Kapitari

In 1980, Don Lucho acquired a piece of land near Iquitos that slash-and-burn farming had left deforested and short of nutrients. He spent the next two decades restoring it, following what he describes as the principles ayahuasca showed him: diversity, balance and regeneration. The land recovered into a living ecosystem. That ground is Estación Kapitari.

Don Lucho is a native of Manacamiri, a small river village on the Nanay, and his ancestral roots trace to the Cocama people. His grandmother was a healer, though he did not train as an apprentice. In a 2014 interview transcribed and translated by Gart van Gennip, he said he first drank ayahuasca at sixteen and understood then that the medicine was part of him.

Kapitari began welcoming Western visitors in 2003, years before most retreats in the region appeared. In its early years it was an open, informal healing space where guests could stay as long as they wished. In 2013 it introduced structured week-long retreats. The center's stated view is that healing people and regenerating the land are inseparable.

A retreat runs six nights and seven days, Monday to Sunday, with three evening ceremonies led by Don Lucho. Plant baths come before each ceremony, with mud and fruit baths when weather allows, and meals follow a mostly plant-based dieta. Guests sleep in tambos built from natural materials, under mosquito netting. The center sits across the Nanay River near Manacamiri, reached from Iquitos by boat and a walk of about 45 minutes, sometimes through mud. Groups are kept small, and facilitation is in English and Spanish.