Colpa Lodge - start: 2,514 m [8,246 ft]
Lucma Lodge - end: 2,135 m [7,003 ft]

Today’s trail was partially on the road due to damage to the trail. While I didn’t capture it well in photos, there are several places that we could see across the river on the other side of the valley where there had been slides and the trail was very narrow. Our guide said that it was too dangerous to take that section even though we did occasionally see a few people on it. You can see a bridge crossing a waterfall/stream to the trail across from us in photo 2206300038P in what looked to be a stable part of the trail.

One can see in the photos on the road that we walked on across the valley from the trail, the land is not that stable in the mountains. The rainy season sees a lot of landslides and the roads are constantly being repaired.

With that said, looking at some of the power line towers, some of them of built right on the edge. In the photo 2206300006P, you can see a good example of that. I just hope there is bedrock that the towers are anchored to else one of these days, there are going to be a major transmission line break!

We started the hike by crossing the river and rejoining the trail that we had arrived on the day before. The trail joined a road and we got a good view of both the pulley system that I mentioned from the previous day along with more buildings built on the side of a mountain between two of the three rivers.

Other than horses, mules and tons of birds, we had not seen much in the way of wildlife on this trip. But today was a lucky day. Some very cute piglets and their parents were munching on the side of the road. These were likely owned by some of the people who had homes in the area.

The trail followed the road for a bit but then took a narrow and steep side short cut to rejoin the main road going down the Santa Teresa River valley. It was definitely a dry weather trail only - if wet would be a super slide!

A few of the photos show damaged bridges going across the river which would have connected with the original Incan trail that, as mentioned, we paralleled on the road for safety reasons. We also went across a bridge on the road where a fast stream had cut through the rocks forming a beautiful gorge. The stone had lots of color in it due to many different minerals. It turns out that Peru is one of the world’s largest producer of copper, silver, lead, zinc, tin, boron, and molybdenum among others.

We broke off the road near our next lodge to again follow the original Inca trail. This section was very interesting as it followed ancient stone steps as you can see in photo 2206300042N. On the way to the lodge we went through the jungle where we saw coffee growing along with many different flowering plants.

After lunch we went on a quick tour of one of the local coffee growers where we were able to help roast some of the coffee beans and ran the hand grinder on them. Of course, we then tasted our own coffee. I myself am not a coffee person but the other guys said it was really good.

Another great dinner in the lodge as we had come to expect. While I normally don’t take pictures of my meals, I included one here just to illustrate how, in addition to the wonderful tastes, the presentations were always top quality. Of course, we finished the night in the hot tub, enjoying the peace and quite while watching fireflies flit back and forth through the trees over our heads.