The Porters of Incas Path
Our male and female porters are the backbone of our company, create unforgettable experiences on the trails would be impossible without the hard work they do.
We have porters from the most experienced to the rookies, all of them work with great passion and dedication to create the best possible experience for our tourists.
Being a porter is a very demanding job, that’s why we provide them; adequate equipment for them to carry out their activity in fair and humane conditions: There are too many companies that do not provide porters with fair and humane conditions and some others make false advertising about how fabulous they are with them.
Something we believe and practice: you can lie to your customers and the whole world but you can never lie to yourself.
Why we believe that the world is an equal place for everyone
We have opened our arms and our company to the women of Peru, we have been fortunate to have female porters who work tirelessly to create magical trips to Machu Picchu.
The Teal Battalion, as we kindly called our porter team
We value the demanding work that our porters carry out too much, that’s why we have a strategic plan to reward our teal battalion in the best possible way.
This is our commitment to our Teal Battalion:
Truly fair wages for our porters.
I have worked as tour guide for more than 10 years and l have seen how arduous that the porters work; so now that l have the chance, l would like to remunerate them fairly.
Proper work and equipment.
Every porter gets proper a hiking equipment set, that includes: hiking shoes, t shirts, hiking pants, water proof jacket, sunhat, woolhat, headlamp, sleeping bag and tents.
The government allows each porter to carry no more than 25 Kg, our porters carry 20 Kg for the company and 5 Kg of their personal items.
Eureka timberline tents and sleeping bags.
To provide tents and sleeping bags to our porters is part of our philosophy to make a sustainable industry with fair and human conditions for everyone.
Medical assistance.
Peru has free health services for everyone, this may be hard to get with long waiting periods; for this reason, we have a special agreement with the Pardo clinic to cure and treat any health problems that our porters may experience while hiking.
Nutritious and abundant meals.
To have plenty of delicious and nutritious food while hiking is essential.
For this reason our porters recieve abundant energetical and protein food like our customers
We are are planning to have a porter house.
Our porters are from far away villages in the mountains, it is not easy for them to come to Cusco and the Inca Trail to work for us; for this reason we are planning for 2022 to build a house for them stay with their families in Cusco.
Business technical advice.
The work of the porters is physically very demanding, so we have a plan so that our porters do not work more than 10 years on the hiking trails.
We have business trainings to discover their alternative talents and passions to help them build their own businesses.
Travel and entertainment meetings.
In order to promote union, solidarity, empathy and keep our entire work team highly motivated, we annually develop trips, sporting events and family games.
We do not provide a bus for our porters.
It is not that we do not treat our porters with the same dignity and respect as our clients, but that we want to strengthen the local economy.
I have the philosophy that a company must also leave incomes to the inhabitants where the tourist activity is carried out, in that sense the porters when boarding buses (comfortable buses) of the local people are helping to strengthen too the local economy.
Who are our Teal Battalion
Our team of porters is made up of 25 men and 5 women from remote areas of Cusco.
Almost 100% of our porters have Quechua as their main language; agriculture and livestock of guinea pig, llama and alpaca are its main economic source: work as a porter, is their second revenue.
- 10 porters from Lawa Lawa community, located at 3900 m.a.s.l. and 4 hours from Cusco.
- 10 porters from Paru Paru community, located at 3200 m.a.s.l. and 1 hour and a half from Cusco.
- 10 porters from Huacahuasi community, located at 3828 m.a.s.l. and 4 hours and a half from Cusco.
Women porters.
We understand the importance that women have in our society and what we would like to achieve through the job opportunity that we offer them is that our mothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, etc., acquire and reinforce their capacities, strategies and leadership, both on the individual plane as well as within society, in order to achieve an autonomous life in which they can participate, in terms of equality, in access to resources, recognition and decision-making in all spheres of personal and social life.