Iquitos, Loreto · Optional · No extra charge
Kambo In Iquitos
Twenty to forty unpleasant minutes that you are fully awake for. No visions, no detox claims, and a separate medical clearance from the one that got you into ceremony. Here is exactly what happens, in the forest the frog actually lives in.
Minutes, start to finish.
Psychoactive effect, fully conscious.
Minimum gap from any ceremony.
Extra, if you are cleared and ask.
A frog secretion, applied to the skin, and then twenty hard minutes
Kambo is the secretion of the giant monkey frog, Phyllomedusa bicolor, which lives in the Amazon basin — including the forest on the other side of this river. It contains a family of peptides that act on the gut, the cardiovascular system and the immune response. A practitioner makes several small superficial burns on the skin, usually on the shoulder or lower leg, and applies dots of the dried secretion to them.
Within a minute or two your face flushes and swells, your heart rate climbs, and a heavy pressure builds. Most people vomit. Twenty to forty minutes later it stops, fairly abruptly, and you spend the afternoon feeling wrung out and unusually clear.
Nothing about it is psychedelic. You are completely present, aware of the room, able to speak and to ask the practitioner to stop.
02 · A session, minute by minute
The whole thing takes less than an hour
Timings are approximate and vary by person. This is the shape of a session as we run it: on a rest day, early in the morning, before the heat of the day builds.
The physician signs off, again
Kambo clearance is confirmed separately from your ayahuasca clearance. Blood pressure is taken, and if anything has changed during the week — poor sleep, a stomach upset, a rough ceremony — the session is postponed or cancelled. Nobody is talked back into it.
Water, measured
You drink roughly a litre of water beforehand, and no more. This is the detail that matters most: the deaths associated with Kambo are overwhelmingly linked to excessive water loading, so we measure it rather than telling you to drink as much as you can. In this climate that discipline matters more, not less.
The points are made
Four to six small superficial burns, usually on the shoulder or lower leg, made with a smouldering vine tip. They sting for a few seconds. They are shallower than most people expect and leave small round marks that fade over months.
Application, and the onset
Dots of the secretion are placed on the points. Heat rises through the chest and face almost immediately, the heart rate climbs, and the face may swell noticeably. The practitioner stays directly beside you from here.
The peak
Heavy pressure in the head, a pounding heart, strong nausea, sometimes shaking or a brief drop in blood pressure. Most people purge somewhere in here. This is the part people describe as intense, and it is the part that ends.
It draws down
The intensity fades in waves rather than all at once. The practitioner removes the points when they judge it is time, which can be earlier if you ask. You lie still, warm, and slightly stunned.
Over, and quicker than you expected
Swelling reduces within the hour and is usually gone by evening. Most guests feel wrung out and oddly light. Electrolytes and a small amount of food follow when you are ready, and you stay in the shade for the rest of the morning.
Nothing scheduled
Sleep, the garden, a plant bath in the afternoon if you want one. No ceremony that night and none the night before. The next ceremony is at least twenty four hours away.
You can stop it
Say so and the points come off. The effect subsides within minutes of removal. Nobody will ask you to hold on a bit longer, and nobody in the group is told whether you finished the session.
About the marks
Small round scars, roughly the size of a match head, that fade over six to twelve months and sometimes remain faintly. Worth knowing before your shoulder is visible at a wedding.
Who is with you
One trained practitioner working one to one, with the retreat physician on the property. Fluid intake is measured throughout and blood pressure is taken before and after.
What the internet says about Kambo, and what we will actually tell you
Kambo detoxes your body and cleans your liver.
No. We make no detox claims. Your liver and kidneys do that work. The vomiting is a physiological response to the peptides, not evidence of toxins leaving. Anyone selling it as a cleanse is describing a marketing idea, not a mechanism.
It boosts your immune system.
Unproven. The peptides are genuinely interesting to researchers and some are being studied. That is a long way from a clinical claim about your immune system, and we will not make one.
It is completely safe, it is natural.
No. There have been deaths. Most trace to excessive water loading, unscreened cardiac conditions, or untrained practitioners. It puts a real load on blood pressure and fluid balance, which is exactly why we screen it separately and measure your water.
Drink as much water as you can beforehand.
This is the single most dangerous piece of advice in circulation. Hyponatraemia from water loading is the most commonly cited factor in serious Kambo incidents. We give you about a litre, measured, and no more.
It prepares you for ayahuasca.
It does not. They are unrelated in mechanism and we never run them close together. Kambo sits on a rest day, at least twenty four hours from any ceremony in either direction.
The jungle is the safest place to do it, since the frog is from there.
Proximity is not safety. Being close to the source means a short, checkable supply chain, and that is a genuine advantage. It does not make the cardiovascular load smaller, and a hospital is ninety minutes away. The two facts are unrelated and we treat them that way.
