Ayahuasca

Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual

Name: Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual
Rating: 4.6

Llanchama, Peru

4.6 (147 reviews)

Contact for $5

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We are an ayahuasca retreat healing center, operating as a lodge in the Amazon rainforest. We are located 90 minutes outside of Iquitos, Peru near the small village of Llanchama along the Nanay River.

We provide traditional Shipibo medicine services wich includes: healing and learning diets, master plant medicine, and traditional Shipibo ayahuasca ceremonies.

Once you are here, you will meet with our shaman master healer Ricardo Amaringo, and with the asistance of a profesional translator, you can explain him your intention for the healing procces.

Your treatment will then be tailored to your personal needs, often including further treatment with a master plant. Furthermore, in traditional style, you will then adhere to a strict healing diet developed to promote the healing work of the curanderos and our medicinal plants.

Once on the diet, you will be invited to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies four times a week, for further ceremonial healing under the guidance of Ricardo and his assistants shamans. In ceremony, you will be further treated by the curanderos through the traditional healing song, called icaros.

The day after every ayahuasca ceremony, with the exception of Fridays, there is a group discussion led by Ricardo to review experiences in the ceremony and the progress of all of our participants, apprentices and visitors.

In some cases, further treatment techniques are also indicated, including healing plant preparations for bathing and vapor treatment, or cataplasm.

Traditional treatment requires time, so visitors are encouraged to visit us for one week or more. Group programs are often designed for 10 days or 2 weeks and more advanced treatment can take one/two months or longer.

For particular individuals, we also offer traditional diets for learning under the guidance of Ricardo. This level of training is best discussed in person with Ricardo himself.

We charge an all-inclusive daily fee for our services, which covers transport from the Iquitos airport, private room, modern bathrooms and showers, diet meals, laundry service, electricity, wifi internet, traditional medicine and experienced international facilitator staff support.

If you are interested in visiting, please email us to establish contact and verify availability at our center. From that point, we can plan your visit!

Reviews (147)

4.6 out of 5

Overall 4.6

asbb
June 8, 2026 at 3:08 pm

Ricardo the main shaman at this retreat center is an evil con man.
When you get to the center, his cult followers like Martina and Joe won’t stop talking about the most esoteric concepts to someone who is not spiritual and is fully in 3d. When I tried to leave the center, they both on separate occasions talked to me about karma, past lives, and how everyone who goes to the center was called to the center by the Great Madre to clear their pain and to assist with the karmic healing of the planet. I am sorry, but why did you not mention to me Ricardo’s karma and what exactly he has done to do what he is doing right now? And how exactly is he assisting Pachamama with his fake ceremonies where he seems to clear people’s blockages but then oppresses them with his own degenerate past lives?

Ricardo is just a scammer who is threatened by women stepping into their power and breaking free from the chains of toxic patriarchy that has been oppressing them since their childhood. All that “hard work” Ricardo, but the war in Ukraine where one of the Pleiades is being abused by Russia still turned into a money-laundering machine, eh? How are you not ashamed of yourself?! What kind of people are you helping that this violence against a woman on a planetary scale continues to plague all of us to this day? Whose money are you taking that the Epstein network that abused me continues to walk free today? You evil wretch. I have reached my limit. If you don’t align with reality, I will manifest the end of your center.

As a survivor, I sat through his ceremonies and received some minor relief. But I also had some really dark ceremonies, and I could not understand where those entities were coming in from. They were all coming in from Ricardo. His past lives were quite something – ooh la la. But of course he’ll deny and gaslight and try to invalidate this review. His survival and success depend on making himself right and others wrong. He and his “powers” only work when he tries to spiritually oppress the women who see right through his bullshit and evil entities attached to him.

This center and these guys are ego-syntonic to the point of gaslighting every single passenger and dieter who sees right through them – because that’s what they have to do maintain control of the narrative. Constructive feedback is not something they seem to learn or grow from.

