After leaving the camp, we climb fairly consistently up to the first ruin of Runkuracay. We take a few pictures and then continue climbing up to a pristine lake nestled in the mountains. Cesar took some time to tell us about this outpost while we took some pictures of the area. Megan was having problems with dehydration and luckily we got some hydration salts into her at the top of the pass so that she could get some energy back.
We quickly ascended up to the top of the second pass. There we decided to hold a ceremony to see if we could get the fog to lift and have better weather. To do this we needed to please the Pachi Mama.(sp?) We left our bags and were told to carry a rock up to a small hill which we all did. There we were each given 3 Coca Leaves which we held together and then placed under a rock and we all piled the rocks up together. After making our offerings and making sure they all pointed the correct direction, we climbed back down to our packs and resumed the trail.
The trail continued with rolling hills for a while. There were a few amazing vistas over the valleys on either side of the trail. We also passed through a few rock tunnels that the Inca's had hollowed out for the trail. We finally got to the next ruin spot where we all took a brief stop and Cesar talked us through this ruin before we began the big descent to our 3rd camp site. Megan was much more willing to talk on the descent but the dork in Tom and I came out and we wanted to count exactly how many steps down we would pass.
We had been told that there are 2000 steps between the ruins and the campground and we wanted to make sure we were getting our moneys worth. Megan tried valiantly to disrupt our count (me: 201, 202, 203 megan: 246,208,234) but luckily we peservered. It took us a while to normalize our count to make sure that we were counting the correct steps and not giving freebies to lame steps but that is why both Tom and I kept separate counts. We ended up about 30 off and averaged to 2240 steps down to the 3rd campground. We got in just before dusk and dropped off our gear, grabbed our lights and cameras and hastened to another ruin site. This one was one to test various plots also. This one had the most levels of any that we had seen up to this point. This picture doesn't do justice to how many terraces were there.Afterwards, we headed back to camp. This campsite was a small village and had a main lodge that had showers, electricity and all kinds of amenities for sale. We grabbed clean clothes and got in the line for the showers. It cost 10 soles for the shower and use of a towel. My pack towel was still slightly wet so I opted for the extra dollarish for the towel. Surprisingly enough, we had hot water. This might have been the most amazing shower ever. It felt great to get all the grime of 3 days on the trail off. We then headed back to our site for dinner.
The next best part of the lodge is that they served beer. We headed back to the lodge and were hanging out playing some euchre and getting beers. After playing for a while, we headed back up to try and get our tour guides to come down and play with us. It didn't take much convincing and we got a crowd back down. For whatever reason, we decided to teach them how to play Euchre which might be one of the most difficult games to teach (why didn't we pick hearts), but they picked it up pretty quickly. It was somewhat tough since we had to jump between english and spanish to get the point across. Things were going pretty well and it wasn't until afterwards, I realized that Juan had been cheating by looking at our cards the whole time. Luckily we caught him in the act on camera!After finishing up a few more hands, we headed back up to the camp because we had to be up way early so we could get to Macchu Picchu in time to beat the crowds.
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