Day 2 - Monday 4th September - Umbwe Caves to Barranco Wall at an altitude of 3850m – 6km- 4 to 5 hour

 

This stretch should have taken us 5 hours, but we managed it in 7 hours 15 minutes, just enjoyed the scenery so much!! Had it rained as much as the first day it would have taken us 9 hours. It was a very tough climb along mountain ridges, which in places were no more than a metre wide with 200-metre drops on either side, but very densely forested that for most of the time you did not know the drops were there, thank goodness.

                                                           

Impatiens Kilimanjari

                                                            

 Old Mans Beard

                                                           

                                                                        Everlasting

                                                                   

                                                                        Heather

                                      Moorland with Giant Groundsels in the foreground

                                                                           and 

                                  a different view of Kilimanjaro in the background      

Mid-morning, we came out of the rain forest into Heather, but the change was so sudden that it looked like a line had been drawn and the different vegetation had agreed that they would not encroach on the other's territory. We came from a world of Old Man’s Beard, about ten varieties of ferns, Camphorwood as big as 40 metres and a girth of up to 8 metres, Lemonwood, Wild Poplar and Podo (Yellowwood) trees, flowers like Kilimanjaro Gladioli (“Busy Lizzy”) Forest Moss and creepers to a world of heather, fynbos, conifers, everlasting flowers, red hot pokers, mountain thistle, ancient 9-metre endemic giant Groundsel’s like the Senecio Johnstonii and Senicio Vulgaris, Giant Lobelia, which can grow as high as a giraffe, to name but a very few. Soon after this vegetation change, we came around a corner and there was Kilimanjaro resplendent before us with no cloud to hide her beauty and she kept us company for the rest of the day.

                                                                 Groundsel Flower

 At the 6-hour mark, I had my first mental challenge when we could see the Barranco camp and when I asked our guide how much longer, Stephen said “Bado kidogo” (a little while), when pressed for real-time he reluctantly said at least another hour, just the thought of another hour, now that was a mental challenge!

 The closer we got to the camp the bleaker and rockier the terrain became, but the saving grace was the views of the mountain, the glaciers and the peak.

 At last, we get to camp right beneath the great mountain and to our right as we looked at Kili was the Barranco Wall it was just that, but not your commoner garden wall, a massive rock wall nearly 500metres high, that Stephen tells us we have to scale and he adds we will need our gloves tomorrow as there will be a lot of scrambling and it will be very cold and the rock is very rough and sharp, pleasant thoughts to go to bed with.

 At around 17h00 the cloud came down, or rather up the mountain and it became very cold our noses, feet and hands gave us a clear message, “wrap up warm tonight or else” surprising that we did not have nightmares that night, one advantage of being totally exhausted.

 Three birds have adapted to the climatic conditions and rely heavily on the climbers for their daily rations, they are the White Neck Raven, the Alpine Chat and the Seed Eater, and you will also see Bearded Vultures and Lammegai’s riding the thermals.

The end of day 2, to bed exhausted.