This Epic Ultramarathon Has More Llamas Than Runners

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Josue Quispe started running as a boy from his village of Cancha Cancha just below 13,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes mountain range. It was the most efficient way to herd the family llamas. His uncle, Julian, had never run a day in his life. Like most families in the 200-person village only accessible by foot, theirs was a traditional one dedicated to livestock, subsistence farming, weaving, and speaking Quechua, the indigenous language traced back to the Incas.

Each year at the end of August, Josue, Julian, and the people of Cancha Cancha witnessed something strange—small groups of people, often from other countries, running the network of trails just above their village. Most often they passed in technical gear, flashing expensive sunglasses and running vests loaded with food and hydration, often to the confusion of the locals.

“I wanted to know better what they were doing,” Julian says. “I wanted to know the route they were running.”

This August, he got his opportunity. Nephew and uncle—one a runner since childhood, one never having run before—signed up for the Andes Race, a 100-kilometer (62.1-mile) ultramarathon trail race with 6,190 meters (20,308 feet) of elevation gain through the Urubamba mountains they call home.

Their participation would come to symbolize a world of change, capturing attention from media near and abroad.

A Pedestrian Way of Life

The only way to Cancha Cancha is a three-hour hiking trail following a ravine cut by a winding stream flowing from the Andes mountains. The village—a cluster of single-story stone-and-thatched-roof houses—sits just below 13,000 feet nestled in the Urubamba subrange, 40 miles outside of Cusco, Peru.

The landscape is wide and stark; streams from alpine lakes rush through fields, herds of llamas and alpacas graze on the expanse of short grasses, and jagged, snow-covered peaks rise from the edges of the village.

It was around the peaks and valleys of Cancha Cancha that Josue  started to run.

“We had animals up in the mountains,” says Josue, 17, whose family cultivates potatoes and maintains herds of llamas. From a young age, Josue was tasked with setting off every evening to gather the animals set out to pasture. “Sometimes the llamas go far,” he explains, “and I would go fast to bring them back.”

Josue always seemed to be running. He would run to herd the livestock, he would run to the nearest town of Huarán for errands, and later, he would run to and from school.

Cancha Cancha has a combined preschool/primary school building with 10 to 15 students in a given year. But for education past age 11, students must descend 3,500 feet via the village’s access trail and follow the road to Huarán, six miles away. Like others, Josue would stay in town during the week and return to his home every Friday. “I’d go running, jogging,” Josue says. “I liked it.”

While Josue was the only runner in his family, often drawing comments about his pace, all were accustomed to long days in the mountains.

Days often began between 4 and 5 A.M. to tend to the animals, followed by preparation of firewood and farmwork, cultivating primarily potatoes.

“I’ve never gone for a run,” says Julian, who manages a herd of 30 llamas, scattered amongst the peaks surrounding his town. He also farms potatoes with his brother who lives close by. “But we’re always working, always walking.”

When materials need to be brought to the village, for example, Julian may make two trips to Huarán in a day—24-miles with 7,000 feet of climbing in total—guiding animals and carrying supplies.

It was in Huarán at 3 P.M. on August 30 when Julian, Josue, and fellow llama herders and farmers Ruben Condori Huamanhuillca and Juan Marco Rojas Barandiaran lined up with 38 other runners for the start of the 100K Andes Race representing Brazil, Argentina, Peru, England, and Japan. Among them were top Peruvian trail runner Victor Canto and Japanese ultrarunner Wataru Iino, who has logged first-place finishes at iconic U.S. events such as the Badwater Ultramarathon and Antelope Canyon 100-miler.

Huamanhuilllca bounced on the balls of his feet under the stanchion before the start, wearing a vivid knitted headband from his Cuncani community.

“This headband is from the Incan community that I come to represent,” he says, “the living Incas.”

“We came to represent our culture and to represent the chasquis.”

The horn blared and they took off, running into the night and the high Andes.

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A Race With Unparalleled Terrain and History 

The Andes Race is an epic trail running ultramarathon in the Sacred Valley just outside of Cusco. Now in its eighth edition, the event has four distances—100K, 60K, 30K, and 13K—traversing the daunting, spectacular terrain of the high Andes. Participants navigate snow-capped mountain landscapes, high-altitude passes, fields of grazing llamas, and dazzling alpine lagoons, all ranging from 9,300 to 15,400 feet above sea level. At the highest points of the 100K distance, participants running above 15,000 feet must traverse steep, rocky inclines and descents via headlamp while breathing air that contains just 56 percent of the oxygen at sea level.

