Pisac · Sacred Valley · 9,750 feet · Standalone sessions
One morning session of twenty to forty minutes, one practitioner to one guest, held in daylight in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. It is not psychedelic, it is never part of an ayahuasca retreat here, and whether it happens at all is the physician’s decision, not yours and not ours.
Screened by Dra. Carmen Rojas Vargas, MD · $240, screening included · If you are declined, you pay nothing
00 · The short answer
Kambo is the dried skin secretion of Phyllomedusa bicolor, the giant monkey frog of the western Amazon. A practitioner lifts the top layer of skin at three to five small burned points, each smaller than a match head, and places the moistened secretion on them. Within a minute your face flushes and your heart rate climbs; most people vomit; twenty to forty minutes later it is finished. There are no visions and nothing you will not remember.
In Pisac we hold kambo as a standalone session, never inside an ayahuasca retreat and never as preparation for one. It runs in the morning, at 9,750 feet, with the fluid you drink measured and written down rather than encouraged. That last detail is the one that matters most, and section 04 explains why.
01 · One medicine at a time
Most centers that offer kambo fold it into the ayahuasca week as a rest-day extra, sometimes framed as preparation. We think that is wrong, and our co-founder is the reason this page exists at all.
“Each medicine has its own intelligence. You do not invite two teachers into the same week and expect to hear either of them clearly.”
Kambo in Pisac runs on its own dates, when no retreat is in residence, and we ask for at least seven days between a kambo session and any ayahuasca ceremony, in either direction. If you are attending one of our retreats, kambo is not available during it. That is not a scheduling gap. It is the policy.
It also removes a claim you will read elsewhere: that kambo opens you up or cleans you out before ayahuasca. No evidence supports that, and it is a convenient thing for a center to say, because it turns an optional session into a recommended one. We do not say it, and our calendar makes it impossible to sell.
02 · What kambo is
The frog is held while the secretion is scraped from its back, then released; it is not venom and nothing bites you. What is in the secretion is not a mystery either. The peptides have been isolated and measured.
Two families of peptides do most of the work. Phyllocaerulein and sauvagine act on the gut and drop blood pressure: the nausea, the vomiting, the heaviness. Phyllomedusin and phyllokinin dilate blood vessels: the heat, the red face, the swelling around the lips and eyes. The secretion also carries dermorphin and deltorphins, opioid peptides of real laboratory interest, present briefly and at very low concentration.
Because it is absorbed through the lymphatic system rather than swallowed, onset arrives inside sixty seconds and the whole event is over in under an hour. Everything you have read described as spiritual is that cascade, felt.
What is actually known: no controlled trial of kambo in humans has ever been run, for any outcome. Everything published is a case report, a laboratory assay or an anecdote. We will describe the forty minutes in as much detail as you want. We will not tell you what it does to your health, because nobody knows.
03 · The morning
Written from the sessions we run. Sacred Valley mornings are cold; nothing is applied until the sun has reached the room and the readings have been taken twice.
Thirty-six hours at 9,750 feet, minimum, before anything is applied. Blood pressure and oxygen saturation are taken from arrival, because the decision on the morning is made against several days of your numbers, not one.
There is no fast. You eat normally and lightly, stop at ten, and from that point water is measured rather than encouraged. Evening readings are taken; if anything has moved by morning, the session moves with it.
Dra. Rojas reads blood pressure and oxygen saturation against your arrival baseline. This is where a session is confirmed, moved or cancelled, before anything is prepared and before any pressure to proceed can exist.
You drink a specific measured volume of water, not the two to four litres many practitioners ask for. The practitioner records what you drank and when. Section 05 is the reason this line exists.
Burned on the shoulder or the outer calf, each smaller than a match head. It stings for a second and is not the part anyone remembers. If you want the points where clothing covers them, say so now.
The face heats and reddens, the heart rate climbs, often past 120. Lips and eyelids can swell and the throat feels full. It is genuinely alarming the first time, and the practitioner tells you what is happening while it happens.
Blood pressure falls while heart rate stays high, heaviness arrives, and almost everyone ends up on the floor. Most guests vomit once or twice in this window. You are on your side, a hand on you, a bucket in reach.
