From Cusco to Colorado
How a mountain guide from Peru's Cordillera Blanca became a broadcast-grade adventure filmmaker, from helping build the Skylodge above the Sacred Valley to telling stories in the mountains of Colorado.
Before the BBC credits and the drone shots, Alexander Estrada was a kid from Lima with the Andes as a far-off line on the horizon. He studied and worked in the city, and then at nineteen he left the coast for the mountains. The camera came much later. The mountains came first, and they never really left.
From Lima to the Cordillera Blanca
Alexander was born and raised in Lima, Peru's sprawling capital on the Pacific coast, where he studied and worked through his early years. At nineteen he moved north to Huaraz, the Andean city that serves as the gateway to the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range on Earth. He learned the trails, the weather, and the rock, and worked the range as a mountain guide, climbing the peaks until he was twenty-four.
The mountains gave him more than a profession. They gave him an eye.
Cusco, and the Skylodge years
At twenty-four he moved south to Cusco, the old Inca capital, and opened a North Face store selling mountain gear. Not long after, an old friend from Huaraz, Ario Ferri, came looking for him. Ferri was designing and building something unusual in the cliffs above the Sacred Valley: a via ferrata, a zipline, and the now-famous Skylodge and Starlodge, glass suites fixed to a sheer rock face hundreds of feet above the valley floor. He asked Alexander to help build it.
Alexander said yes, and that decision shaped the next chapter of his life. He spent eighteen years in Cusco, much of it guiding for Natura Vive, the company behind those Sacred Valley adventures.
Picking up the camera
About seven years into that run, he had started shooting on the side, and one project turned that side work into a calling. It was a production for Transitions, the adaptive-lens brand, and it became the first big job of his career behind the camera. The name fit, because it marked his own transition. He committed full time to photography, video, and drone work and opened his own production company. The work grew quickly, with early clients like Mountain Lodges of Peru, and from there he went on to major names in broadcast and journalism, including the BBC and ABC.
The guide who knew how to read a mountain found he also knew how to frame one. The remote, high-altitude places most crews cannot reach were exactly the places he was already at home.
From Cusco to Colorado
Eventually the path led north again, this time to Colorado. Alexander settled in the Denver–Boulder area for a simple reason: it reminded him of home. Like Cusco, it is a place of mountains and long ranges, of climbing and adventure in every direction, and of warm, big-hearted people. He brought the whole toolkit with him: the climbing, the camera, the drone, and a bilingual perspective that few adventure filmmakers can offer.
The throughline is hard to miss. The kid from Lima who left for the mountains at nineteen has lived in high country ever since, and now makes his living telling its stories: in Peru, in Colorado, and anywhere the terrain gets steep and the access gets hard. From Cusco to Colorado, the mountains have been the constant.
Frequently asked
Alexander Estrada is a bilingual adventure filmmaker, photographer, and drone pilot, born in Lima, Peru and now based in the Denver–Boulder area of Colorado. He spent years as a mountain guide in the Peruvian Andes before turning to film, and today specializes in documentary, brand, and expedition work in high-altitude and remote locations.
He was born and raised in Lima, Peru's coastal capital, where he studied and worked before moving to the mountains. He spent his early career in Huaraz and then eighteen years in Cusco, and is now based in the Denver–Boulder area of Colorado.
In the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range in the world, reached through the town of Huaraz. He moved there at nineteen and worked as a mountain guide until he was twenty-four.
After moving to Cusco, he spent years guiding for Natura Vive, the company behind the Sacred Valley's via ferrata, zipline, and Skylodge suites. About seven years in, he decided to become a videographer and photographer and started his own production company.
He is now based in the Denver–Boulder area of Colorado and works worldwide, but his roots and much of his body of work are in Peru. As a native Spanish speaker, he works fluently in English, Spanish, or both.
Adventure and documentary films, brand and hospitality work, and photography, with a specialty in high-altitude and hard-to-reach locations. His clients have ranged from Mountain Lodges of Peru and the eyewear brand Transitions to broadcasters like the BBC and ABC.