A house at three lakes
4,200 metres above the Sacred Valley. Everyone comes for the day. You can stay the night.
Write on WhatsApp See the house ↓Just a house
Not a hotel, not a retreat centre, not a glamping site. A house people live in.
It stands at 4,200 metres, in an Andean community above the Sacred Valley, beside three lakes. Around it is the puna: high ground without a single tree, alpacas working across the slopes. The mountains stand close. The horizon here is not a line, it is a slope.
There is a stove. It burns wood and it heats in earnest, not for the look of it — at 4,200 that is not comfort, it is a condition. There is a kitchen where you can cook your own food. There is hot water and a shower. There are beds with heavy blankets. There is even a washing machine, in case you have been on the road a long time — at this altitude that sounds almost absurd, and that is the whole point.
The nearest shop is forty minutes downhill. Firewood is brought up from below; nothing grows here to burn. Gas is brought up from below. Everything that looks ordinary was carried up by someone.
The house is private. Everything around it is shared.
The land, the water, the trout in the lake, the trails — all of it belongs to the community. You pay for the house and you end up inside someone else's world, which runs by its own rules. That is why you cannot come here the way you come to a hotel — and it is also why it is worth coming.
Yan · the owner
Who you are writing to
I am from Moscow and I have been in Peru for almost ten years. I came to travel, got stuck in the jungle for a year because of covid, then moved up here. I never got around to going back — at first I did not want to, and then a war started in my country and there was nowhere to go back to.
Ten years have passed. I have settled in. If you do not like living in cities, it is very good here.
Of everything I have learned in that time, the main thing sounds like a joke: walking in the mountains and looking at them. It really is a skill, and it does not come at once.
The same mountain, the same lake at a different hour and a different season — never the same twice. You find something new every time, in the tenth year of walking the same ground.
These days I am busy with my own project in Pisac and I am up here less than I would like. Meanwhile the house stands. I do not like that it just stands, so it became a project of its own: let people come.
There is no reception desk here and no team. When you write, you are writing to me.
— Yan
What you will not find here
We do not publish routes, coordinates or the names of trails.
Not out of spite. These trails hold up on exactly one thing: that nobody writes about them. The moment a coordinate appears, a flow of people appears, and behind the flow comes rubbish, flattened grass and a queue for the photograph.
Lakes
Kinsa qucha is Quechua for “three lakes”. The place was named by counting.
They are fed by meltwater and rain, and the altitude gives them their colour: the water is cold, clean, almost without organic matter, and there is more light up here than below. Hence that dense turquoise no filter can reproduce — and that nobody believes from photographs.
Three lakes gave this place its name. But there is more water here than three.
Others lie further out. Far enough that you cannot reach them and get back in one day — the day would end before the walk there began. We call them by number: the fourth, the fifth. There will be no names in this text.
They are not hidden and not guarded. People simply do not get that far. The usual trip from Cusco is built around daylight: arrive, look at the three lakes, drive back down to sleep. Almost nobody has seen what lies past that line.
The fourth
the furthest out and the highest. You can reach it, but only if you are already up here and in no hurry
The fifth
few people know it, even here. We write down neither the name nor the direction
To see those two you have to stay the night. There is no other way.
But the lakes are what people come for. Not what they stay for.
The order is not fixed. There are long versions and short ones, and which lake you see first depends on the weather, on the time, and on who is walking with you. The guide decides that in the morning, not a week before you arrive.
Getting here
Two ways lead up. This is not “cheaper and dearer”, these are two different days.
First the Sacred Valley, then the road starts to climb, and half an hour later the trees run out. After that it is puna: bare high ground where it gets noticeably colder inside the car. The last stretch is dirt road.
By taxi
The car comes right to the door: no walking with luggage. From Pisac it is faster and cheaper; from Cusco there is nothing to change.
S/. 100 per car, one way
We arrange the driver in advance — write to me and it is handled. Paid separately from the stay.
Driving yourself: Comunidad Paru-Paru, Pisac — that is enough for any driver to know where. We will explain the rest.
On foot
The trail starts where the asphalt ends: you get a ride that far, and past it there is only up, and only on foot. You walk with a guide — he knows where the water is, where it is shorter and where it is worth stopping.
with a guide · S/. 300 for a group of up to three+60 for each person after that
The price is for the climb or the descent, one way. Coming down follows the same trail almost all the way to Pisac: easier than the climb, and longer.
