Despite
clothes rationing, we were still slightly over the prescribed porters carrying a load of
15kgs. We checked our Mombasa holiday suitcase into the baggage room at the
hotel. We also checked in our passports, cash for safekeeping, and our air
tickets for onward trip confirmation by the hotel receptionist.
Moshi is 900m above sea level and is one of
the key staging points for climbing Kilimanjaro on a number of routes.
We were scheduled to depart by Landrover at
09h30, but Africa time came into play and we left at 10h30 for Umbwe gate.
Again, we thought the gods were sending us a message when on the way we were unable to
get past a truck that was stuck in the mud on the narrow road, and of course,
there were a dozen experts telling the driver what to do, which did not help
matters.
After half an hour Denise tells me she has to
go. There are a lot of small-scale farmers on the lower slopes of Kili, growing
coffee, vegetables, mealies, and the like so Alan visits one of these and asks the
owner if Denise can use his toilet, and he was delighted to oblige, We gave
him consideration for the favour with which he was further delighted. Denise
said the facility was immaculate and very clean.
We arrive at Umbwe gate at 11h30 and there is a
lot of activity with local ladies being hired to carry water up to our first
campsite, the Umbwe Caves. The first check is that of porter loads, we were very relieved when
our bags were found acceptable after considerable haggling between the Guides
and the authorities, for the record we weighed our backpacks and found them to
be +/-8kgs and to our surprise, Denise was also found to be carrying the same
weight so we had nothing to complain about. Each Porter carries +/- 25kgs on
head, in hand, and on their backs. Our team consisted, of a guide, Stephen, and an
assistant guide, Dowson, who was qualifying for his guide certificate in 3 months’
time, but doubled up as a porter. Cook - Wilson, Waiter - Charles, Porters -
Barranca, and Mzee.
The start of the climb a hive of activity
at Umbwe Gate
In addition to our gear they had to carry
tents, tables, chairs, food, fuel, as well as their own personal effects and on
many days water as well, on some days the porters would do the trip twice, once
with all the gear and a second one for water. There we were, on occasions,
battling to do a single trip, with our massive 8kgs and tired bodies.
After a lot of shouting, well wishes, good-natured banter, and jokes among our team, the guides, cook, porters, and the local inhabitants,
we eventually get underway just after 12h00 noon. The initial hike was on an
old logging road into the rain forest and we are told we should take 6 hours
for this stretch to Umbwe Caves, which is at an altitude of 2950m. At 14h00 we
stop for a packed lunch prepared by the hotel, half of which we shared with the
porters who were fast overtaking us.
Soon after lunch we hit the path and go into a
steep climb, encountering some rain, which makes the climb somewhat slippery. The
rainforest is very dense with thick vegetation and some magnificent trees. We
very soon saw why they called it a tropical rainforest. We also see a lot of
flowers, but there is a notable apparent lack of animal life even birds were
scarce, it was very quiet and all you could hear was our heavy breathing and
the raindrops falling in the undergrowth.
Rain Forest Day 1
In fact, there is still a lot of game in the
Kilimanjaro National Park, it is reported that there are +/- 220 elephants now
compared to 1000, twenty years ago and they have been sighted at 3000m altitude,
in addition, there are leopards and monkeys.
The
climb was tough and we arrived at our campsite after 5 hours and 45 minutes
fairly exhausted, but with a sense of achievement and we thought if it is all
like this we should not have a problem, little did we know.
As we entered camp Denise said she could smell
popcorn, Alan thought, is it possible she is hallucinating, as we were told it is one of the signs of altitude sickness and according to our guides often led to the decision to descend, a short time later we are greeted by
two German climbers who were eating popcorn. They were very surprised to see a woman on this route and
asked Denise what was her heart’s desire, to which she replied a nice hot
shower, a full body massage, and a glass of wine to go with the popcorn, they
replied ”shame you will only get one wish granted and that will be the popcorn”
Our first night on the mountain was a night of
discovery, firstly the size of the tent, it was a mission in itself to get down
and in and even harder to get up and out, and as the journey went on this event
almost became “mission impossible” as our knees and backs began to take the strain. We
then had to prepare our sleeping bags, the inner sheet, and our clothes for the
next day.
We had our daily briefing from our guide, Stephen, on what to expect
the next day, prepare our water bags by dosing the water with chlorine tablets and
disguising the taste with a flavouring energy drink powder like Game, although
we did not find the straight water with the chemical all that bad, it must be the
acquired taste from our RSA municipal water supplies.
Two man Tents
Other discoveries included, the long drop
toilet, which was just a slot in the ground, with no seats. We only learned how to
aim straight in the squatting position on the last day and by then we could
hardly balance, obviously lots of climbers before us were also bad aimers as
there were brushes and water to clean up after you have done your business. The
signal to tell others that the loo was occupied seemed to vary at each camp,
one had a hook on which you could hang your jacket, and in another a bucket was placed right in the entrance, another tactic was to use the broom strategically
placed across the entrance. We did see, a climbing group who had a proper canvass sit-down loo as part of the porter’s load, we thought it a
bit much, but I sure would have loved to use it although the cold did not
encourage one to linger in the loo.
One of Denise’s bright ideas came into use today
and was to prove a godsend in days to come, Wet Wipes, they at least allowed us
not to offend those with sensitive noses and a keen sense of smell.
Whilst there were no showers, we did get two
bowls of hot water, no bigger than a large soup bowl, in the morning and the evening.
Our waiter Charles would call out “water for bath” Were we disappointed the
first time we saw our “bath water”
What was truly amazing was what came out of our
kitchen courtesy of Wilson our cook/porter, pre-dinner snacks of popcorn or
roasted peanuts, choice of coffee, tea, or Milo. For dinner on day one, for example, we had a three-course meal of fresh leek soup, beef stew, potatoes,
spaghetti and spinach, and sweet Tanzania bananas for dessert. Every day we had one gourmet
meal in the evening a cooked breakfast, porridge, fruit, eggs Fried, omelette,
scrambled, and packed lunch, they say you lose your appetite at high altitudes,
but our food was so well cooked and presented that we did not lose our appetite
at all.
Another discovery was how to get comfortable in
our sleeping bags, utilising our down jacket bag as a pillow and sleeping in
most of our clothes for the following day. The tent only just accommodated two
people and our personal kit bags and our backpacks. We also had to keep our
boots in the tent otherwise they would freeze up overnight.
Day 1 is complete and full of learning, only five more days.
