Nigel writes.....The
previous day we had walked for about 7 hours and therefore arrived in the
dark, pitch dark! Pretty scary last hour or so, so when we woke up we
found ourselves in the middle of the rain forest - just our party - the
only word to explain it was 'Wow'! This is a very new experience and the
team of porters supporting us already are demonstrating how very good they
are.
Debbie writes... Despite Simon's injured calf muscle, he performs
miracles in terms of scaling and descending sheer vertical cliffs. Just
how does he do it? The team is great - all in good spirits, all lending a
helping hand and all motivated about summitting!
Simon
writes... Walking out of the tents after arriving at Umbwe caves in
the dark was an experience. Since we had arrived in the mist and
dark and fallen into our tents, we found our tents perched on an escarpment
with falls in all directions. Fortunately there was not much
wandering around at night since we were all exhausted from the muddy
scrabble that we called hiking. We came to realise fairly quickly
that our cook, Paul, was soon to put any of the cooks on 'Ready Steady
Cook' to shame. What he was able to create in a small tent from one gas
bottle was truly fantastic. Three dozen eggs were carted up and down
the mountain and every morning there was fruit, eggs and toast to
accompany the tea, coffee, milo and hot chocolate. Chicken and chips
at 4,100 metres was still to come, along with the hot soups, the potato
stews and pasta dishes. Our impressions of our team of porters under
Julius was beginning to form and they were a great team! We had been
close to Kilimanjaro - we can't call it Kili unless we have summitted (a
new verb for me) - and had not seen the mountain.
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Lisa writes....I am sooooo glad we arrived in the dark! We were camped in a very precarious position with our tents teetering on what seemed to be very muddy cliffs. Thank God I did not need a loo break during the night! But we were the only people there which did make it quite pleasant and we were treated to a very pleasant breakfast by our cheerful cook, Paul - who even wore all the garb!
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Martin writes... Officially only day two on the
mountain - after
yesterday's marathon trek through the rain forest, today eased up as we
neared the rim of the rain forest. The scenery changed and through the
clouds we caught our first glimpse of Mt Kilimanjaro. It was good to be heading up
the mountain again - the team were excited, even after a tough day
yesterday, and after seeing our 'summit', even more motivated.
) First glimpse of Kili |
) Moving through the alpine rain forest |
Ann Marie writes... All looked very different in the daylight, but shortly after leaving our 'jungle' camp, we were scaling vertical rock faces before glimpsing the true face of Mt Kilimanjaro. Hmmm, that is a bit bigger than Ben Nevis!!
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) Enjoying our packed lunch |
) Omari - Debbie's hero |
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Days summary:
Ascended: 1,079m
Descended: 66m
Trekking time: 6 Hours 22min
