AYA 🌺 Pacha Cacao ® Retreats
Initiation 9: Return to the Sacred Origins
Cacao fino de aroma
From a sanctuary for life conservation called: Ecuador.
Experience Spiritual-communitarian-Eco-tourism while becoming an Earth Guardian. Join our anti-mining resistance at Intag, Junin, Ecuador.
Experience a living legacy — a dinosaur believed extinct.
This is not metaphor.
You will walk amongst Cacao Fino de Aroma, a species as ancient as it is rare, growing in sacred eco-biosphere reserves where time speaks in leaves, and the land breathes prayer.
But before you arrive...
🌎✨ Walk in Sacred Reciprocity
A Required 2-Day Mini (Valued $88, free when you enroll to the retreat) Course Before Your Arrival
We are not a JUST a retreat. We are A Sanctuary of Life Guardianship.
Before stepping into this sacred space, each guest must complete a 2-day self-paced online immersion designed to transform the tourist into an Earth Guardian.
Mini Course: Walking in Sacred Reciprocity. Honouring Spiritual-Communitarian Eco-tourism.
In this ceremonial threshold, you will:
Understand Ecuador as a spiritual and Ancestral territory
Explore Spiritual Communitarian Eco-Tourism
Learn how to offer energetic and physical respect to the land and its people
Prepare your own Reciprocity Offering to gift during your retreat
Receive the Earth Guardian Code to activate your soul’s remembrance
🌺 This is a rite of passage. A vow to serve, not consume.
Only those who complete this gateway will be welcomed to the land.
We are creating a community working for the Conservation of the Ancestral Medicine Cacao Arriba Nacional as a legacy from Ecuador.
Return to the Spiral Origins
Witness and Support a legacy protected 5300 years ago by our Ancestors: Mayo-Chinchipe-Maranon
After completing your Earth Guardian initiation, you will be ready to:
Live among Ancient Cacao elder trees in native forests and actively regenerated land.
Craft your own medicinal Cacao, blessing the Sanctuary of blessed Waters of the purest Nature
Sleep in a treehouse, dream with the hummingbird, and purify in hot springs
Be guided by ancestral wisdom through ceremony, conservation, and living rituals
🐆 Initiation 9: The In-Person Journey💌 Apply Now to Begin the Journey
Only a few are called. Even fewer answer.
But if you feel it in your bones — that you are not here to take, but to give back to the living Earth —
this may be your path.
🔗
-->So, let's explore the full pilgrimage schedule:
🌀 Day 1: Revolutionary Arrival – Landing in Sacred Reciprocity
Location: Puerto Quito | Chocó Andino Biosphere Reserve
Arrival with revolutionary intention to Puerto Quito, a gateway to the sacred Chocó Andino, one of Ecuador’s most vital protected ecosystems.
Warm welcome by our cherished Cacao guardians from ASOANES — the living legacy of:
Francisco, wise guardian of native cacao
María, his wife and soul of the home’s heart medicine
And their multi-generational community holding the vision of reciprocity and sovereignty for their land.
🫖 Cacao Welcome Ritual
Be received with their specialty: a refreshing ancestral Cacao tea, known to awaken joy, clear travel fatigue, and initiate your heart’s listening.
🌺 Abuelita Cacao Sacred Reciprocity Ceremony
Together, we will gather around to meet the ancient Abuelita Cacao tree — the spiritual grandmother of this land and sanctuary.
We’ll prepare offerings and co-create a mandala of love and magic around her roots, asking permission to walk the land in humility and sacred intention.
This begins our path of Sacred Reciprocity, in deep alignment with the ancestral codes of ASOANES.
🌿 Theme: Begin with offering. Begin with listening. The land is alive and receiving you.
🌀 🔥 Evening: Grandfather Fire & the Cacao Origins Journey
🌺 The Fire is Lit. The Seeds Awaken.
We gather around Grandfather Fire, calling in the elemental guardians and ancestral spirits.
A ceremonial roasting of different AYA 🌺 Pacha Cacao ® single origin beans begins:
Las Esmeraldas — coastal, divine treasure cacao
Quinindé — heart-bridging, nutty caramel cacao
Puerto Quito (Chocó Andino) — citrus-laced heirloom cacao, rooted in resistance and renewal
🌌 Ancestral Storytelling & Tasting Journey
Through taste, scent, and vibration, you will experience how each origin carries a unique energy — emotional, spiritual, and alchemical.
We share stories from the grandmothers’ ways of cacao — how it was once prepared, served, and honored in community.
