­Tracing the Qhapaq Ñan: From UNESCO to Great Inca Trail Expedition

Spanning six countries and 273 distinct sites, the Qhapaq Ñan’s nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site was a global first.

What’s the Great Inca Road?

The Great Inca Trail is part of a larger Andean road network called the Qhapaq Ñan, the largest UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s made up of thousands of miles of stone-paved roads that once linked the most advanced society in South America, the Inca Empire. While Incas could only be considered an empire for 100 years, they were the culmination of successive civilizations that were born 5,000 years earlier – at the same time as those in Mesopotamia and Egypt. If we are to understand ancient Peru, we need to understand the road that connected all the dots.

Not all UNESCO World Heritage Sites are created equal. Honoring and protecting a single cathedral or castle in a developed country with an established infrastructure is a relatively facile process, but doing the same for a road network which in its heyday spread across the length and breadth of the Andes is an entirely different prospect.

Ricardo ‘El Caminante’ Espinosa and the Qhapaq Ñan

Were it not for the exploits of Peruvian author and adventurer Ricardo ‘El Caminante’ Espinosa, the Qhapaq Ñan may well have been forgotten by history. As recently as the 1990s the Qhapaq Ñan was – in the words of Espinosa – “just another legend, or in any event, a reality that time had snatched from us forever...which had lain hidden for centuries precisely because of its gigantic size.”

This all changed with Espinosa’s well-publicized mission to walk and document the Inca road system. Between 1995 and 2002 he walked over 6,000 miles (much of it alone) and published two highly successful books (in Peru, at least) about his experiences. Through his vivid, relatable writing Espinosa had achieved what generations of archaeologists before him had failed to do: ignite public interest in the Qhapaq Ñan.

The Great Inca Route

Espinosa walked over 10,000 miles of Inca roads and wrote the definitive book “La Gran Ruta Inca”. Espinosa’s efforts planted the seeds that eventually brought six Andean countries and the UN together in a strategy to preserve and promote the road system as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Espinosa’s maps and years of work on the subject are the foundation for our exploration two decades later.

Government steps in

In 2002, the governments of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina came together to apply for World Heritage status for the Qhapaq Ñan, revering their shared Inca heritage as “an exceptional opportunity for the integration and sharing of cultural values and the promotion of regional development among these six countries.” The following year, the six nations requested that the World Heritage Centre take charge of the coordination of the project due to its unique and pioneering nature. Unlike the establishment of the Qhapaq Ñan itself, this modern-day project would have to follow multifaceted democratic processes…

Preserving Ancient Pathways: UNESCO's Recognition of Qhapaq Ñan

When, in June 2014, the Qhapaq Ñan was finally confirmed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the New York Times described it as “a 12-year cooperative effort that is its own delicate feat of engineering” before going on to marvel at how “the six long-squabbling countries that are home to the Incan road have banded together.”

Naturally, it wasn’t perfect (there were rumblings that the indigenous communities themselves weren’t involved enough, especially in the early stages) but there is also very little doubt that the Qhapaq Ñan’s convocation is anything but a good thing. As Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands prove, placement on the heritage list clearly helps promote sites as important travel destinations.

Not to mention the fact that World Heritage status will help to protect the road network from its biggest threats, namely “encroachment from farms, particularly tractor plowing, as well as communication towers and transmission lines, urban development and mining.”

Unraveling the Great Inca Road: Why SA Expeditions got involved

Part of it is personal: our founder, Nick Stanziano, has a deep connection to the Andean region of Peru and he wants to enhance this connection by walking the Qhapaq Ñan. But it’s also bigger than that: One important aspect of our company’s activities is building high quality, inclusive, community-based trekking tourism along Inca roads, as we have done in Choquechaca. "We believe that the future of luxury travel will be a blend of comfort, exclusivity, and impact," says Nick, "And there's nowhere that these three variables engage more perfectly with one another than on the Qhapaq Ñan.”

As Ricardo Espinosa said, “unlike normal archaeological sites that can be seriously damaged by tourists, roads decline and die when they are not used. Therefore using them responsibly and sensibly will preserve them for future generations. Walking brings us closer to the makers of the road. The way we walk this road will affect our future identity and it should be worthy of the original architects.”

