The circulation of the Covid-19 has lost its force in Peru, allowing the reopening, Sunday, November 1, of the Inca site of Machu Picchu.

After nearly eight months of closure due to an epidemic, this jewel of the country's tourist sites has reopened its doors with a ceremony that resembles an ancestral ceremony.

Under a fine rain and multicolored lights, an Inca ritual was celebrated on Sunday evening to thank the gods for the reopening of this citadel, declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1983.

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Reopening Machu Picchu shows "that Peruvians are resilient," Foreign Trade and Tourism Minister Rocio Barrios told AFP.

A first train of tourists arrived in the morning at Machu Pichu pueblo, the city closest to the Inca site.

For health security reasons, only 675 tourists can access the site each day, or 30% of the daily number of visitors before the pandemic.

The site will receive its first visitors on Monday, but tourists will be required to keep their distance, even as the number of coronavirus cases declines in Peru.

The only exception, a French family, stranded in Peru since March, was able to visit the site on Sunday.

Overcome economic difficulties

This reopening is particularly expected in Cusco, a must before arriving at Machu Pichu and former Inca capital, where the drop in the number of tourists in a city that lives at 70%, has caused havoc.

The confinement has resulted in a dead loss for the tens of thousands of Peruvians who live off tourism, especially in this mountainous region where the Inca citadel is located.

Many hotels, restaurants and other tourism-related activities went bankrupt during the more than 100-day lockdown, lifted in July.

The taxi driver Eberth Hancco, who works at the airport in the city of Cusco is among those who have suffered from the confinement.

Without visitors to bring to the tourist sites, he had to resolve in April to leave the city and work the land on his parents' farm with his wife and daughter.

"The situation has been very bad, because Cusco depends on tourism," he said.

Before the pandemic, there were 80 hotels in Ollantaytambo, a town with an imposing stone fortress at the end of the road from Cusco to Machu Picchu.

This is where tourists can take the train to the famous citadel.

"At least half have gone bankrupt," said Joaquin Randall, who heads the local hotel and restaurant association.

"Official hotels that pay taxes were able to access government aid," he told AFP, but the myriad of informal hotels that operated in the region did not.

With AFP

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