The hike to Pumamarca and back down, where it got interesting....

So while in Ollantaytambo, we had a few options of hikes and day trips, and settled on the highly recommended (via tripadvisor) and free hike to some out of the way mountain top ruins at a site called Pumamarca. We asked our inn keeper about getting there, and he said "Oh, Pumamarca, Ok...." and proceeded to draw us a map. We assumed that hesitation to be one of several things that we already knew 1) this hike is not part of the typical tourist circuit 2) this hike has one clear path to get there, but several other not clear ways to get there, or 3) that it is a 5-6 hour hike and we are two moderately large people with two moderately small people in tow. In the end, we don't know for sure what the cause of the hesitation was, but it likely a combination of all three, with the #2 being the largest contributor to our adventure.

So we set off from the hostal with our map, and we proceeded to follow a road next to a river (very pretty!) for several miles. No upslope yet, but a lot of cool views along the way including the people, the housing and the really awesome Incan terraces that are still being used for farming by a few families today.





















As we were passing the Incan terraces, we also got to see the '700' steps - this is a stone (hand made) staircase all the way up the side of the mountain - pretty awesome to see.

We finally reached the turn off of the main road to Pumamarca, and this is where the ascent begins. We did discover that all four of us like to hike steep terrain at different paces, and that yes, none of us are in as good of shape as we would like to believe.

Toward the end of the upward slope, we cut up a couple of switchbacks following one of the Incan aqueducts and ended up having to look a little bit to find the road again, but we found some locals and trying not to sneak up on them, asked for directions. They pointed, and away we went. Here are a couple of views from the top - if you look closely, you can see the tiny road we started from down at the bottom next to the water.

The ruins were absolutely phenomenal and we were the only ones there for about an hour, with the kids just having a free for all running around from building to building. This caused me to reminisce of visiting various ghost towns across Colorado with my parents on camping trips as a girl. When we came back to the 'front' of the site where we had entered, we found a government caretaker waiting by one of the walls. I was ecstatic to see him as we had read from various reviews that if we could find someone up by the ruins, they could show us an 'alternative' way back that goes on top of the terraces before dropping back into Ollantaytambo.

So in our sad and incomplete Spanish, we asked the caretaker about where to find the other path back, he smiled and rattled off a lot of information that I didn't understand, but C got the jist of it. In the end, we determined that we needed to take the path near the 'Toro Negro' which was literally a large black bull cow staked near the turn for the path. He conveyed to us that we always wanted to take the 'down' option if we came to some option/fork in the path. In addition, from what we had read, as long as you got started on the path, the rest was really easy to identify and hence, stay on and get back to Ollayntaytambo. 

Off we went on our merry way down the hill and back to the road, eating some snacks and keeping our eyes out for the bull, so we could make our turn. We saw the 'path' and we made our turn. The path goes through several peoples farm fields and does still follow some aqueduct for a bit. The interesting part so far was that we were warned about 'aggressive dogs' so we picked up some rocks to carry with us (this was the instruction we were given) to 'warn' them off if they came after us. The views from this path were spectacular, moving back down the valley, looking down from the top, instead of looking up from the road at the bottom we had taken to get there.

We passed a few 'forks' in the path, and we always took the path that lead down. Unfortunately, as we were about 5 hours into the walk, and we had about 3 hours left of light, and we came to a point where the path ended at a fast flowing creek. To be more specific, what would have been the trail from that point forward, was now a creek that had come down the mountain above and turned on the trail, but looked like it had been doing this for some time.

So now we had to figure out where to go. We could go down the slope, below the creek, but there was no visible path, or we could go back the other direction, also down the slope where there was something that under very optimistic circumstances, may have been a path. At this point, we truly made the assumption that no matter the direction we went, that we would join back up with the trail.

We decided to try the path away from the water, which required us to push through some shrubbery, but not too bad for about 100 ft. after which, this path also was gone. So, go back or make our own path ahead? C was not happy with this situation, but we were too far gone to try to make our way back up, so creating our own path was the decision. This quickly became literally sliding down at about a back slash (\) angle, holding on to various vegetation (when we could - we found several of them had thorns) and hoping that the sliding would stop at some point, such as slide for 20 ft, stop on a bush, slide for 30 ft, stop on a rock, and so on. I went in the front, holding A's hand, and dragging her behind me. N followed (and did really well with the sliding!) and C brought up the back of the train. After a few slopes of this, I was in full blown adrenaline mode, just wanting us to get down the mountain safely, and make it back before dark.

After what felt like forever, but was probably about 45 minutes, we came out of the bush and onto a new trail, that looked like a cattle grazing route. Regardless, we were able to follow this one back to the road and continued on our way home.

At the conclusion of this hike, A was crying from sheer exhaustion, and the rest of us just continued to put one foot in front of the other until we made it back to town. I was sore in places I didn't even know I had muscles, not to mention we saw amazing ruins and had an adventure with no injuries (save scratches from the death thorn bushes on the mountain), so all in all, a good hike and a good day :)