The Inca Trail
Jonny spent the 3 days on the run up to the Inca trip convincing me that the walk would be fun and enjoyable and in not such a loud voice, challenging. I was a little nervous as my usuall strategy of running up hills when they get difficult, would not be appropriate at altitudes of 4300 meters. I knew I was going to have to learn to plod!
We set off for our four day walking adventure bright and early on Wednesday morning. We sat in our bus for 2 hours, mostly in silence, surounded by 12 other walkers, 22 porters, 2 guides, 1 cook and 2 monkeys, contemplating what we had let ourselves in for.

This is Monkey our team mascot who was later called 'Maureen' ('Milly' was the monkey that rode on her back).

We had a hearty breakfast and began the walk, stopping to get another stamp in our passport on the way (now if I had known this was going to happen I might have been a little more enthuisiastic at the thought of doing this walk. I love getting passport stamps!) Our fellow walkers were a lively and lovely bunch, our guides were enthusiastic and knowledgable and our porters became our heroes!
The porters carried 25kg each and would run past us, smiling, wearing sandles, as Jonny and I were puffing and panting up the hill. They were amazing ...

Caption Wanted!!! What's Nat thinking??

Day 1 was definately do-able. We admired beautiful views on our way and went to an interesting Inca ruin. We were surprised to find that during the day, the porters would run on ahead, set up a temporary camp so that we could eat or drink in the dry. We felt very spoilt.

Day 2 was tricky! We walked up "dead womans pass" very slowly for 3 hours and descended for 2 hours. I had got the plodding motion down to a fine art. Many people suffered from altitude sickness on this day although only 1 person from our team. Our guides were very pleased with our progress and we spent the afternoon recovering from our climb.

That's one beast of a hill!!

We made it!!

Day 3. I spent the early hours praying hard about the drumming rain on our tent roof. We put on our attractive ponchos and tried to smile. However, Walking up Inca steps that are narrow and steep in mid flow of a water fall, isn`t easy. The rain subsided at lunch time. My prayers were answered! The rest of the day the sun shone and we thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the walk.

Day 4 we were woken at 4am (lovely and early!). We started walking under torch light to get to the gate of the sun, where we would see our first view of Machu Pichu. Our guides were very speedy, setting a cracking pace. It was exhausting, and my eyes were very stingy. But I was suported by my best friend all the way who offered constant encouragement. When we got to the gate of the sun we were blown away by the sight of machu pichu. It was well worth our tiring walk.