SEMILLAS
Seeds of the Ancestors
18 - 28 NOVEMBER 2027
An eleven-day pilgrimage to Chavín de Huántar, at the month the ancestors come near.
18 - 28 Nov, 2027
In the Andes, November is the month of the ancestors. The year is turning toward its close, the first rains are beginning to return, and the veil between the worlds grows thin. Those who walked before us come close.
This is Ayamarka Killa - a lunar month, 28 days long, dedicated to honouring our seed ancestors. To sit with the roots that sustain us. To recognise that there are presences who precede us, continuing in our codes, coexisting with us in forms both seen and unseen.
We call this retreat Semillas - seeds of the ancestors. It is a remembering, and a returning: to the essence of being human, and to our reciprocity with life itself.
We come here in November to remember we are not the beginning. We are a continuation.
Over these eleven days, a small circle of ten will gather in the sacred valley of Chavín de Huántar at this threshold time of year. Through three Tsunaq ceremonies, daily prayer, visits to the temple, simple communal living, and unhurried integration, we make space for what the ancestors are asking to be met.
This pilgrimage holds the two threads of this month together - lineage and prayer. What has been handed down and continues in us. What still speaks to us from the other side of the veil. We walk them gently, with the rhythm the land knows.
CHAVIN ~ Ceremonial and Higher Studies Center
Chavín de Huántar has been a place of prayer for more than three thousand years. Generations of people have walked into this valley with their offerings and their questions - some from the coast, some from the jungle, some from villages whose names are no longer spoken. The valley holds all of them.
Chawpín is what the Quechua call it. It means center. The center of its center.
What is visible today is a temple complex of remarkable precision: plazas, stairways, and underground galleries built to move an initiate through sound, shadow, resonance, and light. Carved stone reliefs show figures holding the sacred cactus, a quiet testament to the place of Tsunaq in the life of this valley for more than three thousand years.
The people who built this valley left a legacy of pure, elevated science in human spirituality - one of the high cultures of this continent. It is a culture that researchers continue to study and often cannot quite reach, because its knowledge was never made for rational thought alone. It is made for those who know how to feel.
In November, something about the valley changes. The dry months have ended. The first rains are beginning to fall. The year is preparing to turn. And at the heart of this ancient month - a festivity so old it is lost in the line of time - the seed ancestors come close.
To walk here at Ayamarka Killa is to feel yourself held by everyone who ever walked here before.
TSUNAQ ~The Medicine of Silence
Tsunaq has been held by the people of this valley for longer than any living person can remember - longer than written records, longer than most of the languages spoken on this continent today. To sit with this cactus in Chavín is to sit with one of the oldest medicine relationships humans have ever kept.
Its Quechua name comes from tsu, meaning silence. Elsewhere in the world it is known as Huachuma, or San Pedro. Tsunaq is often translated as the one who silences the mind.
Across those thousands of years, Tsunaq was always woven into cosmology, into a living system of meaning, responsibility, and learning. To receive it in its ancestral home is to receive it with its context intact.
The variety that grows in this region is steady, clear, and rooted. It is a willing companion. It does not impose. It does not overwhelm. It gently invites you toward your edges, and it meets you in whatever season of your life you have arrived in.
At Ayamarka Killa, at the month the seed ancestors come near, Tsunaq's work is one of meeting what has been carried. The threads passed down to us. The subtle presences that continue through us. The quiet communication that becomes possible when the mind is finally still - because silence is the school of this valley, and those who make it their teacher learn to listen through channels that have always been there.
What has been held for generations, listens. What has been held in you, listens too.
MEET YOUR GUIDES
MAESTRA CECILIA
Descended from curandero grandparents in a village north of Chavín de Huántar, Maestra Cecilia carries a living lineage of ritual relationship with Tsunaq and the ceremonial traditions of the Conchucos Valley.
A researcher and teacher of Quechua knowledge and values, she is devoted to preserving and revitalising the ancestral wisdom of her people. For Maestra Cecilia, Tsunaq is no abstraction. It is a cultural inheritance, rooted in land, language, and lived experience.
She is the founder of Yarpakuti Chawpín, an association preserving the Quechua language and weaving bridges between elders and youth.
To sit with Maestra Cecilia is to sit with continuity.
RAÚL
Born into a family with deep Andean roots, Raúl's search for belonging led him to plant medicine and, in time, to a full devotion to Tsunaq and the ceremonial traditions of Chavín.
His path has been shaped by years of practice, by studies in anthropology, and by a growing relationship with ancestral music and prayer.
His approach is grounded and heart-centred. He holds ceremony as a space of remembering rather than transcendence, a return to the wisdom of the body and the intelligence of the land.
As co-creator of Yarpakuti Chawpín, he is devoted to keeping these traditions alive across generations.
PAU
Researcher and apprentice of Andean traditions, Pau serves as a bridge between ancestral wisdom and contemporary life.
