Living in Peru : your everyday companion

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(by Tim Leffel)

Porters with low-tech backpacks on the Inca Trail.

During high season in Peru, 500 people set off on the Inca Trail each day. On average, 300 of them are porters. So during any four-day period, 1,200 of these human pack mules are at work somewhere between Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu, carrying camping gear, chairs, and four days’ worth of food.

What makes the porters want to take on this job? Do they really make any money? What do they think of these pampered tourists who fly from around the world to spend their nights sleeping on the ground, their days straining their knees and dealing with smelly toilets?

The Inca Trail is likely the most popular multi-day hike in the world. Despite annual increases in costs, the permits often sell out months in advance. Once you’re on the trail, you see why the trip is so popular.

Trekkers spend four days and three nights soaking up amazing Andean Mountain vistas around every turn, seeing ruins that can only be visited on foot. The prize is arriving at the spectacular site of Machu Picchu just before sunrise.

A few days before the hike, I needed to visit our tour operator to settle up on fees. I walked along the busy cobblestone streets of Cuzco through the historic Plaza de Armas, flanked by two imposing cathedrals and rows of carved wooden balconies over stone arches. It was getting dark as I ducked through the small portal cut out of a massive, thick wooden door and stepped into a large courtyard.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw a long line of local men on the second floor, outside the trekking company’s office. I had arrived on porter payday. The forty or so men waiting to get paid looked surprisingly small and wiry. For a moment the cinematic fantasy flashed across my mind that with a little help from Uma Thurman’s character in Kill Bill, I could knock out the whole group of them in a fight, bounding from the balcony and stairs.

Porters with a heavy load, trekkers with daypacks, Inca Trail.

Once we started the trek, however, it was obvious who was stronger. As soon as our group started the ascent, porters bounded past us with huge loads on their back, some carrying full tanks of propane, while we struggled to get up the trail carrying almost nothing.

By the time we got to camp the first night, our tents were already set up and the smells of corn soup and fried trout wafted from the cooking tent. Soon after we changed into warmer clothes, dinner was served in the dining tent, complete with tables and stools that would be carried along for four days. Only after we had all been served and plates had been cleared could the porters finally settle in to their dinner.

At least on our trek, porters carried extra rations meant just for them. On some of the other tours, porters only receive leftovers after the tourists have finished. If the trekkers have big appetites, the porters stay hungry. “Some people I know who work for other companies never get enough to eat on the trail,” said Angel Flores Bañares, a porter in my group. They bring along snacks that don’t weigh much because they never know what they’ll get. At the end of the four days, they go home and eat enough for three people, they are so hungry!” Some load up on two key Andean staples along the way: chicha (corn beer) served up from a bucket by ladies along the trail, and a steady supply of coca leaves to provide energy and quell the appetite.

Porter hauling a propane tank up the mountain to cook for trekkers.

On the morning following our first night of camping, the porters all introduced themselves before we set off for the day, giving us their name, hometown, and age.

Years of high-altitude sunshine and mountain winds aren’t kind to the faces of the Andean people. “Looks like he’s 50” muttered the woman next to me after a 31 year-old porter spoke. Our guide explained what individuals’ names meant in Quechua, the local language that was used by the Incas.

Many of the porters are landowners who farm crops or raise animals near small valley towns such as Ollantaytambo and Chinchero. Bucking the image of the stoic manual laborer, they all seem to smile constantly.

“It is hard work, but they can joke with their friends, have a good time, and take a break from their wives,” explained our guide Oscar. “It’s not a bad job really.”

The porters I spoke to take pride in their work and, like most of us, are just trying to make a living and take care of their families. To us desk jockeys flying in from abroad, however, a porter’s job seems incrediblytaxing. They pack up the camps each morning, then must hike faster than the tourists in order to get far ahead and set up the dining tent for lunch. (The cook and his assistant have to go even faster, to get the meal ready.) They do it all over again after lunch, passing all the tourists on the trail so they can get to the night’s camping spot and set up all the individual tents.

Porter with a woven hat, Inca Trail.

While the foreigners come decked out in high-tech hiking boots and thick wool socks, the porters do all this in sandals or worn-out sneakers. When I mentioned this to Bañares, he took a look at my hiking boots and shrugged. “Your feet are not used to walking in the mountains.”

Working as a porter can mean the difference between barely eking out an existence on the land and having a relatively comfortable life. “I raise wheat, peas, beans, quinoa, and animals, so we have plenty to eat,” explained porter Eranjelio Seina Castca, who lives in a stone and mud brick house near Pisac, an Inca fortress.

“This money lets me fix up my house and buy books and clothes for my children.” With five children spanning the ages of 19 and 4, it made sense that he was still at it after 600 times on the circuit.


