Our history
Southern Peru Explorers is a travel agency and tour operator based in Cusco, founded in 2009 by Joel Cárdenas Gonzales. Our office is at Calle Garcilaso 265, in the historic centre of Cusco.
We organize treks and tours in southern Peru: the Inca Trail and other routes to Machu Picchu such as Salkantay, Lares, the Inca Jungle and Choquequirao, the Ausangate trek and Rainbow Mountain, trips to the Amazon in Tambopata and Manu, and longer tours of Peru.
We work with guides, porters and cooks from the region and want tourism to benefit the communities we travel through. Read how on our responsible travel page.
The founder
Joel Cárdenas Gonzales was born in Cusco. He founded Southern Peru Explorers in 2009 and trained as an official tour guide at Instituto Khipu in Cusco, finishing in 2012. In 2016 he studied photography at Lima Image, and many of the photos and videos of our trips are his.
He also runs Café Coati, a family coffee project. Read Joel’s full profile.
Our guides, porters and chefs
Our guides are from the Cusco region. We look for guides with years of experience, proper licensing, up-to-date certifications and good reviews from travelers, which you can read on our TripAdvisor page.
Some of our guides specialize in bird-watching, flora and fauna, archaeology, history, architecture, anthropology or Andean spirituality. All of them are trained in advanced first aid and rescue, and they take part in courses and seminars in their fields.
Our team speaks English, Spanish, French, Italian and German. If you need another language, we can arrange a translator.
On multi-day treks our porters carry the camping equipment and food. Our chefs come from different backgrounds; most of them are farmers who grow our food, and all of them are trained by us. They carry everything they need to cook on the trail.
Our licences
We hold a certificate from DIRCETUR (Dirección Regional de Comercio Exterior y Turismo del Cusco) and are also certified by PROMPERU (Comisión de Promoción del Perú para la Exportación y el Turismo), two of the government agencies in charge of tourism and exports. We are registered with SUNAT, the tax agency.
Our values
We want every trip to be well organized and personal, and we stay in touch with travelers after the trip ends. We also see it as our job to promote respect for the environment and social inclusion through tourism, and to keep growing our services across Peru without lowering our standards.
The values we work by: loyalty, honesty, truthfulness, respect, dignity, development, collaboration, efficiency and moral responsibility.