We got woken up at 5am by Ernesto who was by the tents giving everybody a cup of hot chocolate. Now that's a great service getting hot chocolate in your tent. We had that then got ready for breakfast, when we got in the tent we had a feast. They gave us pancakes, fruit, cereals, we certainly wouldn't go hungry. We needed as much energy as possible today of all days as we will need it as we're climbing uphill all day today.

Once we'd stuffed our faces, we packed up all our things so the porters could collect the tents and head off to the check point . We set off uphill and it was certainly hard going for me, but once I knew I was only going uphill, I put myself in the right mindset to do the trek. We arrived at the checkpoint after about 10 minutes of walking uphill. I needed a rest so it was a well deserved break. We got our second passport stamp at the checkpoint. After this Elistan gave us a talk about the trail, about how far we'd come from the first day and about heading up to Dead Woman's Pass.

When we carried on I decided we'd go at the front of the group, so we motored on ahead of everyone. As I'm quite slow we could get a head start on everyone else. We were quite lucky with the weather today as it was slightly overcast, which is probably best for trekking uphill. If it was too sunny, it would be unbearable going uphill in the heat. We just walked and admired the scenery. After a while, we saw a couple of llamas right in the path, so we stopped to take a look and get a few pictures. One of the members of our group- Kew caught us up and also saw the llamas . The guides both hung at the back of the group, however, I thought one should be in front, and one behind, just in case anything happened to somebody.

John and myself maintained our pace and I was really good and didn't really stop at all going uphill, although it was hard work. The thought of lunch was keeping me going. When we made it to camp for lunch, it was another 2 course meal of soup and loads of delicious things for the main course. By now everyone was getting to know each other a lot better and getting to know everyone's names. I really feel that we've been put with a nice bunch of people. There are quite a few Americans on our trek, a couple of Australians, an English couple, plus ourselves, and a Dutch couple who could speak really good English.

We all had lunch and set off on the trail again. They said today is quite a short day in terms of distance, but one of the toughest because it's all uphill. I wanted to get going quickly again so we were one of the first in the group to leave . We walked up loads of steps and slopes until we reached a high viewpoint. By this time, it had just started raining a little so I grabbed my rain jacket, and John his poncho. We had arrived at the highest point of the trek at a mere 4,200 metres, so there was much less oxygen in the air today. We met an English girl called Rachel, who we'd been walking with, she was lovely. We waited at the highest point in the cold wind and rain for the rest of the group to come so we could all get a group picture. Some of them took a lot longer to come, so we chatted and admired the views. Eventually when everyone got here we got a group photo. This section of the trail is called Dead Woman's Pass. This is so called as from the other side of the mountain, the shape looks like a dead woman apparently. When you actually get here, it's hard to work out what it looks like, so they say it's best to look at it from the other side on the 3rd day.

When we'd finished admiring the views and taking pictures, we carried on waking and came to the campsite late afternoon at around 4pm . Everyone was so tired as we'd had a hard day. I was so proud of myself for having completed the uphill section of the trail and I hardly even stopped. John said he thought I'd struggle with it, but I proved him wrong! We went into our tents to set up the sleeping bags and sort out our stuff while it was still daylight. We thought we took our maglite with us, but we couldn't find it. Luckily a really nice English couple lent us one of their head torches, as without this, we would have been stuffed. When it gets dark, there are no lights, so when you need to go to the loo and brush your teeth you need some light. The bathrooms here are utterly disguising and the toilet is a whole in the ground, and they smell real bad. There are no hot showers either.

We all had another lovely dinner and afterwards everyone went to bed as we are all shattered. When we vacated the dinner tent, the porters come in here to eat and to sleep. I heard this from somebody else. I felt really sorry for them as this is the norm for them. They have to get up earlier than us and most probably get to bed later than us too. The guides have a tent to share between them, so the porters should at least get some tents to share amongst themselves. I'm sure they don't mind it though.