I really don’t know what we were thinking. Somehow, we knew since the beginning that we would give Mt. Kilimanjaro the old college try. It stood there, standing at nearly 20,000 feet, blocking our view of Kenya. With the one year mark of this trip nearly upon us, we ponied up what felt like our life savings (just wait till we post our budget numbers for Tanzania) and embarked on what was no doubt, a once in a lifetime experience…

Leaving Dar Es Salaam the day prior and arriving after dark to the town of Marangu we started the trip a bit harried. Not able to choose our gear and get briefed the day before departure, we rushed the day of departure to squeeze all that stuff in. We arrived to the park gate at 2:30pm, 30 minutes before it closed and several hours after the others who began hiking that day reached the first camp. Great start. Oh, did I mention that it began to rain the moment we stepped onto the trail….nice.

Mount Kilimanjaro stands a proud 5895 meters above sea level and is considered by some to be “every-man’s Everest.” The climb is not technical which allows people like us to take up the task but is still a serious undertaking. Often climbed round trip in as few as 5 days, we opted to take the popular Marangu (called the Coca-Cola route because of its popularity) route but to use 6 days instead of 5 to allow for extra acclimatization. The other reason we chose the popular route was that it has a-frame huts for sleeping meaning increased comfort (warmth) and decreased costs as there was no need to pay for extra porters to carry up camping equipment.

The first days walk, about 3 hours, took us from the park gate at 1970 meters (6400 feet) above sea level to the Mandara camp at (9,000 feet) 2700 meters, nearly 1000 meters in altitude. Now above 2700 meters we were officially “at” altitude. The line is considered to be 2500 meters, the same air pressure you breathe each time you fly in a commercial aircraft. We arrived late and wet, but not at all exhausted from the walk and in fact a bit surprised we had climbed so high so fast. The trail had been very smooth and easy and our biggest regret with arriving so late was that we didn’t have a chance to meet any of our fellow climbers, tomorrow we said as we went to sleep listening to the falling rain on our a-frame…