Choosing a Trek Agency

Choosing an Inca Trail Agency

Introduction to the Inca Trail:

The Inca Trail is fantastic. The Inca sites are all fascinating, the history of this “ Gringo Trail”and the awesome scenery are worth it. The terrain ranges from high and cold mountain passes to wet cloud forest, and all of it is photo-worthy.

If you are in poor physical shape, consider the two day version of the hike or arriving at Machu Picchu by train. You hike (at least you should ) at your own pace with frequent stops, and the total hiking time is about six to 8 hours per day (depending on your company's itinerary) and only 2 hours on the last morning, so don’t be too intimidated by the physical challenge of it. The most difficult day is the second (everybody says that except the guides who think is the most relaxing day....!)

Before booking (please take a minute to read this)

You may already be aware of the porters' working conditions in various other popular trekking areas such as the Himalayas. The porters on the Inca Trail are mainly recruited from the poor peasant communities in the area, often leaving their farms to supplement their meager incomes. They work extremely hard to make your trail experience memorable. On January 1, 2001, new regulations concerning the use of the Inca Trail, including porter issues, were launched. However, the implementation of these rules is not yet satisfactory.

As a responsible traveler, you may want to know what you can do to support the porters' struggle for a `fair go'. The porters depend on this work, but some companies treat them better than others. Below, you'll find a few recommendations that can help make their life a bit easier:

There is a load limit of 25 kg per porter imposed on the tour operators organizing Inca Trail tours. However, this limit is not enforced, making it virtually meaningless.

• Please do not ask porters to carry your backpack on top of their regular loads, not even for additional payment. This would grossly exceed the permitted load limit.

The costs of Inca Trail tours vary greatly from relatively expensive (often, reputable companies) to very cheap (budget offers). Tours that you may book from home will still be delivered by a locally contracted company. Generally, if you pay more, you find that a better porter to client ratio is in place. However, it also means that additional items may be carried such as toilet tents, folding chairs, more food, and so on. Interestingly, the salaries paid to the porters are very low regardless of how much you pay for the trip. There are very responsible local companies trying to minimize negative impacts of tourism on the hosts and to enforce rules related to fair treatment of local tourism workers. More expensive operators may generally provide more for the porters, but this is not automatically the case. Clients should still keep an eye out for signs of maltreatment of porters.

• Please try to book through reputable companies rather than `cheapies' which often use a very poor porter to client ratio and leave the porters to fend for themselves.

Many companies give porters minimal or no food, minimal or no fuel, and no shelter for the night. Porters are usually only allowed to carry up to 5 kg for their own needs. This means, they often go hungry, drink only cold water and sleep under boulders or tarpaulins.

If you have surplus food, perhaps you want to share this on the trail. However, this should not lead to companies relinquishing their responsibility to feed their staff.

• The porters' pay is poor, and often they have to pay for their own food and transport from this money. Furthermore, many companies expect that damaged or lost equipment is to be paid for by porters at grossly inflated prices. This leaves very little to take home to their families, sometimes nothing at all.

• If you wish to give the porters a tip (normaly on the 3rd night of the classic 4 day trip), please be aware that tips given to a third person for distribution to all is sometimes not passed on. Similarly, any presents you may want to leave, such as warm clothing, may be "collected" by supervisors under the guise that the porters stole it. Try to make clear that your gifts are meant for specific people. Sick o

r injured porters maMost porters have no insurance or assistance with medical costs.

• Please insist that sick or injured porters are looked after.

Porters have little chance to complain about unfair or exploitative treatment as they would not be hired again.

• Please be kind to the porters. They are lovely people trying hard to make a living. If you notice anything on your trip that you feel does not meet the standards of decent treatment of employees, please report this to us. Also report it to the (your) overseas company if you made your bookings in your home country (prefereable to use a local company).

Basically Before Booking you should consider 3 things:

The agent (agency) you are looking into should:

1.- Be Eco - responsible.

2.- Provide a quality and safe service to the visitors.

3.- Pay fairly and look after their Porters properly.

You MUST know:

The Porters Law

Porters work is regulated by the Law Nº 27607 and its rules the Supreme Decree (Decreto Supreme) Nº 011.2005.TR; according to this Law porters have the right to the following MINIMUM conditions for work:

1.- Minimum wage of 42.50 Peruvian soles a day.

2.- 20 kilos limit weigh to carry from the agency.

3.- They have to be provided by adequate trek clothing, shoes and equipment for sleeping (sleeping bags/blankets, sleeping pads group tent).

