Who was I kidding?

When we first met our guide for the trek I made a grand statement of ' the reason we are taking four days is that we are bird watchers and like to stop and look at everything along the way'.

Who did I think I was kidding? The reason for four days was because I am unfit, overweight and slow. I used to blame short legs, but can't even do that now - every local along the way had shorter legs then me and they were going uphill just fine!

It didn't help that I had diarrhoea for the first three days and wasn't eating, but still no excuse!

57 km or so, the El Choro Trek goes from the peak of 4850 metres down to 1200 metres at the bottom. It sounds easy, downhill all the way, but tell your knees and little toes that!

A pre-Inca road carved along the edges of the mountains, either going around the precipitous slopes or going down to the bottom of a deep valley, crossing a river, and then climbing up the other side again.

Started extremely high in the icy winds at 4850 metres and started downhill. Still ice around at 10 am when we got underway.