The significance of the race, though, extends beyond just its striking landscape.

Claudio Castillo is the founder and director of the Andes Race, and also the co-founder of the Latin American Trail Circuit, which includes the Andes Race. For Castillo, the event’s main focus is on celebrating the heritage and history of the Sacred Valley. “It’s an Incan race,” he says.

During the peak of the Incan Empire, from the mid-14th century until the Spanish conquest in 1532, the Sacred Valley was a hotbed of activity. Located just nine miles north of the empire’s capital city of Cusco, the fertile land irrigated by the Urubamba River produced staple crops such as corn and quinoa to feed the empire’s expansion. Although the Incas reigned for only about a century, their territory stretched 3,400 miles from north to south, from present-day Colombia to Chile, and they governed an estimated 10 million people.

The lore of the Incas—and the dramatics of their most famous sites such as Machu Picchu—has attracted droves of historians, archaeologists, and tourists seeking answers about the legendary civilization. For Castillo, though, their legacy is rooted in the day-to-day.

“Here, you live it,” Castillo says. “Walking around you see ancient walls, remains, people in traditional dress. The people maintain their customs.”

Nowhere are these customs more alive than in small mountain villages. Rural Andean communities like Cancha Cancha hold close ties to Inca roots; they preserve traditions of agriculture, artistry, and textiles, and many members only speak the Quechua language.

Cancha Cancha’s history, for example, stretches back to Incan inhabitance; Julian Quispe explains that a temple was to be constructed where the village now lies, but was abandoned after only the framework was laid out. It has been inhabited ever since, according to Julian, meaning many people of Cancha Cancha can trace direct lineage to the Incas. (“Cancha Cancha” signifies “corral” in Quechua, as the stone corrals of the temple framework remain.)

Another captivating remnant of the Incan Empire stretching across the landscape today: the Qhapaq Ñan, or “Royal Road.”

The Incan road network traversed more than 25,000 miles across the Andes, the equivalent distance of Seattle to Miami nine times over. Chasquis, the empire’s famed runners, traversed the route, relaying messages the length of the territory. With no written language, chasquis carried a system of tied knots to help relay and remember information. Each runner would cover six to nine kilometers (roughly 4 to 5.5 miles) before passing their message onto another, and, in this fashion, information could travel up to 240 kilometers (140 miles) in a single day.

“That’s always been part of our concept of the race,” says Castillo. “It’s a homage to the chasquis.”

In this homage, Castillo and his team designed routes that navigate the old Incan road and finish at the historic town of Ollantaytambo. Of the 100-kilometer route, approximately 60 percent follows the Qhapac Ñan, and the 60K, 30K, and 13K distances are all entirely on sections of the Royal Road, according to the organization.

“The routes that runners use are Incan roads,” Castillo says. “They’re declared by UNESCO.”

Along the way, runners also pass through many of the small mountain communities maintaining ancient heritage. Locals in brightly dressed clothing come to observe, and children wave hello, reach out for high-fives, and run alongside participants.

It’s no surprise that the allure of “the Chaski Challenge,” as the Andes Race bills itself, has attracted a global crowd. Almost 800 participants from 24 countries joined the race this year across the four distances, drawn by the event’s incomparable history and sensational course.

For Castillo and his team, though, for many years the race lacked the involvement of a fundamental population: the mountain locals.

“They live in very isolated settings,” Castillo explains. “They can be difficult to contact. We never made that connection we wanted.”

“That is, until we started to work with the llamas.”

Llamas, A Solution from the Past

In the hills above the town of Urubamba, in a pasture hidden behind high plaster walls, Jorge Galvez is running a biological experiment. There he maintains his “genetic bank”—25 to 35 llamas, brought from all across Peru, individually selected for their size.

With the llamas, Galvez hopes to alter the dynamics of tourism in Peru–dynamics rooted in the Spanish conquest, reinforcing the exclusion of indigenous people today.

Galvez is the director of Llama Pack Project, an organization working to restore the traditional use of the llama as a pack animal in the Urubamba mountain range. By replacing mules and horses typically used for tourism with endemic llamas, Llama Pack promotes both ecological conservation of the mountain ecosystem and sustainable development for rural communities.

“Horses cause three times the negative ecological impact as a llama,” Galvez says. This is because, as an endemic species, llamas don’t overgraze at the rate of horses and mules, and their feet are covered in soft, leathery pads, compared to the hard keratin of horse hooves.

In spite of this, Peru’s iconic animal had fallen almost completely out of favor as a pack animal. “It sounds contradictory, but people really weren’t using llamas in Peru anymore,” says Galvez.

