Cerro Casamientuyoc

Second Day.

Sadly on the morning of the second day Jeff decided to turn back as he did not think he would be able to make it; Robbie went with him.

So that left me and three young athletic men hiking the trail. Eek!

We set off at 6am. Today's big challenge was 'Dead Woman's Pass', up to 4,200m, an increase of 1200 m. Thankfully I had now acclimatised and wasn't ill like at Rainbow Mountain, but each step was still a big effort, easily leaving me breathless.

Drew, a former ultra marathon runner (!) ran on ahead to the summit, leaving me and the other two to wheeze our way up to the top. But by 9.45am we had made it!

The next challenge was getting down. Hundreds of steep, uneven, narrow steps, often with sheer cliffs to the side with no barrier. But it seem years of rock climbing meant I was in my element! Going down was so much easier than going up and I left Drew and the others in my wake as I skipped down.

We were at our camp soon after 11am with a decision to make. The plan had been to camp here for the night, but we had arrived hours earlier than planned, so we decided to press on to Sayaqmarca.

We just needed to convince the porters of the plan - they were expecting to only have to set up camp once that day, but instead they set up for lunchtime, cooked us a feast, took down the tents, ran on ahead for the evening, set up camp again and cooked us dinner there! I'm not sure they were entirely happy but agreed nonetheless!

We arrived around 3.30pm. This campsite left a little to be desired - due to the change of plan we got last choice of pitch and were next to stagnant water - a lot of mosquitos and very far away from the (manky) toilets. So we mainly chilled in the tents sheltering from the mozzies. We had loads more food - afternoon tea including pancakes and biscuits, then another 3 course meal (!), before retiring for another early night at 7pm.Read more