Lares trek to Machu Picchu

Planet

The Lares Trek is one of the best Cultural trips we have in Peru, Visiting Local schools where children only speak the Incan native language, pristine lakes and mountains where only llamas an d alpacas inhabit, for this reason we always:

Every time we start a tour to Lares we will explain to all visit during the briefing about how delicate and important is to preserve our natural environment, support the local indigenous population, and try reduce negative impact of tourism in the places we visit. Each guest will get a copy of our Travelers Code of Conduct. Each groups for instance:

Whenever we are hiking on the mountains and see the Andean Goose "Huallata" we will avoid close contact, this are the lovebirds and they are very shy, to avoid affecting their natural habitat we will approach only to a necessary distance and observe them with binoculars. Llamas and alpacas are always around but we don´t disturb then, just take pictures. Fallowing this simple rule we will not affect the wildlife around.

Our tour guide will always have with him a rubbish bag where him and all the group can put any garbage that they produce along the day, this will be taken to the campsite where our porters will separate properly to later be taken with us out for processing. If we find any garbage on this trails we will encourage everybody to pick them up that way we keep clean all mountains and lakes in the Lares trek.

We are not allowed to swim in the lakes, since this is fresh water lakes and local communities, all animal around they drink this water, and we have fish that provides food to villagers. for this reason we provide hot showers heated naturally with the solar energy in our special shower tents.

We encourage all visitors, staff, supplier to fallow this guidelines to preserve the place where we work.

People

We promote gender equality and women´s empowerment on our trips. This is really important and we need more organization to do the same. Peru is a country where we still have a lot of domestic violence, also most organizations will hire only male staff thinking that they will perform better. This will give as a result fewer opportunities for women and will not challenge the communities that think it is better not to spend money on education because in the end, the women will become housewives. We are committed to change this idea and show that we treat male and female workers the same.

We hire local women from the Lares area to work with us as porters, chefs or providing horses during the trek, this will make a huge difference in all tours since we will be helping the young ladies to have a better future.

We visit local schools but do so with a strict code of contact. We visit only with a previous coordination with the school’s principal and only during breaks to avoid interruption during classes, also we will only visit the schools when our visit benefits the schools somehow like if we donate some Materials for the school, or Medical Campaign’s.

Also we help organize afternoon activities with children where travelers can get first hand experience of life in a different culture. The teachers are always present and we recommend specific donations beforehand which are of help to the school such as books, pens, or something that can help with their education. The type of activity is chosen depending on the season, coordination with the schools and the communities.

Every trip we organize has different activities, we visit different schools so we don't visit one school too much and we go to different local houses. This way we guarantee that everybody benefits from tourism.