The reason: economics. Horses and mules can carry up to 100 pounds, while llamas can only handle about a third of that. For tour operators, then, often carrying massive quantities of supplies for large groups on multi-day treks, llamas were simply too small.

This wasn’t always the case, though. Prior to the Spanish conquest, llamas were the dominant beast of burden of the Andean inhabitants.

“The llamas were powerful, capable of traversing the mountains, and so the Spanish replaced them with more sedentary animals,” Galvez says. “It was a way of exercising control over the people.”

Remaining llamas then interbred with their smaller alpaca cousins, resulting in more diminutive camelids with poorer wool quality and a reduced load capacity.

And thus, Galvez’s genetic bank.

Another important development of reintroducing llamas has been greater laboral gender equality. “Women in these communities are often the hardest workers, but they are excluded from social work such as guides or porters,” Galvez says. “Here, family members take turns on trips, and that’s created more equality in the work with llamas.”

More than 350 rural families now work with Llama Pack Project. In 2022, Llama Pack Project reached out to the Andes Race team to offer a potential partnership. “They didn’t doubt it,” says Galvez. “They bet on us, and they’re totally aligned with the mission.”

As a result, for the past three years, the event has employed more than 100 mountain locals from the Llama Pack team as aid station workers and course markers. Each community manages the hydration point along the course closest to their village, and 150 llamas are used to transport material to the aid stations.

“It’s spectacular, isn’t it?” Castillo poses. “The whole theme of caring for the environment, recovering the genetics of the llama, protecting ancestral customs. I’m proud of the partnership.”

Finally, it was through this partnership that rural community members became integrated in the race, not just as spectators but as active participants.

“Before, they watched tourists pass by. Then, after working the event at the stations, they wanted to run, too,” Galvez says. A Llama Pack Project running team was formed, and Andes Race covered the cost of registration.

“We always wanted Andes Race to create the nexus of trail running and the local people,” Castillo says.

“It’s the right thing to do. We pass by the doors of their houses. And finally, we’re achieving it.”

A Community Slow to Change

Cancha Cancha is a beautiful, distinctive place. Change arrives slowly; the village gained access to electricity only six years ago. Change comes, though, regardless.

Grisóloga Pumacahua, a Llama Pack Project guild member, reflects on this duality in her mountain home. “There’s no cars, no motorcycles,” she says. “We have to do everything by foot.” With Llama Pack Project, though, she notes that the lack of employment—the biggest problem in the past—has gotten better. “We have more funds now, so we can care for our children.”

Maribel Houaman, a mother of two, also works with the Llama Pack team. “The best thing about Cancha Cancha is the water,” she says, smiling. “It comes from the lakes below the glaciers. It’s clean, sweet.”

Maribel now splits time between Cancha Cancha and the nearest town, so that her daughter, who has aged out of the village’s primary school, can continue studying. She wonders if Cancha Cancha’s young people will return. “Without road access, it’s difficult,” she says.

Josue Quispe, Cancha Cancha’s young runner, spends most of his time in Cusco where he keeps a strict schedule of running every other day as he studies to become an electrician. When he’s finished he plans to work for a time, maybe in another country.

“But I’ll go back,” he says. “I’ll go make my home there.”

Josue has a little sister, four years old. He talks about running with her when she gets older, about involving the communities’ children in running.

Over lunch, Josue and his uncle wonder what would happen if the trail to Cancha Cancha became paved, if the highway were to arrive.

“It will change even more,” Julian says.

“More cars, more contamination, maybe damage to the crops,” Josue adds. Also, more access to services, more employment, more connectivity. They remain undecided.

Julian—never having run before—crossed the finish line for the Andes Race in 22 hours and 23 minutes. He went back to work the following day. Josue was hampered early by a blister which worsened overnight, forcing him to drop out. He finished fifth in the 13K distance in 2022, however, and remains motivated to tackle the 60K next year.

In the buildup to the race, the pair captured the attention of media from both Peru and abroad. Their participation, their identities, became in many ways symbolic. Symbolic of history, of change, of how we interact with lives so different from our own.

But at lunch across a wooden table in Cusco, all symbolism has faded away. They are a nephew and his uncle, enjoying each other’s company, discussing their home and their plans and their shared running adventure.

Josue cuts half of a stuffed pepper from his plate and places it in front of his uncle. “He loves stuffed peppers,” he says. They exchange a smile.

A special thanks to the kind, welcoming, and hardworking people of Cancha Cancha, especially to the Quispe family—sulpayki.