The Inca Trail - Day 3

Day three and only a little more than half a day of walking. First up, more “Peruvian flats” for a couple of hours, then down, down, down. And believe me, the pain in my feet and legs made an analogy with Hades quite pertinent here. Although we finished up that day by two or three o’clock, it seemed a lot harder than the first two. Our legs were beginning to weary, our joints were stiff from cold, and the damn steps were wreaking havoc on our knees and upper legs. With the aid of the ever-present coca leaves, we made it to our final campsite, Wiñaywayna. There were two things special about this campsite. The first was Wiñaywayna itself, an archaeological site of incredible beauty, constructed in typical Inca styles (more about this later). Wiñaywayna was probably used as a temple from which to worship a bunch of gods (the Incas were polytheistic, and worshipped the sun, moon, water, mountains, rainbows, the Earth, stars, and anything else that took their fancy). As with all the important Inca sites there were the requisite terraces, important for growing food and preventing erosion of the soil. We admired Wiñaywayna for a while before wandering back to camp, and not a moment too soon for as we entered the campsite we found the Apus had tired of their good humour towards us and had seen fit to send the rain bucketing down.

The second special aspect of this particular campsite was less Inca related, but nonetheless exciting. Hot showers. You can only imagine what we smelled like after three days of constant walking. Despite the cold, you get hot and sweaty once you get going, particularly on the uphill stretches. The idea of showering, with hot water, was more appealing than I can put into words.

We ate a cheerful dinner, buoyed by the fact that most of the difficult walking was behind us, and also conscious that this would be our last dinner together and wishing to make the most of each other’s company. I would be particularly sad to leave Solay the next day. Due to my ability to speak Spanish she was more verbose and frank with me than the others, and we had formed a special bond. That night we said goodbye to the porters who would be leaving us the next morning after breakfast, and went to our cosy warm beds early in anticipation of a 04:00 rise the next morning.