We were woken up at 4am and heard the rain splashing off our tent, we drifted off to sleep and were again awoken at 5.30am by the porters offering us a welcome cup of tea in metal cups. We packed our stuff had breakfast and the left the campsite at 6am bound for the highest point of the trail; Dead Woman's Pass (13,000ft). We bought some water from the same little Peruvian girl (she'd dropped her prices due to the slow sales the previous night; we all stocked up on water). We then walked uphill through the forest, there was misty clouds everywhere. We walked along the valley's narrow paths past llamas. We reached the first resting point after 3km. I ate my snack and chewed on some coca leaves (which taste disgusting!!). We continued walking up the challenging mountainside, though dense, wet, forest. We soon were out of the forest and in damp moorland. The valley was barren and there were peculiar rock patterns in the hills. It was a tiring climb, the girls couldn't handle it and were last with our guide Milu looking after them. Then it was my dad and Padraig who were just behind me and Sean who were leading our group to the summit. After 2 hours of steep, rocky paths we reached the highest pass of Warmiwañuscca (Dead Woman's Pass 13, 776 ft). We had walked the most demanding part of the Inca trail and could feel the pain in our legs. At the top there were the same Americans from the day before, wooping, clapping and cheering every time one of their group reached the summit. We just sat in a quiet, dignified but triumphant manner. We waited on Padraig, Dad, and Anne-Marie before beginning the descent to the next campsite. The views were spectacular; cloudy mist and craggy peaks. There was a rocky crag that looked like a woman's breast and this turned out to be the Dead Woman's breast (see photo album "Peru". We walked a further 3km downhill which was great after a strenous 7km uphill hike. We walked down the slippery steps with a tag-along American from Minnesota who kept stopping every 20 minutes to have a fag. We soon could see snow-capped peaks and after a an hour or so walking down the ancient Inca stairs we reached our campsite. I had to use my rain poncho as it rained for a while, it was just like walking with a batman shaped black bin liner. The rocks were so slippy I nearly fell twice. We passed some "Yapanese" tourists who were no word of a lie snapping furiously with their cameras. Milu seems to hate Japanese for some reason, when she saw them she was shocked and said: "Japanese, don't see many of them..haha..they are lazy. I hope it rains today so they get wet!" She also hates: Chileans, Americans, French and Australians (probably soon Scottish and Irish). The campsite was high up (3,600m), we had lunch: soup, meat, veg and rice. We had a bowl of chocolate gloop for dessert and a mug of mint tea. We then took shelter from the rain in our tents and had a well deserved power nap. Later we had a tea break my dad didn't go as he was sleeping like a baby. He didn't miss much just horrible cheese wantons. Later we crept out of our tents in the dark with our torch and avoided falling down the sheer cliff edge that the porters had pitched our tents on. We had soup, some weird potato called yuka and alpaca burger. Of course we had tea for dessert. Milu told us a true story that a German girl was killed at the old campsite by her Israeli boyfriend and they no longer camp at the the campsite because many people complained of "bad karma" that stones were being thrown by someone yet when they looked out there wasn't a soul there. She also told us several people have fallen off the path from the Sun Gate to Machu Picchu. Also there was an unlucky guy who climbed the mountain that overlooks Machu Picchu and he was struck by lightning and died. We had some more tea and sat around our foldable table with our little gaslight flickering in the dark tent. Everyone was tired so banter was non-existent. We then had to walk down a slippery path in the dark to the toilet. We went back to our tent and fell asleep to the sound of the rushing river nearby.