Iquitos, Loreto · Version 1.0 · 6 August 2026
Terms of Service
Most retreat terms are written to protect the centre from the guest. These are written so you can read them before you pay and know exactly where you stand — starting with every circumstance in which you get your money back.
You are never charged to ask
No deposit until a licensed physician has read your file and offered you a place. Roughly one application in five does not proceed, and a decline costs nothing.
Medical withdrawal is always refunded
In full, at any point, including on the day of arrival. A guest with a new cardiac symptom should be thinking about their heart, not about $5,800.
We do not cancel for low numbers
A week with four guests runs and the maestros are paid the same. If we do cancel, you choose a refund or a transfer.
Part A
The money, on one page
The standard fee is $5,800 in US dollars for a seven night retreat, covering everything on the services page including both optional medicines for guests who are cleared. Some weeks are priced differently and the price is always stated when the place is offered.
- Enquiring and applying
- $0Never charged, at any point, whatever the outcome.
- Declined by the physician
- $0Reason given in writing, plus a referral list. Sometimes a place at one of our Andean houses instead.
- Deposit, once a place is offered
- 30% of the feeHolds the place. Not requested until a physician has confirmed you. An unpaid deposit does not hold a place past 14 days — we email first.
- Balance
- Remaining 70%Due 30 days before arrival, or in equal instalments over three or six months.
- You cancel more than 45 days out
- Full refundEverything paid, including the deposit. No administration fee.
- You cancel 44 to 30 days out
- Balance refundedDeposit retained.
- You cancel inside 30 days
- No refund, one free moveThe fee can be transferred once to any week within twelve months.
- You withdraw for a medical reason
- Full refund, any timeIncluding on the day of arrival, with a letter from your own physician. Deliberately open ended.
- You cannot hold the dieta
- Free transferTell us and we move you to a later week. That is a scheduling conversation, not a cancellation.
- You leave partway through
- No refund for unused nightsTransport to Iquitos is arranged for you.
- We cancel the week
- Your choiceFull refund, or transfer to another week or another of our houses at no extra cost.
- We cancel inside 14 days
- Refund plus up to $500Towards documented airline change fees. Which is why we ask you not to book flights before confirmation.
- Not included in the fee
- Flights, insurance, vaccinationsBudget $900–$1,500 in flights from most US hubs, plus nights in Iquitos either side and any appointments with your own prescriber.
Refunds are returned by the method you paid, usually within 14 days. We do not take card payments at the property and we never store card numbers.
Before you pay
These terms are between you and Iquitos Ayahuasca Retreats, which operates a twelve guest centre ninety minutes upriver from Iquitos, in Loreto, Peru. They apply from the moment you submit an application and continue through your integration year.
An application is not a booking
By applying you confirm you are at least 18, that you are applying on your own behalf, and that what you tell us is complete and true to the best of your knowledge. A booking exists only once a physician has confirmed a place, we have written offering it, and a deposit has been received.
A physician decides, and may decline
A licensed physician reads every application before any place is offered or payment taken. Screening usually takes about two weeks. We decline roughly one in five, always with the reason in writing and never with a charge.
We may decline you for Iquitos and offer a place at one of our Andean houses instead, because a hospital an hour away by road is a different medical margin from one ninety minutes away by river. We may also decline without a detailed clinical reason where giving one would be inappropriate, and we may decline an application we do not believe is being made freely.
Insurance is a condition, not advice
You must hold travel insurance for the whole trip including emergency medical treatment and medical evacuation. We ask for confirmation before arrival and will not accept a guest without it.
This is not boilerplate. From the maloca a hospital is ninety minutes away, thirty of them on the river, and evacuation cover is the element most standard policies omit. Check also that your policy does not void cover for participation in traditional plant ceremonies — some do. Ask the insurer in writing, and if the answer is no, tell us and we will point you to insurers other guests have used.
Before you fly
Four to six weeks of preparation sit between a confirmed place and your first night. Most of what can go wrong with a retreat goes wrong here, quietly, before anyone reaches the river.
What you must tell us, and keep telling us
- Every medication, supplement and travel-clinic prescription, with dose and duration — and any change after you apply
- Do not fill a malaria prescription until we have confirmed it is compatible
- Any medication taper arranged with your own prescriber, on their timeline, never compressed to fit a retreat date
- Valid travel documents; entry requirements are your responsibility
- Someone at home who knows your dates, because there is no phone signal past the boat
Declaring something late is fine — tell us at any point, including on arrival, and we will work with it. Concealing a material medical fact is the one thing that genuinely endangers you, and it is grounds for us to end your stay without refund.
Arrive the day before
There is no road into Iquitos. A delayed connection in Lima should cost you a hotel room, not a ceremony, so we ask every guest to sleep in the city the night before their week begins. We do not book or profit from that night.
The dieta is a safety requirement
The vine inhibits monoamine oxidase, and tyramine-rich food, alcohol and several classes of medication interact with that. The full explanation is in our article on why the dieta is pharmacology rather than purity.
