A house at three lakes
They let you in. Nobody sells you a room.
Yan · I live here, and I walk the trails with guests myself
Write to Yan See the house ↓· ·
Yan
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 here and no team. When you write — you are writing to me.
— Yan
At dawn, without me
Nobody meets you up there. No caretaker, no neighbour with a key, no one who lit the stove before you arrived.
I hand the keys over down in Pisac, and explain there when to set off. They come back to the same place, into my hands.
You light the stove yourself. The house comes to you cold — that is the altitude: it stays cold here until someone lights it.
This is not an oversight. A house, a key and nobody around.
Trails are different: I am the only one who guides them, and they happen only when I am up there. About the trails →
Ask whether I will be thereWhen I go up
I don't wait for walk requests. I go up myself and say beforehand when. Whoever wants to comes along.
Next one
Not announced. When I am about to go up, the date will appear here.
The house is available any day, announced ascent or not: the keys and the cold house do not depend on it. Only the trails do — I am the one who guides them.
Come with meThings that happened here
A few things I remember. None of them are advertising — they simply happened.
A year ago
I was not up there those days. A skunk sprayed something near the plot — and for several days the smell was impossible to get away from: it hung over the whole plot and around it, it stood in the yard, it came into the house and would not air out. The animal itself is ordinary here; a thing like that is rare. It is in the Atlas →
My dog's debts
My dog ate the neighbours' food — I paid for it. Then she ate a chicken — I paid for the chicken too. When I was told she had eaten an alpaca, I decided my dog was being overrated.
Just a house
Not a hotel, not a retreat centre, not a glamping site. A house people live in.
It stands above 4,200 m, in an Andean community above the Sacred Valley, beside three lakes. Around it is high ground without a single tree, where alpacas walk 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: at 4,200 a stove is a condition, not a comfort. 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.
Swipe sideways · ten frames of the house
What you will not find here
I do not publish routes, coordinates or the names of trails.
These trails hold up on exactly one thing: that nobody writes about them. Why — on its own page →
Trails
There is no map here. There will not be one.
Four trails, from two hours to a full day. What you'll see on each — on its own page.
All trails → Ask about the trailsHow people come here
Three ready-made options — or the same prices item by item.
Priced per house, not per person, unless stated otherwise. A day runs morning to morning. Half up front — that is what closes your day.
I am not up there every day. The house is yours either way; the walks happen only when I am there. Name a week and I will name the days.
Payment up front
Half the sum in advance, the rest on arrival.
Changed your mind three days out or more — I refund in full. Later I do not: the day stays empty.
This is what I charge friends and the people they bring. Full price list →
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/. 830 · item by item it would be 1040
Take this oneA night at the lake
2 days · 1 night
the house a short trail firewood
separately it would come to S/. 410
for one — S/. 250 · item by item it would be 310
Take this oneThe house for a day
no overnight · arrive in the morning, leave by evening
the house shower kitchen tipi
drop your things, walk, come back to the warmth and head down
Take this oneAll prices: the house, the trails, the climb, the extras →
S/. is the Peruvian sol, the local currency. Everything here is priced in soles: half up front, the rest on the spot.
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 →Lakes
Kinsa qucha is Quechua for “three lakes”. The place was named by counting.
Three lakes gave this place its name. But there is more water here than three.
But the lakes are what people come for. Not what they stay for.
All three lakes, and the fourth and the fifth →Atlas
A field guide to this place. All of it shot here.
There is no photograph — so it had to be drawn.
There used to be pumas here. Now, they say, there are none.
I have no photograph of her. So there will be none here. What else I do not know →
A day here
There is no programme. There is a choice.
Sunrise
mist sits in the valleys, the peaks catch light first. Breakfast is your own, in the kitchen, whenever you wake up
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 — that 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.
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
The fifth one is straight out of The Golden Key, the Russian Pinocchio: a hearth with a pot, painted on canvas, and a little door behind the canvas. The tale has an alchemical reading as well — the furnace is the alchemist's place of transformation, and the golden key stands where other stories would put the philosopher's stone. What people search the whole world for turns out to be behind a painted fire in their own room.
