Our porters

Here are our red tents (me in the first one) that our porters set up for us each day. Our porters were incredible. They carried our bags, tents, sleeping pads (and not Thermarests...full thick mattresses), food for three meals a day for 12 of us plus 2 guides plus all SEVENTEEN of them, a dining tent that fit 12 of us, a kitchen tent, plus dishes for all. Not only that, they left after us, ran past us on the trail wearing sandals made of old tires, got to camp and had everything all set up by the time we arrived. They all clapped as we arrived then brought over warm water and soap for us to wash our hands and faces.

Talk about roughing it...

Each morning we were awakened by the porters tapping on our tents saying "buenos dias - mate de coca?" which means "good morning - would you like hot tea?" And not just any tea; they drink mate de coca here which is tea made from the leaves of coca trees, the same thing you make cocaine from. The tea is supposed to have almost magical properties and is great for avoiding altitude sickness. Brent is concocting a new business plan to sell it at the ski resorts in Colorado. Might have trouble importing it but we are working on it.

The attitude of the porters could not have been better. They had smiles on their faces the whole trip and they even helped us with our Spanish. Brent learned that in Peru, "Que Mamacita" means "What a babe" and when he said it to me as I was summitting a 4200m (14,000ft) peak called Dead Woman's Pass, it became a nickname that stuck. The porters and guides loved it and we were Mamacita y Papacito the rest of the trip.