Yes, walking costs more than the taxi. That is how it should be.
A taxi costs a hundred and solves the problem of being up here. Walking with a guide costs twice that — because it is not transport, it is your first day here. You are not paying to get those kilometres behind you. You are paying to see them.
The difference between the two is not fifty soles. It is the difference between arriving and climbing.
From the car the road takes forty minutes and you remember one bend of it. On foot it unfolds: first eucalyptus forest and the smell that stands in the air after rain, then the last trees, then no trees at all. The valley drops away, and at some point you climb above the clouds — they lie below you, in the valley, and you only see that from the trail.
Along the way: houses of clay, herds, people going about their business, and water coming straight out of the hillside. All of it stands along the road as well, but at sixty an hour it turns into flicker. The only speed at which mountains can be read is four kilometres an hour.
In exchange you walk the trail people here use every day, not the tourist one. Past houses, past herds, past people going about their business. Children will pass you going the other way — their school is the same distance, and they walk faster than you. There are animals on the way: once a deer was standing right on the trail.
Altitude
4,200 metres is a lot. There is about forty per cent less oxygen in the air than at sea level.
It is the same air — there is simply less of it in every breath. The body notices within hours and starts rebuilding: breathing faster, moving blood quicker. That rebuilding takes days, not minutes.
If you are not used to mountains
Spend two or three days in Cusco or the Sacred Valley before coming up. Cusco sits at 3,400 — already high enough for the body to begin adjusting.
The difference between “it was hard and I remember nothing” and “I remember that day” is those two days.
What helps
drink morewalk slowlya light dinnerno alcohol for a daycoca leafstay warm
With children
Yes — under the same rule as for adults: two or three nights in Cusco or the Valley first. We can pick the walk to suit a child; we cannot pick the altitude. With babies under two we do not recommend staying the night: they cannot tell you what is wrong.
If you feel unwell
There is a medicine box in the house: altitude tablets and oxygen. If you need to go down, we call the drivers — we have their numbers. In the daytime a car comes soon. At night you wait for it: it has to come up from below.
Which is why what works here is preparation, not the medicine box.
We would rather talk you out of a bad date than take you in and watch you suffer.
How people come here
Three ready-made options — or the same prices item by item.
The price is for the house, not per person, unless stated otherwise. A day runs morning to morning. Payment on arrival or by transfer.
These prices are for friends only
This is how I count for friends, people I know, and whoever they bring.
They do not go public.
All of Kinsacocha
3 days · 2 nights
the housea half-day traila full-day trailfirewooddinner
separately it would come to S/. 1240
for one — S/. 900 · item by item it would be 1040
Take this oneA night at the lake
2 days · 1 night
the housea short trailfirewood
separately it would come to S/. 410
for one — S/. 350 · item by item it would be 310
Take this oneThe house for a day
no overnight · arrive in the morning, leave by evening
the houseshowerkitchentipi
drop your things, walk, come back to the warmth and head down
Take this oneThe house to yourself
overnight · per day · the whole house, not a bed in it
| One guest | S/. 120 |
| Two | S/. 220 |
| Three | S/. 390 |
| Each one after that | + S/. 80 |
Children under seven do not count here. The first three guests sleep in the room; from the fourth on it is the tipi: five places, and colder. Eight people in all.
Trails with the owner
price for a group of up to three, then per person
| Short · about two hours | S/. 160 +40 / person |
| Half a day · leaving after breakfast | S/. 300 +80 / person |
| A full day · with food by the water | S/. 440 +100 / person |
| The owner's own trail · a day put together for you | S/. 700 +160 / person |
I am not up there every day. The house is yours either way; the walks happen only when I am there — send me your dates and I will tell you straight away. We do not take more than eight people per guide: at 4,200 one person cannot keep track of more.
There is no calculator here. It does not know whether I am up the mountain that day.
Write and say how many of you and for how many days
I will work it out and answer with a number. Give me the dates — whether there are trails depends on them.
Write and ask the price →Commercial events — separate
A retreat, a shoot, a seminar, a group tour, anything you earn from is not counted at these prices. The house closes for you entirely and the terms are agreed in advance.
