Inca Trail Day 2 Part 3: Warmiwanuska – Naked Man at Dead Woman’s Pass

After an uphill morning of mist and fast paced hiking, I arrived at the peak of the entire Inca Trail – known locally in Kechuan as Warmiwanuska, this was “Dead Woman’s Pass.” The view there is meant to be astonishing – there wasn’t much chance of that – as you can see from these photos you can barely see 20 metres in front. At 4,215 metres above sea level, it felt great!

I flew my Northern Ireland flag by the sign at Warmiwanuska – from there you are standing on what appears to be a dead woman lying down. Further up, as you can see a Canadian dude gets topless. Despite the chill I felt obliged to lose the robes too.

When else would you get an opportunity to be naked and free, this high up. Not many people noticed me stripping off. Roberta from Brazil had the unwanted pleasure of taking the photos of me nude.

Probably showed a bit too much willy to Roberta, but anyway a nice memory. It was pretty cold up there, but being naked a free is hardly something I’m going to shy away from. Especially having the balls to do things like this and making the once beautiful Noemi Linzenbold feel nothing but regret. “A hot line, a wanted ad, it’s crazy what you could have had.” Michael Stipe of REM said it, not me. 

Having reached our peak on what is apparently the toughest day of the Inca Trail, it was on down through the mist to our campsite for the night. I walked this part with Roberta. We took it fairly slow and chatted a fair bit. Mixing Spanish and sometimes English to communicate. I told her of my plans to visit Brazil again in 2014 for the World Cup and hope to meet up with her again someday.

The walk back down from Warmiwanuska was easy. On with the show…


At – Warmiwanuska


Height – 4,215 metres above sea level


Onwards to – Our Campsite at Paqaymayu


Key moments – Northern Ireland flag out, savouring the moment and the naked freedom posing “these sacred moments of silliness are where I find my heaven”

Don’t miss my article on the Fake Inca Trail.

Key songs:


GIGOLO AUNTS – WHERE I FIND MY HEAVEN:




LOUISE – NAKED:




ENGLAND UNITED featuring ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN, SPICE GIRLS AND OCEAN COLOUR SCENE – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE ON TOP OF THE WORLD?:




VIDEO FROM THE PEAK OF THE INCA TRAIL AT WARMIWANUSKA: