We started our Kilimanjaro hike yesterday on a 8-day tour following the western Lemosho-route ascending over the Shira-plateau. Just some quick facts for people who don't know anything about Mt. Kilimanjaro: it is the highest freestanding mountain on earth (not part of any mountain chain), it's peak is called "Uhuru" and is 5895 Meters or 19341 feet above sea level. It is one of the seven highest mountains on earth and the highest in Africa. Out of these seven highest mountains it is the only non-technical one, meaning, that you can hike it without any serious climbing.
This is a description of the Lemosho-route just in a shorter version:
http://www.climbingkilimanjaro.com/lemosho-route-kilimanjaro.php
We took off at 9am with a 20 year old Land Cruiser stuffed to the max with 6 porters, 1 guide, 1 driver, 1 assistant, Tosh and me, equipment and food for eight days (about 10 tons). It all looked like we were going on a month long excursion to the north pole.
We stopped several times at shops and street vendors to pick up missing bits and pieces. The tour operator had told us it would take 1.5 hrs to get to the head of the trail. After more than 5 hours we finally get to the gate of Kilimajaro National Park, where we pay the park fees and have some lunch.
We pick up two more porters here aswell (don't ask me how they fit in the truck, I honestly have no idea..) and drive for another hour up an impossibly steep trail that almost tips the truck over several times.
When we finally start walking it is 3:30 pm and we get the feeling that we were meant to start much sooner than this. Our guide is still busy with organising all our gear and the porters and tells us to go on ahead without him. We head off into the thick jungle. After about 1.5 hrs of pretty easy going uphill we already arrive at our first campsite.
Our porters don't get there until about 2 hours later and we really start worrying about them. We meet some people from other trekking groups at the camp: two italian guys, one girl from New Zealand and a dutch man and his teenage daughter. They all seem a lot of fun and we are excited to be on this trek together and meet at the camps at night.
When the rest of our team finally gets to the camp it is getting dark and I am starting to get hypothermic from still wearing my wet shirt in the rapidly dropping temperatures. As soon as the sun disappears behind the one side of the mountain all warmth diminishes instantly.
Much later we get some hot food (which is delicious) and an apology from our guide Anderson. I am really wondering if we made the right choice in tour company, hoping it will get better in the days to come.
We crawl into our sleeping bags and after a few hours I can finally feel my toes again.
In the middle of the night we both wake up from some loud animal sounds coming from the surrounding jungle. We can distinguish some monkeys (probably Colobus monkeys that we saw during the day) but there is also some sounds which are totally strange to us. One sounds like a ginormous mutant mega bullfrog (I hope you can imagine that, because it is really quite impressive) and we hear something that sounds like a flying dinosaur passing over our tent. Very interesting! I hope we get to see who makes those sounds soon.
The next day we get up at 7 am for an amazing hot breakfast with omelette, pancakes, sausages fresh pineapple, avocados and toast. We eat as much as we can (a lot) and start our hike at 8:30 am heading up further into the jungle. We have 1000m of altitude gain and about 8 km distance to cover, taking us from 2600m in the thick jungle to 3500m on brushy bare mountain desert.
We start off walking behind Anderson because he told us he would set the pace. He walks painfully slow, of "Pole Pole" as it is called in Swaheli and Tosh and I soon overtake him to walk our own pace. The hike is pretty easy, not too steep and we reach our second camp after about 5 hours including many breaks, lunch and picture taking. We were told in the morning this would be a long hard day with 7-8 hours hiking. If it keeps going like this, reaching the summit might turn out to be a Sunday stroll ;)
Maybe we could have done this trek in 6 or 7 days instead of 8. It is still great to have the time to look at all the funky plants and animals on the way and just enjoy the breathtaking views of the ice-capped mountain. So far we have seen some Elephant treks (huge dung heaps of at least 5 kilo poops - amazing!) Colobus monkeys
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_colobus
that look a little like a big skunk with stripes of white long fur hanging off their otherwise black backs. And there are some huge black birds with white spots on their neck about double the size of a raven - these guys might be the flying dinosaurs we heard at night.
The vegetation has changed dramatically from lush thick green jungle with 3m wide cypress trees covered in thick layers of moss, ferns and colorful flowers to a dry and dusty desert like steppe with kneehigh evergreen bushes and small thick leaved plants that store water.
We haven't managed to find a computer fast enough to deal with large sized image files yet. Hopefully we can upload some pictures of Toshs camera soon.
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