Machu Picchu’s ‘Sacred Sister’ set to emerge
Peru wants to add cable cars, roads to reach Choquequirao
The iconic 15th-century Inca citadel Machu Picchu attracts more than a million visitors a year to the cloudy forests of southern Peru. Thirty-seven miles away, another mountaintop refuge built by the Incas 50 years later has languished in obscurity, with barely a dozen visitors a day. The government wants that to change.
The South American nation plans to open up Choquequirao — known as Machu Picchu’s “Sacred Sister” — to the tourist mainstream with roads connecting the site to its world famous predecessor, and a cable car to elevate visitors to 9,843 feet above sea level, said Roger Valencia, deputy tourism minister. The excursion is currently a five-day, 37-mile round trip on foot, traversing a canyon and crossing the raging Apurimac River.
“The hike is exceptionally beautiful, but it’s tough,” said Valencia, a former tour operator and guide who’s made the trek more than 20 times. “We’ll put in the roads and the cable cars to make it accessible.”
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is promoting Choquequirao as part of his goal to double the number of tourist arrivals to 7 million by 2021 to ease the economy’s dependence on industries such as mining, which creates few jobs. Tourism accounts for 3.9 percent of Peru’s gross domestic product, the highest contribution among major Latin American economies after Mexico, and is expected to rise to 4.6 percent in the next decade, according to the London-based World Travel & Tourism Council.
Kuczynski flew over Choquequirao on Aug. 31 and pledged 200 million soles ($62 million) of investment to develop infrastructure for accessing the citadel, which has yet to be fully excavated. The investments starting next year will allow visitors to explore its giant stairway, terraces, plazas, fountains and temples in a day trip from Machu Picchu.
Choquequirao — cradle of gold in the Quechua language — was built by the Incas around the turn of the 16th century, before they fled into the jungle beyond Cuzco to escape the invading Spanish Conquistadors. It was visited by American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1910, a year before he introduced the more spectacular and accessible Machu Picchu to the outside world.
Once the cable car service starts, the government sees Choquequirao receiving about 150,000 visitors in the first year, up from 5,800 a year now. In the medium term, it forecasts at least half a million visitors a year.
The government is already cashing in on other less known archaeological sites. Peru inaugurated its first cable car system earlier this year to ferry tourists to Kuelap, a fortress city built in the forests of north Peru. It expects more than 100,000 visitors there in 2017, twice last year’s total.
Peru, cradle of the first civilization in the Americas 5,000 years ago, is leveraging its archaeological heritage to boost its appeal to tourists starting to take notice of a country that was for years off limits because of guerrilla warfare and economic collapse. Seven people were killed during the bombing of a tourist train bound for Machu Picchu in 1986.