Q'eswachaka Bridge
Puente Queshuachaca
Interesting facts
- Each renewal starts from scratch with ichu grass from the highlands, twisted by families into thin cords that are then braided into ropes around 70 metres long.
- The finished bridge is about 28 metres long and hangs roughly 30 metres above the Apurímac River.
- In Inca times, villagers replaced the cables of such bridges every year as part of the mit'a, the labour duty owed to the state.
- Inca rope bridges were built for walkers, llamas and relay runners, because the Inca used no wheeled transport on their roads.
- In 1972 the geographer D. W. Gade documented the bridge and predicted its building art would die out within a generation, a forecast that proved wrong.
- The renewal has been filmed for the PBS series Nova and the BBC, and builders from the communities made a grass bridge for a 2015 Smithsonian event in Washington, D.C.
- Builders work from opposite banks at the same time, weaving the handrails and lashings toward each other until the two halves meet over the gorge.
- The greatest Inca rope bridges also spanned the Apurímac canyon, and one of them is thought to have inspired Thornton Wilder's 1927 novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
Why it is worth it
Q'eswachaka, often written Queshuachaca, is the last Inca rope bridge still in use: a suspension bridge made entirely of grass, slung across the gorge of the Apurímac River near Huinchiri in the highlands of Canas province, south of Cusco. Its name in Cusco Quechua means simply "straw-rope bridge". The Inca road network crossed the Andes' deep river canyons on bridges like this, and while the others have long vanished, this one survives because it has never been allowed to wear out. Every year it is taken down and rebuilt from scratch.
The renewal happens in the second week of June and takes about three days. Four Quechua-speaking communities, Huinchiri, Chaupibanda, Choccayhua and Ccollana Quehue, share the work. Families cut and twist grass into thin cords, the cords are twisted into medium ropes, and those are braided into six great cables. Anchored to stone abutments on either bank, the main cables become the floor and the handrails, and builders working out over the void lash the sides together and lay woven mats as decking. Two bridge masters direct the work, and the whole process is wrapped in ritual: offerings to Pachamama, the Earth Mother, and a festival when the new bridge is finished and first crossed. In Inca times such work was a form of labour tax; today the builders say they do it to honour their ancestors.
The bridge is beautiful in a way no steel structure can be: a golden, sagging thread across a green-brown canyon, with the river running fast far below, and the ropes fresh and bright just after the renewal. A modern road bridge now stands nearby, so this crossing is no longer strictly necessary, which makes the communities' persistence all the more striking. Peru declared the renewal part of its national cultural heritage in 2009, and in 2013 UNESCO inscribed the knowledge, skills and rituals of the annual renewal on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The bridge has fallen twice in recent years, once after the renewal lapsed during the pandemic in 2021 and once in 2025, and both times the communities rebuilt it.
Getting there
The bridge is in Quehue district, Canas province, about 30 kilometres from the town of Sicuani. The nearest airport is Alejandro Velasco Astete International in Cusco (CUZ), about 106 kilometres away in a straight line; most visitors come by road from Cusco. The renewal festival in the second week of June is the time to see the builders at work.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Queshuachaca is the last remaining Inca rope bridge, consisting of grass ropes that span the Apurímac River near Huinchiri, in Quehue District, Canas Province, Peru.
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