EXCAVATIONS IN Baths OF THE INCA

In the vicinity of the Tourist Complex "Baths of the Inca", several excavations were carried out in which were found remains pertenainig to the antiquity. Those remains it could be rooms of ancient residents of Baths of the Inca that already used the thermal waters for their healing therapies. The Archaeological Mission of the University of Tokyo in Peru was in charge of the archaeological works.

Excavations in the Inca's BathsThe scientific investigations was carried out by the experts pertaining to the team of the Professor Yoshio Onuki, responsible for the Japanese Delegation and Director of Kunturwasi Archaeological Center that means in Quechua languaje, House of the Condor, they suppose a valuable contribution to the Cajamarca Project " Thermal Village of the Incas" and they confirm the patrimonial, historical and cultural value of the thermal enclosure.

Well-known in the antiquity under the name of Pultumarca, during the Incan splendour, Baths of the Inca was an aristocratic residence surrounded by trees and springs used as de luxe SPA for the high hierarchy. It was the place where emperor Atahualpa rest, where the famous puddle of the Inca still today preserved and where he recovered forces before undertaking new conquests.

The Baths of the Inca, in the district of Cajamarca, it constitutes the First Tourist Spa in the northern Peru due to count with the hot-mineral-medicinal waters that spring up to the surface in the sources denominated " perolitos " with temperatures ranging from 65º to 76ºC. of greatest importance for the development of the crenoterapia or hydrothermal treatment.

Cajamarca, considered Historical Patrimony of America, it is a cultural good of the ancestral route of the Capac Ñan. The city has been raised to the category of thermal village due to the healthy benefit of its medicinal-mineral waters, is a place strategically located to promote the thermal tourism of Peru with Inca identity in the international tourist forums.

To promote the thermal resources of the district of Baths of the Inca in Cajamarca through a sustainable tourist circuit, it constitutes one of the high-priority actions of the Cajamarca Project that has the support of the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation (AECI).

The Committee for the Development of the Thermalism in Peru, has considered as high-priority action to support the Cajamarca Project, Thermal Village of the Inca, aimed at to convert the District of Baths of the Inca, in the first representative center in Peru offering services of rest, recreation and health in a pleasant environment, in syntony with the tourist tendencies of the new millennium.

The Cajamarca Project that will energize the ecoturism through the path of the Inca, getting to sensitize the social agents about the potentiality of the thermal sector and to place this resource - today an emergent tourist product - among the high-priority resources for the economic, social, tourist and cultural development of the thermal villages.

The combined effort of companies, institutions and local governments of the Cajamarca valley to conserve and to appraise the natural resources and to develop those resources, has in the thermal richness of the thermal mineral-medicinal waters of Baths of the Inca, a tourist inducement that, without a doubt, it will energize the economic development of the area, provided that resources are used in a sustainable way.

TOURISM

The Communication Director of CARETUR Cajamarca, Juan Carlos Rufasto, recently said that tourism is a social activity that rebounds in a decisive way in the economy of Peru and he elevated to about 450 thousand million dollars the investment carried out in the year 2003."

Excavations in the Inca's BathsIn his opinion, the Peruvian tourism is at the present taking position in the international markets, and he supported this statement with the following figures. "In the year 2002 ? he said - we were visited by 865.602 foreign tourists and we calculates that it was increased in the year 2003 with 933.643 tourists that arrived to know Peru."

For Juan Carlos Rufasto in "Peru was born in Cajamarca", sentence that makes allusion to the tourist dynamics that together with the cultural activities and economic development, promotes this city that is an historical reference of the Incan culture.

"Cajamarca -underlined - it is one of the most important tourist destinations in the north of the country and this region develops tourist activities, fairs, workshop and events of well-known success thanks to the capacity, unconditional support and motivation of the guild sector."

Mayte Suárez Santos. Especialist in Medicine and Termalism