Inca Trail: Day 3
Jun. 19th, 2025 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatUnlike Day 2, which was hard work and not terribly rewarding, we loved Day 3 on the Inca Trail. Once again we set off almost as soon as it was light. Wilbert's plan was again to have all the walking done before lunch, in part because of convenience, but this time he also knew there were a lot of ruins to see and was quite keen to get us to them before everyone else got there. In this he was successful. We generally got to look around ruins on our own, but a big group would arrive just as we were leaving.
The first of these was Runkuraqay which Wilbert described as a fuel station for people, which we interpreted as meaning an Inn.
We then went up and over a pass, a little lower than Dead Woman's Pass the previous day, and a shorter climb because we'd started higher. Then we came down towards Sayacmarca, a much larger ruin.
This is the trail we were now walking on which Wilbert described as the original Inca built trail. It was characterised by the stones along one edge, which was often raised up some height to make the trail itself flat.
The approach to Sayacmarca
I'm not exactly bad at heights, but I'm not exactly good either and seeing the steps to get up into Sayacmarca initially had me telling B. he could go and look at it himself. However, he persuaded me I would regret this and after a bit of thought I gave my sticks to Wilbert and went up the steps keeping close to the rock wall and using my hands. One the way down I gave pack and sticks to Wilbert and went down on my bum.
I mean, seriously, look at the things!
According to Wilbert, this is where water came in to Sayacmarca from a wooden pipe taking it from a stream on the hillside to the end of this channel.
The water eventually flowed into this "bath".
I've forgotten what these were for - holding doors closed?
We had visited another Inca site while acclimatising in Cusco (will blog in due course!) in which concentric rings of terraces were each accessed from the other by stone "steps" sticking out from the walls. That site was sufficiently visibly managed to dissuade us from climbing on the archeology. Not so at Sayacmarca where there were no visible signs, barriers or ropes. B. seized the opportunity to climb up the "Inca steps".
This is the view looking back
Once we left Sayacmarca we continued down to about 3,500m. After that the trail was much more level. Strava shows a steady climb, but I felt much more able to look about me at the scenery rather than paying close attention to where I was putting my feet. As the trail levelled out we got to Qunchamarka, another Inn. It wasn't clear how to access this, but we walked around the outside. I think at this point we were up in a Cloud Forest - though I'm hazy on the difference between Cloud Forest, Rainforest and regular forest, all of which I think we walked through at various points.
Wilbert spent some time telling us about the Inca Tunnel we would meet. B was pretty sure this was just a large fallen rock which the Inca's had run the path under. Wilbert got distracted at this point since he found a dog in the brush above the tunnel. After some encouragement he got it to climb down and it ran off down the path ahead of us. We met it again at the next campsite where, presumably, it belonged. I'm afraid we failed to photograph the dog, so you'll just have to imagine it.
This is Intipata from a distance with the fancy zoom lens in B's phone. We were to visit Intipata the next day.
We arrived at our campsite in good time for lunch. The camp was above another Inca ruin, Phuyupatamaca, and after lunch Wilbert packed us off to take a look at it on our own. This involved going down some steep steps and it seemed like the water source for the camp was at the bottom, because we were passed by a lot of porters carrying water back up them. At the time we assumed he sent us to look at it then, rather than the next day, because the plan was to leave before light so that we would get to Machu Picchu in time to meet up with the rest of our group. However it transpired that pretty much everyone was leaving before light and we seemed to be the only party who's guide thought to encourage us to check out the ruins we would miss in the dark.
We saw several sets of buildings like this. Each has water pouring in one end and a basin in the middle. Wilbert described them as a Water Temple and said they were for ritual bathing.
We had an excellent position in the camp right next to a large rock that overlooked the view. We were next to the camp of a group of three people who were on the "Luxury" tour. Wilbert was very contemptuous - they had three guides and a masseuse. They were also served cocktails in glasses made of glass when they reached camp. The most disconcerting thing was that they were played into camp by Andean pipes. B felt he would have been quite happy with the cocktails and the larger tents (including a shower tent!) and so on, but felt he wouldn't have coped with the pipes.
It suddenly occurred to Wilbert that he'd never properly introduced us to the team (apparently we had distracted him by buying him a beer at our first campsite with the unexpected draft beer and sofas). So everyone had to line up and shake our hands and have their photos taken. Our cook, who seemed to be in charge as far as I could tell, and was generally consulted by Wilbert about plans is on the left. The man in the red apron is our waiter, who Wilbert insisted on calling Manuel in reference to Fawlty Towers but actually seemed to be called Stanislaw (though I was never entirely convinced I had heard that correctly). We had excellent food, very cheffily presented with little stripes of sauce and so on, but always on plastic plates - hence our envy of the glass cocktail glasses. By day 3 we were wondering why we continued to have fresh meat and were told that the porters were transporting an ice box with them (B was dubious this would suffice after three days but no one got food poisoning so presumably it was fine). On day 3, the cook somehow also managed to make a cake in the soup tin over a gas burner.
