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 Mt. Kilimanjaro (Uhuru) foreground; Mt. Meru Background All told it was 37 hours getting home. Starting with an encore of the killer taxi ride from Blue Bay to Zanzibar International. Short hop plane ride to Dar Es Salaam. Transfer from domestic to international terminal. Flight from Dar Es Salaam to Nairobi. 8 hours there. Nairobi to Amsterdam. Amsterdam to Dulles.
Rachel had the window seat on the flight to Nairobi. We got one last glimpse of Uhuru from the air and Rachel took a killer picture. This is a fitting end to the blog.
Meet Cathy, who’s lived most everywhere From Zanzibar to Berkeley Square. But Patty’s only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights. What a crazy pair! But they’re cousins Identical cousins all the way One pair of matching bookends Different as night and day.
I watched the Patty Duke show on TV as a kid. It’s funny what sticks in your mind. Cathy was wild, and had been to all the best places in the world. Zanzibar was an exotic name that must have been in my subconsious ever since. While I was planning the Africa trip and found out Zanzibar was part of Tanzania and easily accessible, the deal was done. We were going there!
After saying our goodbyes to Sara and John in Arusha we boarded a small plane to Zanzibar International. After landing we made our way to the waiting van and took a hair-raising 45 minute ride to the Blue Bay resort on the other side of the island. Nobody got killed, so I guess it was a good trip.
We arrived at the hotel and were shown to the room. Our room had a view of the Indian Ocean with its snow white sand beach and picturebook turquoise water. Flower petals on the four poster king size bed completed the mood.
I had mostly recovered during the safari from my hike, but a few days of absolute relaxation on Zanzibar were the perfect punctuation to a the adventure. Walking on the beach, sitting by the pool, and enjoying dinners in the outside restaurant. We made one excursion into Stone Town but that was it for cultural exploration.
Before long it was time to go home.
 
Rachel was flying to Arusha as we were hiking down the mountain. I didn’t know how tired I’d be after the hike and I said that I would come to meet her if I could. If not there would be someone holding a sign with her name on it. She was supposed to get in the car with whoever that was. She took that one OK.
As it turned out, I had to break away from the party in the hotel to go with Gideon to meet her at the airport. Poor me. Her flight was uneventful, we drove back to the hotel, and after meeting a few of my friends and having a bite to eat in the restaurant we crashed for the night.
The next day, we were moving to a nearby hotel, meeting our good friends Sara and John Stubbing from England, and going on a 5 day safari together. Sara and John were flying in from Kenya where they were finishing another safari.
That trip will be memorialized somewhere else
(put link here).
It was actually spectacular in its own way, but in a different way than climbing the mountain. We parted company back in Arusha after it was over; Sara and John headed home to England and Rachel and I headed to Zanzibar.
Looking back I realize I controlled the things I could control: I did lots of research, trained hard, and brought the right things. But in the end it was the things I couldn’t control that had the greatest impact on the trip.
First, our group. It was a random collection of people from around the world. Through the whole trip I can’t remember a single word spoken in anger. At different times everyone felt tired, sore, and sick. People could have been selfish and short with each other. Instead they pulled together. Trish, George, Sean, Tony, Greg, Stefano and Giuseppe: I’m glad we all wound up on the trip together.
Secondly, our outfitter. You can only learn so much from reading websites and then you choose someone and put your safety in their hands. I took a chance on Kiliwarriors and it paid off. They were professionals and great people. They set the tone. Thanks Wilbert, Hosea, Kanini, Eben, Carol, Faraja, Gideon, and all the rest of your group.
So in the end, two thoughts. There was another thing we could all control: our outlook. And it all came down to people.
Poa kichizi kama ndizi
I don’t remember how long it took to drive back to Arusha. Maybe and hour, maybe three. A shower and clean clothes were looking pretty good.
I’d left a small bag with a change of clothing and some things for the safari behind in the hotel, so I retrieved that, went to the room, got cleaned up, and took stock of how dirty everything else was. I took a big bag of trail clothes to the hotel laundry (and also gave them my boots to clean) and wandered down to the open air restaurant balcony. Our hiking party trickled in and Wilbert joined us as well.
We discovered the Arusha Burger: a big, juicy cheeseburger with a couple of giant slices of ripe avocado on top and served with a pile of french fries. Goes perfectly with a Kilimanjaro beer. Considering both the food and the company it was one of the best meals of my life.
We spent most of the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the restaurant balcony and reliving the trip.
