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, Office 05, in the historic center of Cusco.
We organize treks and tours in southern Peru: the Inca Trail and other routes to Machu Picchu such as the Salkantay Trek, the Lares Trek, the Inca Jungle Trek 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 Cusco region and want tourism to benefit the communities we travel through. Read how on our socially conscious 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 official tour guides from the Cusco region. We look for guides with years of experience, 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 tours are in English and Spanish; other languages are available on request.
On multi-day treks our porters carry the camping equipment and food: no more than 20 kg each, with full equipment, fair pay and insurance. Our chefs are trained by us and carry everything they need to cook on the trail.
Our licences
We are registered as a tour operator with the Cusco Regional Government: we have a DIRCETUR constancia from 2012, and the current one, N° 432-2021 from GERCETUR, lists us in Peru’s national directory of qualified tourism service providers. Our office at Calle Garcilaso 265 has had its municipal operating licence since 2018. SERNANP, which manages the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary, has authorized us to operate on the Inca Trail network (the 2016–2017 and 2018–2022 authorizations are shown below), and in 2024 it recognized our part in a reforestation day at Piscacucho. We are an active member of FREDERTUR Cusco, the regional front for the defence of cultural heritage and sustainable tourism, and we are registered with SUNAT, the tax agency. Click on a document to see it larger.
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.