Patallaqta Inca Ruins
The Inca ruins of Patallacta Is the first site that you’ll see on the classic Inca Trail; it’s located at 2,650masl which you’ll see after of 3 hours walk from the km 82; the tail is relatively easy.
The Inca ruins of Patallaqta (up Town) stand on the mountainside high above immense banks of agricultural terraces, on the west bank of the “Cusichaca” river. This well preserved and major Inca ruin was not part of the string of elite ceremonial centers that you will see later on-yet it was vital to their existence, because it produced the food on which they depended. Combined with Q’ente, further downstream, and other side higher up the Cusichaca valley, this area produced three or four times more food than it consumed. Unlike Machu Picchu and the other Inca Trail sites, this one was settled by earlier cultures before the Incas arrived, with human occupation beginning at least 2,000 years ago, through to the present day.
Patallaqta was not a high-prestige settlement. A visit to the ruins provides a contrast to some of the sites you will see later on. The residential compounds are built with uncut field stone, in a strictly repetitive architectural style, characteristic of the type of site where transient “mit ‘a” labor contingents were housed. But the solid stonework, the attention to urban planning, and above all the quality and beautifully contoured style of the terracing betrays the hand of first rate royal architects and engineers, most likely those of Pachacuteq’s panaca.
Below the ruins, near the banks of the “Cusichaca” river here stands a small site called “Pulpituyoq” (Pulpit-having-a hybrid Spanish Quechua word). This curved building, constructed around a huge rock, was Patallaqta’s waca or religious place where the Incas performed ceremonies for their gods.