The Sun Gate, locally known as Intipunku, is a trekking route that is little known and explored by both locals and tourists who enjoy hiking and, above all, having a good time outdoors.

The Inca Trail is a series of pedestrian routes built by the Inca Empire under the orders of Emperor Pachacuteq, which later rulers would improve and expand to connect every corner of their empire.

At present, UNESCO recognized 30,000 km. The Inca logic was that all roads had to connect with Cusco, the capital city, and all subjects had to worship and pay tribute to the emperor through labor.

Let’s begin with this blog, where we will show you this small but spectacular part of the Inca Trail.

1. Where is the Intipunku Sun Gate located?

The Intipunku Sun Gate is located in the department of Cusco, province of Urubamba, district of Ollantaytambo in Peru.

To visit this destination, you must first arrive in the city of Cusco and take a vehicle, a journey that will take you one hour and forty-five minutes heading north. Along the way, you will pass through some small towns; however, all of them are livestock-farming communities, and only one has a few stores where you can make emergency purchases.

2. The two existing routes and which one to take:

2.1. The imperial trail:

The imperial Inca trail that takes you to the Sun Gate begins a few meters before the current vehicle access to the town of Ollantaytambo. To take it, you must cross a small wooden bridge. Keep in mind that from the beginning of the hike, the entire route is uphill, a moderate false-flat type of ascent that extends for a total of 9 km to the summit.

2.2. The ordinary trail:

It is called this because there are some quarries halfway up the mountain, and to access them the Incas opened a little-developed but efficient trail that, to this day, the inhabitants of the Cachic’ata community still use, only now to graze their cows.

Of the two trails, this is the one with the least maintenance, and the vegetation is beginning to cover several parts of it, so finding your way can become tedious.

Of the two routes to the Intipunku Sun Gate, this trail is the steepest and most difficult and is only recommended if you have good physical endurance. To get here, you have to drive about 25 minutes farther from the town of Ollantaytambo, crossing an unpaved dirt road.

3. What to see along the route?

The Inca trail to Intipunku, being a gradual and continuous ascent until reaching the summit, allows you to admire the Inca city of Ollantaytambo from a very different and panoramic perspective, which during its period of greatest splendor came to house around 2,000 inhabitants.

This route is worthwhile because it allows everyone to understand how the Incas carved the rocks, from their extraction to their transportation and final fitting into the wall.

Halfway along the route, if you take the imperial trail, you will come across the famous Cachic’ata quarries, where you can see thousands of stone pieces abandoned in the middle of the working process, some of them with enormous dimensions that will leave you astonished and others with intricate shapes that are surprising in their craftsmanship.

You will learn about the ramps used by the Incas and also get a better idea of how the Incas urbanized, since being a totalitarian empire that redistributed resources, including the labor of all its inhabitants, when the Incas decided to build a new city, they deployed an entire logistics system that allowed them to control each and every detail that the work required until it was completed.

Upon reaching the summit, you will come across the renowned Intipunku Sun Gate, a construction made of stone in pure Inca style, overlooking a majestic snow-capped mountain called Wakay Willca (Sacred Mountain that Cries).

From the summit, you will be able to appreciate a unique landscape straight out of a movie.

4. Total hiking time:

The total distance is 18 km round trip, which takes an average of 10 hours. You should keep in mind that to complete it, you need to be in good physical condition and have acclimatized for a couple of days in the city of Cusco, since the maximum altitude you will reach is 3,900 meters above sea level. Although it is not very high compared to routes such as Humantay Lake or Mountain of 7 Colors, this route is more demanding than the previous two, especially because of the hiking distance.