We understand that you had a negative experience, and that is not something we wish on anyone. We do wish you the best on your journey, but we also owe a duty to the truth, and you have not been fair or honest.

In light of this, from here on we would rather address future clients, as we don’t feel it is reasonable to engage further with this reviewer, and instead provide some background information so that everyone can make an informed decision.

First and foremost, we invite you to take advantage of our free consultation. Meet us, talk with us, see for yourselves. However, if you would like to read our point of view, we have gone into detail below. Unfortunately, given the length of and amount of misinformation in this review, there is a lot to unpack.

During that consultation call, we explain that we do not have a doctor on site. Rather, there is a doctor on-call in Puerto Jiménez, and we also have a consulting doctor in Switzerland. We explain that Pandorita is only accessible by boat, and that it takes 40 minutes to reach the nearest clinic. We ask all potential clients to be honest about any physical or mental health problems, and we do not allow anyone with known risk factors to participate (more on this later). We are not sure what the reviewer was talking about in regards to an acupuncturist.

Again, to clarify expectations, we are not a medical clinic. To address the reviewer’s demands that we have medical equipment and trained personnel: 1) we would never administer a “saline drip,” as that is an intravenous treatment that is very dangerous for non-medical personnel to administer, and also is not medically indicated; and 2) we do not have an “oxygen mask” on-site either, as it is not practical or safe to store oxygen cylinders in high temperatures. Nobody would. Our policies are well thought-through, and the risks (though much less grave than the reviewer would indicate) are well-explained in advance.

We would like to invite potential clients to read and compare this reviewer’s commentary on this site to their reviews on other platforms. You will notice that the review changes ever so slightly as if to seem like two people, or perhaps because the reviewer struggles to keep the details straight. In one review it was an “asthma attack,” in another review she purportedly urinated on herself. But this is the same person, and so we are addressing both reviews with the same response. We should also note that we have yet to find a characterization of her experience across either review that we really agree with, but we tried to limit our response to the allegations that would concern us if we were looking for an ayahuasca workshop ourselves.

It is also important to give a bit of context about this reviewer. Her infidelity to the truth is not limited to these reviews. She lied to us in her intake interview, and once she was here she bragged about having been rejected by other ayahuasca centers, but being accepted here after lying to us about her mental instability. We feel betrayed that anyone would do that – it is for your safety and for ours that we ask you to be honest in these interviews. Moreover, she was incredibly disrespectful to the Shipibo shamans. You can see it a bit in the reviews already, where she calls one of the shamans “an illiterate man from the jungle,” but we also invite you to read the following from another participant from this reviewer’s retreat:

“I was in the same workshop as the lady who gave it only one star.. When I read this, I felt the need to share my impressions of the encounter with her and also to clarify, how safe and professional this center is. On the very first day, she told me and probably also some other guests that she had lied during the info pre-call with the Pandorita team. She had been rejected by several Ayahuasca centers and had therefore lied about her psychological state of health during the call in order to avoid being rejected again. In addition, the way she was acting during the first two days weren‘t really introspective, but more like she just wanted to „have a good time“. She also kept bringing up her desires for possible sexual encounters during the retreat, eventough this is a complete no-go whilst working with the medicine and participants are asked to adhere to this rule such as other safety precautions like not taking medications etc. She joked about starting an Ayahuasca S*x C*lt there.. When her second ceremony didn‘t go like she wanted, she started blaming the shamans, that they are illiterate people and that they are no doctors.. Some of the things she said seemed quite racist to me.. I felt that she – eventough she wanted to try the medicine – was not ready to face the depths, shadows and fears the medicine can bring up and experienced a panic attack or just was in extreme fight- and flight-mode. Also from my point of view, the facilitators took great care of her and did everything possible to make her feel safe, they tried to talk her down also the morning after, all whilst also being very considerate towards the rest of the group and asking us how we were doing after her outburst and making sure that we also felt safe and being cared for.”

We forbid sexual contact during retreats, we insist upon honesty in our intake interviews, and we do not tolerate racism. None of that is negotiable. We were very happy to organize this reviewer’s early departure.

So, unfortunately, this is not a reliable reviewer. And, again, we are very disappointed that we had this experience. It was hard on us. We put our hearts into this work, and we care deeply about each and every client. Sadly, all of us were treated very disrespectfully by the reviewer. So, we hope that anyone reading this will give us the opportunity to introduce ourselves through one of our free consultation calls, so we can start fresh. We love Ayahuasca, we love this land, and we love our clients. We look forward to meeting you. Thank you for reading.