Peru · July 1 to 11, 2027
Huachuma in the Sacred Valley
Ten days in the Sacred Valley. Two ceremonies, planting at the Huachuma Sanctuary, and four subjects taught properly: history, science, cultivation, and ceremonial use.
What this is
Learning, planting, and the group
Education
Three thousand years of history, what the science establishes and what is still argued over, how the plant grows, and the many ways this plant has been used in ceremony. Taught in sessions, with time to ask questions.
Preservation
You plant at the Huachuma Sanctuary, in the ground, with your own hands, and you are taught what you are planting and why it matters before you start. Wild huachuma is cut faster than it grows back, and the Sanctuary is the work that answers it.
Community
Nine people and six months. Four calls together before anyone flies, ten days in the Sacred Valley, four more calls once everyone is home.
The July group
Peru, July 2027
Ten days in the Sacred Valley, held inside six months. Four weekly calls before you travel, ten nights in Pisac, four integration sessions after you land.
Two ceremonies, both full days on the mountain, outdoors and above the valley. They are guided by Miguel Mendiburu, who has been holding these ceremonies for more than twenty years.
The days in between are open on purpose, so that integration has room to happen while you are still there. Teaching runs through all of it: what the plant is, where it comes from, and what is happening to it now.
The retreat runs July 1 to 11, 2027, ten nights, with nine places. From $3,800, and $500 holds a place.
- Nine people
- One group, July 2027
- Ten days
- Held inside six months
- Two ceremonies
- Full days on the mountain
From $3,800
$500 holds your place
The teaching
What you will learn
| History | Three thousand years of it. The temple at Chavin de Huantar, the Inquisition that classified the medicine as heresy, and how the practice outlived it. |
|---|---|
| Science | What mescaline does in the body, and why this plant increases sensation rather than dulling it. |
| Cultivation | How huachuma grows, and how it is propagated. A cactus that gave up its armour and learned to drink from the air is now under pressure in the wild. |
| Ceremonial use | The many ways this plant has been used in ceremony, and how ours are held. The tools, the direction of movement, and the silence. |
What we teach for.
We teach for understanding rather than for facilitation, which is a different discipline.
Four people travelled to Pisac with Hamid in 2023 and wrote about the ten days afterwards, and their words are on the testimonials page.
Where the money goes
Owned by the Huachuma Foundation
Huachuma Works LLC is wholly owned by the Huachuma Foundation, a 501(c)(3) in Arizona. Any profit this company makes is returned to the Foundation and applied to its charitable purposes.
The Sanctuary is the Foundation’s work, and every group plants there.
Before you travel
The Foundation runs a six month online course called Huachuma Wisdom. The suggested donation is $108 and nobody is turned away for lack of funds. If you want the history and the science before you fly, start there.
Applying
How applying works
An application costs you nothing and commits you to nothing. A deposit comes after the two of us have talked and never before it.
You apply.
The form takes about fifteen minutes.
We talk.
A reply within a few days, then a call long enough for both of us to ask everything.
You decide.
Nothing is charged before the call. A $500 deposit holds your place if you want it.
What the ten days ask of you.
The history and the science you can study. The rest is learned by doing it, so come prepared in body and mind. The stamina to walk uphill for a few hours at nine thousand feet. A willingness to sit with whatever comes up. Somebody at home to return to. And a medication list we go through together, because a few of them, antidepressants among them, do not combine safely with this medicine.
We ask about all of it on the form, and we talk it through on the call.