Why trek the Salkantay route to Machu Picchu when you could be on a beach instead?
words :: Erin Moroz
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Type I fun: It’s fun in the moment—perhaps an all-inclusive vacation. The whole thing is goddamn enjoyable; someone cooks your meals and cleans up after you. You day drink and lie in the sun. The good times don’t stop rolling.
Type II fun: It was a good time in retrospect—character building. You did the thing, and while you were doing the thing you suffered a bit and were relieved when it stopped. But when you look back on the thing from your cozy quarters with your feet up: Wow! Turns out the journey was the destination—what an adventure/marathon/slog.
Type III fun: An experience that involves risk and suffering—you could die. You make in-the-moment bargains with your deity of choice to stop the pain/humiliation/trauma. You’ll never do this asinine thing again. Redemption is a lost cause.
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While trekking the Salkantay route to Machu Picchu last fall, our group spent a fair amount of time pondering, sometimes chuckling and often commiserating on the 74-kilometre hike. Between the scratching of Peruvian mosquito bites (more of a horsefly bite really) and bandaging of blisters, we pontificated: Why were we doing this when we could be on a beach somewhere?
Our Indigenous Quechuan guide, the indomitable, barrel-chested Juan Carlos Pillco Chuhui of Cusco’s Alpaca Expeditions, wore a fluorescent green T-shirt that screamed, “The journey is the destination!” Is it, though? Isn’t the destination the destination, we questioned, gasping our way to the top of 4,650 m Salkantay Pass in driving rain.
Pillco grew up in the high-altitude village of Huama in Peru’s Sacred Valley, where Spanish is a second language and storytelling is still the primary method of passing down history. He is part of a movement to reclaim Quechuan identity in tourism—Quechua language, traditions and rituals once pushed to the fringes are now front and centre for travelers who want a deeper connection to the land they are hiking through.
“Quechua is the language of our ancestors,” Pillco told our crew one evening over too many Cusqueñas. He spoke of Pachamama, the earth mother, of sacred lakes and mountains that watch over travelers. In the dinner tent surrounded by new friends and darkness, it was easy to believe in them, too.
Mornings at altitude began with a buenos dias and a hand pushing a scalding mug of coca leaf tea through the tent flap—the herbal drink is a Quechuan cure-all for altitude, sluggish limbs and existential dread. As the mist lifted and sun stretched over the kelly-green carpet of the Andes, we emerged, bleary-eyed, to snorting horses and donkeys in the distance and the busyness of prepping hot breakfast and drinking water while porters dismantled camp like a pit crew.
Pillco spoke of Pachamama, the earth mother, of sacred lakes and mountains that watch over travellers. In the dinner tent surrounded by new friends and darkness, it was easy to believe in them, too.
The Salkantay route in the Peruvian Andes has become an alternative to the popular and crowded Inca Trail. Both will take you to Machu Picchu—one, the Salkantay, is seen as more of an effort. You must be reasonably fit, with the knees of an 8-year-old or at least the ability to ignore the gradual betrayal of your own body. Unlike the classic Inca Trail, the Salkantay Trek offers a more rugged, remote approach, passing by sacred lakes and unnamed peaks before descending into a lush cloud forest.
On the Inca Trail, trekkers follow in the footsteps of the flash-in-the-pan Incan dynasty that ruled much of western South America from 1438 to 1533, in an area that encompasses modern day Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and large parts of Colombia, Chile and Argentina. Machu Picchu was a royal estate and religious site; the Spanish arrived in South America in 1498 and began their conquest of the Incans in 1532—a campaign of displacement, execution and, let’s be honest, general cultural destruction of the region’s Indigenous inhabitants.
Unlike the classic Inca Trail, the Salkantay Trek offers a more rugged, remote approach, passing by sacred lakes and unnamed peaks before descending into a lush cloud forest.
Yet, against the odds, Quechuan culture survived—not just in the remote villages of the Andes but in the very way travelers experience Peru today. Tourists who set foot on these trails rely on the knowledge and endurance of Quechuan porters and guides, men and women whose ancestors built these same paths centuries ago. Alpaca Expeditions is one of the few trekking companies that actively employs Indigenous Quechuans in leadership roles, ensuring they are not just the labour force but also the storytellers.
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And tourism is a lifeline for those working its trails. Our tour company, Alpaca, is at the forefront: hiring female porters and breaking a long-standing gender barrier in Andean trekking, limiting pack weights to less than the country’s mandated amount and ensuring their workers are given proper gear, such as quality sleeping bags and sturdy tents.
