Day one of the hike is now behind us! After a pretty rocky
night of sleep (I blame jet lag) we got up to finish packing, loaded our gear
into the bus, and headed to the Marangu gate. It was about an hour drive from
the hotel to the gate, giving us a glimpse of the Tanzanian landscape.
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| View of Mt. Kilimanjaro from the hotel immediately before heading out. |
We had to register at the gate before we could get started,
and then we waited for our guide to check in and get the crew ready (in
addition to the guide, we have two assistant guides, a cook, and eight porters
to carry our gear).
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| Stops along the way on the Marangu route, with elevations and estimated time of hiking. Estimations were all lies. |
While we waited, we wandered around the area before the
gate and saw the plaque commemorating the first European to reach the summit.
There was also a plaque for his guide and porters, which was nice. I asked our
guide if anyone knew who the first person was to reach the summit; he said that
the local tribe used to go up there to hunt. I don't know if they summited or
just got close (I can't imagine we'll see a lot of big game at 20,000 ft), but
since the first European had guides and porters, somebody obviously knew the
way.
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| Hans Meyer |
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| Plaque to the guides and porters of Meyer's trek |
The first part of our hike was nice. It was in the
rainforest, but we didn't get rain and it wasn't too humid. I started the hike
with a sun hat and using poles, but the hat got too hot and I still haven't
really figured out the point of the poles, so I didn't use them for long.
Anyway, we went nice and slow, reaching our spot for lunch around 1 (with
frequent stops to take pictures).
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| Starting the trek. Don't I look all official and whatnot? |
We started to exit the rainforest in the second half of the
hike, and started to see monkeys, which were fun. We stopped for about fifteen
minutes at one point to watch them and take pictures.
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| Monkey. Isn't it cute? |
We reached Mandara huts in the afternoon and had a brief tea
break before we headed out to a crater to take some pictures.
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| Mandara Huts, 2720 meters |
We did see into Kenya,
but unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see the summit. Our guide says maybe
tomorrow.
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| Looking into Kenya |
Then it was back for dinner (and by now it was getting cold outside)
which was potato and cucumber soup, fried fish, potatoes, vegetables, and
bananas. It was quite good. We hung out in the dinner hut for a while talking
and getting the brief for tomorrow, but then it started to rain, so we all
decided it was time for bed (it's 8 pm as I'm writing this). Here's the overview of the day's hike, according to my GPS watch:
In all, a good day, and I'm really looking forward to
continuing the hike tomorrow.
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