Write and tell me what you have in mind and how many people: ask about terms →
Extras
alone on the mountain · +50% on the stayfirewood · a bundle S/. 30transfer · S/. 100 per car, one waydinner at the neighbours' · S/. 30
An evening usually takes one bundle of wood; in a hard frost, two.
Straight talk about the mountain
There is no deposit — we freeze nothing and hold nothing. But there are things worth knowing before you write “yes”.
Food
There are no shops up here: food is bought down in the Pisac market. Dinner from the neighbours is ordered in advance. This kitchen does not cook meat or fish — the trout arrives already cooked, from next door.
Payment up front
Half the sum in advance, the rest on arrival.
Change your mind three days ahead or earlier — full refund. Later, no: the day will stand empty.
Cleaning and rubbish
Cleaning is in the price, there is nothing to pay on top. Rubbish goes back down with us — I carry mine down the same way; no bin lorry comes up here.
Half up front. From that day on I turn everyone else down.
A day here
There is no programme. There is a choice.
Sunrise
fog lies in the valleys, the summits catch light first
Breakfast
The trail
which one is decided by the guide in the morning: by the weather, by who is walking. It is not chosen in advance, and that is not evasion — it is how people walk here
The stop
if you went out for half a day or a full one
Coming back
the stove is lit straight away — by dinner the house is warm
Dinner
trout is ordered ahead: it comes out of the pens, not out of a freezer
Fire
Night
to the water at night only with a guide — that is a house rule. How many stars you get is decided by the moon, not the weather
Next morning
Tomorrow will be the same thing — and something else entirely: different light, different weather, different water.
Food and drink
There is no restaurant here. There are three ways to eat.
Who cooks
The neighbours cook
lunch or dinner to order, a day ahead
potato soupcream of morayacorntrout
There is no fixed menu — and there will not be one.
They cook from what there is that day. Dinner 30.
The owner cooks
if he is up here, he can make breakfast or come and cook lunch
pasta with vegetablesfried eggs with breadmoraya boiled in chichavegetable soupteacocoa
Nothing elaborate. Plain food, cooked on time.
You cook
kitchen, pans and plates, hot water. And two stoves
Cook whatever you like. Except meat and fish.
That is how the owner lives: he would rather not have blood in his kitchen. It is about the kitchen, not about what you eat.
What you cook on
two stoves in one room
Gas
a bottled-gas hob. Fast, familiar, like at home. Dinner in twenty minutes
A clay wood-fired oven
it stands right in the kitchen; the cooking is done in clay pots
Slow. That is the point of it.
What people eat and drink here
The tea ceremony
Tea here is drunk slowly: Chinese, Indian, Peruvian, and the Tibetan way — with milk, spices and salt. When the owner is up here, tea simply happens: he pours, and takes no money for it. If you want to sit for an hour and go into it properly, that is a separate ceremony, arranged on the spot.
What people eat here at all
Chuño and moraya
potato dried by frost and sun
Eggs with bread
eggs from the village, bread from below
Pasta with vegetables
what the owner cooks most often
Chilli
red and green, with anything
Chicha
here it is drunk hot
Trucha — trout from the lake. The community farms it: you cannot fish for it, you can order it for dinner. We do not have a photograph of our own yet.
Five fires
One feeds you, one warms you, one burns under the open sky. The fourth is painted.
Firewood does not grow here — it is brought up from below. So fire here is not decoration and not “atmosphere”: it is the only way to get warm, dry your clothes and cook. Counting the fires in this house makes the same kind of sense as counting sockets in a city flat.
Clay, in the kitchen
burns wood, cooking in clay pots. Slow — that is the point
The one indoors
lit towards evening, and by dinner the house is warm
The hearth in the tipi
fire a few steps from where you sleep
The hearth in the yard
a ring of stones under the open sky. Tea is carried out to it
The painted one
canvas, cauldron, fire. It does not heat, and it is not meant to
About the fifth
A hearth with a cauldron painted on canvas comes from The Golden Key — the Russian retelling of Pinocchio. In old Carlo's room the hearth was painted, and behind the canvas there was a little door. Buratino put his nose through it and found the thing the whole story had been about.
