Responsible Tourism

Responsible Tourism

ENIGMA recognizes that its operation runs through an environment, a culture and communities that are fragile and sensitive to impact. Organizing trips through Peru and some of its most spectacular remote areas gives us the chance to show this country with pride but also implies a high responsibility to be culturally sensitive and minimize any negative impact on the environment.

Our goal is to be a real help to the local communities we work with, providing income and helping them to develop in a natural way, to provide positive cultural exchanges and operate in such a way that we not only try to maintain, but also improve the environment.

Responsible Tourism is a key point in our corporate philosophy. We have developed a Responsible Tourism Policy, which we try to respect as much as possible. Our teams have been trained and are aware of its importance to our culture and environment. It has therefore also become a key aspect in our team’s attitude, which you will be able to perceive whenever you travel with us.

Responsible Tourism is about providing a sustained commitment to communities and environment, to ensure we have a lasting positive effect. It is about “giving something back”. Our Responsible Tourism practices run at three levels:

1. Responsible Operation
2. Social Commitment
3. Environmental Respect

Responsible Operation

1. We are a Peruvian company, which exclusively employs professional Peruvian people, thus promoting local industry development and local people’s growth.
2. ENIGMA Adventure Tour Operator is an Authorized Travel Agency and Tour Operator (Peruvian Ministry of Industry and Tourism).
3. ENIGMA is also an Officially Licensed Inca Trail Operator by the Management Unit of the Machu Picchu Historical Sanctuary, which regulates all access to the Inca Trail.
4. ENIGMA regularly pays taxes to the Peruvian government, since this is the first means to help develop the Peruvian economy, improve local infrastructure and reduce the country’s heavy external debt. This is unfortunately not a usual practice amongst most agencies and businesses in the country, who take advantage of the still weak tax control system and seek ways to avoid declaring their revenue and paying taxes. This allows these irregular businesses to sell at a lower price, also damaging the market and the proper, serious and legally operating businesses.
5. All our employees are regularly paid professional wages: guides, cooks, porters and horsemen are paid on a weekly basis while our office staff is paid on a monthly basis. ENIGMA does not exploit its employees and does not abuse through delayed wage or salary payments, which is an all too common practice among most agencies employing humble people with little means. If you visit or travel with us, please do not hesitate to ask any of our staff to verify that this is true. Moreover, all direct employees are registered with the company and receive health insurance as part of their employment benefits.
6. ENIGMA offers one of the best-recognized treatments to its team of porters:
   • The wages we pay to our porters are in line with the Porter Law (#27607) and its Regulation (D.S. 011-2005-TR).
   • Most importantly, our porters are paid on time, contributing to a higher stability of their usually weak domestic economy. A delayed wage payment can frequently have serious consequences such as a child missing school for several days or weeks (no entry allowed for those who do not pay).
   • ENIGMA porters are provided waterproof tents for their accommodation during any trek, thermal waterproof fleece jackets, shoes, back and hip protection to carry loads, special orthopaedic backpacks, an independent kitchen and gas to cook their meals without having to wait for our clients to finish, having also sleeping bags and pads available.
   • Our porters enjoy a high budget for their meals along the trek, estimated in approximately +20% vs other top-end agencies offering similarly priced treks (source: internal survey through free-lance cooks). Contrary to the claims of many visitors, porters are used to an Andean diet which should not strongly vary in order not to affect their organism. Therefore, ENIGMA provides enough food quantity and quality, their diet being richer in local carbohydrates such as potatoes and rice.
   • All ENIGMA porters have been carefully selected by our personnel and have undergone training courses in each of their fields to ensure a higher quality service as well as a constant improvement and motivation for our team. Our porters have a formal work contract with ENIGMA, which guarantees both their job and their income.
   • Finally, all our porters are protected by a life and accident insurance paid for by ENIGMA.
   • Our excellent porter treatment has been widely recognized by the porter community itself and by our clients, and has become one of the main reasons why socially conscious Inca Trail visitors wish to travel with us. The same treatment applies to our horsemen in all treks operated with pack animals.
7. ENIGMA staff training. Our guide teams have been trained in first aid and rescue and are regularly updated through seminars and courses in their respective fields. All of our trekking staff receives regular briefings on how to best comply with the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu Sanctuary Regulation as well as on environmental awareness. ENIGMA also regularly provides seminars and courses to its team, covering various matters such as flora and ornithology in the Machupicchu Sanctuary, among others. On the other hand, all our staff has participated in the development of our Responsible Tourism Policy through their constant inputs, they have shared the outcome and regularly operate following it as much as possible. Our training also extends to our chefs, porters and wranglers. Our chefs and assistant chefs follow specific tailor-made courses every year to ensure we maintain our quality menu superiority. As per our porters and wranglers, trainings are undertaken every year as well, with a focus on each person’s specialized role: tent setting, vaiselle cleaning and hygiene, waiter, environment responsible / residues, among others.
8. All ENIGMA treks are operated by ENIGMA: we do not share operation with other agencies, neither totally nor partially. We are licensed operators ensuring a high standard of quality in all our treks and programs. Unfortunately, we would not be able to guarantee the same level of service if we shared services with another tour operator. This means all our treks are operated only by us, so any client having booked with us is sure to be operated by ENIGMA and not any other third party.

