Tailormade holiday in Peru

Community
We only run our own dedicated Inca Trail departures exclusively in conjunction with a small family business in Cusco. We have our own team of local guides and porters in place in Peru. We can be sure that we are only working with the best and most experienced guides. It also means that we work with a single community to provide portage services thus ensuring a stable and reliable source of income for local families.

Our porters come from the community of Chacllanca, about 45km from Cusco. Generally they are subsistence farmers who supplement their earnings by working on the Inca Trail. Our two head chefs, Virgilio and Herlin are in charge of getting the teams together and are therefore the bosses. Your team of porters is usually therefore made up of friends, family and neighbours who respect one another and work well together. Needless to say, we adhere strictly to the Porter Protection Policies in place on the Inca Trail.

On Lake Titicaca we are careful to visit only those floating islands which are genuinely inhabited so you can get a sense of how they actually live day to day and your visit benefits the people you visit.

Similarly, we avoid the main visitor site on Taquile Island, instead travelling to the far side of the island which receives visitors usually once a week and is therefore a genuinely interesting opportunity for cultural interaction and again provides an income for communities without being invasive.

Environment
We take longer to walk the Inca Trail, keeping you away from the overcrowded and environmentally depleted campsites. Instead you stay at peaceful campsites where numbers are very low and therefore environmental impact minimal. We are scrupulous about carrying everything out with us.

In the Amazon you stay in a lodge with first rate environmental credentials. The lodge is integrated into its surroundings in almost every way imaginable. The staff are largely sourced from the tiny local Condenado and Infierno communities. There is an impressive programme of training which means that your guide may well have started as a pot-wash in the kitchen before working and training his way up the ladder to being a guide.

The lodge is placed within a 200 hectare ‘buffer zone’ on the edge of the Tambopata Reserve. It is working hard with the local brazil nut farmers to include them in the benefits from eco-tourism, thereby encouraging their participation in conservation. The actual structure is built from wood brought in from upriver – essentially they would sit on the river banks until a fallen tree passed by and would drag it to the lodge for use in the construction. Otherwise, materials are largely palm fronds, wild cane and clay from the surrounding area.

Finally, the lodge owners have been major players in protecting the area from the threat posed by the proposed trans-continental highway which would run from coastal Peru to coastal Brazil right through the Amazon.