Published on : Friday, May 4, 2018
Now, they charge tourists $3 each to enter their ancestral land, which contributes around $400,000 a year to the community.
In spite of the challenges, roughly 500 villagers have returned in the last couple of years to pursue their ancestral trade of transporting goods across the Andes. The difference is that now they are hauling tourists on horseback.
The guides dress in colorful woollen clothes and wide-brimmed, traditional hats to lead the horses.
From the last decade, a group of shepherds had been quietly taking small groups of tourists to the mountain as part of a five-day hike around the fast-melting Ausangate glacier.
Today the shepherds of Chillca manage four lodges made of eucalyptus wood with a capacity for 16 tourists each. They are lighted only by candle, but have hot water. Guests here are given shoes made of alpaca leather and wool. At dawn, lodge-keeper Orlando Garcia gently awakens his guests with a love song performed in the Quechua language.