The Inca Trail - Day 3

An 8 hour hiking day beckoned us today as the group decided to take Plan B. Most people who walk the Inca Trail take four days to reach Macchu Picchu, as they camp at Winaywayna on the third night, get up at the crack of dawn (she must be a skanky lady cause she gets a lot of that...sorry bad joke), and stumble around in the dark with torches to get to the Sun Gate ("Intipunku" in Quechua) and watch the sun rise over Macchu Picchu. Miguel, our guide, said that it is normally clouded over so you don't see jack. So in our collective wisdom we ditched Plan A in favour of Plan B. In a nutshell, Plan B was to trek all the way to the Sun Gate from our second night campsite and arrive at Macchu Picchu in early afternoon to a guaranteed view of the ruins. The bonus was that we got to spend the afternoon at Macchu Picchu and as long as we wanted the next day, we could sleep inside (albeit on the second floor of a restaurant!), and hit the hot pools at Aguas Calientes to ease our aching joints.

Although a long day of trekking, the journey wasn't too arduous in an upwards sense. We climbed up to the third and final pass of the trail at Phuyupatamarca and along the way visited the ruins of the same name. Next followed about 4,000 Incan steps (accoring to the experts who I assume have counted them all...) down towards Winaywayna. Trudging downhill got pretty tiring after a while and all I wanted to do was arrive at the next stop. The old knees started to take a pounding and it was again that the sticks we bought on Day 1 came into play. Following the steps was a seemingly neverending downwards zig-zagging path that felt like it went on for hours. Finally we arrived at Winaywayna in time for lunch - a hearty feed of papas fritas (fries) and beef patties. I also splashed out on a bit of civilisation at this stage as I bought a coke and some popcorn which was a delght to the culinary senses.

Following lunch and a brief visit to the nearby ruins (see photo below), we headed off for the leg to the Sun Gate. The morale of the group was pretty high as we wereall excited about finally getting a glimpse of the magical Macchu Picchu (and cause we had full bellies!). Most of the trek to the Sun Gate was flat aside from a brief, and in my case, extremely sweaty, ascent at the end. As a Kiwi and keen for a Hillary-esque moment I was the first one of the group to arrive, and stepping out from behind the Sun Gate I had the first view of Macchu Picchu. I was buzzing out, and when the site came into view I couldn't believe that I was finally here.

The view was amazing as the ruins were bathed in sunshine. Cecile and Merryn were the next to show up and after getting some photos taken by a kind stranger we waited for the remainder of the group to arrive. Needless to say everyone was pretty excited and after a lot more photos (both for us and on behalf of other groups) we picked up our feet and headed down the mountain towards the jewel in the Inca Trail crown.

Upon arrival at the site we hung mostly around the Hut of the Caretaker of the Funeral Rock. I sat there just taking in the ruins and still feeling rather surreal that I was there. It was mid/late afternoon when we arrived so there weren't too many tourists around the ruins which allowed us to breath them in without too much distraction. Our big in depth tour of the city was due to take place the next day so after hanging around the hut for an hour and taking some photos we headed down the hill to Aguas Calientes.

The descent was more stairs, much to our chagrin. At the bottom Cecile, Simon and posed for the compulsory exit shot to balance up the entrance shot. The total trip down took about an hour and a half later when we arrived at Aguas Calientes a little grumpy (cause of the stairs), tired and stinky. Nothing a trip to the hot pools didn't solve (although the stinky part is still debatable). The main pool smelt like urine but we wisely spent our time in some of the smaller hot pools that had sandy/gravelly bottoms. It was a weird feeling and I wondered why the water didn't seep away. Fluid physics has never been my strong point. Our accomodation, as mentioned earlier, was on the second floor of an Italian restaurant (complete with little ginger kitten scrounging for food), although the porters still fired up their cookers out the back and served us a tasty feed. After dinner we said our thanks to the cooks, porters, and assistant guide, Gato (who was really called Sergio), as they were leaving us. We managed to rustle up some cash for tips and they probably headed off to blow it all at the pub. Bedtime clocked in at 10pm as we were due to get up at 5am the next morning to catch the bus back up to Macchu Picchu for our tour and day at the ruins.