The 2000-Mile Expedition Along the Great Inca Road

In mid-2015, after walking a stretch of the 2600-mile Pacific Crest Trail with David Rottblatt (who co-founded SA Expeditions with Nick Stanziano) and against the backdrop of a perfect storm of personal and professional evolutions… Nick came up with an idea.

He decided to walk the Great Inca Trail, the Qhapaq Ñan. But Nick didn’t just walk the Inca Road – he was the first to give a day-by-day account, shared in real-time on social networks, so the world could follow along as it happened.

On April 14, 2017, a team of hardened explorers, tourism professionals, and private organizations executed a major expedition along the greatest of all Inca roads that stretches 2,000 miles between what were two capitals of the Inca Empire: Tumebamba, near modern day Cuenca, Ecuador and Cusco, Peru, in the South. The continual five-month trek was captured and transmitted through social networks in real-time to viewers all over the world.

This was the very beginning of a series of expeditions that have continued since 2017 over thousands of miles by foot. The journey has taken us through some of the most remote stretches of the Andes Mountains, tracing the footsteps of the Inca kings of the 14th and 15th centuries who united an empire through this monumental transportation and communications network.

Inspiring Future Explorations & Exploring the Legacy of the Qhapaq Ñan

The expedition team spent nearly 200 days in the mountains, covering more than 3,000 miles on foot. Nick has written more than 60,000 words, and collectively the team has taken thousands of photos – the best and most important of which you will see in the resulting publication.

The digital travelogue is the culmination of our efforts to use contemporary technologies to create a daily story of a more than 500-year-old road that traverses the most remote swathes of the Andes mountains. It’s as rough around the edges as it is audacious and spontaneous; we believe it’s the only real-time, day-by-day account of walking the Inca road system ever to be published.

Our Chance to Make a Difference

At their core, our expeditions are about awareness and conservation of South America’s largest and most important historical asset. Sadly, the road’s destruction continues despite the efforts of UNESCO and the governments of the six Andean countries who are valiantly working to create a cohesive plan to protect it. 

The handful of us who have actually walked its path for thousands of miles understand that it will take far more than any one government, industry or person to protect it... What’s needed is a multi-generational, global effort to reconstruct and reconceptualize what the Inca road is and can become. We hope that this travelogue and our ancillary efforts in creating tourism along the route are a positive force towards this goal.

The expedition is fueled by the economic engines of modern tourism in South America, where profits are recycled into the local economy to foster conservation and hopefully a more thoughtful and sustainable tourism industry of the future.

Where the road goes from here

The Great Inca Road between Cuenca, Ecuador and Cusco, Peru has its own set of challenges, and re-establishing every mile of its 2,000-mile stone path will take decades of support from governments, private industry, and the thousands of communities along its route. This great living road needs passionate and responsible humans to share its magic and reimagine how tourism can play a role in its conservation. This is exactly what SA Expeditions and our team of explorers, tourism specialists, and dreamers is going to do.

Our Commitment to Awareness and Tourism Development 

“We’re going let you all know it exists. And then were going to be the first to bring you along to discover it for yourself!”

Awareness

We will be sharing one of humanity’s great public works, intimately bringing the world along its paths, its lost cities, and the contemporary cultures who are its keepers. Together with our partners in private industry and government in Peru, we hope to elevate this road to its rightful place in the human story. We also want to remind Peru of an inheritance from its ancestors and promote the road as a tool for dignified development of the rural countryside.

Tourism Development

We want to build the operational know-how to execute tourism along shorter, select sections of the road that can be explored in a few days and so we will partner with local and likeminded ground operators across the Andes. Together we will learn how to execute tourism on the Qhapaq Ñan, working in tandem, using our complementary strengths to bring travelers along to discover it for themselves.

How to Join the Great Inca Trail Expedition

Our expeditions continue on an annual basis with our goal being to walk every last inch of primary Inca road that remains. When we’re done, we will have covered more than 6,000 miles across five Andean countries: Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. The living record that you see in the following pages will eventually crisscross more than half a continent and reach all four corners of the Tawantinsuyu or Inca Empire.

Our efforts come at an important crux in history; a time when multiple opposing forces are intersecting. On the one hand Inca roads are being abandoned by rural communities and bulldozed over by modern development, while on the other contemporary society is finally beginning to awaken to their inherent value.

If you would like to explore the Great Inca Trail yourself, you can peruse these curated treks on the very best sections of the Inca Road.