The Hummingbird Center is a plant-medicine healing center offering ayahuasca retreats including san pedro, with an emphasis on mastering our thoughts and emotions to create the life we desire. It provides a beautiful safe, and supportive environment for your personal journey with ayahuasca. Located near Iquitos, Peru, we offer ayahuasca retreats in Peru of different lengths to meet your personal needs. Our ayahuasca retreats are designed to free you from limiting beliefs, and catalyze healing and transformation. All of our retreats include at least one san pedro ceremony, the visionary cactus of the Andes that is very complementary with ayahuasca. Our longer stays include a master plant dieta with a plant selected by our shaman depending on what you are looking to heal, address or learn. Ayahuasca retreats at the Hummingbird is an opportunity for deep personal and spiritual growth following traditional healing methods with a curandero of exceptional skill and ability.
If you are truly ready to change your life, if you are finally sick and tired of being sick and tired of the morass of your thoughts and emotions, this is the place for you.
We offer retreats of 9 and 12 days, and also have more intensive programs of 2, 3 and 4 weeks that include dietas with master medicine plants. The longer programs are for those looking to go deeper with the medicine, or wanting to address more challenging issues that need more time with ayahuasca and san pedro for significant, lasting change to occur. We strive to match what people are hoping to address with the appropriate length of stay and do not try to push people into a stay longer than our experience indicates is required.
While not overtly spiritual, our work is centered on Mindfulness and guided by the simple precept “Without self awareness, there is no healing.” We emphasize the importance of increasing awareness and understanding of our inner world, of the interplay between our thoughts, our emotions and our body. There is a 25 minute guided meditation before each ayahuasca ceremony, to help set the tone for ceremony and help develop or deepen this practice of Mindfulness.
Unique to the Hummingbird Center are a couple of talks about our conscious and sub-conscious minds, our belief systems, how they shape our experience of life, and how we can change those beliefs so we naturally attract events into our lives in closer alignment with our wishes, desires, and aspirations. We strive to teach our clients practical and simple skills they can use in their daily lives to shift their perception of the world and themselves so they can respond to life’s events and their own emotions in a more productive and peaceful way. The plant medicines will only take us so far. Ultimately, WE are responsible for our lives, and it is important to have skills to navigate our inner world and respond to life in productive and loving ways. Mindfulness. Transformation begins and ends with being mindful, with being self aware.
It is the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen. – Muhammad Ali
The Hummingbird Center is a family owned business run by Jim Davis and his Peruvian wife Gina. Our son and daughter in law also work at the center and contribute to its smooth operation in a variety of ways. Our family lives at the center, along with our 9 year old grand daughter, the light of our lives!!
We understand that women have different and valid concerns around safety than men, and ensuring women feel physically and emotionally safe at our center is our #1 priority. Gina´s presence and loving heart, and her easy care of women’s occasional special needs, contributes to this sense of safety and security. Many of our female clients have commented about how quickly they felt safe and at ease, knowing they would be well cared for.
It is important to understand that ayahuasca and san pedro are not cure alls. They are not going to solve all your problems for you. These powerful and loving spirits can only give us what we are open and willing to receive. An individual’s commitment to their own growth, healing and transformation makes a huge difference in the results they receive. You have to do your part, and that is fundamentally being truly committed to change, and being willing to step into unpleasant experiences if that is what is required for the desired change to occur. Trust and surrender are the keys to getting the most from your time with these medicine plants.
What is clear from over 10 years of guiding people through this work is that the medicine spirits know and understand what each individual needs to bring about the change they are looking for. They guide each person through an individualized process. Your journey of growth, transformation and change will not look like another person’s and there is no value in comparing your journey and experience to that of another. It is clear that under the facilitation of a true ayahuasquero, a true healer, the medicine spirits want to help us and know how to do so. Our job is to allow them to.
