So I was a guest two years ago and have been negatively impacted by the experience.

I’m not trying to hurt the reputation of the center in anyway but I want to provide comprehensive experiential information so that others can make the best decision for themselves.

I’m a psychotherapist with a decade and half of experience and have been studying indigenous cultures for nearly a decade. I’ve drank ayahuasca upwards of 100 times within the Santo Daime religion, and various shamanic cultures in Peru, Costa Rica, Columbia, Ecuador, and Mexico.

I’ll start with some of the good things about the retreat. Most of the support staff including Omar and the cook were great and treated you like family. The shaman was a solid approachable guy. The food was great and prepared with genuine love. The medicine was pretty smooth for what it is and not overly purgative. The weather and the mosquitoes were not too bad for the jungle.

Some of the so so things included the structure of the ceremony. After the shaman sang and worked on everyone he left. It was a little uneasy for me to see this because it was typically fairly early in the night and to not see someone holding the space caused a little bit of fear. Also, most of the guests are from the Czech Republic and don’t speak English. They were very nice folks but I wished this was revealed to me before I booked the trip because integrating with other guests is an important component of medicine work for me. Additionally, the integration in three languages was very long and tiring. And the facilitators could have put a little more effort in connecting to the guests, maybe in eating with them occasionally for example. A few folks have given respectful constructive feedback on google but it always seems to get taken down.

The uglier side of things…
There was no psychological screening at all. There was a guest with very severe borderline personality that caused lots of problems. I got a cold during the trip and went to lay down. Upon waking up I discovered that the guest with borderline was presenting my cold as plague like symptoms and scaring guests. I offered to take a covid test to satisfy their concerns and the facilitator told me that he wasn’t concerned because I didn’t have a fever. This upset the guest with borderline and she decided to access and share confidential medical records. I do not believe the breach to have been intentional but the owner did not seem to understand the damage that this caused. I believe that he could have done several things to make the situation right (refund, time with shaman, looking into the incident, etc) but he didn’t. I decided to look into the incident for myself after the trip to see how much of my information was leaked and it led to the center creating a fake website in my name which detailed my profession, my location, and even had a private picture of me. They also shared my demographic and contact information with at least 1 guest without my consent. I asked repeatedly and respectfully for the website to be taken down, as did a lawyer friend, but one year later it still hasn’t been. I’m backed into a corner in writing this review but I hope that it will help others. I still have nightmares about this experience but I don’t want to fight with the center. I send them love, peace, healing, and success.