A hostel in Cañisaya community has just been renovated along the Pacha Trek Charazani-Curva-Apolo-Pelechuco tourist route. This route introduces visitors to the heart of the Kallawaya culture and Apolobamba protected area. It has been designed to visit old settlements that still mantain the ir important cultural heritage. The kallawayas were great herbalists, camelid breeders, farmers of a variety of Andean crops cultivated on terraces and producers of textiles of high artistic quality. The importance of these features as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity have been recognized by Unesco.
Along the Pelechuco to Curva segment the road stops at Cañisaya community, located at the bottom of a deep valley on the base of the Akahamani mountain, upon whose slopes grow keñua groves. In this area the tradition of cultivating terraces distributed along the foothills, increasing the scenic beauty of the place.
Cañisaya offers accommodation and also plans to provide visitors with additional food and guidance services along interpretative trails. The hostel is a major tourist initiative within this circuit and because of this has been targetted by the Biocultura National program to strengthen tourism in the Apolobamba area through a project implemented by Wildlife Conservation Society. Its purpose is to improve household income, cultural revalorization and ecosystem conservation. The inauguration of the rennovated hostel took place on Monday 19 th May, and was attended by authorities from the Departmental Assembly of La Paz, Curva municipal government, staff from the Biocultura program and WCS staff.
Next steps include the recovery and transmission of traditional knowledge on natural resource management, the restoration of precolumbian terraces for demonstration purposes and the development of local capacities for sustainable tourism management. People in Cañisaya and other settlements in the region are aware of the importance of mantaining their cultural patrimony and share it with visitors to the region, along a route that once allowed them to develop trade and cultural exchange, coexisting with other cultures, and that today through community based eco-cultural tourism continues to meet similar goals.