Quillabamba Ayahuasca Retreats
La Convención, Cusco · high jungle at 1,050 m · 12 guests
7 nights on the Urubamba river where the Andes stop and the jungle starts, 2,350 metres below Cusco. 4 ceremonies with Shipibo maestros, a physician on site every night, a hospital 15 minutes away, and a screening process that declines about 1 application in 5. Nothing is charged until a doctor confirms your place.
Elevation here, against 3,399 m in Cusco.
Guests per retreat, never more.
To the hospital in Quillabamba, sealed road.
Months of integration, included in the price.
Cusco city sits at 3,399 metres. Quillabamba sits at about 1,050. That single number is the whole reason this house exists, and it is the reason some of the people we decline for Cusco are accepted here instead. These are the 4 arguments, and you can check every one of them against any other center you are considering.
Ayahuasca raises heart rate and blood pressure. So does 3,399 metres. In Cusco those 2 loads stack, which is why our physician measures oxygen saturation there and why nobody drinks on their first or second night in the city. At 1,050 metres the second load is simply absent. Your heart is doing 1 job, not 2.
Hospital de Quillabamba is about 15 minutes from the property on sealed road, no pass to cross and no river to ford. That is a shorter run than most Andean valley centers can offer and far shorter than any Amazon lodge, and it is the reason the physician will read a thinner medical history here than anywhere else we run.
Ceremony runs 5 to 6 hours lying still in the dark. Here that happens at about 20 C with the river audible through the walls. In Cusco it happens near freezing. Warm is not automatically easier, and guests who run hot say so, but a cold body burns energy all night that a warm one does not.
You land in Cusco at 3,399 metres and then go down. Physiologically that is the direction bodies handle well. The week costs you a road day at each end rather than 2 acclimatisation days in the middle, and you spend that road day going downhill.
The road. Quillabamba is about 204 km from Cusco and the drive takes 5 to 7 hours over the Abra Málaga pass at roughly 4,300 metres, higher than anything else on your trip. There is no commercial airport here. If a long mountain road is the thing you cannot face, book our Cusco house instead and we will manage the altitude for you there.
The other cost is heat. Days run around 30 C and the humidity does not let up. Guests who came for cool Andean air are consistently surprised by how much of the week is spent damp.
Quillabamba is the capital of La Convención, the province that sits on the far side of the Andes from Cusco. Peruvians call this the ceja de selva, the eyebrow of the jungle: the band where the mountains break down into rainforest. It is coffee and cacao country, worked land rather than wilderness, and the same Urubamba river that runs past Ollantaytambo runs past here, 2,350 metres lower and much wider.
We do not publish the gate. 12 people live here for 7 nights, and the address goes to guests in writing once a physician confirms a place.
Siete Tinajas, 7 stacked pools on a waterfall about 20 km out, is the one everybody goes to. Yanay in Maranura drops around 70 metres. Illapani sits over in Echarate. There are coffee and cacao farms in every direction, and most of them will show you the whole process from harvest to cup for the price of a taxi.
Do all of it before the retreat or on a rest day, not after. The week ends with 4 ceremonies behind you and a 5 to 7 hour road back to Cusco, and that is already more than most nervous systems want.
03 · What is offered here
Ayahuasca is the week. Kambo and Bufo are offered only to guests who are separately cleared and who ask, and neither costs extra, because charging for them would give us a reason to recommend them.
5 to 6 hours, dusk to dawn, 12 guests and 2 maestros.
A brew of caapi vine and chacruna, drunk in the dark while the maestros sing almost continuously. 4 ceremonies with rest nights between them, because the first is usually spent learning how to be in the room. Both plants grow in this province, which is not true of anywhere in the Andes.
20 to 40 minutes, fully conscious, on a rest day.
A frog secretion applied to small superficial burns on the skin. Not psychoactive, genuinely unpleasant, and always at least 24 hours from a ceremony. We measure your water rather than loading it, and in this heat we measure it twice, because sweat loss here is not what it is at altitude.
15 minutes most people cannot describe afterwards.
Synthetically sourced 5-MeO-DMT, 1 to 1, only on the morning after the final ceremony, and only when the physician and your integration lead agree independently. Most first time guests are asked to wait.
We do not put you on a 7 hour mountain road on the same day you land at 3,399 metres. You sleep in Cusco first, at our cost, and we drive down the next morning. That night is included and it is not one of the 7.
Collected at Alejandro Velasco Astete airport. A hotel night in Cusco, included. No walking tour, no Sacsayhuamán, no dinner out. You have just gained 3,399 metres and you give it back tomorrow.
5 to 7 hours through Urubamba and Ollantaytambo, over the Abra Málaga pass at about 4,300 metres, then a long descent through Santa María into the heat. We stop twice. You arrive mid afternoon, meet the physician for intake, and go to bed early.
The adjustment here is thermal, not altitudinal, and it is real. Shade, water measured rather than guessed, a plant bath in the afternoon, and an introduction to your integration lead. Blood pressure and resting heart rate checked against what the physician recorded in Cusco.
9 in the evening until first light. Mostly spent working out how to be in the room at all, which is expected. A physician stays awake in the maloca until dawn.
