Today was another beautiful day of hiking. We started with tea in our tent at 5am followed by breakfast after we packed up our stuff. The scenery was beautiful again today. The first part of the climb was about 3 hours of steep up hill to reach the Salkantay Pass which was at an altitude of 4900m and would be the highest altitude of the trek. The climb wasn’t too hard, but my heart was beating pretty fast from the altitude.

The top was very cloudy but there were still amazing views of the Valley below and the glacier above. The difficult part for me was the rest of the hike which was all down hill. My knee has been bothering me since the Inca Trail and the impact from going downhill made it very sore by the end of the day today. After reaching the top we had a 2 hour hike down to our lunch spot. It was pretty cold from the top to the lunch spot because of the higher altitude. Lunch was delicious as always and we bad time for a quick rest before continuing to our final camp for the night. The last part of the hike today was 3.5 more hours of downhill. The terrain changed from rock to heavy forest as we continued down. The weather also got significantly warmer and we are now in the area of the Cloud forest. We made it to camp by 5 and had some tea and snacks when we arrived.

We learned today that as of last year people or families own different mountains and plots of land in the mountain range as opposed to the government who previously owned the land. The trail passed by a few huts and houses today that are owned by people living in the mountains. Most are farmers and have a number of animals roaming around. There are always cows, mules and horses grazing on the mountain side.

Later in the evening we had dinner and now I am tucked in bed at 8:30 and will be going to sleep after I’m finished writing this to get ready for another early day tomorrow and only 4.5 hours of hiking!