Less than 450,000 people visited the Inca castle in Machu Picchu in 2021, a major tourist attraction in Peru, less than a third of the attendance recorded in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ministry of Culture announced in a statement, that Machu Picchu, which closed its doors between late January and early March, “received 447,800 visitors during 2021”, and the number of its visitors reached 67,583 in October.
The number of attendance represented only 29.7% from 2019, when more than 1.5 million tourists (1,505,428) visited the site, according to official figures.
In 2020, the Inca castle – which closed its doors to the public for nearly eight months due to the pandemic – welcomed only 274,594 people.
Currently, about 3,044 people can access the site daily, a metric that can handle 1.1 million visitors a year, according to the ministry.
Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983, Machu Picchu is located on a rocky outcrop at an altitude of 2,400 meters, located about a hundred kilometers from Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca Empire in the south. from present-day Peru.
Peru has recorded more than two million cases of COVID-19 and more than 203,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
“Total coffee aficionado. Travel buff. Music ninja. Bacon nerd. Beeraholic.”
More Stories
Portland Press | The bookstore that resists Amazon
The world in pictures | Journalism
to see | Panda or dog? Zoo admits trying to deceive visitors