The tale has an alchemical reading too: Tolstoy wrote it knowing the Symbolists of the Silver Age and their occultism and alchemy. For an alchemist the furnace is the place of transformation, and the golden key stands exactly where another story would put the philosopher's stone. What people search the world for turns out to be behind a painted fire in their own back room.
This one hangs on the wall and gives no heat. The other four are real — the fifth is there to remind you why you came this high in the first place.
There is also a hot shower, a washing machine, a gas heater you can carry into the room, blankets, plates and electric light. We list all that in one line, because nobody comes for it.
Signal
There is no wifi. Mobile data comes and goes — it depends on where you stand, on the weather and on the network.
We promise you no signal and we promise you no silence either. If you want it, you will find a spot that catches. If you do not, the phone goes quiet on its own.
Where you will sleep
Eight places. Three in the house, five in the tipi.
The room · three beds
heavy blankets, the stove behind the wall. Your own sleeping bag is still warmer — but you will not freeze without one
The tipi · five places
it is colder in here, and that is the first thing we say about it. A sleeping bag is required
Trails
There is no map here. There will not be one.
Four trails. What you will see on them is written down. How to get there is not.
Short · about two hours
The nearest water and back. With children: you are back before lunch, and they are tired exactly enough to fall asleep before sunset.
Half a day
Further and higher. For people who want to walk, not to stroll.
A full day
All three lakes in one day, a stop with food by the water. Not on your first day up: a whole day at 4,200 is worth doing once you have settled in.
The owner's own trail
Nothing is described here, and that is not an oversight. It is put together in the morning — around you, around the weather, around how far you are willing to walk.
Trails from S/. 160 for a group of up to three. The full list with prices is in “How people come here”.
The fourth is left undescribed on purpose: there are places that are not in those three lines, and we will not write about them here or in the field notes.
Different light on the same trails
the same three trails at a different hour. The route does not change; everything else does
Sunrise
leaving at 5:30. Fog lies in the valleys, the summits catch light first. Any of the three trails, only it looks like another place
Sunset
the last light settles on the water. We come back in the dark, so only with a guide — bring your own head torch
Full moon
not one night but a week: three days before and three after. On those days there is light enough to walk without a torch
You need a clear sky. In the dry season that is more common; in the wet, it is luck. We do not promise it: the weather decides, not the calendar.
Animals
Three steps. Going down, the odds fall.
There are few large animals here, and every one of them is in plain sight — there is nowhere to hide on bare puna. Meeting one is not a tracker's luck, it is a question of what time you set out.
There is no photograph — so it had to be drawn.
The puma is here. Nobody here has seen it.
The people here say it sees you first. Always. And it leaves before you have had time to think about it.
We have no photograph of it. So it will not be here.
Plants
Everything here wears wool. Even the cactus.
Plants at four thousand metres are not smaller copies of the ones below. Wind, ultraviolet and frost every night, all year round — and they all arrive at roughly the same answer: press to the ground, grow fur, flower briefly. People here wear alpaca, the cactus wears its own white wool, and it is for the same reason.
They all flower at once, and that is a matter of timing rather than of the plants: October and November, when the end of the dry season and the first rains arrive together.
Twenty-seven species have been photographed. Eighteen we are ready to name; the rest we are still checking — a name goes up only when we are sure.
All the plants — eighteen species →Stone
There is almost no soil here. First the rock, then everything else.
The Andes are young mountains and they are still growing. Here the rock is covered by neither forest nor deep soil: it lies open, split by frost and painted over by lichen. Plants settle not in earth but in the cracks between stones — everything alive here begins with rock.
Wet stone is never the colour of dry stone. That is the first thing people notice at the water, and the reason half the photographs were taken on the shore.
All the stone — and how old it is →The people who live here
The puna looks empty. It is not empty.
People have lived at these altitudes not for centuries but for millennia — longer than the word “Peru” has existed. The potato was bred in the Andes, and hundreds of its varieties are still kept here. The alpaca was tamed here too, and a life was built where a newcomer's head aches on the first day. Paru-Paru is held up by potatoes, fish and what is woven by hand — not by tourists.
Houses made of earth
A brick that is never fired. The sun dries it.
