Thursday, December 29, 2011

Tourist raped in Colca Canyon

by the Colca Specialist

This is not the first time that this undesirable situation happens in Colca Canyon. The main problem as we said before is informality: there are lots of uncertified tour guides that are NOT FROM THE AREA but from Arequipa who are trying to make some money in tourism.

That means that there is no safety for you specially if you are traveling alone. Authorities and representatives of travel agencies they just care about their own interests. It is disgusting to see them talking on TV about the hard work done by them in order to improve the security in tourism but they do nothing about it and what is worst is that the avoid the media to publish news about these undesirable situations beause they don´t like the scandals.

There is informality because the travel agencies are hiring informal tour guides because they are cheaper! The don´t have a fixed salary and they travel just for the tips and the commissions they get from restaurants ,pack drivers of mules and handicrafts stores. They have no contracts so when there is a problem they just dissapear and that is all.

The victim cannot stay longer than a week in the place because investigations take very long time so at the end the tourist has to go back home and the criminal comes back in business again looking for other easy prey.Traveling cheap doesn´t mean the best and we have to be responsable travellers.

Going alone with to the mountains with an informal tour guide and to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol with these guys that means you are in trouble. There are a lot of web pages providing safety tips for travellers. To write about this situation is difficult but we have to remember that we are the result of our decisions so our destiny is in our hands. Before buying a tour with a very cheap informal travel agency think it twice.

The Colca Specialist.

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