We were awakened at dawn (5:45)with a nice hot cup of coca tea. Did I mention that coca tea is made with the leaves that are turned into cocaine? :) They also set out tubs of hot water and soap to wash up with. The bathrooms at this first campsite were probably the worst I have seen, I mean smell, ever. There was no light of course, but worse, there was not a way to "flush" the hole in the ground. You had to wipe, then put the used toilet paper into a wastebasket near the "door." With no light and no flushing, you can only imagine how horrible the stench and sight was.
Anyway, we packed up our things and headed over to breakfast. This also was a nice spread of food. They had lots tea, hot chocolate, and very strong coffee (think of a shot of espresso and a whole cup full of milk unable to water it down). They made each of us a fresh omelet with tomatoes, green peppers, and cheese (I ate around the veggies). They also had jelly and bread.
We stayed together as a group for the first hour or so. It was "easy" for the first 2 hours. I can tell you that it wasn't "easy" for me. The altitude was really hard for me. I was huffing and puffing during the "small" hills. Luckily, Linze and Josh were willing to wait for me and Joshy to take our time up the big hills.
This was a beautiful day and although the hike was one of the hardest I have ever been on. We stopped every 20 meters or so to "take pictures" or "tie our shoes" or anything else that let us stop. All told, we gained 3,000 feet in just a few hours. The bad news was that we had to go back down almost all those feet. So, we died on the way up, but our knees almost blew out on the way down. It started to rain on the way down, which made the steep stairs very difficult to navigate. Linze and Joshy started to book it at this point (for some reason they are very annoyed by rain and always take off to try to get out of nature as fast as possible). The funny part was when Joshy was having trouble keeping up, then slid, fell on his ass, but managed to accidentally get revenge on Linze going too fast, by flinging his walking stick and hitting her in the leg.
We arrived at camp by 3pm, and found we were the last ones there. They had all waited on lunch for us (which was nice and unexpected). We again had a huge feast and enjoyed soup and many plates of food. After lunch, we went to find the bathroom where we had a very interesting experience. We had brought toilet paper, but when you try and poop while squatting over a toilet bowl with no lid, the poop tends to stick to your butt. So, even though I was shaking and shaking, the poop would not fall. So, I had to grab ahold of it and try to wipe clean. However, I did not have enough toilet paper. All I had with me was a map of Cuzco. So, even after tearing it into 4 pieces, getting poo on my hands, I gave up and came out of the bathroom. Linze was up next, she also ran out of toilet paper, yelled from the stall and Josh handed her his old plane ticket. Again, like my experience, a torn up plane ticket does not stop you from getting poo on your hands, or get your butt clean. I rememembered that Dave and Rowan had baby wipes. We went back to camp on a mission to get our backsides clean. They obliged and soon we kicked the boys out of our tents and spent some quality, but cold and slimy time getting cleaned up.
After that, we decided to go and stretch. Man are we true believers of stretching after this trip.
We headed back to camp for tea time where we had crackers and popcorn again. However, we were not as hungry since we had just eaten lunch. We ate anyway of course.
After snack, we walked around and took pictures of mountains and the campground. It wasn't long before dinner, which we were not very hungry for either.
We ate a huge dinner and even managed to eat desert.
Again, we went to bed early since the next day would be the longest hike. Plus, it was cloudy and no stars.