m Pucyura to answer the
requirements of Calancha that it was "two or three days' journey"
from Uilcapampa to Puquiura.

A new road had recently been built along the river bank by the owner
of the sugar estate at Paltaybamba, to enable his pack animals to
travel more rapidly. Much of it had to be carved out of the face
of a solid rock precipice and in places it pierces the cliffs in
a series of little tunnels. My gendarme missed this road and took
the steep old trail over the cliffs. As Ocampo said in his story of
Captain Garcia's expedition, "the road was narrow in the ascent with
forest on the fight, and on the left a ravine of great depth." We
reached Paltaybamba about dusk. The owner, Senor Jose S. Pancorbo,
was absent, attending to the affairs of a rubber estate in the jungles
of the river San Miguel. The plantation of Paltaybamba occupies the
best lands in the lower Vilcabamba Valley, but lying, as it does,
well off the main highway, visitors are rare and our arrival was
the occasion for considerable excitement. We were not unexpected,
however. It was Senor Pancorbo who had assured us in Cuzco that we
should find ruins near Pucyura and he had told his major-domo to be
on the look-out for us. We had a long talk with the manager of the
plantation and his friends that evening. They had heard little of
any ruins in this vicinity, but repeated one of the stories we had
heard in Santa Ana, that way off somewhere in the montana there was
"an Inca city." All agreed that it was a very difficult place to reach;
and none of them had ever been there. In the morning the manager gave
us a guide to the next house up the valley, with orders that the man
at that house should relay us to the next, and so on. These people,
all tenants of the plantation, obligingly carried out their orders,
although at considerable inconvenience to themselves.

The Vilcabamba Valley above Paltaybamba is very picturesque. There
are high mountains on either side, covered with dense jungle and dark
green foliage, in pleasing contrast to the light green of the fields of
waving sugar cane. The valley is steep, the road is very winding, and
the torrent of the Vilcabamba roars loudly, even in July. What it must
be like in February, the rainy season, we could only surmise. About
two leagues above Paltaybamba, at or near the spot called by Raimondi
"Maracnyoc," an "abandoned tampu," we came to some old stone walls,
the ruins of a place now called Huayara or