Full Day Hike to Huchuy Qosqo

After breakfast at your hotel, our guide will pick up from your hotel and we will drive through winding hills towards the Sacred Valley until reaching the Piuray Lagoon, located near the town of Chinchero. In the nearby community of Tauca, you will start the 7 to 8 hours hike, where you can see the beautiful sunlight on the snowcapped Veronica Mountain and the Vilcabamba range. On the shores of the Piuray Lake we will hike uphill to the high Puna and on route, we be able to apreciate herds of Alpacas and Llamas that enhance the landscape. After the Apacheta pass 14,000 feet (4,200masl), from here, you will hike along an original Incan trail, which has be restored as part of the Qapacñan project. This trail will lead you to the isolated and mysterious Inca site of Huchuy Qosqo (“the little Cusco’’) perched above the Sacred Valley of the Incas located at 12,099 feet (3688 masl). Once in the site, your guide will walk you through and show you all the site’s amazing Inca buildings like sacred temples, storehouses, Inca terraces for agriculture and the Inca reservoir used to store water during the dry season. One interested caracteristic is that this site have three high Inca structures made of stone and adobe (mud-brick). The beauty of these place is that they have been built on the mountaintop, with clear blue skies above and streams running on either sides.

After relaxing in the shade of the Queñua trees (Andean Oak) while feasting our box lunch and snacks, it is time to continue on the hike. We will cross the open terrain and begin the zigzag trail down the face of the mountain, until we meet our vehicle in Lamay Village, taking us back to your hotel in the early evening.

Distance: 9.07 miles (14.60 km). Maximum altitude: 14,557 feet (4437 meters). Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. Optional: We can end this tour at Ollantaytambo train station if you have a connection train to Aguas Caliente (Machupicchu town).