Day 4 - Wednesday 6th September - Karanga Valley to Barafu Hut at an altitude of 4700m – 4km – 4 to 5 hours

                                                Karanga Valley to Barafu Camp

Another short hike of 4 hours with a climb of 500 metres up to Barafu Hut, Barafu in Swahili means Ice, the base camp area is where three of the routes up Kili converge, before the final assault on the summit. As we would be starting our ascent at around 23h00 we would again try to have a rest, but like yesterday it was hot and very noisy, I should say at this point that if it was not for our sleeping pills we would have had a difficult time sleeping on the whole trip so we decided to use them again even though we would only have 4 to 5 hours sleep.

 We asked Stephen what time we would start the climb, he thought 22h00 was optimum, what did he know that we did not? We negotiated a 24h00 start as we felt a reasonable amount of sleep was imperative. The strain on the old body was starting to take its toll, Alan was wearing both strapping and knee supports on both knees by now, but his prosthetic knee was holding up well and the strapping was just a precaution. Denise was in good spirits and raring to go.

 I must say before we started on this trip, we both saw ourselves conversing a lot, Denise suggested that I read the De Vinci Code and then we could talk about it and debate the theories, well I read the book, but we never discussed one paragraph, let alone a chapter. One is so focused on the climb, eyes down concentrating on the next step and constantly talking to oneself, we hardly held a conversation between ourselves whilst hiking, but our guides and porters surely made up for our silence, I was amazed at what they found to talk about for hours on end, Charles our waiter would have done an Irishman who had kissed the Blarney Stone proud.

Only now did we realise the popularity of Kilimanjaro as many of the routes up and down the mountain converged on this base camp

Before having our nap, we had to prepare all our clothes and equipment for the final day and pack the balance of our gear for our descent, we were told we would be able to have a short rest on the way down.

 We got all our clothing ready that we were not sleeping in and checked our lights, and batteries for the camera made sure we had spares as they do not like the extreme cold, and filled up our water bladders with hot water as we were warned our water would freeze even though it was close to our bodies in the backpack. Little did we know how important that water was to be to us on our final ascent. The trick is to wear all your clothes and peel off layers, as you got hot or add them when you got cold. Gloves today were essential and we had chemical heaters that slide into pockets in the back of the gloves and keep your hands warm for a whole day and most importantly a headlamp.