I was awake at 4am and Edwin came and picked me up from the hotel at 5am. He bought a duffle bag for all my things that don’t need to go in the day pack and some trekking poles. We walked to the main square where there was a minibus waiting for us. I was introduced to our cook, Eder, and the driver whose name I can’t remember.

We then set off on a 4-5 hour journey to the start of the trek. I kind of dozed on and off for a couple of hours in the bus.

Around 730am we stopped in a small village for breakfast – which cost about £1 and was huge and filling.

As we left the village we came across a young lady and an older guy walking along the path. We stopped to see where they were going and offered them a lift seeming as we pretty much had an empty minibus. At the town of Chacora we dropped off our passengers- it was a pretty long way from where we had picked them up, I’m not sure the oldr guy would’ve made it.

We arrived in Capuliyoc, at 3,100m, around 10am where we said goodbye to our driver and met our horseman Hugo. All the baggage, apart from our daypacks, were dropped off for the horses and mules to carry and we set off on the first day of hiking.

The first part of the hike was mainly downhill to Chiquisca and it took around two hours. The scenery was gorgeous and it was pretty hot and humid. We had some great views of the Padreyoq mountain.

At Chiquisca we stopped for our lunch. Hugo and Eder had gone ahead with the horses and prepared a delicious hot lunch for us. I also found a cat to play with, he was a gorgeous silver colour.

Around 2pm we set off again, for a shortish walk downhill to the bridge over the river Apurimac. We were now at around 1,500m so had descended around 1,600m.

After this it was all uphill! And pretty steep too. We walked uphill for around 2 hours to reach our campsite Santa Rosa Bajo. It was a difficult hike as it’s hot and humid and there are a lot of mosquitos around. Santa Rosa is at around 2,115m.

At the campsite the tents were already up and ready for us and after a quick change of clothes into something dry and warm we had some coffee and popcorn.

About an hour later we had dinner, around 630pm, and as it was already getting cold once the sun had gone in, we went to bed shortly after dinner, probably around 8pm.

My sleeping bag was lovely and warm and pretty comfortable too.

Over the whole day we walked around 13km, descended 1,500m and then ascended 600m. I found the uphill part pretty tough as it was very humid and so steep.