Inca Trail day 3/4 Cloud Forest, 16th April 2017

Sunday 16^th April 2017

Day 3/4 Inca Trail – Runkuraqay, Phuyupatamarca.

I naively thought that the Dead Woman's Pass would be the end of uphill climbs. How very wrong. The whole trail is a series of ups and downs. We started with a climb to the second pass at Runkuraqay where we could see the Vilcabamba and Urubamba mountains.

We then descended for about 2 hours down a paved Inca road (actually ankle-breaking cobble stones) to the ruins of Runkuraqay. Terry and Diane also explored Sayaqmarca, but Iain and I looked at the extra 100x dodgy steps and gave it a miss.

 

We were by now in the Cloud Forest which gave some lovely cool cover from the hot sun, with lots of bamboo, lichen, and numerous varieties of moss over the cliffs and hanging from the trees. 




Another thigh and calf-killing stone staircase descent took us to our third campsite near the ruins of Phuyupatamarca.

 

We were again with lots of other groups at the campsite, but Walter had arranged that we were in a quiet area, so that we wouldn’t be disturbed by other groups getting up at 3am for the final push to Machu Picchu.  Crazy stuff – walking on these dodgy trails with a headtorch was not my idea of a holiday.

We all watched a superb sunset and wondered why our cook Alfonso seemed to be taking a long time mixing batter. 

All became clear when he proudly presented me with a large sponge cake with icing of ‘Linda’s Freedom Tour’.  I had told the porters that I had retired the day before the Inca trail, so it was a lovely way to celebrate – lot of pictures and all the porters also got a slice.