The first of these was Runkuraqay which Wilbert described as a fuel station for people, which we interpreted as meaning an Inn.
We then went up and over a pass, a little lower than Dead Woman's Pass the previous day, and a shorter climb because we'd started higher. Then we came down towards Sayacmarca, a much larger ruin.
This is the trail we were now walking on which Wilbert described as the original Inca built trail. It was characterised by the stones along one edge, which was often raised up some height to make the trail itself flat.
The approach to Sayacmarca
I'm not exactly bad at heights, but I'm not exactly good either and seeing the steps to get up into Sayacmarca initially had me telling B. he could go and look at it himself. However, he persuaded me I would regret this and after a bit of thought I gave my sticks to Wilbert and went up the steps keeping close to the rock wall and using my hands. One the way down I gave pack and sticks to Wilbert and went down on my bum.
I mean, seriously, look at the things!
According to Wilbert, this is where water came in to Sayacmarca from a wooden pipe taking it from a stream on the hillside to the end of this channel.
The water eventually flowed into this "bath".
I've forgotten what these were for - holding doors closed?
We had visited another Inca site while acclimatising in Cusco (will blog in due course!) in which concentric rings of terraces were each accessed from the other by stone "steps" sticking out from the walls. That site was sufficiently visibly managed to dissuade us from climbing on the archeology. Not so at Sayacmarca where there were no visible signs, barriers or ropes. B. seized the opportunity to climb up the "Inca steps".
This is the view looking back
Once we left Sayacmarca we continued down to about 3,500m. After that the trail was much more level. Strava shows a steady climb, but I felt much more able to look about me at the scenery rather than paying close attention to where I was putting my feet. As the trail levelled out we got to Qunchamarka, another Inn. It wasn't clear how to access this, but we walked around the outside. I think at this point we were up in a Cloud Forest - though I'm hazy on the difference between Cloud Forest, Rainforest and regular forest, all of which I think we walked through at various points.
Wilbert spent some time telling us about the Inca Tunnel we would meet. B was pretty sure this was just a large fallen rock which the Inca's had run the path under. Wilbert got distracted at this point since he found a dog in the brush above the tunnel. After some encouragement he got it to climb down and it ran off down the path ahead of us. We met it again at the next campsite where, presumably, it belonged. I'm afraid we failed to photograph the dog, so you'll just have to imagine it.
This is Intipata from a distance with the fancy zoom lens in B's phone. We were to visit Intipata the next day.
We arrived at our campsite in good time for lunch. The camp was above another Inca ruin, Phuyupatamaca, and after lunch Wilbert packed us off to take a look at it on our own. This involved going down some steep steps and it seemed like the water source for the camp was at the bottom, because we were passed by a lot of porters carrying water back up them. At the time we assumed he sent us to look at it then, rather than the next day, because the plan was to leave before light so that we would get to Machu Picchu in time to meet up with the rest of our group. However it transpired that pretty much everyone was leaving before light and we seemed to be the only party who's guide thought to encourage us to check out the ruins we would miss in the dark.
We saw several sets of buildings like this. Each has water pouring in one end and a basin in the middle. Wilbert described them as a Water Temple and said they were for ritual bathing.
We had an excellent position in the camp right next to a large rock that overlooked the view. We were next to the camp of a group of three people who were on the "Luxury" tour. Wilbert was very contemptuous - they had three guides and a masseuse. They were also served cocktails in glasses made of glass when they reached camp. The most disconcerting thing was that they were played into camp by Andean pipes. B felt he would have been quite happy with the cocktails and the larger tents (including a shower tent!) and so on, but felt he wouldn't have coped with the pipes.
It suddenly occurred to Wilbert that he'd never properly introduced us to the team (apparently we had distracted him by buying him a beer at our first campsite with the unexpected draft beer and sofas). So everyone had to line up and shake our hands and have their photos taken. Our cook, who seemed to be in charge as far as I could tell, and was generally consulted by Wilbert about plans is on the left. The man in the red apron is our waiter, who Wilbert insisted on calling Manuel in reference to Fawlty Towers but actually seemed to be called Stanislaw (though I was never entirely convinced I had heard that correctly). We had excellent food, very cheffily presented with little stripes of sauce and so on, but always on plastic plates - hence our envy of the glass cocktail glasses. By day 3 we were wondering why we continued to have fresh meat and were told that the porters were transporting an ice box with them (B was dubious this would suffice after three days but no one got food poisoning so presumably it was fine). On day 3, the cook somehow also managed to make a cake in the soup tin over a gas burner.
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Date: 2025-06-19 08:31 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing your pictures. :-)
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