Heat drains from the face, swelling settles, heart rate comes down. It recedes faster than it arrived, which surprises people more than the onset does. Most guests are sitting up and talking by minute twenty-five.
Heavy, tired, often very thirsty. Fluids come in measured, salted amounts rather than freely. Blood pressure is taken again, and again an hour later. Nobody is left alone in this window.
Sleep, eat when you want to, sit by the river, do nothing. The points scab within a day and heal into small pale circles that stay visible for months and often years, a permanent mark worth deciding about beforehand.
04 · Altitude
Almost everything written about kambo describes sessions near sea level, in the Amazon basin or a European treatment room. Pisac is neither, and the difference is not decoration. It changes the risk arithmetic.
| Setting | Elevation | What it means for a session |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon basin | ~500 ft | Where the practice comes from and where nearly all of the safety literature was written. Full oxygen, humid air, normal plasma volume. |
| Pisac, Sacred Valley | 9,750 ft | Thin, dry air has already raised your resting heart rate and pulled fluid from you through every breath. Kambo raises heart rate, dilates vessels and empties you further. The two stack, which is why we require 36 hours in the valley and readings before anything is applied. |
| Cusco city | 11,150 ft | Fourteen hundred feet higher again. Many guests acclimatize in the Sacred Valley first for exactly this reason. Pisac is the gentler place in the region to meet this medicine. |
In the valley before any session. The acclimatization rule our own altitude incidents taught us, applied to kambo without exception.
Blood pressure and oxygen saturation from arrival, again the evening before, again on the morning. The numbers decide, not how well you say you slept.
So there are eight waking hours of observation afterwards. Sessions are never held on the day you arrive or the day you fly.
If the morning readings are wrong, the session does not run. There is no version where it happens anyway because you fly tomorrow.
05 · The real risk
People have died from kambo. We would rather you read the mechanisms here, from us, than find them somewhere else after you have paid.
The first mechanism is water. Many practitioners tell guests to drink two to four litres immediately before a session, on the theory that it helps the purge. The peptides then drive heavy vomiting while impairing the kidney’s ability to excrete free water. Blood sodium falls, water moves into the brain, and the brain swells inside a skull that cannot make room. A case published in 2025 describes a thirty-five-year-old woman who followed her facilitator’s pre-hydration protocol, reached hospital with a serum sodium of 123 millimoles per litre, and was declared brain dead. Nothing in her history would have flagged on a standard kambo screen. The water did it.
The second is the heart. A 2018 death in Italy involved a man with an enlarged heart who died of an abnormal rhythm during a session. A New South Wales coroner, reporting in 2024 on a 2019 death, found an adverse cardiac event triggered by the kambo itself, and noted that the people administering it were not prepared for an emergency. Deaths have also been reported in Brazil, Australia, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Neither mechanism is the secretion doing something unexpected. Both are known, published, and preventable at the level of protocol, which is what the four rules beside this text are.
A specific recorded volume before and after, salted rather than plain. If you loaded water on your own that morning, the session does not run.
Dra. Rojas takes blood pressure before, immediately after, and an hour later. She has eighteen years in practice, six of them in emergency medicine, and additional training in altitude medicine.
Cardiac history reviewed, blood pressure tracked across your days at altitude, and any cardiac event inside twelve months is a full stop, not a conversation.
Never a group. Most of the serious harm on record happened where one person was managing several guests and could not reach the one who needed reaching.
06 · Screening
Every application is reviewed by Dra. Carmen Rojas Vargas, MD, within 72 hours, followed by a video call with Diego Mendoza, our senior facilitator. Kambo screening asks a different question than ayahuasca screening: it is about your heart and your fluid balance, and being cleared for one says nothing about the other.
Roughly one in five applications to this center does not proceed, and our rejection rate is higher than most because altitude adds a screening dimension lowland centers never face. Cleared for ayahuasca and declined for kambo is a normal outcome, not a mistake or something to argue with. One screening question we ask that most centers do not: tell me about the worst physical experience you have ever had, and what helped you through it.
07 · Honesty
The kambo industry runs on three sentences. Here is each one, and why we will not write it.
No published evidence shows kambo removes toxins, metals, parasites or anything else. The vomiting is a direct pharmacological effect on your gut and would happen whether or not there were anything to remove. Emptying your stomach is not detoxification.