It hangs on the wall and gives no heat. The other four are real.
Eight places to sleep: three beds in the room, five in the tipi. Hot shower, kitchen, washing machine, electric light — all of it is here, and none of it is why people come.
Inside the house: stoves, beds, connection →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 soup cream of moraya corn trout
There is no fixed menu — and there will not be one.
They cook from what there is that day. Dinner 30.
I cook
if he is up here, he can make breakfast or come and cook lunch
pasta with vegetables fried eggs with bread moraya boiled in chicha vegetable soup tea cocoa
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 I live: I would rather not have blood in my kitchen. It is about the kitchen, not about what you eat.
What people eat and drink here
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 I cook 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. I do not have a photograph of my own yet.
Ask about the foodAltitude
Above 4,200 metres — that 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 more walk slowly a light dinner no alcohol for a day coca leaf stay warm
With children
I set no minimum age: the parents decide. The rule is the same as for adults — two or three nights in Cusco or the Valley first. We will fit the route to the child; the altitude cannot be fitted to anyone.
There is no wifi, and the nights are cold. That is exactly why children get brought here: to look up at the sky once.
What to do if the night goes badly — in the practical questions: first aid kit, oxygen, a car from below.
I would rather talk you out of a bad date than take you in and watch you suffer.
Name your dates and askGetting 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 after half an hour the trees end. Beyond that is bare high ground, and it gets noticeably colder right there in the car. The last stretch is dirt.
The car comes right to the door: no walking with your bags. From Pisac it is faster and cheaper, from Cusco there are no changes. We arrange it with 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. I will explain the rest.
Longer. Harder. More expensive.
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.
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.
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
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
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
Rubber boots
in the rainy season they matter more than a raincoat: ordinary boots are no use here
Trekking poles
there are some here, but your own are better
One more thing: nobody comes up here empty-handed. Why — in the house rules →
What is already in the house, what to do with spring water and what the first aid kit holds — in the house rules.
Ask what to bringCome
There is no booking form. There is a person you can write to.
I work by word of mouth
The link for friends does not come from the site. It comes from someone who has been here. I 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. I 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.
Write on WhatsAppWhat to write
Dates and how many of you. I will ask the rest myself.
When I answer
Usually the same day. If I am up here — as soon as I come down: the signal is not there every day.
In what language
Russian and Spanish — straight away. English too, sometimes through a translator. Chinese through the same one.
Prices
The full price list: the house, the walks, the climb and everything that goes with them. A day runs from 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/. 830
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/. 250
The house for a day
no overnight · the house, shower, kitchen, tipi
Cleaning and rubbish
Cleaning is included, there is nothing extra to pay. I take the rubbish down — mine goes the same way; the truck does not come up here.
Food
There are no shops up here: food is bought below, at the market in Pisac. Dinner at the neighbours' is ordered in advance.
S/. is the Peruvian sol. Roughly: every S/. 100 is about US$ 30 — rate of 5 September 2026, and it drifts. Check yours before you send anything.
The house overnight
| One guest | S/. 120 |
| Two | S/. 220 |
| Three | S/. 300 |
| 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 a guide
price for a group of up to three, then per person
Every trail has its own page: what you see on it, its frames, and what you can take away from it. The band opens in full.
Getting up here
| Taxi to the door · 40 minutes from Pisac | S/. 100 one way, per car |
Price one way. A taxi is a service: it drops you and leaves. On foot it is a trail, and it has its own page.
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 more — because it is not transport, it is your first day here. You pay to see those kilometres rather than skip them.
The difference between the two is not only the price. It is the difference between arriving and climbing.
Extras
Alone on the mountain
Nobody else comes those days — no other guests, and not me either.
Without the surcharge, either may turn up.
Firewood
You can buy it yourself below, or a little dearer up here — the ones I have already carried up.
Dinner
Cooked and brought by neighbours from the community.
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 →
The whole house
Five fires, eight places to sleep, hot water — and no wifi.
The house stands above 4,200 m and burns wood that is brought up from below. Everything listed here was carried up once, by car or on someone's back.