4.- Optionally they can be provided by the agency with insurance that should cover all sort of accidents that may occur while on the trek.

Agencies that fail on fulfilling this law requirements get fined.

Something to consider:

Taking a look at the Inca Trail porters and changes

Click link below to read article

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25197433/

By Andrew Whalem / AP Associated Press

Inca Trail Regulations

For decades, individuals trekked the Inca Trail on their own, but hundreds of thousands of visitors -- as many as 75,000 a year -- left behind so much detritus that not only was the experience compromised for most future trekkers, but the very environment was also placed at risk. The entire zone has suffered grave deforestation and erosion. The Peruvian government, under pressure from international organizations, has finally instituted changes and restrictions designed to lessen the human impact on the trail and on Machu Picchu itself: In the first couple of years, regulations were poorly enforced, but in 2003, the government announced its intentions to fully and strictly enforce them.

All trekkers are now required to go accompanied by a guide and a group.

Prices for both the 4 day (classic) trail and the Machu Picchu ruins are:

Adults $82
Students$41 (companies also pay for porters entrance fees $14)
Children 7 or under are exonerated from paying the fee
Children 8 to 15 years old pay the studen rate only ($42).

The overall number of people permitted on the trail was significantly reduced to 500 per day (counting the 250 guides and porters!); only professionally qualified and licensed guides are allowed to lead groups on the Inca Trail; the maximum loads porters can carry has been limited to 20 kilograms (44 lb.); tourists are no longer permitted to travel on the local train from Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu (or vice versa); and all companies must pay porters the minimum wage (S/ 170.00 or $13.5 per day!).

These changes have cut the number of trekkers on the trail in half and have made reservations essential all year round. Guarantee your space on the trail by making a reservation at least 2 months in advance of your trip (but 3 month or more in advance for high season May-Oct; reservations can be made as much as a year in advance). Travelers willing to wing it might still find available spots a couple of days before embarking on the trail (in December and January), perhaps even at discounted rates, but waiting is a huge risk if you're really counting on doing the Inca Trail.

The key changes for travelers are that it is no longer possible to go on the trail independently and no longer dirt cheap to walk 4 days to Machu Picchu. The good news is that the trail is more organized and that hope for its preservation is greater.

Heavy load for porters on the Inca Trail

By Andrew Whalem / AP Associated Press

Tourism boom slow to advance porters on South America's famed trail

WARMIWANUSCA, Peru - Porters on the famed Inca Trail trek to the jungle-shrouded ruins of Machu Picchu recall the fleet-footed chasqui — Inca messengers who darted over the vast road network of South America's most powerful empire.

Chewing wads of stimulating coca leaves and trading quips in Quechua, the ancient language of the Incas, they sprint up the centuries-old, ruin-dotted path at dizzying heights in the Andes.

But instead of carrying news or fresh seafood delicacies from the coast, they haul propane tanks, camping equipment and four days of food for wealthy tourists from worlds away — all for as little as $8 a day.

Peruvian law permits only 500 people to set out each day on the Inca Trail to Peru's top tourist destination, Machu Picchu — and nearly 300 of them are porters. Many complain that they are underpaid for their backbreaking labor.

Tourism to the ancient Inca ruins is booming. Some 140,000 people — tourists, porters, guides and cooks — did the hike in 2007, compared with fewer than 20,000 in 1998, according to park director Fernando Astete.

Peruvian law requires visitors to pay for a guided, catered tour, and what was once a backpackers' trek now costs at least $420.

But travelers be warned: pay much less — guides in Cuzco offer trips for as low as $350 — and the tour operator is likely cutting corners, at the expense of those who make the arduous, high-altitude trek accessible to so many — the Indian porters.

Despite the low pay, the jobs are highly coveted in the poor, rural Andean region

"It's hard work, but without tourism there would be no jobs," Faustino Quispe, a porter with Continental Tours, told me when I caught up with him on a stretch of steep stone steps.

The pay is "very little, just enough for our families," said Quispe, a wiry man of 34 with a weathered face that makes him look closer to 50. The money helps supplement the food they are able to harvest from their small plots in the Sacred Valley.

The camping equipment slung in a blue tarp from his shoulders dwarfed my backpack, yet I struggled to keep up with him as he and his crew raced to set up camp ahead of their group of hikers.

A 2003 law mandated a minimum wage for porters roughly equivalent to $15 a day, with a load no more than 57 pounds. That created a slight improvement in porters' pay and working conditions.

"Everything has changed in the past 10 years," Flabio Letona, a porter on my trek with Llama Path tour agency, told me as we rested at our campsite on the trail.