No controlled human trial of kambo exists for any condition. Anyone citing research is describing isolated peptides in dishes and animals, not kambo, and not in people. Until that work exists, every therapeutic claim is speculation.
There is no evidence for it, and it is the sentence that turns an optional session into a recommended one. Our calendar keeps the two medicines at least seven days apart, so nobody here can profit from saying it.
Where it stands legally: kambo is legal in Peru and used traditionally here. It is not an approved treatment anywhere in the world. Brazil banned its commercial sale in 2004, Australia prohibits supply or use without authorisation, and in January 2025 the US Embassy in Lima advised American citizens not to use ayahuasca or kambo in Peru. Nothing may be carried home. We would rather you read that alert now and bring us your questions than find it afterwards and wonder what else we left out.
08 · What it costs
One price, stated plainly, and no commissions attached to it.
A center that earns more when you say yes has a financial reason to recommend kambo. We priced ours so that reason does not exist: the fee covers the physician screening, the session and the morning of observation, and if Dra. Rojas declines you, you pay nothing. Nobody here raises kambo with a guest who did not raise it first.
Ask any center you are considering what happens to your money if you are declined on the morning. The answer tells you more than the reviews will.
Travel insurance with medical evacuation coverage is required for every guest, which matters more at 9,750 feet than it would at sea level.
09 · Questions
Answers first, then the detail. If yours is not here, ask it on the application and a person will answer.
Kambo is the dried skin secretion of Phyllomedusa bicolor, the giant monkey frog of the western Amazon, placed on three to five small burned points on the skin and absorbed through the lymphatic system. The physical response lasts twenty to forty minutes. It is not venom, nothing bites you, and the frog is released afterwards.
No. Kambo here is a standalone session held on dates when no retreat is in residence, at least seven days from any ceremony in either direction. We work with one medicine at a time. That is our co-founder’s position and it does not bend for scheduling.
No. There are no visions, no altered state, and no part of it you will not remember clearly. It is an intense physical event you are fully present for, which is why many guests find it harder than an ayahuasca ceremony rather than easier.
Twenty to forty minutes for the acute response, with onset inside the first minute and the peak between roughly minute three and fifteen. Most guests are sitting up and talking by minute twenty-five, then tired and quiet for another hour. Plan on losing the morning, not the day.
$240 for one session, including the physician screening and the morning of observation. If the physician declines you, you pay nothing. We do not offer a second session in the same week.
It carries real risk and people have died, in at least five countries. Nearly all serious harm traces to two mechanisms: severe hyponatremia from drinking large volumes of water before a session, and cardiac events in people who were never screened for a heart condition. Both are why we measure fluid rather than load it and screen the heart as its own gate.
Because water loading is the mechanism behind the worst outcomes on record. The peptides trigger heavy vomiting while impairing the kidney’s ability to excrete water; sodium falls and the brain swells. You drink a specific recorded volume before and after, salted rather than plain, and a session does not run for a guest who loaded water on their own.
Yes. Pisac sits at 9,750 feet, and thin dry air raises your heart rate and shifts your fluid balance before anything touches your skin. You must be in the valley at least 36 hours before a session, with blood pressure and oxygen saturation taken from arrival. If the morning readings are not right, the session is cancelled rather than squeezed in.
Yes. The points scab within a day and heal as small pale circular scars, typically three to five, visible for months and often years. We place them on the shoulder or the outer calf, and we will put them where clothing covers them if you ask. Decide before, not after.
Yes. Kambo is legal in Peru and has long traditional use in the Amazon. It is not an approved treatment anywhere in the world, Brazil banned its commercial sale in 2004, Australia prohibits it without authorisation, and it may not be brought into the United States.
The frog is not killed; the secretion is scraped from its back and the frog is released. It is also true that commercial demand has grown fast, handling stresses the animal, and supply chains outside Peru are largely unregulated. We source through practitioners working within the Amazonian communities the practice comes from, and we would rather say that plainly than claim the practice has no cost at all.
Apply
Every application goes to Dra. Rojas before anyone takes your money. Kambo is assessed on its own, roughly one in five applications to this center does not proceed, and a no costs you nothing.