Willoq
Explore Peru's Living Past

We pioneered travel to indigenous communities in Peru more than a decade ago, when we began our close relationship with the villagers of Willoq.

Soon after we began taking travellers to Willoq to witness the daily life of its people and their living Inca culture as represented by their beautiful textiles, the company realised that it would have to take an active role in the community in order to preserve its unique way of life. Our aim was to ensure the villagers receive the benefits of tourism whilst protecting them from its perils.

Reciprocity has always been the corner stone of Andean culture, teaching that one should never accept a gift without having something to offer in return.

Today, our company’s reciprocal relationship with the Willoq community covers three fundamental aspects: health, education and cultural re-evaluation.

Peruvian Odyssey undertakes regular campaigns to prevent disease and provide medical attention to those in need, including hospitalisation. We supply the local school with teaching and sporting equipment and for the last five years have paid the salary of a full-time school teacher.

In order to ensure the future survival of local indigenous culture, children are encouraged to play traditional musical instruments and are taken each year to the historic city of Cusco, where they learn more about the great legacy of their ancestors.

In our work with the adult community of Willoq, we have brought back the ancient techniques of hat making to the village by bringing in craftsmen from neighbouring communities.

Our adventure travel staff also run training courses for local men, who for the last twenty years have supplemented their income from farming by working as porters on the famous Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and as a company we are keen proponents of the new Inca Trail guidelines designed to protect local porters from exploitation.

A trip to the village of Willoq, high in the Patacancha valley, is a journey into the past, to a world governed by a concept of time very different to the one which holds sway in this thought-tormented age of ours.