Before you send a deposit anywhere
Choosing a Huachuma Retreat
Seven questions worth asking any retreat in the Sacred Valley, and our own answer to each.
Ask Before You Book
A good retreat answers these plainly, on a call, before it takes any money. We have set our own answers beside each one, so you can hold us to them too.
The person who guides you is a question of its own. The Huachuma Foundation’s guide to choosing a facilitator goes further into it: referrals, a conversation before you book, and restraint.
Ask for a name, and for how long that person has held ceremony.
Who Guides the Ceremonies, and for How Long?
Miguel Mendiburu guides every ceremony on both paths. He has offered Huachuma ceremonies in the Sacred Valley for more than twenty years, from his home there, and the land where the Huachuma Sanctuary grows is his.
Hamid Jabbar founded Huachuma Works and is with every group, from the first call to the last. Dani Reardon, a certified yoga instructor, sound practitioner and ceremony facilitator, is there on both paths too. More about all three is on our About page.
Groups have traveled to Pisac with us every summer since 2023, two of them in 2026.
Does Anyone Ask About Your Health Before You Pay?
Ask what the application asks, and when you will talk.
Our application asks about your physical and mental health, the medications you take and their doses, and any hard time you have had with a medicine or a ceremony. Some medications, antidepressants and other serotonergic drugs among them, do not combine safely with this medicine, so we ask from the start.
Checking a box rules nobody out. It means we talk it through, and it may mean a conversation with your prescriber. Never stop a prescribed medication on your own.
Nothing is paid until we have spoken one to one, and after the call we both decide. If we decline an application on health grounds, we say so plainly and refund anything already paid, and if we ever ask someone not to come after they have paid, which is rare, we refund everything.
How Many People Will Be There?
Ask how many people will be in the circle, and who is with them.
Each path has nine places, and we take one group at a time to Pisac. Hamid Jabbar and Dani Reardon sleep at the house and are with Miguel Mendiburu on every ceremony, other members of our team are close at hand, and the group itself holds space for everyone. There is rarely any issue.
There are clinics in Pisac, a ten minute walk from the house, and larger hospitals in Cusco, about 45 minutes away by car.
We share a house for the ten days, and most people come on their own. The four preparation calls mean everyone arrives already knowing everybody.
Ask what preparation you get, and who you can turn to once you are home.
What Happens Before You Fly, and After You Come Home?
Before the trip there are four weekly calls with the whole group, on history, science, ceremony and packing, with the preparation materials and packing lists. After we get home there are four group integration sessions, spread over the following months, which is when most of the questions come up. The calls before and the sessions after are online, so the only travel is the ten days.
Is the Price Written Down, and What Does It Cover?
Ask for the full price before you apply, and for what it leaves out.
Every price is on our retreat page, per person, for the ten days. Before you travel it covers four weekly preparation calls, the preparation materials and packing lists, and help coordinating flights. In Peru it covers ten nights in the room you choose, breakfast and dinner together each day, all ground transport, including airport transfers and the ceremony days, the ceremonies with Miguel, and the visit and planting at the Huachuma Sanctuary. After you get home it covers the four integration sessions.
You book your own flights to and from Cusco, and we help you coordinate them. Lunch is on you too, and it is inexpensive in Pisac. We recommend travel and medical insurance but do not require it.
Ask who owns the retreat, and where its profit ends up.
Where Does the Money Go?
Huachuma Works LLC is wholly owned by the Huachuma Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in Arizona. Any profit Huachuma Works LLC makes is returned to the Foundation and applied to its charitable purposes.
Wild Huachuma is being cut faster than it grows back, so the Foundation is planting a hillside of it at the Huachuma Sanctuary, and every group plants there.
Is It Legal?
Ask where the ceremonies happen, and what crosses a border.
Every ceremony on our retreats takes place in Peru. No medicine is supplied, sold, shipped or administered outside Peru, and nothing crosses an international border in connection with the retreat.
What Peru’s law says, source by source, is set out in Is Huachuma Legal in Peru?
If our answers suit you
Heart Path
It runs July 1 to 11, 2027, and is open to everyone.
Fire Path
It runs June 17 to 27, 2027, for experienced seekers.
Applying is free and commits you to nothing. There is no deposit until we have talked.