Hi !

Oh that second day ! No ruins, nothing to learn about the Inca except that the stairs they built are steep, and there are so many of them to climb !! 1200m elevation gain to reach the Warmiwañuscca (Dead Woman) pass at 4200masl, with the joy of fighting against the thin air !!!

Surprisingly, considering the night camping and my previous experience at high altitude, we made it rather easily up there. It takes usually 5 hours to climb up and 2 hours to climb down to the next camp, and we needed 4 hours for the uphill section (including the breaks) and 1h15 for the downhill section. The weather was spectacularly good, so we where able to enjoy 30 minutes of view, until another reality hit us: we need food (we purposely decided not to have a lunch break half way through the climb to not deal with digestion during the steepest sections) !

As you can imagine, the obvious reward for all this effort is the view. On one side (not the picture above), there’s the view on the Wayanay glacier; on the other side (the above picture), the view on a valley and the what will be tomorrow challenge: the Runkuraqay pass (at 3900masl). This section of the Inca Trail is about the spiritual journey, as the mountain are sacred for the Incas, and while I haven’t found my religion, I would definitively agree that there’s something majestic about these mountains.

I cannot leave this post without a picture of the Wayanay Glacier…

Enjoy (or not) and stay tuned !