Day Nine - Punta Union

Last night was cold. Like really really cold! I must have woken up every hour!! Nelly woke us up properly at 6am with some coca tea - bleurgh!! It's supposed to help with the altitude but I'm a bit dubious! Brendan says it's essentially really really watered down cocaine - again I'm dubious! I somehow manage to knock back the whole cup, being aware of how high we're trekking today!

We left our tent to grab some breakfast and there was frost on the ground and the little window in our tent was all blurry because of frost! We packed all our stuff and then had some scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes - again really nice!

We set off on our second day of trekking around 7:30ish. The first couple of hours were pretty steady and we were nearing the front of the group - sadly this wasn't to last!! As the walk continued it sneakily got steeper and me and Brendan fell towards the back of the group, but still keeping up. I was quite conscious of not holding the rest of the trek up!! Rosy was keeping with is which was nice, but I had a suspicion it was to keep us company more than because she was struggling which was very kind!

The walk kept getting tougher and We finally stopped at a small lake before the final big incline! We had our snack packs which had some strange Peruvian fruit in which I can only describe as tasting like banana and looking like frogspawn, kind of put me off a bit! We had our final breather before setting off to the top of the pass.

We were trailing at the back a bit, but Jimmy and Ceaser, our cooks were so nice in staying behind us and giving us motivation! We stopped a bit higher up as a group to have a bit of coca tea - I politely declined and had some chocolate instead! My head was pounding at this point and the pass didn't seem to be getting any closer!!!
Everyone was quite worried about Brendan, who kept plodding on and was so determined to make it!

This last bit was the toughest, literally walking up steep huge slabs of rock, stopping every 3 paces to catch our breath! We could see the pass and kept on plodding. The last bit was a windy staircase to the top, eventually peaking over to the valley behind.

We'd made it! Honestly, I had a lump in my throat and thought I might cry! Maybe due to exhaustion, maybe due to altitude, maybe due to the sheer amazingness of the view beyond us. It was beautiful.

We took lots of group photos to document this moment on hundreds of different cameras and then marvelled at the fact we'd done it with lunch overlooking the pass. The snowy mountains made me so excited to be back skiing, they were just stunning.

After a good hours lunch break, we began our descent. This was just two hours of walking down in the sunshine towards our camp that we could see already set up for us in the distance!

Walking with Rosy, I felt something nudge me from behind, so I turned around about to laugh at Brendan and came face to face with a donkey!! He'd nudged my back with his nose to move out his path! I've never jumped so much!!

We arrived in camp around 3:30ish, to the sun still gleaming, and buckets of warm water to wash off in, it was amazing. Me and Brendan made a new puppy friend who settled himself outside our tent for a couple of hours in the sunshine! We went and had some hot chocolate and some warm dated popcorn (my favourite!) and then we all split and had a little bit of a wander around.

Dinner was at 7, another lovely meal with a wheat based soup, a chicken curry and some berry dessert. Everyone was exhausted, so after wrapping myself up in almost every item of clothing I had with me, we settled down to hopefully a better nights sleep than the one before!!