I won my court case for this atrocious “retreat”
If you're looking for a professionally organised wellness retreat, I'd recommend not booking anything with The Healing Temple or Guiomar Rebelo. A weekend in a motorway services would probably involve more planning and a whole lot less ChatGPT.
The long and short of this review is, I took Guiomar to court and won. A court has sided with me that what I was sold bore so little resemblance to what I received. I'm still wondering if I was on the wrong holiday.
I am happy to send the judgment to anyone who asks because I believe future customers deserve to see the outcome for themselves rather than relying solely on what’s written below- it speaks far more eloquently than I ever could.
Firstly, we stayed over three hours away from the attractions we were supposedly visiting and I mainly saw Bali from the inside of a minibus. When we questioned the address Guiomar had provided us with she told us it was only 20 minutes away. That should have been the first sign of things to come…
I mean someone who organises a cacao ceremony and has to cancel it because they had the cacao confiscated at the airport probably shouldn’t be trusted to guide 6 women around a foreign country.
The villa itself was fine, but I didn’t appreciate that my travel partner and I, who were sharing a room, had no privacy given the fact that the bathroom was completely open to the outside world, and there was no divider except for a curtain between it and the bedroom.
However the beach at the villa itself? Disgusting, littered, unvisitable. It was not the idyllic location advertised. The “chef” was actually the Made who didn’t work for periods of time we stayed at the villa, meaning at one point I was left making toast (breakfast) for everyone. Nothing screams "premium wellness retreat" quite like discovering you're on toast duty (am I Chef Jero?).
Additionally, the advertised activities seemed to be purely aspirational. Most simply didn't happen and I saw the Rice Terraces from a distance at a roadside cafe where we had stopped for lunch.
Every day felt like someone opening ChatGPT and typing, "Give me something to do in Bali today." There was no sense of preparation, local knowledge or organisation. We weren't being led through a retreat but instead watching someone improvise their own holiday in real time. She took part in the activities, taking time away from her actual paying customers, and it meant things we could have seen, were either performed hurriedly, or not at all.
The itinerary was crossed out in multiple places to the point that it wasn’t remotely the same as what we were told we would experience. Exasperated by the fact that there wasn’t even a plan for what would happen when Guiomar got sick. We were left in the middle of nowhere standing on the side of the road, soaking wet, trying to figure out ANY KIND of plan for if she took a turn (did I mention we were 3 hours away from our villa?)
The credentials and memberships used to market the retreat were another surprise. Some of the organisations advertised turned out not to be memberships Guiomar actually held, and I understand this was something that has been raised with Trading Standards. Make of that what you will.
This wasn't a minor misunderstanding or the odd hiccup that can happen on holiday. Almost nothing matched what had been sold and the overwhelming impression was that the we, the paying guests, had funded somebody else's holiday while being expected to applaud the effort.
If you're considering booking one of these retreats, I'd encourage you to read the judgment before handing over any money. Then make your own decision. Guiomar should be ashamed of what she has put forward as a retreat.
I'd sooner organise my own retreat armed with nothing but Google Maps and a blindfold. I have every confidence it would be better organised.
In my opinion, Guiomar should not be organising retreats and for the safety of others, should not be offering them to the public.







