Peru is making plans for a cable car link to Kuelap, high in the Andes. Kuelap, centuries older than Machu Picchu, predates the Incas. It’s the largest pre-Columbian stone-built city in South America, with over 400 round houses and a 1.5 km stone wall around it.
The facility will open next year making it possible for visitors to reach the site, 3000 m. high in the mountains, without a 3-4 hour hike or a long drive on an unpaved road. Estimates are that 100,000 visitors a year might come, more than twice as many as now.
However, according to the Guardian (UK) there are also worries that numbers of small villages that depend on providing food, lodging and assistance to visitors may die when the cable car bypasses them altogether.
Photo: Wikimedia / Martin St.-Amant
Certainly the building of the gondola must have created many good jobs, as will maintaining and running it. And as PM has suggested, more tourism to the area will benefit everyone.
I suspect not all visitors to the site will take the easy way, the cable car. Some, no doubt, will continue to take the route through the villages, precisely because it includes the villages. Not everyone is in a hurry. There may be fewer going that way, or maybe not. As more learn of the existence of Kuelap, a certain percentage will opt for the more in-depth experience and it could conceivably increase the number of visitors to the surrounding villages. I wouldn’t be surprised. As with many such predictions, the sky may not fall.
And hopefully, not the gondola, either!