It has been three nights on the trail and here at this final campsite there is the promise of a warm shower and supposedly superior toilet facilities. This of course, was a blatant lie. The lavs along the trail have been really rather grim. A sort of strange mix between a western loo and a long drop which results in a ceramic bowl about an inch and half deep sunk into the floor, two foot pads and a flush which has been carefully placed in the horizontal position. So... if you successfully manage to place your feet on the appropriate pads and, using an aim made increasingly difficult by tired and throbbing thigh muscles, avoid filling your shorts (that will now be stretched to breaking point and cutting off the blood supply to your feet), you still have to run the gauntlet of the flush, which being horizontal is powerful enough to send your offering skittering up the rim of the pan and cementing it firmly across the back wall and up onto the ceiling. All of the above has to be completed by torch light as there is no power to speak of.

As for the warm shower, you pay your entrance fee and then wait outside in a courtyard until your number is called out along with 20 or so other bemused and quite frankly smelly looking people. After what seemed like 30 minutes of sitting on a rock clutching a towel and some head and shoulders I was given the nod that my time had come. Entering the hallowed showering ground I was confronted with two shower cubicles (filled) and four extra somewhat embarrased looking blokes in various states of undress awaiting their turn. The bliss of eventually climbing into one of the cubicles and shutting the curtain on the array of genitals and cracks on offer was slightly marred by the water being only just warm enough to flow.

We were up at 4am on the last day to walk, through the night, in order to reach the Sun Gate at Machu Picchu at dawn. We weren't the only ones though. What followed was in essence a forced march at a fast pace, which degenerated into a lolloping sprint with much elbowing and jabbing of walking poles between about 450 people, all fervently itching to get past us, to be the first at the Sun Gate. It felt quite fraught. As the sun came up, it got much warmer, but if you slowed or stopped to remove a layer of clothing or your hat, people would scurry past you with a glint in their eyes at being further ahead. Unless you are going to do the Inca trail in Decemeber you actually don't need to be at the Sun Gate at dawn because the sun doesn't rise through it (thats why they built it there, for the equinox). So the mad rush to get there is a somewhat pointless task.

Right before the gate itself is a nigh on sheer set of rough hewn steps that will challenge all that venture up them. As we neared the top we could see our main group from which we had been surgically seperated early on by a band of determined pole swinging Frenchies, all sunblock and shades, arms crossed and walking poles angled out making them look like a giant demonic millipede. At the mouth of the Sun Gate there is a narrow entrance that leads to a lookout point, an outcropping of rock that was being held tenaciously by our intrepid troupe. I took enormous amounts of pleasure positioning myself at the mouth of this lookout and refusing to move as our entire group made its way back through the entrance of the gate, effectively blocking it for the hundreds of cursing climbers below us on the steps. This is not something that would normally have come easily to me, except that in people's fervor to get to the top of the Sun Gate they had lost all reason and Maddy was pushed out of the way more than once on the steep and quite frankly dangerous stairs leading to this point.

From there Team Tortuga reformed and we made our way down to the city proper, leaving the thronging masses fighting for space behind us. We made the city just in time for dawn and sat on what was once an agricultural terrace and watched gold stream in from above and set light to the buildings below us. It would have once been a magical sight. Pilgrims would have made the same journey that we had just made (plus quite a bit more and a damn sight less comfortably) up into these mountains to speak with and be with the spiritual leaders that once inhabited this holy city. However for us the whole effect was slightly marred by the bus loads of brightly coloured tourists that we could see scrambling around the walls, having come up on the first buses from the town below.