Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to machu pichu we go...

We got up about 6am this morning, having packed everything last night. Our main backpacks were staying in storage at the hotel and we were allowed a 4kg duffle bag (which would be carried by our porters) and anything else we wanted to carry in our own smaller backpacks.

My packing had gone so well that I had about a kilo left over in my duffle bag. I done what any sensible trecker would do and went to the bottle shop and bought a litre of rum to fill the space.

Mo had a drama though. Her bag weighed 6 kilos. She went away to her room, returned a few minutes later and it was still 5.5. She went back to her room again. Another 5 minutes passed with everyone waiting for her. The bag was reweighed. 5kg. On her third return to the scales she was dissapointed to discover that she was still half a kilo over the limit.

the tour guide was not happy with her as she was holding all of us up. Worse, everyone else had passed the weigh test first time. After all the scales had been left out for us to use for the previous 24 hours.

In desperation she asked if anyone had space for 500g of her possessions. A couple of people sympathised and offered to help. You should have seen their faces when she dived into her duffle bag and gave each of them a fucking great MANGO.

The bus drove us to Km82, the starting point of the trail. On the way we'd stopped to buy hiking sticks from locals. TT was the only person who didn't buy one on the grounds that she'd steal mine if she needed one. Nice eh?

Something that surprised me about the start of the inca trail is the security. We had to have our passports stamped. That hows it's going to be an impressive walk doesn't it?

The first couple of hours were ok, reasonably level and some impressive scenery. Then we came across a large cliff that needed to be climbed by way of loads of uneven inca carved steps. That was a bit draining. At the top the guide was waiting and informed us that 80% of tomorrow would be like that. What a nice chap.

We stopped a short while later for lunch. That was pretty amazing. The porters, carrying all our equipment had overtaken us during the morning and had set up a large lunch tent and cooked for us. We had soup, spaghetti bolognaise and trifle. In the afternoon we carried on trekking and arrived at our first campsite about 5pm.

Again, the porters had overtaken us and arrived ahead to pitch our tents, setup camp and prepare afternoon tea. There was a village nearby so we played some football with the locals.

After this I shared out some of my rum and a pleasant time was had by all.