Tourism on the Rise in Andean Countries

Tourism is going smoothly among member states of the Andean Community and posted a 5.3 percent raise all through 2003 with a tally of 815,000 visitors, an upturn trend that has remained unaltered over the past five years.

The Andean Community´s official website reported a 7.4 percent increase in the number of foreign arrivals from 1999, plus a 5 percent average annual spike in terms of domestic tourists compared to the numbers scored five years ago.

With these figures, receptive tourism in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru peaked 2,894,000 travelers in 2003, with Peru taking the lion´s share of that total with 976,000 trippers in all.

The arrival of domestic trekkers in the course of the past year churned out more than $2.4 billion. Out of that total, Peru grabbed $832 million.

In Peru, a land of millenary cultures, a considerable chunk of vacationers head for Cusco and the Inca city of Machu Picchu, built over 500 years ago in the Andean jungle.

Other big-time travel destinations are the Titicaca Lake (on the Peruvian and Bolivian common border), the colonial walled city of Cartagena in Colombia, the Galapagos Islands off the Ecuadorian coast, and Venezuela´s 979-meter-high Salto del Angel (Angel´s Jump), the world´s highest waterfall.