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Social Commitment

Our goal is to be a real help to the local communities we work with, providing income and helping them to develop in a natural way, to provide positive cultural exchanges and operate in such a way that we not only try to maintain, but also improve the environment.

ENIGMA helps Andean communities through some of its programs and actions, our Social Commitment Programs being primarily focused towards helping the people and communities we work with. ENIGMA’s main Social Commitment actions are the following:

1. Porter Wages
   ENIGMA is committed to paying its porters and horsemen what is agreed by the Law and by their respective Unions. Our payments are not delayed and therefore do not affect the families’ economy negatively. We do not exploit porters and are strongly against agencies whose operation includes underpaying or overloading the porter community. For those interested, we have available at our office in Cusco the documents that prove our porter wages and schedules of payment.
2. Social Help Budget
   ENIGMA invests 10% of the company’s net benefits to social aid within the Cusco area, more specifically with the communities we work with, namely Tinki, Lares, Mollepata and several communities along the Sacred Valley.
   Some of our most extensive actions are:
   • Lares: clothes donation + hot chocolate party to communities of Lares, Quiswarani and Cuncani
   • Mollepata wrangler community: money donation
   • Lamay: clothes donation to the orphanage of this Sacred Valley community
   • Tinqui Public School: donation of notebooks, pencils and pens to teacher staff and alumni
   • Porter families help: ENIGMA has financed the school material, baptism ceremonies and first communions of 10 children whose parents belong to our porter communities
   • Inca Trail Clean-Ups
   • ENIGMA porters community: Christmas baskets containing food products, T-shirts
3. Social Help Programs
   ENIGMA offers some specific programs and treks which include social collaboration, being this the case of some our treks, such as the Lares routes, in which we allow a 5-10% of the tour price to the visited communities. Please contact us for further information.
4. Horsemen Outsourcing Project
   Porters’ services are exclusively employed in the Inca Trail, since the maintenance of the trail in its current conditions does not allow pack animals, as they would damage it. Trekking programs that run in other areas do employ pack animals but, unfortunately, the demand for these programs is still substantially lower than that of the world-famous Inca Trail, despite their breathtaking beauty. As a result, numerous families belonging to these communities suffer from severe unemployment during most of the year, as agriculture is their only means of survival.
   
   ENIGMA has started to help some of these communities by inserting their family heads into our porter teams, previously instructing them on how to best behave and work as a porter. In this way, we believe to be contributing to the welfare of these families, by re-inserting them and providing new jobs for them.
5. Our Clothes Bank Project
   ENIGMA invites all of its clients to support our neighboring communities through the donation of clothes and other materials that are of no further use to them. We gather all this material and organize donations to communities every three or four months. Alternatively, the donations can be organized to be a part of the activities in a program, so that our clients can live this social aid experience for themselves.

