The women porters making history on Peru's Inca Trail

In the darkness of her small bedroom in Peru's Sacred Valley of the Incas, Sara Qquehuarucho Zamalloa packed her bag, thoughts racing: Would the weather be good? Would the team be friendly? Would she encounter park rangers with bad attitudes toward women? Would her mum, who suffers from chronic pain, be okay while she was gone?

50 Reasons to Love the World - 2021

Why do you love the world?

"Because living in the world is an adventure. One day can be up, and the next can be down. But we learn and grow. That's what the world is about." – Sara Qquehuarucho Zamalloa, guide

More Reasons to Love the World

She pushed aside the ruminations. She was headed out the next morning as an assistant guide on the Inca Trail, the precipitous pathway leading to the famous 15th-Century Inca citadel of Machu Picchu. She loved the job. It paid more than anything else she could be doing, and, perhaps most importantly, it empowered her in Peru's patriarchal society. Knowing she could tackle the Inca Trail – both physically and mentally – as a guide made her feel like she could accomplish anything she set her mind to.

She double checked to make sure she had her guiding ID and her water bottle, and ensured her pack was not too heavy (every kilogram counts on the trail), then went to say farewell to her mother in the house's other room. Zamalloa slipped her mother some money, noticing how their roles had changed since childhood, and crawled into bed for six hours of solid sleep. She always slept well the night before a trek.

Zamalloa's boldest hope as a child in the village of San Martin, located in the cloud forests high above the Amazon jungle, was to become an administrative assistant, a job that in Peru would have landed her in a male-dominated office with no hope of upward mobility. 

"In my community, not a lot of people finished education," Zamalloa told me, sitting around a kitchen table in Cusco with her trekking coworkers. "Our school was a three-hour walk there and a three-hour walk back. Parents made children marry when they were 13 years old. I wanted to change all of those injustices."

With a sense of adventure that would serve her well, eight-year-old Zamalloa joined her mother on the 15-hour bus ride to move to Calca, near Cusco City, to sell vegetables at the local market. As she got older, she sought out jobs, attended high school and studied tourism for three years at college. The Inca Trail and a whole new world of possibility weren't even on her radar until 2016, when she met Miguel Angel Góngora, the co-owner of Evolution Treks Peru, a Cusco-based trekking company, who invited her to join a new programme for women porters on the Inca Trail.

Originally, the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu was a path for the royal emperor, who honoured the mountains and peaks on his pilgrimage (Credit: Mac99/Getty Images)

"I remember the date of my first trek very well. 27 March 2018," she said. "That was the start of a different life for me."

The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is part of a vast network of trails in Latin America that integrated Tahuantinsuyo – the Inca Empire – which ruled in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Only the Inca, the royal emperor, was allowed on this portion of the trail, as he pilgrimaged to the sacred site of Machu Picchu, honouring the mountains and peaks along the way. American archaeologist Hiram Bingham's "discovery" of Machu Picchu in the early 1900s brought worldwide attention to the trail previously unknown to the Western world. Intrepid trekkers in the following decades used locally drawn maps to find their way to the legendary "Lost City of Gold".

In the 1970s, tour operators began hiring men from the villages of the Sacred Valley as porters to lead hikers along the route. Initially, given the unstable political situation that ravaged Peru at that time, few tourists dared visit the Inca Trail, making porter jobs limited. But after the defeat of the far-left guerrilla group Shining Path in the early 1990s, visitors flocked to the trail. In 2001, new Inca Trail regulations required permits for trekkers as well as porters; today, 300 porters and guides support 200 tourists daily. But until recently, only men were hired for the job.

Evolution Treks Peru was founded in 2015 as an ethical tour operator by Góngora, a former porter, and his business partner, Amelia Huaraya Palomino. From the start, the duo has been committed to supporting the rights of Inca Trail porters, who have endured low wages and backbreaking work, with no benefits. The two have made good progress, ensuring that their porters sleep in their own tents rather than on the bathroom floor, earn fair wages, carry packs that aren't overloaded and are properly clothed.

Machu Picchu is the reward for four days of hiking along the rough, vertiginous Inca Trail (Credit: Pablo Porciuncula Brune/AFP/Getty Images)

But women, who throughout Peruvian history have faced prejudice and discrimination, have always been at the epicentre of the company's mission. Evolution Treks Peru brought on the first women Inca Trail porters in June 2017. "We want women to realise their importance in society," said Palomino. "That they matter as much as men do. In our Inca history, women always mattered. It's time to show that by giving women porters and guides opportunities." This year, Evolution Treks debuted an all-women trek, on which the porters, guides and clients are all women. 

