UJ #8 - Arequipa

INTERVIEW
Christian Declercq
Alonso Burgos
Executive director of Colca Lodge Spa & Hot Springs
By
Rodrigo Cabrera
DISCOVER THE HISTORY OF TOURISM IN THE COLCA VALLEY FROM ONE OF ITS PIONEERS, ALONSO BURGOS
HARTLEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COLCA LODGE SPA & HOT SPRINGS.
Christian Declercq
You know the history of tourism in the Colca
Valley from its beginnings, can you tell
us a little about how it started?
During the seventies it was decided to build an irrigation
scheme to take water to the coast, and that
was when Colca was discovered; though I should
say rediscovered, because this area has a long and
interesting history that goes back to the Collagua
and Cabana peoples who lived there before the Incas.
Then the Spanish arrived, a long time before
they settled in Arequipa, created the sixteen villages
or settlements and started to exploit the mines of
Caylloma, which they thought would be wealthier
than those of Potosi. In 1621 they realised that Caylloma
was not going to be as important as Potosi
and decided to abandon Colca and move to what
is now Arequipa. Life in the Colca became a mixture
of Hispanic religion and Andean beliefs, and
has stayed that way for almost three hundred years.
News of Peru’s independence reached the Colca
nearly one hundred years after the event, because
many of the villages were completely isolated from
the outside world.
“The Incas came first, the Spanish second and the
Majes irrigation project was third, and that changed
the Colca. The camp that was used as the base
for the whole of the irrigation project was converted
into the first tourist lodge in the area. That was how
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