I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more

This was my chant on the last day as we were climbing to the sungate. Others included: I am Edmund Hillary, I am Edmund Hillary´s sherpa (both courtesy of Debbie), I will have buns of steel (going up a million steps). The Inca trail is magnificent. It´s also hard work. The two days chilling out in Cusco and getting used to the altitude were so worth it. Even then, I think the altitude made it harder.

The first day is a gently walk from 2600 metres to 3000 metres over about 9km. There are a couple of Inca ruins along the way which we stopped at and our guide Humberto gave us some of the history about. He has been a guide for 23 years and gives you some of the various interpretations of the ruins and then what he thinks they were used for and why. As a former history student, I loved his way of presenting the information. He was very proud of his Inca heritage and all the things that the Inca nation achieved. And very rightly so. Some of the feats of engineering are amazing.

The second day we climbed from 3000 metres to 4215 metres (dead woman pass) over a very short distance. And mostly in steps. Over the last stretch I´d manage about about five steps, have a brief stop and then do another five steps. I´d get my breath back really quickly but be out of breath again just as quickly. I´d like to blame the altitude but I think it was also to do with my level of fitness. But I felt such a sense of achievement and the view from the top was spectacular.

Then we dropped 600 metres to the campsite for the night. At times the drop felt vertical. Again, there were lots of steps and I was incredibly grateful for my two walking poles and for nurofen. My knees felt a few twinges but they were fine for the whole trip (yay! I was really dreading having bung knees).

We climbed another pass on the second day (Runkuraqay) which I think is 4000 metres. This day was hard as well, but I´d got into a rhythm with a certain level of puff and I felt much more comfortable walking. Fantastic views from the pass again and all along the may. A couple more stops at ruins and down to the camp site at a fairly brisk pace(this is the day that they clapped when we arrived).

The next day started a 3.45am so that we could get down to the control gate for the walk up to the sungate (intipunku) so that we could see the sun rise over Machu Picchu. The gate opens at 5.30am and we were there at about 4.30am - second group there. We then practicallly ran up the hill (I kept up most of the way but the nearly vertical 50 steps took the stuffing out of me so I was a bit behind the others). Didn´t matter though because all we saw was clouds - I have a lovely photo of nothing). It also started to rain to it was ponchos all round for the 30 minute walk down to Machu Picchu. It was a shame not to see the sunrise, but if any day was going to rain, this was the day. It would have been miserable to walk in the rain on any of the other days. We had beautiful weather on the first three days which made the walk so much more enjoyable.