Cusco handicrafts: the new social initiative of Turismo Cuida and Inca Rail

Thousands of people from all the Cusco region live from handicrafts, creating products that make hundreds of tourists from all over the world fall in love every day. To help some of these artisans continue growing and as part of the Wallata Plan, we created the Patacancha project.

Through it, we train artisans from the communities of Qelqanqa, Yanamayo, Rumira and Huilloc, in Ollantaytambo, to reinforce their traditional knitting techniques and, subsequently, help them with their sale at our ticket office.

Do you want to know more about this project and find out where can you buy these beautiful products? Here we tell you all the details!

Let’s start at the beginning: what is the Wallata Plan?

The Wallata Plan was created by Turismo Cuida, the first non-profit Peruvian association focused on tourism sustainability, of which Inca Rail is a founding member.

How do we help the tourist sector of Cusco? Through the Wallata Plan, a five-year tourism development plan, we work to improve certain elements in the city and district of Ollantaytambo.

This plan has different actions, such as the Patacancha Project.

Patacancha Project: learning to knit with the artisans of Ollantaytambo

Thus, following the Wallata Plan, Turismo Cuida arrived in Ollantaytambo to meet artisans from Qelqanca, Yanamayo, Rumira and Huilloc, in the Patacancha basin.

In these communities, dozens of people were trained by the Sustainable Preservation Initiative, which helped artisans strengthen their traditional knitting techniques.

Thus, the artists of Ollantaytambo learned to create new and beautiful works of art such as those you can see in this gallery.

Our trains, part of this craft

In Inca Rail we have a great commitment to the environment and responsible tourism. For that reason, we wanted to do bit to help this initiative of Turismo Cuida offering something that represents us: a part of our trains, the heart of Inca Rail.

How did we do it? We reused the leather of the old seats of some of our remodeled trains to give them to these artisans from the Patacancha basin. They used it in the best way creating beautiful leather objects mixed with typical pieces of Peruvian loom.

And we are tremendously proud that part of our trains to Machu Picchu have been converted and used in this wonderful project!

What everyone want to know: where to buy these precious pieces of crafts?

Surely now you have seen these articles you want to know where you can get one of them. Very easy! All these products are available for sale, from November 2018, in one of our ticket offices in Cusco (Avenida el Sol 843, just 50m away from the Qorikancha garden).

Buying one of these products you will not only bring a great memory of Cusco to your home, but, most importantly, you will help build a sustainable income for families in the most remote areas of our department.

Come visit us and leave a positive footprint on your way through our country. At Inca Rail we will continue working to make tourism a sustainable activity with the communities of our country and with the environment.

Remember: traveling with Inca Rail means being part of responsible tourism!