Inca Trail (Day 3)

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Day 52 is day 3 of the Inca trail. A 6 am wake-up tea again after a reasonable sleep in freezing conditions for a 7.20 am start for a less intense day covering 11 kms to Winaywayna base camp. The early start is to allow us to reach camp by lunch time & after a rest inspect the spectacular nearby Winay Wayna ('Forever Young')ruins.

We started with a trek over the third pass to the beautiful ruins of Phuyupatamarca, the 'Town above the Clouds', at 3,600 mtrs. This is another unique micro climate system known as the cloud forest that is almost continuously in cloud & fog & creates moist & humid conditions that is the perfect environment for moss, lichen & flowers to thrive including numerous types of orchids. Incas considered orchids the nicest flower & often used them to illustrate on pottery& tapestry. The valley continuously echoed with frog calls.

Along this section of the track the Incas built massive retaining walls ( up to 20 mtrs) in order to have relatively flat tracks between villages but later decided it was too hard & switched to stairs.

After exiting the cloud forest we reached the impressive Phuyupatamarka ruins & a change in vegetation to non-descript green bushes which was just as well as we needed full concentration of the steep downhill steps ( 1300 steps down with a drop of 1600 mtrs in altitude.) the temperature quickly rose as we had a photo stop at the Intipata ruins & a final walk to the camp site.

While it was a shorter trek our muscles were aching but Ruth was so good on the walking poles she was literally dancing down the stairs like a pole dancer! After being last into camp on days 1 & 2 Ruth fairly raced down & was 1st in to the ritual applause of the porters.

After a lunch time siesta we visited the little known & recently discovered (1942) Winay Wayna ruins that were found by accident. Not much is known about the site but as no bones were found it is believed that the site was abandoned soon after completion possibly as they were aware of the relentless march of the Spaniards.

At this stage my muscles were aching & suffering dehydration.

Before dinner we thanked our porters for all their efforts as they work so hard without getting well paid. Hopefully our small gratuities will help. As everyone had great expectations for next day most went to be early as next day we had to wake up at 3.30 am!!!!

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