Group reflection and circle sharing — listening to the cacao in your own body.
🌿 Theme: Cacao is not one thing. It is many lives. Many songs. Many prayers. You are about to choose your medicine with soul and deep call knowingness.
Return to Sacred Origins
🌳 Day 2: Conservation as Ceremony – Awakening the Guardian Within
Location: AYA 🌺 Pacha Sanctuary | Puerto Quito Region
🌞 Morning: The Unveiling – Why Conservation is Sacred
Guided walk through our sanctuary’s reforested paths, where once-threatened lands now bloom with cacao, native flowers, and songbirds.
Teaching Circle:
“Conservation is not charity. It’s remembrance.”
What does it mean to protect a land that gave you cacao?
Introduction to land stewardship, biodiversity guardianship, and the interdependence between cacao and native forest ecosystems
Understanding native Cacao Fino de Aroma as a living prayer that only thrives in biodiverse, sacred relationships — not monocultures.
🌱 Theme: Conservation is not optional — it is survival. It is the ground where the sacred grows.
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🪔 Midday: Truth Telling – The Shadow of Chocolate
Community Dialogue Circle:
“What you eat becomes who you are — but do you know where it came from?”
Unveiling the shadow of the modern chocolate industry:
Deforestation
Child labor & exploitation
Genetic modification & hybridization
Chemical additives, dairy, and sugar
Why single origin cacao is not a trend, but a spiritual and ecological necessity.
Honoring the resistance of our Ecuadorian ancestral farmers, who preserved cacao as a ceremonial plant — with agroecological techniques that worked with the Earth, not against her.
🍲 Lunch: Ancestral Nourishment
Enjoy a meal made with local, native ingredients grown through regenerative practices — an embodied taste of what conscious conservation feels like.
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🌳 Afternoon: From Consumer to Guardian
Interactive Reflection:
“What is my relationship with the things I consume?”
Group inquiry and journaling: how we become participants in restoration, not just spiritual tourists
Learn simple yet powerful ways to support land regeneration, cacao biodiversity, and ancestral food systems — wherever you are in the world
Earth Guardian Pledge Wall:
Each guest writes one act of reciprocity they will carry forward
(seed planting, food sourcing, cacao honoring, conscious storytelling, etc.)
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🌿 Theme:
You are not here to consume medicine.
You are here to remember how to be medicine — for the land, for cacao, for the children of the future.
Day 3: Heart of the Offering – Crafting Your Medicine, Receiving Earth’s Love
Location: AYA 🌺 Pacha Sanctuary | Puerto Quito
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🌞 Morning: Fire, Flowers & Final Roasting
Grandfather Fire is called once again to guide the final alchemical transformation.
Guests return to their chosen single origin cacao seeds, and begin the sacred process of grinding and blending their personal medicinal paste.
🍃 🕊️ Silence Practice: “What Am I Gifting the Earth?”
As the beans are ground into paste, we enter a guided silence — a deep meditative reflection where guests are invited to journey inward with this question:
> “What am I offering to the Earth through this medicine?”
“What does my heart long to contribute in return?”
This is a portal of listening. Each turn of the stone, each motion of the hand, becomes an act of prayer — crafting your agroforestry apothecary not only from plants, but from the deepest truth of your being.
🌺 Theme: Your medicine is not what you make. It’s what you give.
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🪻 Midday: Sacred Flower & Bird Walk
Gentle walk among the wild medicinal flowers and tropical birds of the Chocó Andino.
Observation, listening, and direct transmission from the natural world — how flowers teach softness, how birds carry joy.
Guests may harvest symbolic elements (with permission from the land) to include in their final cacao blend altar.
🌿 Theme: Walk as one who belongs. The forest is family.
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🍲 Lunch: "La Tonga" – A Puerto Quito Blessing
A sacred ancestral meal offered by our local cacao guardian family:
Tonga: free-range chicken steamed in plantain leaves, prepared with native herbs, love, and local wisdom
This dish honors not only your body, but your commitment to walk in reciprocity.
🌱 Theme: Earth feeds those who feed her.
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💧 Afternoon: River Purification & Integration
Visit to the sacred river for ritual bathing, song, and stillness
A time to offer gratitude and rest in the arms of Water — the first medicine
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🌙 Evening: Preparation for the Journey to Intag
Gentle packing and gratitude for the land of Puerto Quito
Closing circle to complete this first phase of your journey
Early rest — tomorrow, we ascend into the cloud forest of Intag, the realm of fog, moss, and high-elevation teachings
Day 4: Intag, The Water & Life Sanctuary – Guardians of the Unseen
Location: Intag Cloud Forest | Imbabura Province
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🌄 Morning: Ascending into the Cloud Realm
Departure from Puerto Quito as we rise into the lush embrace of Intag, one of the most biodiverse and threatened regions on Earth.