“Our main goal as a sustainable, local tour operator has always been to treat our team—porters, chefs and guides—better. It’s special for our team to work for a company that genuinely cares for them,” says Raul Ccolque, owner of Alpaca Expeditions. “Many of our team members have been with us for eight or nine years. To us, being sustainable means actively involving local communities, ensuring Quechuan families benefit directly from the tourism industry.” And Alpaca does give back to the local villages, in the form of sponsorship dollars and funding for medical necessities like optometrist and dentist visits to remote communities.
Visiting Machu Picchu feels like stumbling into the past—a sacred refuge that went quiet for centuries, swallowed by the green until someone finally asked the right question. (The locals were always aware of the site, passing down oral histories long before American professor Hiram Bingham “discovered” it in 1911.) Every day, 4,000 humans step onto its stone terraces, their movements restricted since the Covid pandemic to three-hour slots in one of four parcelled sections. Each visitor’s permit costs $85 CAD. Multiply that amount by the 1.5 million tourists who flock to Machu Picchu annually—purchasing baby alpaca sweaters (none of that adult alpaca shit, please), sipping pisco sours and hiring guides, porters and drivers—and the financial impact of tourism becomes undeniable. Tourism contributes $30 billion CAD yearly to Peru’s economy, with more than 2 million travellers visiting the Cusco region alone.
“To us, being sustainable means actively involving local communities, ensuring Quechuan families benefit directly from the tourism industry.”
Before we step onto the ruins of Machu Picchu, we witness the landscape, surreal and sweeping. Alpine meadows are dotted with purple tarwi and later, on the descent, Toblerone-style emerald peaks fade, layer upon layer, beyond sight into a nearly silent jungle where the only sounds are bird calls from unseen places and the crunch of boots finding purchase on trails strewn with baby-head boulders. We sample muña (a relative of mint), eat so much passion fruit it’s obnoxious and keep a keen eye on the jungle for one of the 400 species of orchids native to the region.
Our crew of seven travellers is as varied as the landscape, at least to a Westerner: the wise, grey-haired couple from Atlanta; the dry-witted doctor from Edinburgh (via Derry, Ireland); the Milwaukee sisters; and the Canucks (who incidentally everyone quizzed about weed), myself and my compatriot from Coquitlam. All came equipped with tales of other places one must see and of the full lives lived by those fortunate enough to adventure internationally.
All but the fittest hikers in our pack felt the extreme impact of altitude. The Quechuan people, though, have adapted to the thin air over centuries; in fact, studies suggest many Indigenous Peruvians have larger lung capacity than those of us who live at sea level and a unique genetic adaptation to low oxygen levels at high altitude.
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My Canadian counterpart, Jordan, hadn’t made it to Cusco in time to acclimatize for the three-day recommended window and was nearly crippled by altitude sickness during the early days of the trek. By day three, though, he was resurrected and holding court in the hot tub, “Back from the dead with his harem of 20-year-olds,” Emma the Irishwoman playfully deadpanned as he nestled amongst the bikinis of the trekking herd mirroring our path (but unnervingly fuelled by song and trivia games in the way of 20-somethings). Emma had functioned as a patient lifeline for Jordan the first days of the trek—literally coaxing him step by step when, he said, “It felt like the inside of [his] head wanted to get out.”
As the kilometres slip by, we visit family-run coffee farms, duck beneath avocado trees and cold dip in the Aobamba River along the trek through montane forest before reaching the final long, flat march along the train tracks to Aguas Calientes. And we discover the journey isn’t measured in kilometres—not accurately, anyway, we would realize while inspecting the distance listed on our souvenir T-shirts over yet another pisco sour at the end of our journey. Over the span of five days and five nights we had experienced a stretching and wrinkling of space and time culminating in the conclusion that maybe distance isn’t that useful a metric after all.
Suddenly we were back to crisp bed sheets and private toilets—and, dear god, is that air conditioning? At our journey’s end the suffering blurs to nostalgia, the memories sharpen and say, “Wait a minute, what an adventure!” Type II fun indeed.
Machu Picchu was more than I never imagined. I expected something akin to a dusty church, but it delivered prodigious disbelief—not merely from location, but also in structural integrity, the colourful tales of Spanish deception and the indomitable spirit of the Indigenous Peruvians.
Erin was a guest of Alpaca Expeditions while in Peru.
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