Today we started hiking at 7am for our longest day so far. It was a truly beautiful morning, without a cloud in the sky for the early morning start. The sun started to rise on the summits as we started hiking up the Salkantay valley. With the cold ever present, it felt like a classic alpine start. We met other hikers that we had seen since choquequirao, and there was quite a big group of people zigzagging up to the pass. I felt really good so I started racing up, and managed to be the first at the tiny lake below the pass. It was so quiet and beautiful as I was sitting on a big granite boulder below the huge glaciated face of Salkantay (6200m). Erick told us that the peak is unclimbed, which seems surprising as the arete we were looking at doesn't seem impossible.
Soon we were all standing at the Salkantay pass (4600m), an altitude record for Beatrice and Nonna. The clear view and the fresh thin air made me very euphoric.
The enthusiasm was needed for the long descent to collcapampa: it took us a lot of hours to descend 1600m. After the pass the ecosystem changed as vegetation appeared in stages, and it started raining... For the first time in two months I used my rain pants. The path turned very muddy, and after a great lunch under the kitchen tent, we were back in the forest and in mudslides territory... We arrived safe and sound at camp but very wet and covered in mud (maybe mixed with mules feces as one fellow hiker said). It was a long and varied day: alpine landscape to forest to beginning of jungle that I thoroughly enjoyed thanks to my rain gear.
That evening Nonna got really sick with headache an vomitting. We gave her medicine and a little of oxygen but what seemed to cure her was a good night of sleep.
Depending on trail conditions we would go to Santa Teresa (hot springs) or llactapata (inca ruins in the jungle, the original plan) the next day for our last day of proper hiking before machu picchu.
JN