Inca Trail Day 3

Llulluchapampa-Phuyupatamarka
12.9 km
986 elevation gain

Today was described to us as the longest and toughest day. It certainly was a long day, but I think yesterday was harder if I'm being honest. Today was a lot of up and down, up and down. Not little up and down though, BIG up and down, like up 420m and down 650m to go back up 365m to go back down about 250m.

The day started with a wake-up at 4:30 before we started walking around 6:00. It had been raining for a couple of hours, and still was when we had to pack which made things a bit trickier. Luckily, after breakfast it started to lighten up and by the time we were walking, it had pretty much stopped raining. It was a steep climb up to Dead Woman's Pass at around 4,200m, the highest point on the Inca Trail. It was rough, but not as hard as the steep climb at the end of yesterday. It was also very cloudy in the valley so we couldn't see very much except for the dead woman at the top of the mountain that was our goal. We got there in just over an hour which was quicker than I expected to be honest. It was still pretty cloudy impacting the view, but we still got some nice pictures to go with our sense of accomplishment.

After the pass, it was time to go down for a while. Going down is so much harder than going up in some respects, and it also tends to take longer which is annoying. The steps and path down for about 650m were big in some parts, but even a nice gradual path required caution because the stones were wet from the rain earlier. We were pretty bored of going down by the time we reached the bottom, and made me frustrated to go all that way up and then down, to only have to go up a steep part again. The good news though, was that we were always moving forward closer to the destination.

This part of the trail going back up was in the forest for the most part. There was a lot of greenery and Jhon pointed out different orchids every now and again. I also spotted a few hummingbirds and we saw a tree turkey (which actually looks more like a nicer pigeon). Once we began to reach the top of this ascent, the forest opened up to tall brown grasses. Towards the top there were a couple of ruins with some spectacular views of the mountains we'd gone up and down all day. There were also some small ponds dotted around. We saw some ducks and spotted a deer eating near the edge of one.

Once we reached the top of this pass, it was time to head back down AGAIN. Towards the bottom of this big down section, there was the 'inaccessible ruins' so named because of the narrow, steep steps to reach them. I was feeling pretty tired, so Allan ran up and had a bit of an explore. After his exploration, it was another 20 minutes until we stopped for lunch where our porters were waiting. Due to the long nature of the day, we stopped for lunch prior to reaching the campsite. During lunch, lots of laughs and poking fun at me was had (those potatoes were very good, it is a good chef here). We had some time to take our shoes off and switch our socks over to clean, dry ones before resuming our journey to our campsite a few kilometers away. The path now was little up and down so we could go a bit faster.

We reached our campsite much quicker than expected and it was a busy one. It was also high in the clouds, so you couldn't see much. At one point though we did manage to spot Aguas Calientes down below, the town where we will be sleeping tomorrow night after finishing the Inca Trail.

It's another early wake-up tomorrow, so we went to bed early hoping for some rest to conquer the last of the trail.Read more