In our Inca history, women always mattered. It's time to show that by giving women porters and guides opportunities.

"We proceed from the perspective of using tourism as a tool for social change," Góngora said. "In this sense, having women-only tours is a step further into our mission of creating that social change. It solidifies the presence of women on the Inca Trail while it expands on the role that they initially played. That is going from being only one or two women porters to have a team of exclusively women guides, porters and cooks taking care of our women travellers." 

Hiking the Inca Trail is no easy task. The classic trek, 42 kilometres from the trailhead known as Kilometre 82 to Machu Picchu, comprises four days and three nights of hiking and camping along rough, vertiginous trails, sometimes at more than 3,962m in elevation, through some of the world's most striking landscapes. Llamas run free and birds soar overhead, and the ancient ruins of the Inca world sprinkle the verdant, cloud-cloaked mountainsides. Porters, though, are steely focused on lugging heavy packs of supplies and clients' personal items between campsites, setting up camp and getting the next meal ready. The guides, meanwhile, must ensure that trekking clients are comfortable on the demanding trail and be prepared for illness, injury or other calamities, all while sharing insights into Incan history and culture.

Women first started working as porters on the Inca Trail in 2017. There's now an all-women trek with women guides, porters and guests (Credit: Evolution Treks Peru)

When Zamalloa started off as a porter, she doubted her ability. The night before her first trek she didn't sleep. To top it off, she felt ill when she showed up for her first day of work, either from food poisoning or nerves – or both.

"I didn't think she was going to make it," Góngora said. "She was throwing up."

"I said, 'Yes, I'm going to make it,'" Zamalloa said firmly. The profession had been male-only until the year before she was hired. Knowing the significance of what she was doing, and how it could help her life, she refused to give up. 

And she didn't. For four days she dug deep, carrying a heavy pack along the tortuous trail and fighting her unhappy stomach. Typically shy, she found that she enjoyed meeting new people and developing friendships with her fellow porters. She since has been promoted to assistant tour guide and is studying English to become a fully-fledged tour guide.

When women first started working on the trail in 2017, they encountered resistance from men who questioned their abilities – and their very presence. "At the beginning, guys judged me for being a woman, thinking I wouldn't be able to do the trek. They made me doubt my abilities, and that was hard at first," Zamalloa said. "Then I realised I could, and that has made me stronger."

There also has been some grumbling over women porters carrying less weight than men (15kg to the men's 20kg) while earning the same wage (915 soles ($233; ₤168) a month for 16 days of work, plus an extra 398 soles ($101; ₤73) in tips.

But little by little, as the appearance of women guides and porters has become more prevalent along the Inca Trail, acceptance is growing.

Porters carry heavy packs of supplies and clients' personal items between campsites, set up camp and prepare meals (Credit: Evolution Treks Peru)

"We are being given the opportunity that women have been looking for, to end discrimination," said Evolution Treks porter and chef Silvia Flor Gallegos Flores. "To show the world that women are equal in a man's job, not just on the Inca Trail, but in anything else. We have the mental and physical ability to complete those jobs. We're more than what we've been taught." 

Flores dreams of becoming a lead guide and one day owning her own business. "I want to be completely independent," she said. "I don't want to depend on anyone else."

We are being given the opportunity that women have been looking for, to end discrimination

This push to redefine Peruvian women's role in society is not confined to Evolution Treks.

"We are forcing our competitors to do the same," Góngora said. "We are forcing a conversation around women's issues, inclusion, discrimination. It's going to change the approach that tourists will have for tourism, and not only here in Peru. We want to inspire other people in other parts of the world to take on our initiative."

In the meantime, Zamalloa, Flores and 16 other women porters and guides are making history on the Inca Trail, treading their way forward on the same polished stones once reserved for the revered – male – Inca emperor. And after every trek, Zamalloa returns to her mum, grateful she can support them both.

BBC Travel celebrates 50 Reasons to Love the World in 2021, through the inspiration of well-known voices as well as unsung heroes in local communities around the globe.

 

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210803-the-women-porters-making-history-on-perus-inca-trail