 Arusha burger, Kilimanjaro beer, Stefano and Wilbert
 Heading down the trail from Mweka Camp We were allowed to sleep in until 8:00 am and awoke to find the camp buzzing with activity. This was a large campsite with many groups. Kiliwarriors were the center of attention with their song and dance.
We were on the trail by 9:00. We had 5.5 miles to walk and we would drop another 4,500 feet of elevation by lunchtime. The trail was steeply down but well constructed and tended for the heavy traffic. Still, it was slippery from the high humidity and mist and we were glad, again, that it wasn’t raining for that would have made it treacherous. We walked through rain forest with mosses, vines, flowers and lush green growth. The trail eventually turned into a road which led us to the waiting porters and the vans to take us back to the hotel.
 Trail's end Kanini was there, with his trademark huge smile and multicolored wig, to greet and congratulate me one last time. Kiliwarriors had set up a private space near the park exit for our lunch and final ceremony with more singing, dancing, and celebration. Other groups, as they walked past, would stop and watch and take pictures and movies of all our activity. We received certificates, tipped and thanked all the guides and porters who had made our success, safety and enjoyment possible, said our last good-byes, and signed out of the park.
 Kanini  Celebration  Wilbert leads the final ceremony
 View from Stella Point We were up by 6:00am and underway soon after a quick breakfast. It turned out that nobody else had slept at that altitude either. Many things had frozen, including the camp’s water filter and some of my companions’ water bottles and Ipods. Today we would walk 7.6 miles and drop 8500 feet in altitude.
 Looking back towards camp from Stella Point It was a bright, sunny morning and we paused at Stella point for some pictures before heading back down the mountain. The way down was dusty and more like skiing through the scree than walking. After a couple of hours of this my thighs, which had been mostly unused on the way up, were complaining. My knees hurt too. It was harder going down than going up. We passed many hikers on their way up, and encouraged them. They were congratulating us.
We stopped for a brief rest and change of clothing (taking off our arctic wear and putting it in the duffel bags) at Barafu camp before continuing down the mountain toward Mweka camp where we would spend the night. All routes on our area of Kilimanjaro descend by a common route, not the same route they take on the way up. It quickly got warmer and the air seemed to be saturated with oxygen.
I was concerned about calling Rachel to tell her I was alright. We didn’t have the satellite phone at Crater Camp because Wilbert carried it, and had gone down the mountain with Trish and George the day before. Hosea could communicate with Wilbert by walkie talkie but that was it. Hosea arranged for Wilbert to leave the phone at our lunch site so that I could call when we got in.
We were back in civilization for lunch, defined by the ability to buy water, coca cola, and beer from a park ranger who was stationed in a hut there. Tony, Greg and Sean bought cokes and beers for our entire expedition and I can’t tell you how good that beer tasted. I reached Rachel, who had only been moderately worried, and told her as much as I could in a few minutes. I was really glad she hadn’t been waiting a day to hear form me.
The scenery in the afternoon was wide open heath and moorland and we arrived at Mweka Camp in mid afternoon. We found Trish and George, and saw Trish smiling for the first time in many days. We could take showers, buy beer, and we had folding chairs to sit in at the campsite. We were back in the montagne forest. Luxury!
 Trish and George at Mweka Camp We played cards again that night for the first time in awhile. I had stopped taking Diamox that morning and slept the whole night through…probably the best night of the whole trip.
As we finished descending the scree slope and walked to the campsite, Kanini and the other porters came running out to congratulate us. It was their victory as much as it was ours. Kanini insisted on taking my pack, as he always did, and carried it the rest of the way and showed me to my tent.
We were the first ones in, and snacks were waiting. We had popcorn and hot ginger tea. I went to the tent and pulled out my journal but I was tired, my eyes were stinging, and all I could scrawl was ‘ successfully climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro!’. I lay down in the sleeping bag and listened to music, trying unsuccessfully to relax and fall asleep. I had hoped to walk over to the crater itself but that would have been another 1.5 hour round trip and I decided against it. Giuseppe and Stefano came into camp an hour or so later.
I did walk around a little, admiring the view of Furtwangler glacier just beside our camp.
 Furtwangler glacier It was extremely cold. They made one of the best dinners of the whole trip…french fried potatoes and grilled cheese & tomato sandwiches. Not much would have tasted good that night. Only a small number of the porters were at Crater Camp with us and only two of the guides. We went straight to bed.
One of the special experiences of the trip, in addition to the scenery, was seeing the stars at night. The sky was exceptionally clear and dark as we got higher and higher and there were an unbelievable number of stars. That night, at 18,500 feet, I looked up and saw one of the most incredible views of my lifetime. It was as if someone had painted the Milky Way with a bright white wide paintbrush from one side of the sky to the other. The stars were so dense in every direction!