Through a mouthful of coca leaves — chewed to ward off altitude sickness and fatigue — Letona told me that he started working as a porter in the 1990s and still hauls cargo on the knee-crunching 20-mile trail at the age of 55.

Letona, like many other porters, is from the Sacred Valley, where locals live humbly off small plots of land in the shadow of several major Inca sites. He proudly told me that his children learn to read and write in their native Quechua language at the local public school.

"Before, we were carrying 130 to 150 pounds and making 15 nuevo soles a day," he said, a sum roughly equivalent to $4.50 in the late 1990s.

But a fair wage and working conditions are the exception on the trail.

I caught up to Victor, 22, as he labored alone on the final ascent to Warmiwanusca, Quechua for "Dead Woman's Pass," the grisly name for the trail's highest point at 13,779 feet.

He refused to give me his full name because he said his employer — Inca Trail Peru — has fired porters in the past for talking to tourists about conditions and pay.

The Sacred Valley native said he was carrying over-regulation weight — 66 pounds — for $9 dollars a day and complained bitterly about not getting enough food.

Unlike porters with other agencies, Victor didn't have a water bottle and his dry, cracked toes jutted out from the end of worn-down sandals, covered in dust from the trail.

Jorge Villasante, Peru's vice labor minister, acknowledges that enforcing the 2003 law is a problem.

The Labor Ministry's inspections of the trail in June of 2007 found that some 80 percent of tour agencies were violating the law — their porters had overloaded packs, inadequate food rations and poor sleeping conditions.

"Every agency reports that they pay their workers the minimum wage, but we know from talking to porters that many receive only $8 or $9," Villasante said in an interview.

But Villasante believes weigh stations at the start of the trail and fines of up to $1,075 for tour operators that violate the law are slowly improving porters' conditions.

Jose Antonio Gongora, 39, founder of Llama Path tour agency, believes it is up to tour operators themselves to improve porters' conditions, rather than relying on what he calls a corrupt and inefficient government.

Gongora started on the trail as a porter in 1992, working his way up the ranks to a guide, before founding his own agency in 2004.

Porters frequently carry 90 pounds because their employer knows workers at the weigh station, Gongora said.

He said the money from fines should be used to help exploited porters.

"Why not force a company that is operating incorrectly to use the fine to buy clothes for all of their porters?" Gongora told me back in the Llama Path office in Cuzco.

Llama Path and SAS Travel were the only agencies I saw on the trail that outfit their porters with matching sport-grade uniforms and hiking boots.

Llama Path porters were also the only ones I spoke to who receive medical insurance. Porter Letona proudly told me that he injured his right foot hiking the trail last year but didn't pay a dime for treatment.

In the past, when they got hurt working for other agencies, the companies would say "See you," Fredy Condori, 31, Llama Path's head porter, said as he displayed his staff's medical insurance forms.

"The food was terrible," Condori said, recalling his past experiences. "In four days we didn't eat much and when we slept on the ground the water seeped through. It was a disaster."

Condori, who is the representative of Llama Path's workers in a 6,000-strong porter union based in Cuzco, said such conditions are still common on the trail.

Llama Path is trying to change that culture and turn the work of a porter into a stable, protected occupation. Gongora and Condori have trained some 85 porters to hike on fixed rotations, bought them medical insurance and worked to improve food rations and sleeping conditions.

"The idea is to humanize the work" and to "provoke change in other agencies," Gongora said.

But such an operational shift isn't easy, or cheap. "It requires a lot of money," Gongora said, adding that Llama Path wasn't able change its operations and improve porter conditions until this year, its fifth.

"For a porter there's no rain, no sun and no cold, so we have to do all we can to provide them with the facilities and conditions they need," Gongora said.

If you go:

Charging slightly higher prices, few tour operators in Cuzco give their porters fair working conditions and take steps to protect the fragile ecosystem in the scenic Andean region where they operate. Be sure to book early for the classic, four-day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, as park entry permits are currently sold out through September.

Some of our recommendations include:

Llama Path: www.llamapath.com Calle San Juan de Dios 250, Cuzco, 011- 51-84-240822 51-84-240822 , An agency founded by former porter Jose, provides excellent conditions for porters (including insurance). It is Recommended by different travel books.

Inca Land Adventures: www.incalandadventures.com/ Small family-run business. Personalised service at competitive prices with good porters treatment.

Qente Expeditions: www.qente.com well based Cusco operator offering different treks at different prices.

Chaska Tours: www.chaskatours.com provides good service at a rage of prices.