Houses here are built of adobe: clay mixed with sand and chopped straw — up here that means ichu, the grass of the puna — pressed into a wooden mould and left to dry in the sun, turned day after day. The straw holds the block together and keeps it from cracking as it dries. The wall comes out thick, and that is the whole point: through the day it takes in heat, and at night it gives it back to the room while it drops to freezing outside. The Moche and Chan Chan were built the same way, and it is still done that way — not out of poverty, but because at four thousand metres it works better than fired brick.
The word itself came here with the Spanish, and to them from Arabic: al-tub, “the brick”. The technique, though, is local and older than any of those languages.
Here they weave while walking. Following the herd.
Wool and thread are always on them — the way a phone is always in a city pocket. The hands are working, the feet are following the alpacas, and that is the day.
They weave on a loom and by hand. Belts, shawls, hats, bags, gloves, ponchos — what they wear themselves and what they sell.
Selling potatoes, fish and weaving is very nearly the only income in this place. We say that as a fact, not as a reason to feel sorry: pity sells once, respect brings people back.
Come and choose for yourself
There is a museum by the lake: an exhibition of weaving and things you can take with you. There is plenty of it, the choice is wide, and it is not a scheduled item — it is simply next door.
We take nothing from this. The money goes to the woman who wove it. You can photograph — but we ask permission.
What it looks like
You will not have time to take one frame in before it is another.
See all the photographs →What to bring
By day you will burn. By night you will freeze. Both are solved in advance.
the problem is cold
Night in the house
Sleeping bag
there is bedding and the blankets are warm, but your own bag is warmer
Down jacket
you need it indoors in the evening, before the stove gets going, more than outside
Wool socks
the cold comes up through the floor
Hat
sleeping in a hat is normal here, not funny
Gloves
Thermos
there is always boiling water. A thermos makes it yours for the whole night and the whole trail
the problem is sun and rain
Day on the trail
Brimmed hat
a brim, not a cap: it is the ears and the neck that burn
Sunscreen
at 4,200 people burn within the hour, cloudy days included
Rucksack
small, for the day: water, thermos, some food, a raincoat
Water
a litre and a half per person, carried
Raincoat
required in the rainy season, November to March
Trekking poles
there are some here, but your own are better
Food for the trail
bought below, in Pisac or Cusco: there are no shops up here
nutsdried fruitchocolatebreadcheeseboiled eggsmandarinscoca leaf
The rule is simple: things that do not squash, leak or spoil without a fridge.
And a fair warning: at altitude you do not feel like eating — that is normal and it passes. But going out on the trail without food is not on: at 4,200 hunger hits the head before the stomach.
Already here — do not carry it up
blanketsplates and panswaterfirewoodlightpoles
Water
Carry a litre and a half per person. You drink more up high than you do below.
You will pass springs on the way: water straight out of the rock, and people here have drunk it all their lives. Fill up if you like — but boil it on the stove at night. There are sheep grazing further up the slope, and altitude forgives your stomach nothing.
Not empty-handed
Buy something down below: fruit, bread, coca leaf. On the trail you will meet shepherds, old people, children — here people do not walk past one another.
Coca leaf is legal in Peru and sold in every market. People chew it and brew it against the altitude — an everyday thing here, not an exotic one.
This is not a gift. This is how people greet each other here.
In the Andes it is called ayni — the mutual exchange that all community life rests on. Not a gesture from above, but a level one: you are not giving, you are taking part.
Pets
allowed, but the house already has Matvey the dog and Sirius the cat
Children
they do well here
Practical
Ask before you come up. There may be no signal up here.
What about altitude sickness at 4,200 metres?
The house has a medicine box with altitude tablets and oxygen, but what works is preparation, not the box: how to prepare is in the “Altitude” section above.
Is there wifi?
No. Mobile data comes and goes — it depends on where you stand, on the weather and on the network. That is not a shortcoming, it is half the point of the trip: children are brought here precisely so that once in their lives they look at the sky instead of a screen.
Can we come with children?
Yes. The walk is chosen to suit the child, not the other way round. Altitude is a separate matter: a child needs the same two or three nights in Cusco or the Valley as an adult, and with babies under two we do not recommend staying overnight.
Can we bring a dog?
You can, but the house already has Matvey the dog and Sirius the cat. They were here before you and they will be here after.
How long does it take to get here, and is the transfer included?
Forty minutes from Pisac, about an hour and a half from Cusco. The transfer is paid separately from the stay and arranged over WhatsApp; the car comes right to the door. The price is above, under “Getting here”.