A slow, contemplative journey into the mists — entering the home of sacred waters, jaguar trails, and orchid spirits.
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🏡 Midday Arrival: The Sanctuary of Doña Ileana de los Ángeles
Arrival at the Water & Life Sanctuary, a sacred land named in honor of Doña Ileana de los Ángeles, beloved mother and matriarch of the Ramírez family.
Welcomed by:
Bryan Ramírez – steward of this sacred land and young guardian of the new generation
His siblings – co-weavers of the sanctuary’s vision
Javier Ramírez – grandfather elder, leader of Intag’s anti-mining resistance for over 3 generations
🍲 Shared Lunch — a warm, nourishing meal with the family, sourced from local agroforestry and ancestral recipes
🌿 Theme: To sit at the table of the resistance is to eat from the hand of the Earth.
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🌺 Afternoon: Sacred Reciprocity with the Cacao Elder & Flower Spirits
We journey to the Cacao elder tree near the conservation garden — a cacao unlike any other, perfumed with an enchanting floral essence, rooted in deep Earth memory.
Ceremony of Sacred Reciprocity to offer your prayers to the land, and listen to the presence of the tree.
Botanical Immersion with Bryan, who will introduce:
The secret world of wild Ecuadorian orchids
How they influence and communicate with the cacao tree
The sacred ecology between birds, flowers, trees, and human presence
🌸 Theme: Not all pollination is physical. Some is spiritual.
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🐸 Evening: Into the World of the Dinosaur Frog
Sunset guided conservation walk with Bryan and the young elders
Monitor and observe the habitat of the “extinct” dinosaur frog, a sacred amphibian whose survival mirrors the health of the land
Teachings:
The role of clean, sacred water
The interdependence of species — frog, orchid, jaguar, hummingbird
The urgency of resistance to mining contamination in Intag
How one small frog holds the balance of an entire ecosystem
💧 Theme: When we protect Water, Water protects us.
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✨ Close of Day
Night rest in the sanctuary, wrapped in the breath of mist, orchids, and ancestral dreams
Optional reflection:
> “If I disappear the unseen, what beauty will be left in the world?”
“How can I be a voice for what cannot speak?”
Day 5: The Offering of Water – Beauty as Resistance
Location: Intag Cloud Forest | Treehouse Sanctuary
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🌿 Where You Rest: A Vision in the Trees
For Days 4 & 5, your home is our first sacred treehouse, a living prayer rooted in the forest canopy of Intag.
Built by local hands and fueled by ancestral dreams, it is the seed of a greater vision: 5 more treehouses, a conservation corridor, and an Earth Guardian home.
You’ll learn how to become a co-founder of this sacred regeneration.
🛖 This isn’t accommodation. It’s participation.
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💧 Morning: Pilgrimage to the Sacred Waterfalls
Guided walk through orchid-lined trails to the ceremonial cascades of Intag.
Offering ritual to Mama Earth: water as blessing, water as remembrance.
Prayers, seeds, or silence offered in devotion to the source of life.
🌊 Theme: May we become as pure as what we wish to protect.
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🌺 Midday: Grandmother Cacao & Community Circle
Cacao ceremony beneath the flowering elder cacao tree, joined by our community guardians.
Guided dialogue with Javier, Bryan, and local elders:
Living legacy of resistance against mining
Spiritual-communitarian-eco-tourism as a sustainable economy for Earth-aligned futures
Cacao as a teacher of devotion. Tourism as ceremony, not consumption.
🍲 Ancestral meal by the river, infused with Earth’s gifts
🌿 Theme: A tourist asks what they can take. A guardian asks what they can protect.
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🔥 Afternoon: Coffee & Cacao Roasting + Vision Circle
We gather once more around grandfather fire to roast native cacao and coffee beans — grown on the very land that has resisted extraction for generations.
Their scent opens the heart. Their taste carries history.
☕ “What have I received?”
🌱 “What can I contribute to preserve this magic?”
Together we vision, brainstorm, and dream aloud:
How can we support this sanctuary to thrive?
How can each guest take this message home and become a guardian, storyteller, or ally?
📝 Guests are invited to write or draw their reflections and commitments to leave at the sanctuary altar.
