Up and at ’em at 6 am. Luis woke us up and porters had warm bowls of water for washing at our tent and a choice of coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Those guys work their butts off. You can see in the pictures the size of the packs they carry.

We cleaned up, had a great breakfast, and off we went. The guide wasn’t kidding about a tough hike. We hiked from 7 am till 5 pm. Remember the saying, 10 miles to school, up hill? Well, we found it. I calculated we hiked about 9 miles up and down a 4000′ mountain. Not one of those pansy slight inclines. You strained you neck up to see where you were heading. Of course, it was better not to look. Just one step at a time. If you can zoom in on the sign in the pictures you’ll see we started at Wayllabamba at 3100 meters (10,170′) and went up to 4200 meters (13,780′) then to camp at Pacaymayu which I think was about 3600 meters (11,800′). Going down was almost as difficult as going up due to the steep hills.

With sightseeing and lunch it took us 10 hours. One very cool part of the day was we came across some butterflies on the trail and one flew onto Jamie’s hand. She put it on her ski cap and it stayed there the rest of the day! We also passed by quite a few people living out on the trail literally in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, we got to camp, already set up of course, and we were done. We dropped our packs and sat and had a beer and appetizers and waited for dinner.

After dinner the chef surprised me with a birthday cake! It was amazing. The guide even taught the porters, who didn’t speak a lick of English, how to sing happy birthday to me! Was a very tough but great day. The quote of the day was from Jamie about halfway through the hike. “Happy f’ing birthday” lol. Oh, and I forgot to add, that butterfly stayed with Jamie all the way till bedtime so she let the damned thing sleep in the tent, lol. I was sure I was gonna roll over on it.

Luis taught them how to sing happy birthday in English while we were eating dinner.