Around the beginning of the decade, various porter welfare groups began to lobby for better standards for these men. The most vocal was the now-defunct Inka Porter Project, a group that many credit with raising awareness of porter treatment among foreign visitors. The NGO also provided English lessons and first aid classes for porters who wanted to upgrade their skills.

Groups like this have collectively tried to coax tour companies into paying each porter a wage of at least 100 soles for the four-day trek. Counting tips, if a porter goes out five times per month at that rate, he will make about $190—just a tad more than the retail price of the fancy North Face fleece I wore on the trail each night.

Put in local perspective, however, that’s a worthwhile sum. In the villages scattered around the Sacred Valley between Cuzco and Machu Picchu, the better-paid porters and cooks are actually middle to upper class compared to many of their neighbors. When Peru Treks & Adventure started a school supplies donation program in villages where their porters lived, some unforeseen dynamics cropped up. “

Porters prepare for weigh-in procedures at the entrance to the Inca Trail.

As soon as we started delivering supplies to the public schools we heard grumbling,” explained Mike Weston, founder of the agency. “It turned out that most of the porters were sending their kids to a private school on the edge of town. They wanted the supplies to go there, where their kids were, not to the public school. It was a messy situation that I never expected.”

Anyone can rent an office in Cuzco for a hundred bucks, throw up a sign, and call themselves a trekking company. Many of them simply pocket a commission and then channel clients into a central pool. “If you are paying the lowest rate on offer to hike the trail, it’s a certainty that the porters are not being treated well,” says Ann Noon, who worked with the Inka Porter Project.

“The easiest and least visible place to cut corners is in the pay and treatment of the porters.”

A high price doesn’t necessarily equate to better treatment either, especially if the trip is booked at an agency abroad. “The worst exploitation comes from some of the highest-priced agencies,” explained Weston. “A lot of times the overseas agency takes a huge cut, then the actual trip is run by a local operator who is doing everything on the cheap.” The key is doing some research to see which companies have a reputation for being responsible.

In 2001, the government enacted laws meant to curb exploitation. Loads were limited to 25 kilos and a ratio of porters to tourists was set. In the years before government regulations and market pressures kicked in, poor treatment was standard practice. Some travelers wistfully recall the era when they could just show up and hike the Inca Trail for next to nothing. When I spoke to Castca, he felt no nostalgia for that period.

“There was a lot of misery before the controls started,” he explained. “We would have to carry over 50 kilos (110 pounds) and there was never enough food. We had to sleep out in the open, with no tents. If it rained, we would try to find a cave so we could stay dry.”

Other long-time porters talked of huddling together at night to compensate for the lack of blankets, of carrying trash bags with them to have something to lay over the mud for sleeping. “A lot of porters became alcoholics,” added Castca. “They would drink to stay warm and to help them sleep in the cold. After a while it was a habit and it hurt their lives.”

Now life is far better for the trail itself and for the porters, a fact backpackers have to keep in mind when confronted with the ever-rising cost to go on the hike. It still doesn’t mean the job is easy, however. While a few hardy souls turn around and do another trip the day after they arrive home, most spend that time recovering. When I asked various porters what they did on the day they get home, the answers were all variations on one word: “rest.”

…poor treatment was standard practice.

As I sat with porters Castca and Bañares in the dining tent on the last night, under the glow of camp lanterns, I asked them what they thought about us travelers. I expected some resentment over having to haul all our belongings while we skip along with just a daypack. Weston had told me earlier that their agency encourages everyone to hire a personal porter, since it results in more jobs for locals and makes it easier to cope with an altitude that reaches 14,000 feet.

This feeling was echoed by Castca. “You do not live in this air and walk in the mountains all the time,” he said. “It is better for you to pay us to carry your things. We earn money for our family and you can look around without being tired all the time.”

Did they think we were nuts to pay hundreds of dollars to sleep in tents and hike among mountains they see every day? Bañares furrowed his brow, adjusted his alpaca hat, and answered slowly, “We don’t think you are crazy at all. You have dreamed of coming here and seeing these mountains, and learning the history of the Inca culture. You live in a big city and don’t have views like this, so you want to come spend some time in this special place.”

“And you get bored with all the technology and the noise and you want to escape.” added Castca. “You can dream about the Incas and see photos of Machu Picchu, but you can only feel our history by walking in these mountains and seeing the Andean people.”

As they talked, a few other hikers playing cards at the other end of the table stopped what they were doing, looked up, and nodded with a smile. Sometimes the eyes of a porter see more than we think.

Bio:
Tim Leffel is author of "Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune" and "The World's Cheapest Destinations".
He is also editor of the narrative travel site PerceptiveTravel.com.

Hyperlinks:
Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune - http://www.contrariantraveler.com/
The World's Cheapest Destinations - http://www.worldscheapestdestinations.com/index.html
Perceptive Travel - http://www.perceptivetravel.com/