Part 2 of 4: June 29: Dead Woman’s Pass

Dead Woman's Pass, originally uploaded by Andrew & Yvette's world travel.

This day was all about climbing, climbing and more climbing. Our first upward climb was to the Dead Woman’s Pass which rises to 4200m. What should only take 3 hours took me a lil more than 4 hours to complete with the last hour literally being only a 100m ascent. The altitude was a killer and it was a good thing Andrew wasn’t affected because without him, I would’ve asked one of the porters to piggy back me the rest of the way up!

Once we did make it up, we were treated to some really spectacular views of the valley below on one side and the cloud forest on the other. After resting though, what did we do next? Go down some 1800 steps on the back face of the same mountain. And once we had gotten down, what did we do next? Go up the 2nd Pass at 4000m, so that once we reached the top, we could then go down on the back face. Needless to say, the day was extremely long and more than once I wondered why we had paid to torture ourselves when we could have easily gotten to Machu Piccu by train/bus. The answer of course lay in the yummy buttery popcorn treat we got at the end of our hiking day, something day trippers don’t get to taste at all!