Name: José Antonio Góngora Meza  

Nickname: Payjosé    

e-mail:  josegongora@hotmail.com

Education: San Antonio Abad del Cusco University Tourism Degree. 

Favorite treks: Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, Salcantay-Santa Teresa and Lares trek.

Passion: The Mountains

Click here: JoséGóngora For Sustainable tourism

After working 10 years and having undertaken about 300 trekking trips in the Cusco area, I decided to get involved in this project as a way to develop a real sustainable tourism in Cusco.

During these years I have got to experience, understand and feel a lot of things about mountain life hardship and also about the importance of  mountains themselves for our lives. I have got to know the lifestyle and standards of life of people living in the countryside. Standards of life are very low and unstable in all regions of Peru-as is typical in a third world country - even in those places most visited by tourists. Many areas are almost completely forgotten and abandoned, some don’t even have basic commodities. Life is survival only and poverty has been replaced by misery.

For a lot of people it seems that mountain life is synonymous with poverty and discrimination, I can understand that; but why does it mean that to try to make money to get things that anyone in the first world has is a crime? Why do we bargain that much that don’t leave any profits for the seller? Do we really understand what sustainable tourism means??? If so, what do we do to carry out the principles? ‘It’s nice to get things but it´s nicer to give things’. It took me quite a while to understand that ‘ walking in the mountains is for your mind rather that for your feet’. It took me a while to understand that it is not enough to be born in the mountains if the mountains are not born in you.

It’s a passion for me now to work as a mountain guide. It’s a passion for me to show people from other cultures what my ancestors left for us all to enjoy; now I am really concerned with preserving the past, with preserving that which shows us the way for the future.

I have no doubt right now that there is no a route like the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, what more can it bring you?? its diversity in nature, its impressive example of roads, its Inca sites and its connection with the mountains….it’s just amazing!! Remember the Inca trail is not only a trekking route but it is a ‘route into the past!!!!’ If the first day makes you think you are walking in the mountains, wait till the third day for the real mountain walk, take your time and relax.

If I were you, I think I would do the real Inca Trail alternative route for me: Mollepata-Santa Teresa- Machu Picchu trek, with the scary 6 272 metre Salcantay mount, by going over snow-capped passes, through cloud forests filled with parakeets and finally down to the tropical Santa Teresa. I am sure this trek will be a life time experience!! Good luck amigos!!!!

If the many official regulations stopped you from going on the impressive Inca Trail, try another beautiful walk: to Lares. It’s a typical Andean trek, peaceful, with amazing friendly people dressed in colourful ponchos, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and many turquoise lakes.