The house is local and built from local material — brick and hay.
There are five fires: the clay one in the kitchen, the one in the house, the hearth in the tipi, the hearth in the yard — and the fifth, painted on canvas. All five in photographs — on the front page →
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.
I promise you no signal, and 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 I say about it. A sleeping bag is required
What the cooking is done 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.
The tea ceremony
Tea here is drunk slowly: Chinese, Indian, Peruvian, and the Tibetan way — with milk, spices and salt. When I am up here, tea simply happens: I pour, and take 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.
Lakes
Kinsa qucha — “three lakes”
It is spelled several ways: Kinsa Cocha, Kinsacocha, Kimsaqucha, Quinsacocha — all the same place.
They lie in steps above 4,200 m.
They are fed by meltwater and rain. 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 here know it. I will not give its name or which way it lies — that is my choice, not a rule
To see those two you have to stay the night. There is no other way.
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.
The highest of the three — 4,325 metres. The figure is not mine: it is cut into a Parque de la Papa marker stone, like the 4,243 at Azul Cocha. The name comes from Quechua and means «the puma’s lake». For the Incas the puma was not simply an animal: she stood for strength and for the bond with the earth, one of the three levels of the world. Naming water at this altitude after her is not the same as naming a lake after a pretty bird.
In the community they say there are no pumas here now — there used to be. The lake keeps her name, and the puma herself will not be in the frame, which is probably the most accurate description of this place.
Dark water, a bare slope, the feeling that it is colder here. Not a postcard view — a heavy one.
One lake, different days
Taken between July and August.
The other two lakes
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.
I did not measure the height myself. 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.
One lake, different days
Taken between July and August.
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.
Only what you will see. Why there is no map →
One lake, different days
Taken between July and August.
The other two lakes
Trails
There is no map here. There will not be one.
What you will see on the trail is written down. How to get there is not, for any of them. Each one opens: its story, its frames, its objects and its atlas. Why there is no map →
Trails from S/. 160 for a group of up to three. The full price list is “How people come here”.
One is left undescribed on purpose: there are places that are not in these lines, and I will not write about them here or in the notes.
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 it is kept apart from the other plants in the Atlas. Everything that grows up here — ichu, the woolly cactus, queñua — is local and lived here before people did. The eucalyptus arrived with them and stayed as part of the household, not as part of these slopes.
What is taken from it
beams rafters posts firewood leaves for the tincture
The very leaf that in the communities is steeped in spirit together with maycha and rubbed into legs.
Where it ends
Roughly where the road up ends: higher than that it does not manage. The last trees stay behind, and beyond is bare slope.
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 →
Photographs
Everything shot here. Without a caption where there is nothing to caption it with.
Any frame can be asked for as the original — the full file, uncompressed and unmarked. There is no required payment: how much to send is up to you. Open a frame — the button is inside.
There are no trails and no coordinates under the frames, and there will not be. A place is named only where it is already open.
Made here
What you can take away from here.
You cannot photograph silence. You can record it. There are eight shelves here: sound — recordings of the place and recorded stories; the raw file of any frame, which costs nothing; a photograph on paper and a pressed plant; jewellery tied to this place; things made by hand; food dried by frost; and herbs from the slope.
Sold at the price of the person who made it — no haggling and no markup for a pretty word. Everything is ordered in one message: there is no basket, no account and no card payment on this site, and there will not be.
What I do not know
The list does not get shorter by keeping quiet about it.
Atlas
A name goes up only when I am sure. Where I am not, there is a genus or a description — and the card says so. The Quechua names are known by the people here; where I did not ask, there is none.
Altitudes
Azul Cocha is 4,243 metres, Puma Cocha 4,325. Neither figure is mine: both are cut into Parque de la Papa marker stones. The Azul Cocha stone is in the frames; the Puma Cocha marker I do not publish. Kinsa Cocha has no figure. About the house I say «above 4,200» — I have not measured it with an instrument.
