Kilimanjaro

Yesterday Catherine and I left CCS Karanga (our home in Tanzania) with a crew of guides, porters, and cooks and headed to Mount Kilimanjaro. Catherine was prepared for her 5 day hike to the summit, which reaches an altitude of 5895 meters (around 19,000 feet), ski clothes and all. I opted for a two day hike instead. The base area where you begin hiking is about an hour drive from Moshi, but on a clear day Kilimanjaro looks much closer because it is so massive.

Once we arrived at the gate of Kilimanjaro National Park it was already much colder than in Moshi. Our starting point was at an altitude of 1970 meters/ 6400 feet. We signed the Marangu Route log book and waited to begin our hike with our head guide Barcary (sounds like Barcardi without the d) who could not say my name properly. He kept calling me “Lion” so we just laughed and went with it. Catherine and I both agreed that we looked ridiculous in our backpacks, rain jackets, kaki walking shorts, and tall hiking socks, but we did look the part. We even had trekking poles which definitely came in handy once we finally began our 3 to 4 hour hike to the first huts (8.4km). The slope was much gentler than I envisioned. The very difficult part does not come until the hike to the summit. Evidently it is very very steep and intense hike of seven hours.

The vegetation on the hike to the Mandara huts was gorgeous! It rains a lot around the bottom of the mountain so the forest area is incredibly green. The trees are huge and are covered in dark green moss and a much lighter dusty green moss hangs from all the branches. There are tiny purple and white wildflowers that grow along the trail. There is also the relaxing sound of a creek babbling down from the snow capped summit. Ahhh the sounds of nature. I have to mention that we did listen to Chris Brown, Rihanna, and T.I. on our hike as well. Bacary is a huge fan of rap and hip hop music and he just couldn’t resist playing some of his favorite songs from his phone. He sang them in a Swahili accent which was hiliarious to say the least. I’m sure Catherine will have many more stories about Bacary when she gets back.

After we hiked halfway to the first set of huts we stopped to eat our boxed lunches while a little mongoose popped out now and again to search for scraps. Mongooses are really freaky by the way. My lunch was a hamburger with a fried egg on it and Catherine had a veggie sandwich that tasted like beer. Thank goodness we bananas and muffins were included.

We made it to the Mandara huts where the terraine actually looked very much like New Mexico or parts of Colorado. The trees were smaller and everything looked much drier. It is very true what the say about there being micro-climates on Kili. In three hours we went from mossy rainforest to tall grasses, smaller trees and more rocks. We walked to a crater about 15 minutes from our hut. The center was filled with tall grass and from rim we could actually see Kenya!

We got settled in our tiny hut with our Swedish roommates Eric and Bianca (a couple from Stokholm who were really nice and spoke great English).Then we had dinner in the dining hall area and went to bed. Everyone on Catherine’s climbing schedule is really nice so I think she is going to have a great experience.The people sitting with us at dinner were from Canada, Norway, and London.People literally come from all over the world to climb Kili!

After a night of sleeping in two pairs of wool socks, gloves, a t-shirt, a fleece, jeans, and a raincoat and breakfast with our international friends Catherine and I parted ways. We both got teary eyes and agreed that it was a stupid decision for me not to attempt to climb Kili...it is always more fun to have your sister (dada in Swhaili) by you side. I miss Catherine already. It was not the same hiking down with just a guide.Keep Catherine in your prayers.She will begin climbing the summit just after midnight and reach the summit around sunrise on Wednesday morning (Tanzania time).Five to seven hours up to the summit and two to four hours down to the third set of huts. Go Catherine!