Another early rise of 5.30am this morning for what was arguably to be the hardest day, again only about 7 miles, but with a climb up Abra de Warmi Wa?a which is over 1,250m, made even more difficult by the high altitude. Also, the descent from the "Dead Woman's Pass" is quite steep and difficult on the knees, thankfully we had sticks to help us out!!

Our guides woke us up with a cup of coca tea served to us in our tent we were very impressed with this service!! Then after packing quickly we had breakfast, huge fruit salads, toast, pancakes and a lumpy milky drink that we all presumed was milk powder that had not mixed properly, so we all added chocolate, only to be informed that it was actually a local style of porridge! We all felt a bit daft, but the chocolate porridge was great and tasted better when you knew what it was!! We had such a large breakfast since we would not have lunch until we reached the campsite at about 3pm. They used to have lunch halfway up the climb to Dead Woman's Pass, however this made lots of people sick so they stopped doing this!!At about 6.30am we started walking, uphill all the way!

We first came across Wayllabamba which is the last community on the Inca Tail just before the path started to get steeper and climb over 1100m in about 6km, it was going to be very hard work!!The group was allowed to split up so we could all walk to our individual pace, I decided to go for it quickly and have a long rest at the end whereas Sarah stayed with Niamh and took it easy!!

The first group meeting point was a campsite with spectacular views, we stopped here to eat our snack, with the added bonus of a cheese sandwich today, to give us the energy to make the big climb to the top of the pass. There were loads of wild llamas at this spot.

The next couple of hours were spent trudging up the rest of the steep hill, it was quite an achievement when we finally reached the top, the last 200m were particularly tiring! The descent was probably more tiring than the climb as it was very steep with hundreds of steps. We finally reached the campsite Paqaymayu at about 2.30pm and collapsed into our tents!

We had been told that today was going to be incredibly difficult and it certainly was not easy, but we definitely did not find it as difficult as the guides had made it out to be!! After a big lunch we were allowed a well-deserved siesta and when we woke only 3 hours later there was another huge dinner waiting for us!! Another early night ready for tomorrow, no partying all night on this trip!

Love A&S xxx