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Environmental Respect

ENIGMA is fully conscious that the areas in which it is operating are natural protected areas and therefore complies with the corresponding Law of Natural Protected Areas #26834 (published July 04, 1997), as well as with the Law of Conservation and Sustainable Profit of the Biological Diversity #26839 (published July 16, 1997). All our operations, campsites and activities try their best to avoid aggression and damage to these natural protected areas and their bio-diversity.

Environmental Policy

Our Environmental Management Policy and Commitment mean running our operations in a responsible way, according to the following:

• Selective disposal of garbage (organic & inorganic)
• Garbage removal from Natural Protected Areas
• Use of flush toilets built along the Inca Trail or different communities and villages. Otherwise, we provide toilet tents with chemical toilet facilities. All garbage is disposed of outside the Natural Protected Areas
• Avoid fires – no smoking allowed inside the tents
• Use of bowl for washing purposes to avoid the soap being thrown over to the floor
• Avoid disturbing animals
• No animal hunting allowed
• Preservation of flora, no orchid taking allowed
• Walking over the Inca ruins, walls or archaeological sites is absolutely forbidden
• Avoid tipping, giving candies or others to local community children or adults in order not to impact their lifestyle.

Fair Travel Partner

We all like to travel abroad. As travelers we visit other countries and regions and, in doing so, are also guests of the host country and the people living there. By visiting foreign places, we automatically enjoy and consume local resources, like fresh water, clean air, local produce and the physical infrastructure. This consumption can lead to further problems for those countries and regions which are already facing social and ecological deficits.
The projects of Fair Travel contribute to the improvement of people’s living conditions and their environment in regions which are popular tourist destinations but also face socio-ecological problems.

ENIGMA, as a member of APTAE (Asociación Peruana de Turismo de Aventura y Ecoturismo - Peruvian Association of Adventure Tourism and Eco-Tourism), is a FAIR TRAVEL partner and contributes through the donation of one US$ dollar per guest traveling with us. The donations are currently being invested in the following reforestation program:

Reforestation Program – Apu Pachatusan

The Municipal Area of Conservation “Apu Pachatusan” is located between the city of Cusco and the Sacred Valley of the Incas, in south-east Peru. The territory includes the districts of San Jerónimo, Oropesa and San Salvador, having multiple environmental, spiritual and social potentialities and directly providing an important number of families belonging to the three districts with water and clean air. The area is in fact considered one of the most significant centers of Andean spirituality, also hosting wild flora and fauna ecosystems. During recent years, this territory has suffered the continuous menace of forest fires, accentuating the process of erosion and destruction of its ecosystem, as well as the loss of endemic species.

This project works on the ecological restoration as well as on communitarian and municipal environmental management of the Apu Pachatusan area through actions including reforestation, training, development of contingency plans and the promotion of a sustainable production and management in the area by the inhabiting communities.

The Machupicchu Institute, a non-profit Peruvian organization having as main objective the conservation of natural and cultural resources of the Historical Sanctuary of Machupicchu and the Cusco region, is implementing the project. This is being done through the promotion and execution of sustainable development projects in tourism, agro-ecology, handicrafts, small industry and scientific research. This initiative is developed in a participative way with the communities involved, including men and women, children and teenagers of the Andean villages of Huanca and Parpacalle, together with the leadership and co-management of the Municipality of the District of San Salvador.

All our clients and guests, through booking services with ENIGMA, are actively contributing to the protection of our planet and to the sustainable development of the rural communities where we work.

ENIGMA Inca Trail Clean-Up

ENIGMA operates and finances a yearly Inca Trail Clean-Up, which usually takes place in the month of November or December. During 4 days, ENIGMA staff volunteers get together to clean a specific are in the Inca Trail.

In 2008, the Inca Trail Clean-Up took place from October 30 to November 2^nd.

• Area covered: the whole Classic Inca Trail area from Km 82 to Km 107, point of departure of all operators’ staffs
• Number of participants: a total of 30 persons
• Solid residues retrieved: 700 kg

ENIGMA remains the only official Inca Trail operator to run a yearly Inca Trail Clean-Up, among a total of approximately 180 authorized agents.

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