There was a condor. It turned out to be a caracara
The Atlas had an entry called “Condor” with three photographs. The photographs turned out to be a mountain caracara — a similar bird of an entirely different size. The entry has been rewritten and the photographs moved to the caracara. There is no condor in the Atlas any more: I have not seen one here with my own eyes, and I will not put up someone else's photo.
The pumas, they say, are gone
The community says one thing: there used to be pumas here, and now there are none. Nothing more — no tracks, no sightings.
And also
Whether Paru-Paru belongs to the Parque de la Papa group of communities or the park is simply next door — I have not checked. Whether a community fee is charged at the entrance, and how much — I do not know. How long it takes from Cusco I give rounded: an hour and a half.
This is not modesty. One invented line about a place you are going to costs more than any blank.
Why there is no map here
No routes, no coordinates, no trail names. Not on the site, not in the feed.
A trail lives exactly as long as nobody describes it. As soon as there is a coordinate, there is a stream of people, and behind the stream come rubbish, trampled grass and a queue for the photograph. It has happened to everything that got onto a list, and it would happen here.
About the three lakes I do not keep quiet
They have not been a secret for a long time: the track is in the open hiking apps, and a dozen Cusco agencies sell day trips to them. Pretending it is a secret would be silly. What I keep quiet about is what lies beyond them.
About the animals I am obliged to keep quiet
The taruca — the Andean deer — is on the lists of the International Union for Conservation of Nature: the population is small and scattered in patches across the highlands. To name the trail where it was seen is to gather people there. Not publishing the places where such animals live is an obligation, not a pose.
The house itself is on the map
And that is a different decision, not half-heartedness. The house is a point people come to by invitation, and without it no search would find me. A trail is not a point but a living place, and it breaks under numbers.
What there is instead of a map
What you will see on the trail is written down: how long it takes, how hard it is, who you will meet, how empty it is. How to get there is not. The trail is chosen in the morning — by the weather and by who is walking — and I am the one who chooses it.
Practical
Ask before you come up. There may be no signal up here.
What about altitude sickness above 4,200 m?
There is a medicine box in the house with altitude tablets and oxygen, but what works is preparation: two or three nights in Cusco or the Valley before coming up.
Is there wifi?
No. Mobile data sometimes works, but I cannot promise it. How the signal works here →
Can we come with children?
Yes, and I set no minimum age: the parents decide. The route is fitted to the child, not the other way round. Altitude is a separate matter: two or three nights in Cusco or the Valley are as necessary for a child as for an adult.
What if it rains?
From November — rain and frost. Going far into the mountains is dangerous then, and the longer routes close. Walking close by is fine, and these months are very beautiful here: fog and snow on the slopes.
You need rubber boots — ordinary boots are no use here. A raincoat too, but the boots matter more.
Can we bring a dog?
You can, but a dog called Matvey and a cat called Sirius already live in the house. How things are done here →
How long does it take to get here, and is the transfer included?
From Pisac it is 40 minutes, from Cusco about an hour and a half. The transfer is paid separately from the stay and arranged over WhatsApp; the car comes right to the door.
What if I feel ill in the night?
There is a medicine box and oxygen in the house. After that I call the drivers — their numbers are on the wall. In the daytime a car comes soon; at night you wait for it, because it comes up from below. Which is why acclimatising is a condition.
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, just differently. The dry season is April to October or November: clear, sunny, with freezing nights. The rains are November to March: more green, fewer people, and the walks and formats change.
Data and cookies
In short: there are no forms here, I 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 costs more to get.
I may turn you down and I 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 I 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 me, 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 I live — I would rather not have blood in my 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 the walks.
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.
Out walking
children by the water — watched in the dark — only with a guide we take nothing away people 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.
Food for the trail
bought below, in Pisac or Cusco: there are no shops up here
nuts dried fruit chocolate bread cheese boiled eggs mandarins coca leaf
The rule is simple: things that do not squash, leak or spoil without a fridge.
And one more thing: 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.
What is already here, and what to do with the water
Already here — do not carry it up
blankets plates and pans water firewood light poles
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.
The medicine box
for headaches for the stomach for allergies bandage and plasters antiseptic scissors, tweezers sunscreen lip balm altitude tablets oxygen coca 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