🌌 Theme: From soil to soul, may our gifts return to the land that gave them.
-->Nay 6: Integration at the Waters – Living Life as Ceremony
Location: Intag Hot Springs | Final Blessing & Gratitude Circle
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🌄 Morning: Farewell to the Treehouse Sanctuary
After breakfast, we lovingly say goodbye to our home in the clouds — the Treehouse of Los Ángeles de Junín, built with devotion by the Ramírez family and blessed by the surrounding forest.
Final embrace of the mist, the orchids, and the sacred pulse of this land before we journey to the healing waters.
🌳 Theme: Every structure we build in harmony becomes a temple.
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💧 Midday: Sacred Waters of Intag
Arrival at the natural mineralized hot springs, held by the Earth and warmed by the inner fire of the Andes.
Gentle bathing, laughter, silence, and restoration — the nervous system fully relaxes, the body remembers its softness.
🪔 Intag River Offering Ritual
Together, we return to the river one last time to offer our gratitude and prayers, releasing the journey, anchoring the transformation.
Seeds, words, and tears are offered as the river carries them into the great web of life.
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🍫 Medicinal Cacao Journey – Integration with All AYA 🌺 Pacha Cacao ® Blends
A deep tasting and soul communion with all of AYA’s ceremonial blends:
🌺 Womb Elixir Blend
🍄 Noursing Alchemy Blend
😄 Gemini & AYA Huma Blend
🌳 Single Origins of Esmeraldas, Quinindé & Puerto Quito
Guided inner journey to discover:
> “Which blend speaks to me now?”
“What medicine is calling to stay with me as I return to my world?”
🌿 Theme: Medicine is not just something we drink. It is something we become.
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🌎 Afternoon: Final Cacao Blessing & Expansion Circle
A sacred Cacao Gratitude Circle, where we offer our voices and prayers for:
The Earth and her waters
The guardians and their families
The dreams we will now embody
The communities we’ll ripple into
🕊️ With our final sip, we speak this invocation aloud:
> “I choose to live my life as a ceremony.
With cacao in my heart and Earth as my altar,
I walk as a guardian of beauty, of joy, of truth.”
🌀 🔥 Evening: Grandfather FRetreat Contribution & Sacred Reciprocity Exchange
AYA 🌺 Pacha Cacao ® Initiation 9 Retreat
7 Days | Puerto Quito & Intag Cloud Forest | Ecuador 🇪🇨
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🔮 Investment: $2,222 USD
This sacred exchange includes:
✔️ 6 nights / 7 days in soul-aligned to the Sacred Count of Time and space following our Ancestors Cholq'ij with Cacao medicine and full lodging, including our first sacred treehouse sanctuary
✔️ All ancestrally prepared meals, locally sourced with native ingredients
✔️ Participation in all ceremonies, cacao rituals, land offerings, and ancestral teachings
✔️ Your own medicinal cacao paste, crafted by your hands with love and prayer
✔️ Transportation between retreat sites: Puerto Quito ↔ Intag
✔️ Access to sacred natural sites: waterfalls, rivers, conservation forests, and hot springs
✔️ Wisdom transmissions from the ASOANES cacao guardians, anti-mining elders, and the Ramírez family
✔️ Participation in the EcoSímia ancestral exchange
✔️ Full integration day at the sacred hot springs of Intag
✔️ Final Earth Guardian Cacao Blessing
✔️ Your Earth Guardian Certificate – AYA 🌺 Pacha Cacao ® Initiation 9
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✨ What’s Not Included:
✖️ International flights to/from Quito, Ecuador
✖️ Transfer from Quito airport to Puerto Quito (optional add-on: $ USD)
✖️ Additional nights for extended integration at Treehouse Sanctuary:
• $144 USD per night, including meals and forest rest
✖️ Optional Master Plant experiences for qualified participants (additional fee)
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🌱 Pre-Retreat Requirement
All participants must complete our 2-Day Online Mini-Course
📖 “Walking in Sacred Reciprocity: A Portal into Spiritual-Communitarian Eco-Tourism”
✔️ Free & included with retreat
✔️ Required to embody our mission before arrival
✔️ A key to enter the land in right relationship
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💌 To Apply & Join the Circle
We welcome 121 initiates as well as groups up to 8 participants per journey, to walk this path with intimacy and devotion.
Retreat in an Equatorial Paradise, learn about Cacao from the roots where she originates. Adopt a baby tree and get deep with your own medicinal journey by understanding deeper layers of Plant Medicines and Conservation supported within community.