The frogs are killed for it.
No. The frog is not killed and is released after collection. Demand has still led to poor handling in parts of the trade, so we source only from communities in Loreto who collect traditionally and release the animal, and we will name the community if you ask.
Kambo is not a smaller version of ayahuasca
People arrive assuming these are two strengths of the same thing. They share almost nothing except the region they come from and the fact that both are screened before you are allowed near them.
| Kambo | Ayahuasca | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Frog secretion on the skin | A brew of vine and leaf, drunk |
| Psychoactive | No, fully conscious throughout | Yes, profoundly |
| Duration | Twenty to forty minutes | Five to six hours |
| When | Early morning, on a rest day | Night, four times in the week |
| Setting | One to one with a practitioner | Group of twelve, two maestros |
| Main risk | Cardiovascular load and water loading | MAO inhibition and medication interaction |
| What the heat adds | A real factor. It is why sessions run before the day warms | Little. The maloca cools once the sun goes down |
| Can you stop it | Yes, points removed and it subsides in minutes | No, once you have drunk it you ride it out |
| Included | Yes, optional, no extra charge | Yes, four ceremonies every week |
05 · Screening
A separate clearance, with its own list
Kambo loads the cardiovascular system and shifts fluid balance quickly. That risk has nothing to do with the MAO inhibition governing ayahuasca screening, so it gets its own assessment against your file, and it is declined on its own terms.
Absolute stops
- Any heart condition or arrhythmia
- Low blood pressure
- Addison’s disease or adrenal insufficiency
- Pregnancy or breastfeeding
- Recovery from recent surgery
- Current chemotherapy
- Serious epilepsy or brain haemorrhage history
Reviewed individually
- Blood pressure medication and beta blockers
- Diuretics and anything affecting fluid balance
- Kidney or liver conditions
- Diabetes, particularly type 1
- A history of fainting or vasovagal episodes
- Any medication changed during your taper
- Whether you have adjusted to the climate yet
How we run it safely
- Water measured, roughly one litre, never loaded
- Blood pressure before and after
- One practitioner, one guest, never a group
- Physician on the property throughout
- Early morning, never before or after a ceremony
- Postponed without argument on a bad day
In this heat, we are stricter
Loreto runs around 88 degrees with heavy humidity year round. Guests arrive at a Kambo session already closer to their fluid limits than they would be in the mountains, and the cardiovascular load lands on top of that rather than on a rested baseline. So sessions run early, never in the afternoon, and never in the first forty eight hours after you land while your body is still adjusting. We cancel on marginal days rather than proceeding, and ninety minutes from a hospital we decline more people for Kambo than a center near a city would.
Not medical advice
These lists are not exhaustive and nothing on this page is medical advice. Send your file, including supplements, antimalarials and anything prescribed since you applied, and let the physician decide.
Roughly half of our guests take it
The other half either are not cleared or decide they do not want it, and neither group is asked twice. Because it costs nothing extra, we have no reason to push it, and because it is genuinely unpleasant, we would rather you chose it deliberately.
If you are already anxious about the ceremonies, skip it on a first visit. Adding a hard physical experience to a week that is already demanding rarely helps anyone — and here the week already includes a long travel day and a climate your body is still learning.
Guests who tend to want it
- Have done it before and know the shape of it
- Are drawn to a short, physical, contained challenge
- Feel stuck in the body rather than the head
- Are medically straightforward with clean blood pressure
- Have settled into the heat by mid week
Guests we tend to steer away
- First timers who are already nervous about ceremony
- Anyone mid taper or newly off a medication
- People arriving on very little sleep or unwell
- Anyone hoping it will detox or fix something specific
- Anyone still visibly struggling with the humidity
07 · Included in the week
No extra charge, and that is a safeguard
Kambo is part of the $5,800 seven night retreat for guests who are separately cleared and who ask for it. We do not price it as an add-on, because charging for it would give us a financial reason to recommend it. That is not a discount, it is a safeguard.
It is never suggested to a guest who did not raise it, and skipping it costs you nothing at all — not the room, not the food, not a single integration call.
08 · Questions
About Kambo in Iquitos
Does it hurt?
Why does the Amazon heat change how you run Kambo?
Will I definitely vomit?
Is Kambo dangerous?
Does it actually detox anything?
Will it leave scars?
Can I stop partway through?
Can I do it on a ceremony day?
Are the frogs harmed?
No charge to apply · reviewed within 48 hours
Ask whether you are cleared, not whether you should want it.
One application covers all three medicines. The physician assesses Kambo on its own contraindications and tells you plainly whether it is open to you. Nothing is charged either way, and choosing to skip it costs you nothing at all.