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| Inca Trail Day 3: Pacamayo camp to Trekkers' Hotel |
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From Pacamayo camp soon we reach Runcuracay (Ruinas Amontonadas / Pile of Ruins), perched on a rocky platform. Runkuraqay was probably an Inca tambo or post house in a semi circular shape that overlooks the valley of the Paqaymayu River. A steep climb brings us to the next pass Runkuraqay Pass (3950 m.) passing by the twin lakes of Yanacocha (black lake). The Cordillera Vilcabamba rises over us. Every thirty metres or so we have to pause, breathless, to catch more oxygen. From the Runkuraqay Pass the trail descends towards a valley containing two beautiful green lakes. Chaquacha, the biggest, feeds the smaller one by an underground river. Here starts the cloud forest, the higher in Peru. Deep green trees covered with moss, bromeliads, orchids, begonias, humming birds and butterflies that flew around us. Now the trail changes from a dirt path to a narrow stone roadway, the original stones laid at the period of the Inca Empire.
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Inca Trail
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Approaching the bottom of the valley the large Inca ruins of Sayacmarca (Poblado Pendiente / Village (in a) Steep Place) can be seen on the hillside on the left. It is built on the edge of a rocky promontory and is accessible only via a narrow stone staircase above a sheer drop onto the rocks below. This is a magnificent Inca site with a panoramic view of the Aobamba valley and the snow covered peak Pumasillo in the distance. Its buildings have a maze like layout and almost cramped ones against the others. We climbed the stone staircase to the labyrinthine ruins. Legend says the Incas had a plant that could dissolve stone, making possible to mate perfectly the surfaces of the stones. The knowledge of this leaf is now lost, but its existence is hinted at by another legend of a bird of the region which uses an unknown substance to dissolve nesting holes in the rock surfaces.
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After Sayacmarca, the trail descends to the valley floor; the path takes the form of a long causeway leading across the dry bed of a shallow lake where there is the campsite of Chakicocha (dry lake), a plain and spacious place with baths and water supply where we stopped for lunch. After this, the trail passes the so-called Inca tunnel, 20 meters long it has stairs carved out in the solid rock. Then we climb a little more and arrive at the third and last pass, the Pass of Phuyupatamarka (3650m). This part is among the most beautiful stretches of the trail, going through a wonderful cloud forest full of flowers and birds. The terrain now changes frequently, from swamp to jungle, from cliff-face pathways to thickly wooded hills. The view from the pass offers excellent views of several snow-capped peaks including Salkantay (6,180m) to the east and Veronica in an untraceably complex pattern of peaks; a thousand metres below is the silent curve of the Urabamba valley.
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Inca Trail
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On the other side of the pass are the wonderful Phuyupatamarka ruins (Pueblo Alto en las Nubes Town / High in the Clouds). Surrounded by the cloud forest it is located on the border of a gorge that dominates the Urubamba valley. There are some agricultural terraces and a group of ritual fountains with circulating fresh water. At the top of the site there is a sort of main plaza. In the lower part, there is a group of circular and sinuous shaped buildings that seems to follow the form of the terrain. Look for the six Inca baths probably used for ritual ablutions, the spring that used to feed them is now dray.
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The trail continue the descend into a forest of moss-furred trees. As the altitude decreases, wild flowers and birds emerge by the side of the trail. After the shoulder of a hill, we begin to see down to the River Urubamba valley revealed by a high-voltage power pylon from the hydroelectric power station. On the steep side of the mountain the terraces of Intipata and Wiñawayna appear. The Intipata terraces (Sun Place) have a convex shape whereas those of Wiñawayna are concave.
We continued down a seemingly endless series of steps that I found quite tiring on my knees. About three hours of descent from Phuyu Pata Marca we arrived by late night at the Trekkers' Hotel.
The Trekkers' hotel is actually a hardly a hotel at all. It's a large ugly concrete-walled, tin-roof structure with a restaurant. It was terribly full of trekkers and porters. I was astonished by the crowd, almost every patch of reasonably level ground seemed to be occupied by a tent. The best feature of the Trekkers' Hotel may be the warm showers (s5), but after a long queue the warm water was already gone. We had our last diner in a big crowded and very noisy place full of trekkers and strange people looking at your wallet with some interest.
Unfortunately we missed the nearby (10 min.) ruins of Wiñawayna (Huinay Huayna / Joven Para Siempre / Forever Young). They are maybe the most beautiful ruins along the trail, but we arrived too late in the night to see them, our suggestion is to hike the Inca trail in a four days, in this way you can avoid the too long trek of the third day leaving more time for nature and ruins watching.
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Inca Trail
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The site is named after a typical orchid of the area with red, violet and yellow flowers that blooms year-round. The place was built on the steepest of mountain slopes on the left bank of the Urubamba River. It has four main sectors: the urban sector on the lower part with more that twenty buildings, the ritual fountains sector, the agricultural terraces sector and the tower sector. Fifty terraces descend from jungle. Beside the terrace stairs is a descending line of ceremonial ablution cubicles, still with running water and drainage.
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