locations?
Do you make any medical claims?
No charge to apply · reviewed within 48 hours
Ask us the four questions.
Who reads my medical file, how far is the nearest hospital, how are the healers paid, and how often do you say no. Ask us in writing, then ask everyone else you are considering. We are comfortable being compared on those answers.