I have nothing good to say about this center, its facilitators, and its friends like Martina, Joe, Markus, or Cvita. I wish I never asked Zoe to connect me with them. It’s a weird cult that revolves around mind-warps, superstitions and magic (even though they’ll tell you that they don’t do magic and only pray to God – but all their little ceremonial tricks in states of altered consciousness are still magic).

If you’re reading this, this is your sign to stop messing around with all these superstitious Shipibo scammers and go work with the African medicine. It saves lives and allows you to take your power back from the cult of degenerate fake healers and fake spiritualists. You’re welcome.

Note: This review was edited to remove personal messages and gossip, but has otherwise been left in its original form.
arias
April 8, 2025 at 8:47 am

I was came for a retreat here but there was a shocking scene when I arrived.
A woman who drank the ayahuasca apparently had a mental break and the facilitators had locked her inside of a room. The woman was screaming loudly, rambling verbal nonsense, banging on things and sounded in a state of emergency.
Another guest told me that it had been like this for days. I couldn’t believe such behavior and madness was occurring next to the ceremony space and the other guest quarters. It appeared outright negligent for the woman obviously in deep distress to be locked up and left alone.
At the time the head shaman was not there and from what I could see the facilitators seriously lacked experience, care, professionalism and insight.
everything I witnessed was unethical and unsafe which prompted me to turn around and leave to find a calming center with better attention towards its participants.
Mark Chelsea
November 18, 2022 at 9:07 am

Great icaros/songs, but unfortunately a place full of greed, ego and jealousy. No investment in facilities, low quality of rooms, dirty. Scary vibe. Poor management.
Kate
June 4, 2022 at 9:16 pm

The week I spent at Nihue Rao was most traumatic. One of the shamans sexually assaulted me. I complained about it to Ricardo, the head shaman, the following day. I was told it was my imagination and didn’t happen. Joe Tafur preferred to treat me as crazy, rather than deal with the assault. a year or two later, that shaman was fired for sexually violating other women. No-one bothered to even acknowledge or apologize for what had happened to me.
This is s dangerous place to be in while in altered state. It is so extremely low to tolerate sexual abuse when putting participants in the most vulnerable state. The Western “shamans”at Nihue Rao are amateurs, and therefore could not see how entrenched in darkness the local shamans are.
Sophia
May 18, 2022 at 8:25 am

I would never go back there. I noticed right away that NR was not a high vibe place. People who diet there – all seemed really suspicious of others, scared, and paranoid. It was like a parasite infecting that center. After some time, my own discernment and the Holy Spirit showed me that there’s something really off about the main shaman Ricardo there – he is out of integrity. Ricardo Amaringo steals his pasajeros’ souls, and he is abusing this beautiful medicine. I don’t know if he does it consciously or unconsciously (because obviously the energy of the center is permeated with a really unconscious energy), but he is ought to look at what he’s doing. It is not right. Go to a different center, where the sacred divine feminine energy of the Mother medicine is honored. ___________ Update: this retreat center also employs some of the most psychopathic sexual predators. I know of helpers who found their “wives” there and either had their spiritual weddings there or eloped with them – only to “divorce” them later. As a woman I don’t want to drink ayahuasca at a place where facilitators are allowed to have relationships with women-dieters. After I cut all ties with this center, their helper Gage Crossett started harassing me with phone calls, messages, letters, and texts. This deranged predator convinced himself that he is “in love” with me and that I am his “soulmate.” He took it upon himself to look up my phone number, home address, tried to find out all the private details about my life, reached out to people I have a restraining order against (I’m not even sure how he found them…) and has repeatedly crossed the line and made me feel unsafe with his scary sexual harassment. Every time I block him, he changes his phone number – to keep tabs on someone who wants nothing to do with him. I wake up to 60-80 messages (and sometimes phone calls) a day from this desperate and sick stalker; this has been going on since August of 2021. It’s pretty sickening. To all the beautiful women out there, do yourself a favor and go to a retreat center with better vibes – where you will be respected, safe, and empowered. Avoid a retreat center where shamans and helpers are filthy predators.