This was my absolute favourite day of the hike! The cloud forest was AMAZING!!! The slower group, mind you, by this stage we had named ourselves “The Turtles”, were taking our time, enjoying the moment and taking photos. We even stopped at one stage for about half an hour to listen to the birds – we saw woodpeckers, they were amazing! The fauna was spectacular – due to the moisture, all the leaves and petals had droplets of water, which made it all the more magical…

We reached the lunch stop and were treated to a nice surprise – the cooks had backed us a cake and had even piped “SEXY LAMAS” on it!!! How amazing?!?!?! The lunch itself was also very tasty. I ate a lot more than what I ate on previous days (which panned out to be a very bad idea…). After full tummy’s we continued on our trek.

The trek was not difficult – in fact it was enjoyable. Again, the Turtles had fallen behind, in fact so behind, that Clisor (the apprentice guide) stayed behind and hiked with us. He was a character – he had a portable speaker connected to his phone with awesome dance beats. So walking next to him – no one could simply walk normally. We all were busting out a groove. We reached an Incan site which we had all to ourselves – it was probably one of the best parts of the trek. Who can say that they were atop an Incan site with a great bunch of friends, dancing to awesome tunes…? We all agreed that this was simply awesome!

We reached camp, and I bee-lined it to the showers. It was still freezing cold water, but it just felt so good to be clean. After dinner, the porters had come into the tent and we thanked them all. We also gave them our tips – which they completely deserved!

We then settled in for sleep. After an hour or two of sleep, I woke up feeling very sick – I had only just realised that I had eaten way too much and that I had a severely upset stomach (digestion takes twice as long when you are at higher altitude). I was drifting in and out of sleep…. I had a very rough night….