I have survived the Inca Trail! It was hard work but feels good to have done it. Day one we were picked up from the hostel at 5.30am and drove two hours to a town where we bought walking sticks, and coca leaves and had breakfast. We then continued on to the start of the Inca Trail. Our group was small, only five people, as the rest of our group had passes for the day before. We had a guide, a cook and seven porters to look after us. The porters ran ahead with all our gear to set up at each stop so only our guide walked with us. It was about 9.30 by the time we started walking and the first day, the easy day, was undulating the whole way. It was still hard to be walking for that long when I'm not used to it though. We saw the first archaeological site on the first day, viewed from above. Lunch was set up along the trail, we had a tent that was half kitchen, half dining room and an amazing cooked two course meal. Every meal was also followed by tea. We arrived at our first camp site at about 3pm to find our tents all set up and our gear waiting, and had the rest of the afternoon to chill out, with tea, popcorn and crackers at 5pm and dinner, a three course meal, at seven. We went to bed right after dinner to prepare for day two, the hard day.

Starting out at 6.30, after being woken with coca tea in our tents and eating a heavy breakfast, the first part of the trail was not too hard, but it took a bit of effort to get my legs going again. From there it just got harder, steps, steps and more steps! I found I went into my own little world and just kept moving, slowly but surely up. If I stopped it was too hard to get going again. This was the hike to the highest pass, Dead Woman's Pass, at 4200m. The air was very thin and hard to breath, it was slow, hard going but I got there and the view was amazing. It was cold up there waiting for the rest of the group to arrive, our guide came at the back to make sure everyone made it. We took some time for photos at the top then carried on down the other side, just as steep downhill steps, our campsite was about two hours on and we arrived with a great sense of achievement. Lunch was waiting for us, it was about 2.45 by the time we got there. Then everyone had a nap. We were overfed with tea and dinner again on top of our late lunch then off to bed again.

Day three was to be the most spectacular day. We left at about the same time in the morning and walked about 45min uphill to the next archaeological site. Very hard going getting our muscles moving again. This site was on the trail so we could go right in and explore, and there were three more sites along the trail to explore as well. Between the ruins the trail was a mixture of uphill, undulating and a lot of downhill. We crossed two more passes and walked through beautiful forest that was a lot like New Zealand bush. Lunch was along the trail again as this was the longest day, by the time we visited the last ruin and got to the camp site it was after 5pm. This camp site had a bar, restaurant and hot showers. I had a shower between tea and dinner, then went straight to bed again in preparation for the most important day, the day we visit Machu Picchu!

The day dawned rainy. We were woken before 4am to get going and queue up to get through the gate to the trail. The gate opened at 5.30 and we were one of the first groups through, it was another two hours hike to the Sun Gate for our first glimpse of Machu Picchu. The trail went through bush and was rocky and slippery and wet and sticky the whole way. The rain didn't let up and when we finally got to the Sun Gate all we could see was cloud. It was very disappointing. We continued down the trail to get to Machu Picchu and managed to get a glimpse on the way down but by the time I got to the check point I was completely miserable and grumpy. The rain let up a bit and our guide gave us a tour and showed us some of the important sites in Machu Picchu, then we were left to do our own thing. Louise and I decided we had to sit down and eat something so we found our way back to the cafe and paid a fortune for some food. After that we felt much better and ready to explore. It was still raining but much less and when we got up to the watch tower the cloud cleared enough and we managed to get the classic shot looking down over the city. While we were up there we went to see the Inca Bridge and spent some time sitting up on the hill with a view of Machu Picchu. It wasn't as busy as we expected, probably because of the rain, so it worked in our favour in some ways. It ended up being well worth the trip.

We had caught the bus into town, had lunch, then hopped on a very slow train for two hours, followed by a van for another two hours and arrived back in Cusco about 7.30pm exhausted but very proud of our achievement.