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Peru Treks & Adventure - About Us
Peru
Treks & Adventure is a licensed trek & tour operator based in
Cusco, the heart of the ancient Inca empire.
We offer a variety of treks and tour packages in Peru with exciting itineraries designed to appeal to most
visitor's budgets. Due to our many years of experience in the travel
industry, we can offer unbeatable prices with no compromise on
quality.
Peru
Treks and Adventure is run as a professional tour operator with
experienced office staff and guides. We take pride in looking after
our team and pay our trekking staff such as cooks and porters well
above average wages.
A percentage of our profits go towards funding
local
community-based projects either organized directly by ourselves or in
association with local non-governmental organizations (NGO's).
In October 2006
Peru Treks received an award for the Best
Travel Agency in Cusco 2006, an award that recognizes the
quality of our services and hard work and dedication of our
trekking team.
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Georgina ("The Boss") collecting
the award for Best Travel agency in Cusco 2006. |
For
details about how
We
are taking Responsible Tourism seriously
please click here.
Our Office staff:
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Georgina (the
boss) |
Mike
(reservations) |
Tim (office
manager) |
Goyo
(operations) |
Remigio
(assistant) |
Our Guides:
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Marcelino &
daughter |
Washington |
Victor |
Gladys |
Oscar |
Our Porters (&
family):
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Pisac
community |
Chinchero
community |
Paucartambo
community |
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Georgina Gonzalez
de Weston
(Owner/manager)
Georgina (Koqui)
was born in Cusco and brought up in Aguas Calientes before moving
back to Cusco to study Company Administration. She has travelled
widely in Peru and has been organising treks since 1998 and
working in the travel industry since 1995. She is one of eight
brothers and sisters.
Mike Weston
(Community Projects Manager)
Mike is in charge
of our community projects. Mike was born in Britain and moved
to Peru in 1998 where he has now settled down with his Peruvian
wife Koqui (The boss - see above) and their 5 year-old daughter. In 1994 Mike
travelled extensively throughout South America and in 1996, he
dedicated a year to visiting local village festivals throughout
Peru and Bolivia where he spent a lot of time staying with
families in remote Andean communities as well as dancing (with a
complete lack of natural ability some may say!) and drinking large
amounts of local firewater. Mike is our webmaster and is currently
working on several projects to promote handicrafts and textiles
from local mountain communities.
Dave Weston
(Reservations Manager)
Dave is Mike's
brother and is in charge of the reservations which means that he
is responsible for answering all of your emails. Dave is mad-keen
on photography and is currently taking a year off work to travel
around South America with his camera & laptop, so your email may
be answered from just about anywhere !!! Dave normally works as a
Shore Excursion manager for a cruise line and has visited just
about every country on the planet. Of course Peru is his favourite
country!.
Tim Auccapuma
(Office Manager)
Tim is in charge of
our main office in Cusco. He is probably the person you'll meet
when you come to our office to pay your trek balance and receive
your trek briefing. Tim was born and brought up in the village of
Chinchero and, following his compulsory military service, moved to
Cusco over 10 years ago to work as a security officer for the US
consulate. During this period Tim received free English lessons
from the consulate and decided to gain experience working in
tourism. Together with Koqui, Tim helped set up Peru Treks. Tim is
now taking a computer course.
Goyo Mamani
(Operations manager)
Goyo, born in a
mining community near Lake Titicaca, worked as a
porter on the Inca Trail for several years before helping out in
the equipment stores for several trekking companies. He is now in
charge of the stores at Peru Treks, checking that all the
equipment is in order for our treks. His wife and sister-in-law
are now helping out in the stores which has allowed Goyo to gain
experience working in our office. He now buys the trek permits and
train tickets for the groups. Goyo is currently learning English
and his wife is studying computation.
Remejio (Office
assistant)
Remejio, born in
the village of Tinqui near Ausangate, was also a
porter on the Inca Trail before starting a 4-year course in
Tourism. He helps Tim out in the office and helps to deliver any
sleeping bags and porter duffle bags to your hotel the night
before the trek. When he finishes his course in a years' time he
will become a qualified guide and will work as an assistant guide
for Peru Treks for 2 years before becoming experienced enough to
lead his own groups.
Our Guides:
Marcelino
Washington
Oscar
Victor
Juvenal
Gladys
Efrain
Emilio
Patricia
Marleni
Our Porters:
Peru Treks employs
about 130 porters taken mainly from the three Andean communities
of Chinchero, Pisac and Paucartambo.
