Kilimanjaro!

The conversation about Kilimanjaro had begun in Edmonton.  When Justin and I arrived and continued talking about it, Joshua heard about our trip and the three of us decided we would go together. Joshua is a busy man, but putting him in charge of booking made sense because he knows far more people than we do, and he knows how to get a good deal. There are many ways to climb Kili due to the nature of our late booking we ended up on the “Coca-Cola route” so named because you can literally buy Coke on the way up, and the lodging instead of being tents is in huts on the way up.

The week before Kilimanjaro was especially busy as there was a lot of work to be done at the factory and we were working on preparing a quote for an NGO, so I didn’t put anything into the planning process, and wasn’t totally sure if I would be able to make it. It wasn’t until two days before the day that we had to leave for Justin to be able to make his flight that Joshua announced the details. And I of course wasn’t going to pass a chance, the chance, to climb Kili.

Leaving from Kitale we boarded the night bus for Nairobi. This time the bus company was to be Akamba. It was an old bus, but the seats were like armchairs, only the person in front of me reclined his seat to the max, and when I tried to recline my seat, it actually moved forward and refused to adjust. When I asked him to move, he acted like he didn’t speak English. So I moved, and had a decent bus ride, sleeping most of the way the bus got pretty cold in the night. Justin had it a little worse though, some rain was leaking in by the window where he sat.

We pulled into Nairobi around what I think was 4 in the morning. We were a little excited as our ticket came with a meal voucher for breakfast listed as eggs and toast. We got a mandazi, which are basically balls of dough cooked like donuts only they were hollow, so it was a little disappointing. Eventually we shuffled onto our next bus, which was to take us all the way to Arusha. This meant crossing into Tanzania. We arrived sometime in the early afternoon and were greeted by Ritha; Joshua’s friend who was to accompany us on our climb. She took us to our hotel, and the we visited her place which was just nearby.

Next we went for lunch. At lunch we decided the division of labour, Ritha and I went to the bank, while Joshua and Justin started on the shopping. I spent about half the afternoon standing in a bank. We also went to a market which was very cool to see, but unfortunately I didn’t want to scream tourist by taking out my camera.

As a last note on exposition I should have long ago mentioned that bargaining is a way of life here. The first rule is that prices are negotiable. When I arrived in Arusha I didn’t have a sleeping bag so we went to an outfitter. Two hours later we walked out with walking poles, Justin had some gators, and I had a sleeping bag, and we weren’t much poorer.

Day 1: Driving up to Kilimanjaro we weren’t afforded a view of the peak, Kili just has a giant base, and the top of the mountain is covered in clouds. When we got there we met the porter team, took our packs, and after signing in we began the climb. The first day scenery was forest, and the first camp was actually at an altitude not much higher than where we stay in Kiminini, so things were pretty easy for us. We saw some monkeys in the trees and walked to see a crater, which was quite deep and had a swap in it. One of the surprises of the trip was to be how good our cook was, most of his meals were pretty similar, but decent none the less.

The next day we began our hike up to the next camp. In doing so we left the forest behind and climbed above the clouds to Horombo huts at 3720m. The hike was slow, the motto of the mountain is “pole pole” which means slowly, so nothing about the hike was too challenging. The night at Horombo was quite cold though. The next day was our acclimatization.. day To acclimatize we spent an extra day at Horombo, during which we hiked to the base of Mawenzi peak, the jagged looking of the two peaks, and spent most of the afternoon there. The other part of the afternoon was spent making a figure out of rocks and wood we called “Mr. Maji.”

After acclimatization we left Horombo for Kibo. Kibo is at 4700m and is the camp from which the summit attempt is staged. Again, there was nothing challenging about moving between camps, during the day when the sun was shining the weather was quite pleasant, and some of the views were quite impressive, and by mid afternoon we were at Kibo. The fun part about climbing Kilimanjaro to Uhuru peak though, is that the climb is made at midnight so as to reach the peak by sunrise. So after arriving at Kibo we had a quick lunch and went to sleep.

Waking up was easier than expected, I couldn’t sleep much anyways, I was a little excited, and the room was not too cold, probably because there were about ten of us crammed into a pretty small room. Stepping outside was a little colder though. Especially my feet, I had on five pairs of socks so that my feet barely fit into my boots, but it barely registered. The ground was scree, loose rock and sand, and slowly, slowly, slowly we trudged up against the cold. Our water bottles froze, at for hours we hiked. Joshua has since described it as the most difficult thing he has ever done. It took us about seven and a half hours to reach the summit. Unfortunately Justin has all the summit pictures on his camera, so I can’t even offer photographic evidence to back my claim of ascension.

That very day we made the hike back to Horombo, and the following day we climbed down the mountain and rode back to Arusha. After that it was a bus ride to Nairobi where Justin caught his flight back home, while I was to head back to Kitale.