Machu Picchu, set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru, is one of South America’s premier tourist attractions.

In 2017 alone, more than 1,5 million people visited the iconic Inca citadel – that works out at around 4 110 people every single day.

Much like the Netherlands, which is currently taking active measures to discourage people from visiting certain parts of the country, that places a massive strain on the already-fragile ruins and local ecology.

Unfortunately for Peruvian archaeologists, who are trying to preserve the area, things are about to get much, much worse.

Over to the Guardian:

…in a move that has drawn a mixture of horror and outrage from archaeologists, historians and locals, work has begun on clearing ground for a multibillion-dollar international airport, intended to jet tourists into Machu Picchu directly.

Bulldozers are already scraping clear millions of tonnes of earth in Chinchero, a picturesque Inca town about 3,800 metres above sea level that is the gateway to the Sacred Valley. This area was once was the heartland of a civilisation that stretched from modern-day Colombia to Argentina, and in the 15th century was the world’s largest empire.

“This is a built landscape; there are terraces and routes which were designed by the Incas,” says Natalia Majluf, a Peruvian art historian at Cambridge University who has organised a petition against the new airport. “Putting an airport here would destroy it.”

As things stand, tourists can fly into the tiny Cusco airport (pictured below), which isn’t equipped to handle large planes. The new airport would allow for direct flights from some major cities across both Latin America and the United States.

Critics say planes would pass low over nearby Ollantaytambo and its 134 sq mile (348 sq km) archeological park, causing potentially incalculable damages to the Inca ruins…

“It seems ironic and in a way contradictory that here, just 20 minutes from the Sacred Valley, the nucleus of the Inca culture, they want to build an airport – right on top of exactly what the tourists have come here to see,” said the Cusco-based anthropologist Pablo Del Valle.

Locals opposed to the building of the airport have started a petition (at the time of writing, it only had 5 600 signatures), although Peru’s finance minister, Carlos Oliva, says there are “a series of technical studies which support this airport’s construction”.

Whilst Peru has taken the steps of tightening up entry requirements to Machu Picchu, and established morning and afternoon visit time schedules, the airport looks to be a real step in the wrong direction.

[source:guardian]