Southern Peru tailor made holiday

Environment

The lodge in the Amazon has excellent environmental credentials, including a strong sustainability policy, community engagement programmes, and is carbon neutral. The company which owns the lodge has a variety of ecological / research programmes operating, including the establishment of permanent conservation areas and a rescue centre for Andean, or spectacled, bears.

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.

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.

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.