What if I feel ill in the night?
There is a medicine box and oxygen in the house. After that we call the drivers — their numbers are on the wall. In the daytime a car comes soon; at night you wait for it, because it has to come up from below. Which is why acclimatising is a condition, not a suggestion.
Do I need Spanish?
No. In Russian and Spanish I answer straight away; in English too, sometimes with a translator's help.
Which season is better, dry or wet?
Both are good, in different ways. The dry season is April to October or November: clear, sunny, freezing at night. The rains are November to March: greener, fewer people, different trails and formats. October and November stand apart: at the seam between the seasons everything flowers at once.
We work by word of mouth
People come here because someone told them. We do not publish guest reviews — people come here not to be looked at.
There is no internet up here — guests write on paper, in a book that lies by the stove. We do not show names.
But you can ask directly. Write to me and I will put you in touch with someone who has been here, if they agree to it. That takes longer than reading five stars, and it is more honest.
Come
There is no booking form. There is a person you can write to.
Write on WhatsAppYou write
The dates and how many of you. Nothing else is needed to start.
I answer
Whether the date is free and what it will cost. If I am up the mountain — as soon as I come down.
The date is yours
Half up front, and I close that day. Then we sort out the road: a lift from Pisac, or your own way.
If I am up the mountain, the signal does not always reach.
In Russian and Spanish I answer straight away. In English I answer too, sometimes with a translator's help. Even if you write in Chinese, a translator will turn up for that as well.
Prices
Three ready-made options — or the same prices item by item. The price is for the house, not per person, unless stated otherwise. A day runs morning to morning.
These prices are for friends only
This is how I count for friends, people I know, and whoever they bring.
They do not go public.
All of Kinsacocha
3 days · 2 nights · the house, a half-day trail, a full-day trail, firewood, dinner
separately it would come to S/. 1240
for one — S/. 900
A night at the lake
2 days · 1 night · the house, a short trail, firewood
separately it would come to S/. 410
for one — S/. 350
The house for a day
no overnight · the house, shower, kitchen, tipi
The house overnight
| One guest | S/. 120 |
| Two | S/. 220 |
| Three | S/. 390 |
| Each one after that | + S/. 80 |
Children under seven are not counted. Eight places in all: three beds in the room, five in the tipi.
Trails with the owner
price for a group of up to three, then per person
| Short · about two hours | S/. 160 (+40) |
| Half a day | S/. 300 (+80) |
| A full day | S/. 440 (+100) |
| The owner's own trail | S/. 700 (+160) |
I am not up there every day. The house is yours either way; the walks happen only when I am there — send me your dates and I will tell you straight away.
Getting up here
| Taxi to the door · 40 minutes from Pisac | S/. 100 one way, per car |
| On foot with a guide · 2–3 hours up | S/. 300 for a group of up to three (+60) |
Up or down, one way.
Extras
alone on the mountain · +50%firewood · a bundle S/. 30dinner · S/. 30
Commercial events — separate
A retreat, a shoot, a seminar, a group tour, anything you earn from is not counted at these prices. The house closes for you entirely and the terms are agreed in advance.
Write and tell me what you have in mind and how many people: ask about terms →
Lakes
Kinsa qucha — “three lakes”
It is spelled several ways: Kinsa Cocha, Kinsacocha, Kimsaqucha, Quinsacocha — all the same place.
They lie in steps above four thousand metres.
They are fed by meltwater and rain, and the altitude gives them their colour: the water is cold, clean, almost without organic matter, and there is more light up here than below. Three are named, and they gave the place its name. Below, each one on its own.
One water, different days
Not one frame is labelled with a lake. Up close they do not look different anyway — the colour comes from the light, not the bottom.
Water from the three lakes.
The fourth and the fifth
Three lakes gave this place its name. But there is more water here than three.
The next two lie further out — far enough that you cannot reach them and get back in a day. They are not hidden and not guarded. People simply do not get that far: the usual trip from Cusco is built around daylight, and the walk there starts later than that day ends.
The fourth
the furthest out and the highest. You can reach it, but only if you are already up here and in no hurry
The fifth
few people know it, even here. We write down neither the name nor the direction
To see those two you have to stay the night. There is no other way.