Why choose Peru Treks ?
In the last few years Peru Treks has been working hard to become
one of Peru's most responsible tour operators. Since we operate
all of our own treks we have complete control over the quality of
our service. The fact that you will enjoy our service is of utmost
importance to us, however it is also important that everyone
involved in the operation of our is well treated and cared for and that
the benefits of tourism are shared throughout the Peruvian
communities. We now employ over 130 full time porters the majority
of whom have worked with us for over 5 years. All of our porters are picked from one of three
mountain villages: Amaru (in the mountains behind Pisac),
Paucartambo (on the road between Cusco and Manu just before the
Andes drop down to the Amazon) and Cuper Alto (a small community
beside Lake Piuray near Chinchero). Since the beginning of 2004
all of our porters have been issued with free sleeping bags, rain
ponchos, backpacks and suitable shoes. All of our porters sleep in
a communal tent which has a waterproof floor and they have access
to any first aid equipment if necessary. Since the beginning of
2006 we have provided free life insurance to ALL of our Inca Trail
porters. Obviously we hope that the insurance won't be needed but
it should provide our porters and families with peace of mind. We
don't consider any of these items to be luxuries or anything
special, we consider them to be the absolute minimum requirements
for treating our porters fairly and like human beings. We cannot
promise you that our porters are happy all of the time (they still
have to work extremely hard for a living) but we can guarantee
that our porters are well treated, fairly paid (in accordance with
the Porters Law and requirements set down by the Ministry of Work)
and have warm dry accommodation and plenty of nutritious hot meals
to eat. Of course many other trekking companies will tell you
this, but there are less than a handful of companies that
genuinely care for their porters. More detailed information can be
found on our Porter Welfare
page. Peru Treks is recommended in many guidebooks including South
American Handbook (Footprint), Peru Handbook (Footprint), The
Inca Trail Cusco & Machu Picchu Guide (Trailblazer) and Peru
Guide (Moon handbooks). In October 2006 Peru
Treks was awarded the Best Travel Agency in Cusco by the
Ministry of Tourism. Peru Treks have also been
recommended in several articles in the New York Times and
Independent newspapers. The new Lonely Planet Guide to Peru (published March 2007)
describes Peru Treks as a "locally owned, ecoconscious company
with experienced guides; it also invests in the ethical treatment
of porters. Highly recommended".
Community Projects: Ever since Peru
Treks was first established we have been helping to spread some of the
benefits brought by tourism to local communities by donating school
equipment to village schools and ensuring that it is properly
used. A large percentage of the profits made by Peru Treks go
towards such community projects. (rather than just talking about
helping communities we would prefer to be judged upon our actions.
Information and photos of our most recent projects can be seen on our
community projects page). In March
2005 we built a new school for 60 children in the remote mountain
village of Checaspampa near Ausangate. In November 2006 we completed the
construction of a primary school for 30 children in the community
of Pinipujio in the district of Ccatcca (on the road between Cusco
and Ausangate). In 2007, with help from some of our clients from
Canada, we were able to construct a Kindergarten for 30 children together
with toilet block and repairs to the primary school in the community of
Pampallacta near Chahuaytire in the mountains behind Pisac. In 2008 we
have distributed school equipment to over 1500 children living in the
foothills of the great Ausangate mountain. This year (2008) we have also
set aside an additional US$5000 for the purchase of 10 computers for a
secondary school in Ocongate, a remote town about 3 hours by road from
Cusco. However since school summer holidays in Peru run from Christmas
till the end of February we have decided to wait until the school returns
to work in March 2009 to distribute the computers. In 2009 we hope to
distribute school equipment to a record 2000 children and continue to
donate computers to some of the larger secondary schools in the more
remote districts. For the last 2 years we have "adopted" the secondary
school of Tiracanchi and continue to pay for their school promotion. In
2007 the visit was to Cusco & Machu Picchu, in 2008 the promotion went to
Cusco & Lake Titicaca. Many of these children had never left their village
before, never been on a bus, seen a restaurant or eaten an ice-cream!! In
2009 we also hope to open a weaving-cooperative shop next door to our
offices. This shop will allow some of the more distant mountain
communities to exhibit and market their textiles with the small company
being completely owned and run by the communities and 100% of the profits
being distributed amongst them.
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