Inca stones quarry trek: We offer wide amount of adventure tours in southern peru. Our new adventure hike, begins at Zurite, and leads to the famous inca stones quarry. It offers magnificent andean scenery, the typical Peru’s highland, where you’ll see lakes, snow coated mounts.
It is a non-frequented path, many can offer hikes with the same name, but we are the only ones, who are going to take you by the most remote and beautiful places of the area, because we are locals, the Owner of the company has passed most of his childhood exploring the mounts and lakes..
Yanacocha is one of the lakes that we can approach and camp nearby on our 1st day, then we descend by places where we can see the old inca trail that is connecting to the traditional 4 days of the inca trail, pass a little but nice canyon. The highlight of the hike is the quarry where, you can be amazed by the enormous size of carved rocks, that were ready to transport, and build ollantaytambo.
3 hours before pick up
This fantastic inca stones quarry trek begins with an early departure from Cusco city, at 06 hours we transfer you from your hotel to Zurite 3322m, start point of our hike. We will drive about 50 minutes, and once arriving to zurite we will breakfast, after breakfast we will drive for about 30 more minutes, then meet our muleteers.
he trek leads by a scenic section and after about 2 hours of walk we will reach the summit, we will arrive llama-cancha “llama fence” (fence where a llama head was painted). Here we’ll appreciate snow coat mountains such as: Wak´ay huillca “veronica”, Huayanay, chicon, salkantay and Ausangate, from the summit we’ll walk downhill to a stream and lunch at the banks.
After lunch, we will walk for about 3 hours to the campground located at Hatun Pampa “big flat” land surrounded by beautiful mountains, after this flat-ground we arrive to Yanacocha lake “dark lake” it is a lake of legends, Holly lake for the villagers. (We´ll camp at about 4,200 meters). (Challenge hike, 12 km distance, and seven hours of walk).
The magnificent second day hike to the stones quarry, begins with a delicious breakfast made by our trekking chef, wake up at about 6 in the morning, then after breakfast we will walk by an old trail used only by locals, deer’s, and foxes (no other tour operator knows the 1st and 2nd day sections).
it is a magnificent trail, a gentle uphill trail leads to a summit named C’ara Cruz 4600m, we will have 360°, from where we will see colorful mountains, snow coated mountains and valley and the Apurimac canyon, we will see eagles, herons, torrent ducks, wild guinea pigs, and condors if we are lucky, we will reach the banks of the zigzagging river named Qenqo Mayu, and lunch nearby.
After lunch the trail leads downhill, then we will cross a stream and do a small uphill and arrive to a little plateau and camp nearby couple houses at about 3800 meters.
(Difficulty: Challenge, about 12 km and 8 hours walk).
Another fascinating section is waiting the day, wake up at 06 in the morning then after breakfast we re-start the hike, a gentle flat and small uphill lead to chancachuco, this is a plateau that has a nice fence that once incas used to shepherd llamas, we will find a family who has many sheep and cows, we walk to the stream where we lunch in a quiet place.
After lunch our group will walk by a narrow trail banking and stream, it was place from incas channelized water for the stones quarry, in few minutes we’ll be amazed by the punkuyoc canyon, the trail goes downhill then we follow up to reach the inca water chanel and walk in a flat level, we arrive to Qorihuayrachina from where we can enjoy the view of the sacred valley and the snow capped mounts.
We descend and arrive to the stones quarry where we set up our camp at about 3.700m. (Difficulty: Medium. Total distance: 14 km. Estimated walking time: 8 hours).
This last day is very gentle, a magnificent view of la Veronica mountain welcome us to the sacred valley, we will have breakfast at outdoor, then we will explore the area and see the carved rocks, this is the inca stones quarry, from here the incas has extracted all the rock to build the temples in Ollantaytambo, there are a lot of rocks, some of them carved ready to get transported.
Incas also have built platforms, to support rock when they did slide the rocks down, then made a road to ollantaytambo on which they pulled the rocks.
We will follow this path and after about 5 hours we will arrive to ollantaytambo where we will lunch then take our private transport back to Cusco city.
(Optional extension to Machu Picchu by train).
(Medium difficulty, Seven kilometers distance, “3.28 miles”. And 5 hours of walk)..
