Inca trail day 3 - A walk in the rain

When we awoke on day 3 we were greeted with a great view (below) and a sick group member.
Matt had apparently spent the night rather ill and was not looking to good first thing in the morning. To make matters worse, Matias was also feeling ill. I was feeling much better and was able to give Matt our extra bottle of Gatorade to help him through the morning. Matt and Matias were both fairly lucky; where day 2 was a flat out test of endurance, day 3 was a gentle stroll through the cloud forest above Machu Picchu. Day 3 was all original Inca Road. Every stone we stepped on was laid by the Inca Civilization.
As you can see, the road was beautiful. It was a bit damp the entire day, with intermittent moments of heavy rain. Our first Inca site of the day required a small climb to reach the ruins of Phuyupatamarka. It was misty and a bit eerie to sit atop the ancient site. Alex taught us about the ritual sacrifices that the Incas did and Matt managed to purge his system while being respectful of the site. Eddie and Matias decided to skip the site and head straight to camp to give Matias a chance to rest and be ready for Machu Picchu the next day.
After Phuyupatamarka we had another 45 minute walk or so to our next Inca site, Yunkapata. Klaas took his usual trail blazing pace while Jo, Matt, Bethany and I strolled casually with Alex. We walked through hand carved tunnels(below) and Alex stopped and showed us every different orchid he could find, of which there were dozens. It was a beautiful little walk and quite a difference from the day before. When we reached Yunkapata we were all feeling a lot better and the mist had (mostly) lifted. We breezed through Yunkapata because we were running behind schedule due to our botanical bliss. On our way to camp we saw a bit of wild squash.
We headed down to camp to have lunch, and I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed that we didn't spend more time at Yunkapata. However, our 3 minute walk to Winaywaya after lunch totally made up for it. After Machu Picchu itself, this is the most amazing site we saw.
Winyawayna is a monstrous concave set of terraces that run up a very steep hill. The site had a beautiful room with seven windows, meant to represent the 7 colors of the rainbow. It also had a complex system of fountains that ran down the side of the buildings. We had a lot of time to explore the site and really got a feel for the architecture and skill of the Incas. We returned to camp just as it started to rain and were treated to happy hour (popcorn and cocoa) and a few card tricks from Klaas. This 3rd camp had a small cantina/restaraunt and there were a ton of people enjoying cold beers for most of the evening ( Kenya friends, it was a lot like the little bar at the campsite on our Nile trip). Matias was feeling better and he joined us for happy hour and dinner. After dinner we had our formal goodbye with our porters. Matias really saved our bacon by giving our respects in Spanish to the porters on our behalf. One of the tragic bits of information we learned at dinner was the fact that none of the porter had ever seen Machu Pichu. They take a different trail down to Aguas Calientes and do not go through the city of their ancestors. It is roughly 80 U.S. dollars to visit the site and none of them can afford it. We had an early dinner and the Chef went all out for us (I'll do a whole post on the food, no worries). We headed off to bed around 8 a.m. due to our 4 a.m. wake-up call. We all slept soundly, dreaming of then next day and our first view of Macchu Picchu.