For years she has walked in relationship with this land, studying its cosmology, sitting in ceremony, and accompanying healing processes with master plants through presence and deep listening.
She walks beside the people she accompanies, never ahead of them, holding a grounded and clear container where insight can settle into lived life.
It is an honour for her to guide others back to this land, and back to themselves.
MILENE
Milène is a Himalayan Kriya yogini, a tea ceremonialist, and a singer-songwriter who bridges Shamanic and Vedic traditions - two paths in which she has found her roots.
A mother of two, her medicine is one of embodiment. She offers spaces where the sacred can be lived, practised, and felt in the body.
Through Kriya yoga, through the contemplative art of Cha Dao, and through song, she invites people into a quiet presence with themselves and with the natural world - a remembering of the body as teacher, and of the slower rhythms we have always been part of.
THE RHYTHM
A pilgrimage has its own pace, and this one unfolds slowly, with care.
We begin by arriving - in body, in attention, and in the intention we have carried here. The valley sits high in the Andes, and the first days are gentle ones: time to meet the land, to settle into the simple rhythm of communal life, and to prepare for what is coming.
From there, three Tsunaq ceremonies are held across the journey, each followed by spacious time to rest and integrate. Between them we visit the temple and other sacred sites, gather in workshops and sharing circles, make offerings to the land and to the ancestors, walk between places at the pace of prayer, and let silence have its place.
Because this is the month of the ancestors, something of their presence runs through all of it - in the ceremonies, in the offerings, in the quieter conversations around the fire. We do not force any particular meeting. We make space, and we let it come.
Nothing here is rushed. We close as we began, slowly, gathering what has been remembered and preparing to carry it home.
WHO IS THIS FOR
This pilgrimage asks for a certain readiness. It tends to meet people best when there is already some relationship with ceremony, or with Tsunaq itself.
The door is not closed to those who are newer to the path. What matters more than experience is honesty, and a true sense of being called. We come to know this together, in conversation, before anyone joins the circle.
People arrive here in every season of their own lives - some following a thread they have carried for years, some drawn by a longing for connection with those who came before, some simply answering a quiet call they finally decided to trust. What we ask you to bring is what is honest: your questions, your longing, your willingness to be met.
This is a pilgrimage of presence rather than intensity. It will ask you to slow down, to live simply, to spend your days at altitude and often on your feet, and to let the land set the pace. And because this is the month of lineage and prayer, it may also ask you to meet the threads that run through you from those who came before.
If something in you is already answering, that is enough to begin the conversation.
RECIPROCITY & LOGISTICS
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Ayni is the Andean principle of sacred reciprocity - the circle of giving and receiving in which we always stand.
Contribution: $2,800 USD
A circle limited to 10 participants
Payment plans are available. The full contribution must be completed three months before the pilgrimage begins.
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10 nights of accommodation in Chavín
3 Tsunaq ceremonies
All wholesome, Andean-based meals
Workshops and activities
Offerings to the land
Visits to the temple and sacred sites
Bus transport from Lima to Chavín and back
Ground transport within Chavín
Supported preparation and integration sessions
English, Spanish, and Quechua translation
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International flights
Transport within Lima
Visa costs
Travel insurance (we ask that every participant arranges their own)
Additional accommodation if you arrive early or stay on
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To begin your journey, please email us at connect@colibritemple.com. We would love to hear about you and your intention for joining this pilgrimage. Feel free to reach out with any questions, we’re happy to support you.
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The first step is to fill out a registration form. After that, we will schedule a check-in call to explore your intention for participating in this retreat. Once confirmed, a non-refundable deposit of $500 USD will be required to reserve your space.
We recommend using Wise for all payments.
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Cancellations made more than 90 days prior will receive a full refund, minus the non-refundable deposit.
Cancellations within 90 days of the event are non-refundable. However, if you (or we) find a suitable participant to take your place, a refund may be considered.
Please understand that due to the nature of this work, we maintain a strict cancellation policy. You can read more about it here.
TRUST THE CALLING
The work here does not need to be forced. Chavín does its own quiet work when you arrive, and Tsunaq does its own. What we do is create the conditions - a small circle, a clear container, a rhythm that lets us learn to walk alongside the world rather than against it.
You are held by Maestra Cecilia, Raúl, Paula and Milène, by the mountains and the land, and by those who walked here long before any of us. We share practices of prayer and offering, and grounded tools for integration, so that what opens here becomes something you live.
A NOTE FROM PAU
I have been walking groups into this valley since 2019, and returning to Chavín at Ayamarka Killa carries its own kind of weight. November here is quiet in a particular way - the year is turning, the rains are returning, and the ancestors feel close. I have grown to love this month deeply. It teaches me, each time, that we are never alone in what we are carrying.
If something in you is being asked to meet what has been held - in your line, in your longing for connection across the veil, in the quiet knowing that you are part of something that preceded you - that is worth listening to. A true calling rarely feels like overthinking. It feels like recognition. Something in you simply says, yes.