The highest of the three. The name is Quechua for “the puma's lake”. For the Inca the puma was not simply an animal: it stood for strength and for the tie to the earth, one of the three levels of the world. Putting that name on water at this altitude is not the same as naming a lake after a handsome bird.
The puma has not been seen here. It lives in the region, but no tracks are found and nobody local can say they have met one. The lake carries its name and the puma itself will not be in the frame — which is probably the most accurate description of this place there is.
Dark water, a bare slope, the feeling that it is colder here. Not a postcard view — a heavy one.
There is no route and no coordinates on this page — we describe what you will see, not how to get there.
One lake, different days
Photographed between July and August. Not one frame is labelled with a place — here it is not needed, the water differs in all three.
The other two lakes
Eighty-odd metres below Puma Cocha. Azul is Spanish for “blue”, and the name does not exaggerate: the water here goes into a dense turquoise, and on a clear day, with the sky standing without a single cloud, the line between water and sky almost disappears.
The colour is not pigment and not a mineral in any ordinary sense. It is what altitude does: clean cold water, little organic matter, a great deal of light. Water like this does not occur below, simply because below it is warmer.
We did not measure the height ourselves. There is a Parque de la Papa marker stone by the water with the figure cut into it: 4,243.74. It is in the frames below.
There is no route and no coordinates on this page — we describe what you will see, not how to get there.
One lake, different days
Photographed between July and August. Not one frame is labelled with a place — here it is not needed, the water differs in all three.
The other two lakes
The largest of the three and the nearest. This is the one the house stands on, and the one that gave the whole place its name. It is also where the community farms trout — trucha. You cannot fish for it, you can order it for dinner: it is the only food here that does not have to be carried up from below.
Kinsa qucha is Quechua for “three lakes”. The place is named by a count: not after a mountain, not after a person, but after how much water there is. The house stands on the lake that gave the other two their name.
There is no route and no coordinates on this page — we describe what you will see, not how to get there.
One lake, different days
Photographed between July and August. Not one frame is labelled with a place — here it is not needed, the water differs in all three.
The other two lakes
Eucalyptus
The whole road up is planted with a tree that was never here.
Climbing from Pisac you drive through eucalyptus for half an hour. It stands along the road like a wall, drops its narrow grey-blue leaves under the wheels and smells strongly enough that the scent comes into the car through a closed window. It looks like local forest. It is not local forest.
Eucalyptus was brought from Australia — it appeared in Peru in the second half of the nineteenth century and spread across the whole highlands within a few decades. The reason is simple and obvious to anyone who lives here: it grows fast. A beam, a rafter, a post, firewood — all of it was needed immediately, and the local trees grow slowly or do not grow at all.
That decision has another side, and it shows on the same slopes. Eucalyptus drinks a great deal of water and dries the ground around it; almost nothing grows underneath — the leaves lie in a dense layer and keep the grass down. Where it has taken a slope, there is no local regrowth.
That is why we keep it apart from the other plants of the Atlas. Everything that grows up top — ichu, the cactus in wool, queuña — is local and was here before people. The eucalyptus arrived with them and stayed as part of the household, not as part of the puna.
What is taken from it
beamsrafterspostsfirewoodleaves for the tincture
The very leaf that in the communities is steeped in spirit together with maycha and rubbed into legs.
Where it ends
At roughly the same point as the road up: higher than that it does not manage. The last trees fall behind — and from there it is only puna.
The line between forest and bare high ground takes half an hour of travel to cross, and you can see it happen.
The queuña is the opposite case: a native tree. Trees of its genus grow higher than any others on the planet, but they grow slowly, and so the queuña was cut for firewood for centuries. The queuña page →
Data and cookies
In short: there are no forms here, we ask nothing about you and store nothing. The only thing collected is anonymous visit statistics.
Who is responsible for this site
The site is run by Yan, the owner of the house in Comunidad Paru-Paru, Pisac, Cusco, Peru. This is a private house, not a company. To write about anything to do with data: WhatsApp, Telegram or hello@kinsacocha.com.
What is collected
The site runs Google Analytics 4. It records anonymous things: which sections were opened, how long people stayed, what device and country they came from, which link they arrived by. There is no name, phone or email in it — the site does not ask for them.
