DAY TWO @ altitude 3000m-4200m-

Why oh why would the Incas make a trail like this?!! Again, superhuman crazy people only way to explain it. What a nutcracker day! Day two is known to be the hardest day of the trail and good grief, I sincerely hope this is true! The trail went up, up, up a bit more, up again, get the idea??...IT WAS NEVER ENDING!!! Pain to the butt, hips, knees, legs, calves and still, the porters are running past us in their sandals.

A bonus to our group was that everyone was reasonably fit and healthy, without much threat of altitude sickness, we weren't interlinked like elephants for every step but no-one was too far behind, a few minutes wait and our 'familia' (family- as Mamma and Pappa called us) were all back together.

This day was tough, my dodgy hip decided to join in the fun too so instead of your usual step up I was reduced to flinging my leg upwards from my waist, all-in-all quite an attractive approach.

The weather was wet, light winds with a very occasional short sunny spell, with such a hard upwards hike this is a good condition, I cant imagine trying to attempt it in consistent heat.

Once reaching the top of Dead Woman's Pass the sense of achievement/relief gets you a little emotional and also so so thankful that that bit was over. The top of DWP can be seen a long way approaching, looking not too far but it was very deceiving and I just remember momentarily hating every person even one step in front of me.

With our confidence never diminishing we are reminded. if we come up so we must go down....! Over the peak of DWP was a definite shock to the system, it was freeeeezing! to an extent where we all stopped to layer up with nearly the entire contents of our bags. The downward journey was long, it was just as much of a decline as incline up so initially at such great height keeping a steady balanced foot carrying weight was hard and I found to go at a speed was much easier than taking it slowly, pretty sure that's when ankle twists would have happened.

As per usual, Paul left me to my own devices powering on and me chasing to catch up behind with him no sign in the distance, this successfully lead to me getting lost...just what you want after a such a strenuous day, thankfully, I wasn't the only one though. With our guides walking at the back, before we set off they tell us where to aim for and where our settling camp is, I will happily blame this one on rubbish sign posting, I managed to trek on right past it having to walk the whole way back but boy! when I got there I was so happy to be greeted with coco tea, I didn't care I just wanted to park my backside somewhere.