I don’t know how cold it was that night. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was well below 0degF. Anything I cared about protecting went in the bottom of the sleeping bag, including camera batteries, Rachel’s tanzanites, and water bottles. Like usual, the Diamox was sending me outside to the bathroom every couple of hours. I don’t think I really slept at all.
Showtime.
We were up, dressed, packed and in the breakfast tent at 5:30am. The tents were frozen on the outside. So were we. Nobody said much at breakfast and soon we were on our way. We were going to gain over 4,000 vertical feet to the summit at 19,340ft.
 Jon all bundled up  Sunrise from Barafu. Mawenzi peak in the distance.  Hosea I felt lucky. The other groups that camped here, which included all the other groups traveling the Machame and Lemosho routes, had already left for the summit before midnight with only a few hours to nap after dinner. They would hike up the mountain all night in the dark, arrive at the summit at sunrise, wait in a line to take their pictures, and then descend back to Barafu for a couple more hours of rest before descending to a lower camp for the night. We were going to summit in the early afternoon, camp in the crater, and descend at sunrise the next day.
Hosea had said to bring 3 liters of water with us since we would not be able to refill from the porters until we reached the summit and were at camp in the crater. The only water up here is what they chip off of Furtwangler glacier and melt over the stove. Hosea offered more than twice to carry my third liter and I let him.
We started walking, pole pole. One foot in front of the other. Hosea seemed to sense our (or at least my) maximum pace. We stopped a couple of times for 10 minutes to rest, but each time we would get cold, have to go into our packs for more clothing, then start walking again, get warmed up, stop to take off the extra clothes, and then get back on pace. We talked Hosea into stopping for only about 3 minutes at a time so we wouldn’t get stiff and cold. There were great views looking back down the mountain.
The weather would change constantly from clear sunshine to overcast to low clouds, to hail. We kept making our way up the mountain to our lunch stop, about 400 vertical feet below the crater rim, served on a blanket spread out on the rocks. It was hailing. We learned that Trish and George had turned back somewhere below us and that Wilbert and Faraja were staying with them.
 Lunch on the way to the summit We finished a light lunch and wanted to get back underway as quickly as possible as it was windy and probably below freezing. 45 minutes later we were at Stella point, on the crater rim at 18,800ft. Here it flattens out and the hardest part of the climb is over. We could see the summit (Uhuru) and knew we were going to make it without much trouble.
 At Stella Point We picked up our pace and finished the remaining 500 or so feet of elevation gain in an hour and a half, climbing past glaciers, through fields of spikes of ice & snow and marveling at other lunar-looking scenery.
We reached Uhuru peak, 19,340ft, at exactly 2:00pm local time, celebrated, and took pictures. We probably stayed there for 15 minutes before continuing down a steep scree slope to our camp in the crater below us.
 Jon and Hosea at Uhuru summit!  Sean, Greg and Tony  View from the summit, with our next campsite below in the crater
Barafu Camp is the departure point for the summit of Kibo. It is on a steep, exposed slope, at 15,200 feet. We arrived early afternoon into camp and the winds were fierce. The porters were struggling to erect a tent as we got there.
The ground is full of rocks and is so hard that tent stakes will not penetrate. The tents were anchored mostly with ropes tied to boulders. Not long after we arrived a huge gust picked up a four man tent and lifted it a couple of hundred feet in the air. It just swirled up there for over a minute, like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz, before falling to the ground in the valley below. In an instant the porters were running down the mountain and they brought it back intact. Later when I was sitting in my tent I felt it being lifted off the ground as well. I was glad to have been sitting there.
 Loose tent! I called Rachel on the satellite phone and told her I was well and excited about the next day. I also told her, fortunately as it turned out, not to expect me to call from the summit but the following day. It’s funny how little time you really have on the expedition and when you’re exhausted even little things like finding a guide, getting the phone set up, and making a call seem to take forever. I had not wanted her to worry if I didn’t call.
 Tony phones home  Sunset at Barafu Camp At dinner we got instructions for the next day. We would get up at 4:30am, have breakfast, and be on our way by 6am. The guides told us to wear our fleece trousers, lots of layers, and not to be late ! We were warned to take special care when walking around camp after dark as the drops are perilous and people have been killed looking for toilets and not watching where they are going.
We were all a bit worse for wear, but were mostly concerned about Trish and George, who had been steadily declining but had kept putting one foot in front of the other. Someone had run into the chatty lady from the Amsterdam airport and found out she had stayed at camp and had not attempted the summit. Her trip had been a day shorter than ours.
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