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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 […] 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 […] 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 […] 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, […] 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 […] 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 […] 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 […] 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 […] |