The day before it is deliberately empty. This is usually the night guests describe afterwards: the maestros have watched you once and adjust per person.
Kambo runs in the morning for guests who are separately cleared and asked for it. No ceremony that night. Most guests sleep through the afternoon and are surprised they needed to.
Most weeks this is the quietest one. The room knows itself and the maestros work with less noise.
Guests frequently say this is where the previous 3 finally made sense. The maestros close at first light.
Bufo only where both leads agree, and never within hours of the drive. We leave for Cusco after lunch and put you in a hotel there for the night, because nobody should fly out of 3,399 metres the same day they came up from 1,050. Your first integration call is booked before you leave the property.
We never publish images from inside a ceremony, and no photograph on this page is taken during one.
You need a night in Cusco at each end, and both are included. Do not book a flight out of Cusco for the morning after the final ceremony, because you will still be on the road. Keep the 2 days after you land at home completely empty.
Shipibo maestros from Ucayali communities, a physician on site every night, and an integration lead who stays with you for a year. Everyone who touches your week here is named on this page.
Our senior maestro. Leads the first and fourth ceremonies of every week here.
Works with plant baths and the dieta alongside ceremony.
Second maestro in most ceremonies, and the one guests tend to talk to at dawn.
Reads every application, runs intake in Cusco and again on arrival, and stays awake through all 4 ceremonies. Named to you in writing before you are asked for anything.
It is the water, and nothing else. The Urubamba that runs past Quillabamba joins the Tambo downriver and becomes the Ucayali, which is the river the maestros are from. Same watershed, several hundred kilometres upstream. That is geography, not lineage. La Convención is Quechua country shading into Matsigenka territory downriver, and no amount of river will make it Shipibo.
If provenance is what matters most to you, our Iquitos house sits in the maestros’ own communities and we will book you there instead, at the same price and on the same protocol.
A full professional fee per week plus travel and time away from their communities, paid whether 4 guests come or 12. The journey to this house is longer than to any of our others and they are paid for those days too. Photographed only with permission and paid for it, and we never reproduce Shipibo textile patterns as decoration anywhere on this site.
06 · Before you get excited
We make no medical claims. Ayahuasca is not a cure for any condition, and guests who arrive expecting one tend to leave disappointed and occasionally worse.
5 to 7 hours each way over a 4,300 metre pass, twice. There is no commercial airport. Guests who cannot sit in a vehicle that long should book Cusco, where the drive from the airport is 15 minutes.
Around 30 C by day and humid through the night. Ceremony happens in warm air. Some people find that far harder than cold, and there is no way to know which you are until you are in it.
La Convención is Quechua and Matsigenka. The lineage in the room is Shipibo and travels here from Ucayali. That is an honest gap and we would rather name it than paper over it.
The group was founded in 2026. The maestros carry decades each, but the house does not, and we will not buy reviews to imply otherwise.
Screening takes about 2 weeks and the dieta takes 3 more. If you want to sit in 4 weeks, we are the wrong center.
The dieta kitchen runs with a nutritionist. No salt, no sugar, no alcohol, no fermented food, for 3 weeks before you fly and 1 week after you land. The fruit is local; the coffee and cacao this province is famous for are not on the menu until the week is over.
We run both, on the same protocol, the same pay standard and the same 12 guest limit, at the same price. 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.
| Quillabamba · here | Cusco · the city house | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting there | Cusco, a night, then 5 to 7 hours by road | 15 minutes from the airport |
| Elevation | About 1,050 m. No acclimatisation needed | 3,399 m. 2 days before anyone drinks |
| Nearest hospital | About 15 minutes, in town | Minutes, full regional hospitals |
| Cardiac and respiratory histories | Read without an altitude load on top | Read against 3,399 m, and often declined |
| Climate | Around 30 C, humid, warm nights | Dry, cold nights, high sun |
| The plants | Caapi and chacruna grow in this province | Brought up from the lowlands |
| Choose it if | Altitude is your limit and you can take the road | Your calendar is tight or long drives are not an option |
08 · Price
$5,800 covers the whole thing, including both road transfers, both Cusco hotel nights and the year afterwards. Nothing is upsold once you are here, the optional medicines cost nothing extra, and being declined for one changes nothing about what you paid.
Nothing is charged until a physician confirms your place. Payment plans run over 3 or 6 months once a place is offered. Flights and travel insurance are not included, and we recommend insurance that covers trip cancellation on medical grounds, because sometimes the medical grounds are ours.
We do not run weeks through the heaviest rain months. The Abra Málaga road is the reason, and a week that cannot guarantee the drive out is not a week we will sell. The drier season here runs roughly May to October.
09 · Questions
The house sits on the Urubamba river outside Quillabamba, in La Convención province, on the far side of the Andes from Cusco. The map below shows the town we are on the edge of. We give accepted guests the exact address and a pin once their application is confirmed.
Urubamba river, high jungle of the Cusco region, Peru
Open in Google Maps ›Siete Tinajas is about 20 km out, Yanay in Maranura about 15 km, and Illapani sits over in Echarate. Machu Picchu is reached from Ollantaytambo, which you pass through on the road down.
No charge to apply · reviewed within 48 hours
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 every other center you are considering. We are comfortable being compared on those answers.