Jesse Katayama planned to finish the world voyage at 8,000 feet above sea level from Machu Picchu, the 15th-century Inc of the Andes Mountains.
Then came the coronavirus, where Mr. Katayama, a 26-year-old Japanese citizen, was mortgaged in Peru and locked down tourist destinations across the country.
On Sunday, after a seven-month wait, Mr. Katayama finally went to visit the UNESCO World Heritage Site. And with the exception of a few guides, he got it all on his own.
“After the lockdown, the first person to visit Machu Picchu is Meii,” he wrote in an Instagram post that included photos of him with a representative from the park.
Peru’s Culture Minister Alejandro Neira told a virtual news conference on Monday that Mr Katyama had been given special admission to the venue in recognition of his patience.
“They came to Peru with a dream that they would be able to enter,” Mr. Nera said. “The Japanese citizen has entered together with our head of the park so that he can do so before returning to his country.”
Before the epidemic, Machu Picchu welcomed thousands of visitors a day. Tourists usually have to apply for permits months in advance to enter the Inca Trail leading to the ancient gerss.
Mr. Katayama’s original pass was to take place on March 16, and he arrived two days earlier, at Agaas Calients at the foot of the mountain.
But two days turned into weeks and then months. He rented a small apartment in the city and took daily yoga classes, taught local children how to make box boxes, and studied various fitness and sports nutrition certification exams.
He wrote on a crowdfunding website in 2019 that he dreams of opening a boxing gym in Japan and wants to travel the world to learn the best approach from each country. Before arriving in Peru, he taught boxing in Australia, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya.
Mr Katayama told a Japanese news outlet that he had planned to join the emergency evacuation flights planned by the Japanese government in the spring, but it was too expensive. He finally decided to stop, postponing his departure in the hope that Machu Picchu would reopen soon.
Her patience paid off in the end, and when La Repubblica became a bit of a local celebrity last week, A large Peruvian broadsheet, covering his awareness and calling him “the last tourist in Machu Picchu”.
“I stayed with the sole purpose of knowing this wonder and I did not want to leave without doing so,” he told the newspaper in a separate interview.
Hundreds of well-wishers offered to apply to the authorities on his behalf as a result of the news of his perseverance, he said on Instagram.
Culture Minister Mr Nera said officials had received a visitor’s application for Mr Katayama and decided to grant him special admission before returning to Japan.
The epidemic has devastated Peru’s tourism industry, the country’s third-largest generator of revenue. The Lima Chamber of Commerce said in 2018 that the industry employs more than 1.3 million workers or about 8 percent of the country’s workforce. Most of them lost their jobs when the trip stopped.
Peru also has an increasing number of coronavirus cases and more than 33,000 deaths.
Mr Neyras said seven archaeological sites in the city of Cusco in the Andes would be reopened in small groups with a 30 per cent capacity on Thursday. A resumption date for Machu Picchu is pending.
