Since our last post, we had a few nights in Cusco, and met an Aussie couple who were on our bus. We went to the highest Irish bar in the world, Paddy OFlahertys´to make the most of happy hour. Apparently the altitude didnt agree with me because after about 4 drinks I felt horrible and was sick all night. With this experience stored we had an easy day the next day as we had to be up at 4am to get the minibus to the start of the Inca Trial.

We arrived at Kilometre 82 (the starting point for the classic Inca Trail) at 9am on Sat 6th. There were 8 others in our group, 3 irish, 3 australians and 2 swiss - all extremely nice people who we would become good friends with over the next four days. we had a main guide - Casiano and an assistant guide - Edwin. We also had 16 porters for the 10 of us. We decided against hiring a porter to carry our stuff as it was going to cost $100 and Phil thought he could do it.

The first morning consisted of a fairly gentle hike for about 8 km before we had lunch. As we arrived for lunch, the porters had placed bowls of hot water and soap for us to wash before eating. Then came what can only be described as a jacobean banquet - five courses including some entrees, soup, fresh trout, pudding and coca tea. it was literally amazing and we would be treated to these five course meals - three times a day!!!! And there we were thinking we might lose a couple of pounds along the way!!

The second half of day one was only 6km but most of it was uphill, and by the time we reached camp (Ayapata) at about 4.30pm, we were pretty knackered. Our porters had arranged a happy hour for us from 5.30 - 6.30 which consisted of popcorn, crackers and coca tea. Evening meal was at 7pm which again was a sight to behold. With most of us nodding in our food like young children by 8pm we decided to go to bed.

At 5.30am we were woken by edwin and the porters bringing us coca tea to our tents, breakfast, then on the way by 7am. The second day is the hardest of the four as we cover 16 km and reach our highest altitude of 4200m / 13779 ft. The morning was extremely tough but rewarding, climbing the aptly named "Dead Womans Pass" will never be forgotten, basically an unrelenting set of steps that climb over 1km. The nxt hour is spent downhill (Phil hated downhill because of the huge backpack which wasnt too kind on the knees!), to our lunch stop at Pacamayu. After lunch is another very steep ascent lasting around 3 hours. We arrived at our campsite in cloud forest around 5.30pm absolutely shattered but the views from the heights we reached today were amazing & totally worth it.

It rained from 7pm on the 2nd night until, 11.30am on the third day and as we began our trek before 7am - we were in for a drenching. And when i say rain, i mean RAIN!!!! We hiked for only five hours on the third day, mostly downhill to our campsite at Winay Wayna and after drying everything out, had a relaxing afternoon. At 5pm we went to visit the impressive Winay Wayna (forever young) Inca site, then after dinner we thanked the porters, gave the tips and they sang a traditional Quechuan song for us. Then it was bed time as we were to be up at 3.30am to get in the queue for the final checkpoint.

So the final day began at 3.30am with 2 huge cakes which chef had cooked the night before - literally amazing if a little surreal at that time of the morning!! we queued from 4.30 - 5.30 for the checkpoint to open and were first through. We were almost running for most of it (last 6km) and got to the sun gate in about 35 mins (thats quick!!), and our group were the first people to see maccu picchu from the sungate. we were extremely lucky in that we had a perfectly clear morning for the view. After 45km of at times, very tough hiking we had made it and it was definately worth it!!

We were given a 2 hour guided tour of the area and then headed to aguas calientes for lunch. From here we got the train back to cusco and headed for a 14 hour, cross border bus into copacapana, bolivia. As you can imagine, we slept the entire way!!!