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Our Inca Trail holiday actually started with three days spent in and around Cusco, the ancient Inca Capital. Our first day started with a walking tour of Cusco. Because of the various mix-ups with permits, this was with a guide called Arturo who should have been our guide for the whole trip, but wasn't.

( Photos under the Cut )

Then Wilbert showed us around Machu Picchu.

( Photos )

The story of Machu Picchu, as Wilbert told it to us, was that it was under construction as a district capital when the Spanish arrived. Intimating that things were going badly with the Spanish, the Inca moved 700 people and all their gold from their capital of Cusco along the Inca trail to Machu Picchu, destroying the roads behind them with landslides. They remained there for 80 years but were aware that the Spanish, in search of the gold, were getting closer aided by a generation of half-Peruvian, half-Spanish collaborators. After 80 years, therefore, they hid the gold in the surrounding hills and some moved back towards Cusco where they were captured by the Spanish and others moved east into the Amazon where their descendents were briefly encountered by archeologists in the 1970s. The Spanish eventually reached Machu Picchu but found no gold. This story does not appear anywhere else I've looked (but, as noted, information at the level of detail I'm accustomed to for historic sites is much harder to find for Machu Picchu), but it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't the legend as told among the local Andean people.

Day 4 started at 3:30am in the morning because we were supposed to meet up with the rest of our party at 11am at Machu Picchu which was about 14km away. Most of the rest of the camp got up and set out around the same time for reasons that were less clear to me - maybe the general plan is to get to Machu Picchu before lunch and then spend the afternoon in the city.

Anyway, this meant the first hour of the walk was in the dark going down steep steps with head torches which, once the novelty had worn off, wasn't much fun. We were, presumably, missing some stunning views.

The first ruin of the day was Intipata. This involved a slight diversion off the Inca road itself. According to Wilbert no one had even known it was there until a forest fire about 25 years ago. It's a bit difficult to convey it in photographs, especially as we don't seem to have managed to take any which have any people in for a sense of scale. It was huge, each individual terrace rising above our heads. As far as one can tell, it was a farm.

( Photos under the cut )

We then went to Wiñay Wayna which was very similar except that Wilbert insisted it was a laboratory not a farm. We had previously seen another Inca "Laboratory" at Moray but were somewhat confused by the distinction. Laboratories, we were told, were convex while farms were concave. The convex shape caused microclimates at each terrace and you could see different plants were grown on each terrace so it was obvious that the Inca's were experimenting. B. and I felt a frew crucial steps were missing here for something to be called an experiment, as opposed to growing things where they grow best. I was actually getting rather tired at this point so I just sat down and admired the view at Wiñay Wayna, while B. walked down to look at the buildings disturbing some Llamas who were grazing on the terraces.

( More Photos )

Wiñay Wayna was right by a campsite of the same name. It was currently out of use following landslides but was, apparently, where people normally spent the final night on the trail. Having left us to explore Wiñay Wayna, Wilbert sat down and chatted to the various guides and porters working at the camp. When we got back he reported that several other parties had gone past, none going to look at the ruins... which again seemed rather odd. I guess for a lot of poeple the Inca Trail is about the walk and then Machu Picchu and not so much about the less well known ruins along the way.

Once past Wiñay Wayna, we left the controlled part of the Inca Trail. At that point I half expected to start seeing day trippers up from Machu Picchu but we never passed anyone going the other way. Wilbert said this was because day trippers were lazy (Wilbert considered many people lazy, including anyone who spoke Spanish in preference to Quechua) but I would have thought quite a lot of people would like to walk along a bit of an Inca road without necessarily doing so for four days and going over Dead Woman's Pass.

Anyway, we continued for another 5 or so km, mostly on the flat but rising slightly until we came to a set of steps that Wilbert cheerfully informed us were called the "Gringo Killer". He had my measure by now and offered to take my sticks while I clambered up.

( Evidence under the Cut )

Then we turned a corner and came out at Inti Punku, the Sun Gate, the ceremonial entrance to Machu Picchu. This is where you get your first glimpse of the city.

( Photos )

I'll leave Machu Picchu to another post. We were half an hour "late", but Wilbert had a back-up plan which involved showing us around himself and we bumped into the rest of the party during the tour. I was a little frazzled when we got there - a combination I think of the early start, a fairly long walk and the fact my esim wasn't working so I was out of WhatsApp contact from our other guide and so couldn't coordinate meeting up (I eventually managed to contact him via B's phone). But once I'd sent the WhatsApp message and had something to eat, I cheered up enough to enjoy the city.

I felt even better after a bus ride down to Aguas Calientes and a late lunch.

( Evidence of Lunch )

Unlike Day 2, which was hard work and not terribly rewarding, we loved Day 3 on the Inca Trail. Once again we set off almost as soon as it was light. Wilbert's plan was again to have all the walking done before lunch, in part because of convenience, but this time he also knew there were a lot of ruins to see and was quite keen to get us to them before everyone else got there. In this he was successful. We generally got to look around ruins on our own, but a big group would arrive just as we were leaving.

The first of these was Runkuraqay which Wilbert described as a fuel station for people, which we interpreted as meaning an Inn.

( Runkuraqay Pictures )

We then went up and over a pass, a little lower than Dead Woman's Pass the previous day, and a shorter climb because we'd started higher. Then we came down towards Sayacmarca, a much larger ruin.

( Pictures )

Once we left Sayacmarca we continued down to about 3,500m. After that the trail was much more level. Strava shows a steady climb, but I felt much more able to look about me at the scenery rather than paying close attention to where I was putting my feet. As the trail levelled out we got to Qunchamarka, another Inn. It wasn't clear how to access this, but we walked around the outside. I think at this point we were up in a Cloud Forest - though I'm hazy on the difference between Cloud Forest, Rainforest and regular forest, all of which I think we walked through at various points.

( Pictures )

Wilbert spent some time telling us about the Inca Tunnel we would meet. B was pretty sure this was just a large fallen rock which the Inca's had run the path under. Wilbert got distracted at this point since he found a dog in the brush above the tunnel. After some encouragement he got it to climb down and it ran off down the path ahead of us. We met it again at the next campsite where, presumably, it belonged. I'm afraid we failed to photograph the dog, so you'll just have to imagine it.

( B did photograph the tunnel, however )

We arrived at our campsite in good time for lunch. The camp was above another Inca ruin, Phuyupatamaca, and after lunch Wilbert packed us off to take a look at it on our own. This involved going down some steep steps and it seemed like the water source for the camp was at the bottom, because we were passed by a lot of porters carrying water back up them. At the time we assumed he sent us to look at it then, rather than the next day, because the plan was to leave before light so that we would get to Machu Picchu in time to meet up with the rest of our group. However it transpired that pretty much everyone was leaving before light and we seemed to be the only party who's guide thought to encourage us to check out the ruins we would miss in the dark.

( Pictures of Phuyupatamarca )

We had an excellent position in the camp right next to a large rock that overlooked the view. We were next to the camp of a group of three people who were on the "Luxury" tour. Wilbert was very contemptuous - they had three guides and a masseuse. They were also served cocktails in glasses made of glass when they reached camp. The most disconcerting thing was that they were played into camp by Andean pipes. B felt he would have been quite happy with the cocktails and the larger tents (including a shower tent!) and so on, but felt he wouldn't have coped with the pipes.

( Pictures in the Camp )