We wish we could make some guarantees about outcomes, but we cannot. What we can say, is that if one shows up committed to change, with an attitude of “what ever it takes, I am willing”, enormous change is possible within a very short period of time. Your attitude makes all the difference in what you receive!
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Alexandra Shu
March 14, 2026 at 7:15 amAbsolutely love this place and miss already! Amazing experience of retreat I have ever had. Thanks to the team, who took care of me every single moment like I am a very special person to everyone. My heart was melted. Still, clean, cozy, comfortable and very natural place. Thank you Jim for assisting me in this powerful journey within the ceremonies. I felt love, care and safety with you and your team! Want to come back and go deeper into myself. Would highly recommend Hummingbird Healing Center to anyone who is looking for something special in their way. Center is truly healing. My hugs to all of you! Aleksa.
filipestarling
February 10, 2026 at 4:28 pmI spent two and a half weeks at the Hummingbird Healing Center, and I can assure you that this is an excellent place for those seeking healing and self-knowledge through ayahuasca, this sacred medicine of the Amazon rainforest.
The place is beautiful, very clean and well organized. All the staff working at the center are very helpful and friendly. In particular, Jim and Gina, who are the administrators of the center, are extremely loving people and always available to meet all your needs. Manain, the shaman who leads the ceremonies, is a person of great faith and purity of heart.
The food is homemade, very healthy, nutritious, and delicious. The collective space is cozy and includes a library with many interesting books for those who are seeking self-development.
You will definitely be very well cared for at this center.
Gerald NZ
December 22, 2025 at 8:54 pmThis was my second visit to Hummingbird. I highly recommend Hummingbird, as it is such a magical healing place. I felt great benefit from working with Ayahuasca again. Jim and Ayahuascero Manain are highly experienced facilitators, I always felt very safe and cared for at the retreat while working with Ayahuasca and San Pedro,
Jim,Gina, Ayahuascero Manain and all the staff at Hummingbird made me feel very safe and supported.
Plus, the best food in Iquitos!
Thank you once again.
Cully
October 25, 2025 at 11:37 amMy time at Hummingbird Healing Center was nothing short of life-changing. From the moment I arrived, I could feel the love, care, and intention woven into every part of the retreat. Jim has created something truly special. He gives each guest personal attention and heartfelt guidance, helping you understand your ayahuasca experiences and integrate them in meaningful ways. You never feel like “just another participant”; you’re seen, supported, and encouraged every step of the way.
The ceremonies with Manain, the master curandero, were profoundly beautiful. His icaros carry an ancient wisdom that fills the space with peace and strength. Each ceremony felt safe, sacred, and deeply healing.
The food prepared by Gina and her team is nourishing and delicious, perfectly aligned with the dieta. The rooms are clean and refreshed daily, and the whole center runs smoothly and on time. The lake is a perfect spot to cool off and reflect, and the jungle hike was both grounding and awe-inspiring, with so much life all around.
This was my first ayahuasca retreat, and it exceeded every hope I had. I left feeling clear, light, healthy, deeply connected, free of stress and full of gratitude. I had wanted an authentic Peruvian jungle experience, not a luxury resort, and I found exactly that at Hummingbird.
If your heart is calling you to healing, growth, and connection with spirit, Hummingbird Healing Center is the place to go.
helena
January 29, 2025 at 2:22 pmHummingbird is an extraordinary place. I feel so grateful to have been taken here by a dear friend who herself had been 7+ times. I’ve now been to the centre for two retreats and I know I will be back again. Everyone who guides the experience is so beautiful, kind, welcoming and extraordinarily talented at what they do. Theur knowledge is rich and detailed. Their dedication and care is felt. This place sings with love and is here to teach you a lot about yourself and your journey. There is a possibility for great positive change for life through this experience. I feel so in awe of what I’ve been gifted by the retreat. Forever changed. I would highly recommended the 9 day retreat. See you again soon next year I believe !
The food, lake swimming, turtles and accommodation are also lovely.