Day 2: January 17

Machame Hut to Shira Camp

Elevation Change: 9,300 ft to 12,300 ft(+3,000 ft)
Estimated distance: 6km/3.75 miles

Day 2 started very early for me as I woke at at about 12:15AM with rain pounding on our tent (like traffic noises outside my Manhattan apartment window, as anyone who has visited me in New York can attest). Of course, once awake, you instantly have the need to expel any liquids you consumed earlier that night (in this case, multiple cups of hot tea). But in going outside, you wake up your tent mate, and you run the risk of getting completely soaked. So you sit there, thinking about how much you have to pee, and knowing full well that you won't sleep until you do it...

After 40 minutes, there was a break in the rain, so out of the sleeping bag, get pants and sweater on, unzip the tent, tie up hiking boots, climb out (being very careful not to get covered in mud), and then over to the trees for relief. Wow, sometimes you look back on odd things as great moments, and this was definitely one of them. As I got back into the tent, it started to pour again. Of course, my coming and going had woken up James, and now he faced the same dilemma as me. I pitied him for about as long as it took for my head to hit the pillow, where I crashed again immediately. James managed to hang on until 5, but finally cracked under the pressure (and I use that word both literally and figuratively).

Woke up at 6:30 to a great breakfast of toast, porridge, fruit and of course, more tea and coffee. Went out for some fresh air and got a brief glimpse of Kilimanjaro through the clouds. Still looks pretty high...As I was wandering, I met up with Christophe from the French party. He'd talked with some people before starting out on the hike and they'd told him the temperature had been 10 degrees F at Barafu Camp, the last camp before the summit. I think my sleeping bag is good to 20 degrees F so I expressed my concern. Christophe chuckled and said not to worry - Pierre, who had been standing beside us looking very sombre, only had a sleeping bag rated to about 40 degrees F - he was already planning to wear every piece of his clothing, whether it was completely covered in mud or not, in order to keep warm.

We were ready to go at about 8:15 but James was nowhere to be found. I'd seen him go off to the bathroom about ten minutes ago but hadn't seen him come back. A quick comment on bathrooms - at each campsite, there are wooden huts, which have a hole inside them where you can do your business. No seat whatsoever, so you have to be somewhat of a contortionist to do your number twos effectively, and the smell can be somewhat overwhelming. Knowing this, James and I had requested and paid for a portable toilet for the trip. What is a portable toilet, you may ask? Well, it is a plastic toilet seat that sits on a plastic stand, and is placed inside a small tent set up separate from all of the sleeping tents. Under the seat you attach a plastic bag, and any transactions you may need to carry out are caught in the bag. After completing the sale, you tie the bag up and deposit it into a second bag. This second bag, full of the many transactions that James and I would complete over the trip, would be carried all the way up the mountain by one of our porters. To limit the weight of the transaction bag, it was suggested that under no circumstances should you pee in the portable toilet. Also, to be fair, James and I limited our visits to the portable toilet if at all possible. Back to the story, James finally showed up about 5 minutes later, unzipping the toilet tent, with a comment that he felt like he had been trying to unhook a giant tuna for the past 20 minutes, to no avail...the joys of camping.

We started out on our hike at about 8:30. Almost immediately, we left the forest and entered a landscape of mossy ferns and heather.The temperature was definitely cooler, probably in the 60's. It was damp although the rain was very intermittent so we stayed dry for the most part.

Amani lead the way today – he and Roderick take turns being out front. One of them usually stays back each day to make sure that the camp is taken down quickly after we leave, and then catches up, usually quite quickly. The pace is extremely slow – the Tanzanians call it “pole pole” (pronounced pole-ay, pole-ay) meaning ‘slowly, slowly’. I can only compare the pace to what you would do if you were trying to sneak past a sleeping leopard without making a sound – very slow and very deliberate steps. In my hikes in Colorado, when you get to a high altitude, you tend to stop every 100 steps or so to catch your breath. But going at Amani’s pace, which is much slower, you really don’t need to stop as much, and you don’t have a chance to really feel the altitude.