Clicks on the “write to me” buttons are recorded separately — WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and email. What is stored is the click itself and the section you left from. What you write afterwards does not enter the statistics: the conversation happens in the messenger, not on the site.
If a Google Ads advert brings you here, a tracking tag is added to the address, which shows which advert worked. That is anonymous too.
Cookies
Google Analytics
Cookies _ga and the like. They are there to tell a new visitor from a returning one. They live for up to two years.
Tab memory
The site remembers, inside the tab itself, whether to show friends' prices if you arrived by a particular link. That is not a cookie, and the record disappears when the tab closes.
There are no advertising cookies or pixels from other networks on this site.
What is not here
No booking forms, no card payments, no registration, no mailing list, no operator chat. None of your data is sold or passed to anyone — apart from Google itself, which processes the statistics under its own rules.
How to opt out
The simplest way is to block third-party cookies in your browser, or use private mode: then the statistics will not see you. You can also install Google's official add-on, which turns Analytics off on every site at once. The site works the same either way.
If you want the data about your visit deleted, write to me and I will send the request to Google.
What happens to our messages
When you write on WhatsApp or Telegram, the conversation is stored in the messenger itself, under its rules. I keep it as long as it is needed for the trip, and I do not forward it to anyone.
Updated 22 August 2026.
How things are done here
The house lives by its own rules at 4,200 — not out of strictness, but because everything here costs more to get.
We may turn you down and we will not explain why. This is a house, not a hotel: people are let in, not sold a room. A refusal is not an accusation and not a verdict, and we will not discuss it.
In the house
Cleaning is included in the price. There is nothing to pay on top. We ask one thing: leave the house the way you would like to walk into it yourself.
You take your rubbish with you. Everything that will not burn or rot — plastic, glass, tins, batteries. No bin lorry comes up here: what stays up here stays up here for good, or somebody carries it down on their back.
Firewood is under the lean-to, in bundles. A bundle is 30 soles. Take what you need and settle up when you leave. Firewood is brought up from below; at 4,200 nothing grows to burn.
Matvey the dog and Sirius the cat live in this house. They were here before you and they will be here after. If you take the house without the owner, either you will be asked to feed them or people from the community will come and do it. We agree that in advance.
Meat and fish are not cooked in this kitchen. That is how the owner lives — he would rather not have blood in his kitchen. The rule is about the kitchen, not about what you eat.
The neighbours cook the trout at their place. It reaches you ready — this kitchen does not gut fish.
You can order cooked food from the neighbours or bring your own. Eggs and milk here are local.
Alcohol and everything else
There is no drinking on the grounds of the house. Beyond them you are adults and you decide for yourselves.
A clear head is what the trail asks for. At 4,200 the heart works differently, help is forty minutes away uphill, and lost coordination puts more than you at risk. Everything else is your own business, outside this house and outside our walks.
Out walking
children by the water — watchedin the dark — only with a guidewe take nothing awaypeople on the trail — ask first
“We take nothing away” means stones, plants and everything else. The same principle the whole site stands on: the place stays as it is.
There are bags by the door. Take one if you like: you are going down anyway, and a bag weighs nothing.
If something goes wrong
If you feel unwell — the medicine box and oxygen are in the house, and after that we call the drivers: their numbers are on the wall. In the daytime a car comes soon; at night you wait for it.
Which is why the main house rule is not about the house: come acclimatised. Two or three days in Cusco or the Valley before you come up.
The medicine box
for headachesfor the stomachfor allergiesbandage and plastersantisepticscissors, tweezerssunscreenlip balmaltitude tabletsoxygencoca leaf
What is not in it: anything on prescription, antibiotics, and whatever is yours. Bring your own medicines — the nearest pharmacy is forty minutes down.
Ask, if something is unclearCome
There is no booking form. There is a person you can write to.
Write on WhatsAppYou write
The dates and how many of you. Nothing else is needed to start.
I answer
Whether the date is free and what it will cost. If I am up the mountain — as soon as I come down.
The date is yours
Half up front, and I close that day. Then we sort out the road: a lift from Pisac, or your own way.
If I am up the mountain, the signal does not always reach.
In Russian and Spanish I answer straight away. In English I answer too, sometimes with a translator's help. Even if you write in Chinese, a translator will turn up for that as well.
Pisac, Cusco, Peru