If you arrive having broken it, tell the physician. Depending on what and when, we may delay your first ceremony, adjust your participation, or rarely decline to serve you — none of which affects your room, your food or your integration calls. Concealing it is treated as a safety breach instead.
At the retreat
Twelve people share one room for four nights, ninety minutes from help. Almost every rule below exists because of that sentence.
Conduct, in six lines
- No alcohol, cannabis or undisclosed substances on the property at any point
- No photography or recording of other guests, the maestros, or any ceremony
- Phones stay in the box during ceremony
- Nothing another guest shares leaves the property
- Do not leave the property alone — it is forest and river, not grounds
- Treat the maestros and the local team as colleagues, not as scenery
We may end a stay for bringing alcohol or undisclosed substances onto the property, concealing a material medical fact, or behaviour that makes the maloca unsafe for other guests. Transport to Iquitos is arranged at our cost, onward travel is yours, and no refund is due. We have every intention of never using this clause.
The optional medicines are never sold to you
Kambo and Bufo are included for guests who are separately cleared and who ask. They are never suggested to a guest who did not raise them, and they are not priced separately — charging for them would give us a financial reason to recommend them.
Kambo needs a separate clearance from the physician. Bufo needs independent clearance from both the physician and your integration lead, and either may decline without explanation. Being declined creates no entitlement to a refund, discount or substitution. You may withdraw from any medicine at any point, including on the morning itself, and nobody will ask twice.
The physician may say no during the week
A physician is on site all seven nights and awake through every ceremony, and may decline to serve any medicine to any guest on medical grounds at any point. That decision is final. No refund is due for a ceremony declined on medical grounds, though we will discuss a transfer where that is fair.
What our medical care is, and is not
Oxygen, a defibrillator and emergency medication are held on the property, an evacuation protocol is rehearsed monthly, and a boat is kept fuelled at the dock around the clock. What that is not is a hospital: we can stabilise and evacuate, not provide surgical, intensive or specialist care.
In an emergency we will act in your best interests, including sharing what a treating clinician needs to know. The costs of external treatment and evacuation are yours, which is what the insurance is for. We are also not an emergency mental health service — if you are in crisis before travelling, contact your local service first; in the US, call or text 988.
Nobody photographs you
Any image of you exists only because you asked for it and agreed in writing, and consent can be withdrawn afterwards. The maestros are photographed only with permission, and we do not reproduce Shipibo textile patterns as decoration. How we handle your information is set out in our privacy policy.
The legal frame
The part that exists for lawyers. We have kept it as short as we can and have not hidden anything material in it.
What we do not promise
We make no medical claims. Ayahuasca is not a treatment for any condition and we do not offer it as one. Participants report lasting change; the peer reviewed research is early and limited, and we cite those limitations rather than around them.
We do not promise a particular experience, an insight, a healing, or that you will have any experience at all. We do not promise which maestros will lead a given week, though we tell you if the team changes. And we do not promise the work will be pleasant — a difficult week is a normal outcome, not a failure of service.
What we do promise is the protocol: twelve guests, two maestros per ceremony, a physician awake in the room, medicine cooked on site, and twelve months of integration with the same lead.
Liability
Traditional plant medicine carries real risks, and this site describes them rather than minimising them. By attending you accept those risks having been told what they are, and confirm you have disclosed your medical history fully.
We are liable for our own negligence and for failing to provide the services described here. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything that cannot lawfully be excluded. Outside that, our total liability is limited to the fee you paid.
We are not liable for losses caused by events beyond our reasonable control — weather, river conditions, flight disruption, strikes, civil disruption or public health measures — nor for costs arising from your own failure to disclose a medical fact or hold the required insurance.
Complaints, and then disputes
Tell us first. Email support@eclmedia.agency marked as a complaint and a named person responds within 14 days with a decision rather than an acknowledgement. Most things end there.
If we cannot resolve it, both sides agree to attempt good-faith mediation before commencing proceedings. These terms are governed by the law of Peru and its courts have jurisdiction. Nothing here removes a consumer right in your own country that cannot be excluded by agreement.
This website
The content here is ours and is provided for information. Quote it with attribution; please do not republish it wholesale. Articles are general information, not medical or legal advice. We link to external sources such as public health bodies but do not control them. Our sister houses each publish their own terms and prices.
Changes never apply backwards
We may update these terms, and the version and date at the top always reflect the current edition. Changes never apply retrospectively to a confirmed booking: the terms in force when you booked continue to govern your retreat, and we will email you rather than leave you to notice.
Contact
Questions about these terms, refunds, transfers or complaints go to support@eclmedia.agency. A real person reads it and replies within 48 hours on weekdays.
Ask before you agree, not after. If any clause here would change your decision, write and ask before you pay a deposit. We would far rather explain a term to a cautious applicant than argue about it with a disappointed guest.
No charge to apply · reviewed within 48 hours
You have read the terms. Now ask the awkward question.
Nothing is charged to enquire or to apply, and no deposit is taken until a physician has read your file and offered you a place.