Peru Day 4: Peruvian Time

Finally, the day we've been waiting for! Up at 4.30am, leave the hotel by 6am to set off for KM82 and the start of the Inca Trail.

We quickly learned on the trip that Peruvian time is completely different than UK time. An example of this came today on the bus when I was sat next to Hugo (another of our Peruvian guides) who told me we'd have an hour drive to Ollyatambo, pick up supplies and then maybe 5 mins more to KM82. The trip actually took over 3hours.

Each day, only 500 people are allowed to start the Inca Trail in order to help preserve it. Our group was huge:
- 48 of us
- 2 medics
- 2 staff from the travel company who'd arranged it all
- 1 staff member from Macmillan
- 5 Peruvian guides
- 84 (yes, 84) chaskis (similar to Nepalese sherpas), cooks etc to look after us en route.

It's hard to describe the emotion of finally being on the Inca Trail.

This photo is from our first main climb and is indicative of the surface of the trail. It got harder than this - much harder!

We got into camp about 5.30pm. By 5.45pm it was dark, but we were in the main food tents with hot chocolate, popcorn and biscuits. By 8pm we were all in our tents, asleep. Rock n roll!