Sunday, June 7 through Friday, June 12: Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro
Day 1: We meet the other climbers: Ross, an Australian, and Gail and Peter, Americans from Oakland, California. They're all around our age, which is good, but they're all tall, which worries me. (Though, at 5' 1", I'm not too bothered by trailing behind. I've spent most of my life doing it.) We find out that we are going to have a team of 23 supporting us, and for the life of us, we can't figure out what all these guys are going to do. We arrive at the Machame gate and find the greatest concentration of white people we've seen since we arrived in Africa. We wait for quite some time while the porters organize the gear and we sign in and pay park fees.
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We finally get going. One of the highlights of the Machame route is that the scenery changes every day. Today we're walking in the rain forest. Apparently it's been raining quite a bit lately, and Ross dubs the trail the "Mud-chame" route. About an hour or so into the trek, we get our first glimpse of the summit. Because it had been overcast when we were in Arusha, we hadn't seen it yet. All of a sudden, my motivation jumped: all this slogging through the mud would be worthwhile.
Walking at 9000 feet, we feel fine, but our guides, Damien, Safiri, and Thaddeus, insist that we get used to the slow pace that we'll need to set to make it to the top. If we start going too fast, we hear the constant reminder of "pole, pole" -- "slowly, slowly."
As we walk slowly, the porters from our group as well as lots of others quickly pass us, carrying backpacks, tents, food, water, tables, chairs, and God knows what else, strapped to their backs and on their heads. We're very pleased to learn that the outfitter that we're using, IntoAfrica, strictly enforces weight limits for our porters, which is one of the reasons that we have 18 of them with us. Having so many people also allows one of them to take a very light load and run ahead, literally, to get the best campsite for us every night.
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My feet -- by lunch on the first day |
Our first glimpse of the summit |
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Randy -- How does he stay so clean? |
The porters |
When we arrive at camp, our tents have been set up, popcorn and tea are waiting, and the porters even take our boots to clean them. Now we're glad we have so many people with us. We realize how much it takes to set up and move what amounts to a small village every day. Dinner is exceptional. It's amazing what our two cooks can come up with on the mountain. We have fish, vegetables, and rice, with bananas in custard sauce for dessert. We don't feel like we're roughing it at all.
Days 2 through 5 continue the same way. We walk three to six hours a day, very slowly, stopping for snacks and water every hour or so. The scenery changes from rainforest to heather to moorland to lava fields. It's different every day, but always very beautiful. So far, everyone is very happy, generally comfortable, and acclimatizing well. The food is good and plentiful, the walking is not too strenuous, and we are all in good spirits. The biggest challenges are a couple of very, very cold nights; the way altitude causes some people (who will remain nameless) to have a tremendous amount of gas; and some difficulty sleeping at altitude.
Click here to see more photos from Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Click here to see IntoAfrica's Kilimanjaro Itinerary.