We were collected at 5am! Very early start!! We picked up everyone else and went onto Ollantaytambo. The drive was really spectacular, we were driving along the edge of a cliff the whole way there nearly. We started the Inca trail from kilometre 82. Kevin had a dodgy stomach the whole way which made for pleasant company for Sile and the rest of the group! First day was fairly easy walking, it was nice and warm and we seen a few Inca ruins. The porters are amazing. We started out before them and they came running along behind us with our tents and gear and food, they even have to carry gas cylinders on their backs, but they all came running past us anyway and they have the dining tents set up by the time we got to the lunch place. They all clapped us walking in which was so embarrassing considered they were carrying packs ten times what we were carrying and they ran past us on the way. We were happy to get the clap on day 2 though! Lunch was 4 courses! It was really weird sitting in a tent on the side of a mountain eating our aperitif(!), soup, dinner, and teas and coffees, we really weren´t slumming it at all! After lunch we continued walking, first campsite was on a farm in the middle of nowhere and the stupid rooster had us all awake far earlier than our wake up time of 5.30am!  Day 2 was tough enough, says Kevin. Sile says it was really, really, tough. Notice all the photos of me which Kevin has taking from the top of the hills half an hour before I reached there. Back to Kev now ? The view from Dead Woman´s pass was nothing spectacular compared to the sites on the way up and their was a noticeable temperature difference on the summit. On one side it was boiling hot and 15 metres away there was a chilling wind blowing over the mountain top. After 4 or 5 hours of climbing up steps to reach the pass we had another 2 hours downhill journey to reach the campsite for day 2. Sile typing-Kev looked like he hadn´t broken a sweat all day. It was really hard, you´d climb, climb and climb, turn a corner and you wouldn´t be able to see the top of the steps again so you just had to keep walking. Every time I got to the top, sweating and red faced Kev was there all smiley happy. Needless to say that was quite annoying! The 2nd campsite was beside a loud river and there were frogs croaking all night. Also the toilets weren´t the best! See attached pictures to have an idea of the facilities we had to work with. They are basically glorified holes in the ground ? squatting was?difficult. Day 3. It was raining for most of the day. We were on the peak of a mountain and had to walk through the clouds to get to the next campsite. The clouds from the other side of the mountain were trying to pass over the slope it was releasing all the rain on top of us for about 8 hours!! Finally after a few hours of downhill hiking through streams the mist broke and we could see the sun in the valley below along with some more ancient Inca ruins ? pretty awesome sight!! When we arrived at the campsite we were not long joining the queue for the much needed hot showers. We had dinner that night as well as a freshly baked cake!! How ever the cook managed to do that with out an oven on a mountain side is beyond me. We also pooled our funds together to tip the porters and cooks for doing such a fantastic job. We had a tipping ceremony which was fairly awkward as none in the group had enough Spanish to really thank them. But we handed over the money and everyone got a clap so that was good. We all went to bed happy that we almost completed the 28 mile trek. Next day Machu Picchu! Day 4 ? Final Day. We got up at 4am and had a rushed half a pancake breakfast each in order to join the queue to enter the last checkpoint before Machu Picchu. We also got up that early to beat the ?Lazy Tourists? who just skipped the 4 day hike and got the train directly to the awesome site. We were about the third group to go through the checkpoint and the pace was really fast. Everyone seemed in a hurry to get to the Sungate. I (Sile) had to slow down at one point because I slipped and we were basically walking along a path on which there was a sheer drop the other side and this was when the sun was coming up so you couldn?t even see that clearly! We all got to the sun gate safe and sound anyway and caught our breath we were looking at the gorgeous view, well what should have been it was too misty to see anything! Off we went then for the final half hour to Machu Picchu! Everyone was quite excited for the first magical glimpse?. Which when we got there was shrouded by mist and clouds! Quite the view! We hung around for about half an hour from the place where you get your picture postcard hoping from the mist to clear. It was grand though because we had lammas to amuse us and a particularly big dung beetle who was busy with the lama droppings, didn?t take pics unfortunately. After a 2 hour tour of Machu Picchu the clouds cleared and the sun was out. We went back to the postcard spot and got our pics taken. After that we took off for Aguas Calientis to wait for train back to Cusco and the end of the Inca Trail. We were tired at that stage to do anything so we had lunch then stayed in the lunch place playing cards for about 4 hours!Overall it was a pretty awesome trek!