As slow as we are going, it’s not long into the hike before our porters, as well as many other porters from the other hiking groups, coming zipping past us on the trail. It’s an amazing site to see these men (and all of them are men) walking past at a rapid pace, often balancing a 50-60 lb load on their heads. The trail is narrow, so as you feel a group of porters catch you up from behind, you stand aside to let them pass. As they pass, it is customary to say a greeting of “Jambo” meaning ‘good day, eh?’ or “Mambo” meaning ‘how’s it going, eh?’ (hey, I’m Canadian – I’ll use Canadian translations). The response to “Mambo” is “Poa” meaning ‘well, thanks’ or ‘pretty good, eh?’. We’d pick up a number of Tanzanian words (the Tanzanian national language is Kiswahili) over the course of the trip, but pole pole and jambo would be the words we used most frequently. You can see some of the porters ahead of me in this photo.The trail got much rockier – instead of wood and dirt, you were more likely to be stepping over rocks, and in some cases, doing short scrambles up and down areas of rocky scree. Because of the dampness, it might have been quite treacherous had we been walking at a faster pace, but ‘slow and steady wins the race’ as Marge Simpson says. We stopped for lunch around 11:30.We had been given packed lunches that morning and once again, they hit the spot. I’m not much of a boiled egg fan but the boiled egg tasted especially good. We met a few other hikers, among them Peter, a tall American who was hiking on his own (which means he had a guide and three porters – no one is alone on Kilimanjaro). Interesting guy, as he had been working as a nurse in the Congo before coming on the hike. Didn’t seem to have the clothing for a summit hike though, as we’d see him over the next few days wearing the same ripped up pants and thin jacket. We also had our first experience with a group I’ll call the “slow Germans” on this day. There are about eight of these Germans, some of whom look like they are close to 70. They have a very methodical style to hiking, each hiking with two hiking poles, and marching in almost lock step unison (left pole – right leg, then right pole – left leg, then repeat) at a pace that can only be described as “pole pole pole pole pole…”. Because they are such a large group, it is almost impossible to pass them unless they come to a full stop, so they were often followed by a tailback of between five and ten other hikers and porters. But you had to admire them for making this ascent at their age. And they did seem to be in good spirits, unlike Klaus and Uwe, the dour Germans from yesterday who always looked quite grim.

We packed up our lunch after half an hour. As an aside, I should mention that you pack up everything on Kilimanjaro – everything you bring in must come out. There are no garbage cans. You’d expect to see litter strewn everywhere, but surprisingly, there is not much litter on the ground. In fact, I saw less trash on Kilimanjaro than I would see on a typical mountain in Colorado. A lot of effort must have gone in to making the mountain this clean, quite amazing in a country without a lot of money.

The weather got a bit damper as we made the final push to Shira Camp on the Shira Plateau. Vegetation had all but disappeared by this point and the clouds had really come in so visibility was limited.Tents started appearing in the afternoon gloom, across a flat rocky plain. The tents were not set up directly on rocks (which would have made sleeping very interesting). Instead, through manual labour, any big rocks had been cleared out from each site, so the tents themselves were set up on a gravel base. We found our small camp around 2PM. Here is a photo, the portable toilet is the grey tent behind the yellow ones.We were treated to some popcorn and hot chocolate – a great way to finish the day’s hike. There were some huge white necked ravens around the camp, one of which almost got into our tent for some popcorn leftovers (I chased it away with a loud “Caw” – hey, when in Rome…).It appears these are the vultures of the high summit, as we could see groups of them surrounding many of the other tents. Here is another photo of one.Because of the lack of sleep last night, I was able to snooze for an hour or so, and then dinner was served at about 5:30. Another great meal – carrot soup followed by rice with miced beaf, beans and carrots, and then mango and orange slices. Amani came by after dinner for a little chat. We got to talking about Tanzania, and some of its history. Tanzania’s origins are as a German colony called Tanganyika, named after Lake Tanganyika on its western border. After World War I, the British took over and it became a British colony for a long period of time. In 1961, it gained it’s independence from Britain and was run by an inspirational leader named Julius Nyerere. Unlike a lot of other countries where the old tribal cultures sometimes clash, Nyerere was instrumental in uniting all of the groups (over 120) together into a unified whole. In 1964, it merged with the newly independent island nation of Zanzibar to form a new country called Tanzania (“Tan” for Tanganyika and “Zan” for Zanzibar). From what we gathered, there is some contention between Tanzania-Barra (the mainland) and Zanzibar – Zanzibarians (Zanzibarites?) have all the rights of other Tanzanians should they move to the mainland, but the reverse is not so. There is a religious divide too, as Zanzibar is almost 95% Moslem, while the mainland is split almost equally Moslem/Christian (most of the ethnic groups around Kilimanjaro, known as the Chagga, are Chirstian). Interesting stuff.

We finished up the evening by playing some Euchre (James killed me again) and crashed around 9PM. I used a Tylenol PM to sleep better, and apart from the weird hallucinogenic dreams where a raven was picking at my eyeballs, I actually got some sleep.

Read the next post: Day 3: January 18