Climb for Hospice

Mkubwa Forest Camp to Shira One

My first thought when I awoke this morning was, “I cannot believe that people willfully go camping“. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people?! It was a relief to get out of that tent and onto the trail! Or so I thought…

Today we hiked to Shira One camp. It was a long day and our first real experience with extended bouts of mondo uphill hiking. It started out beautifully as we wandered through the last bit of rainforest, then came out of the trees and looked into a mountainous landscape of dried grasses and crunchy, stubby green trees.

The hard part, though, was that when you looked around, you would catch glimpses of wee tiny, tiny bugs scaling up long, steep paths ahead of you. But they weren’t bugs, they were our porters, and they were walking where we were heading. I saw a lot of this:

If you look reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally closely you can see tiny white spots on the photo. That’s where we’re going. Up there. All day. I think that spending all day watching people hike the trail ahead is the outdoorsy equivalent to walking that last hallway toward the electric chair. “Daunted girl hiking!”

Anyway, it was HOT today. VERY hot. There wasn’t much in the way of shade, so the sun just beat down on you and (I believe) made a faint ‘wom-wom-wom’ sound like some sort of Star Trek heat laser… gun… thingy. Whatever! It was hot, ok?

So, after winding and wending, climbing and cresting, we finally see it; Mt. Kilimanjaro. Its taken two days of hiking to get to this point, and my god, it was incredibly beautiful. It also seemed to be about a year away! This was my first reaction to it:

That’s Kili in the background there… days away. DAYS AWAY.

Anyway, after about 5 hours of hiking we stumbled into Shira One camp, (not the prettiest campsite, but damn, what a view!)

signed the log book (that’s what’s in that green hut-lookin’ thing on the left), snarfed on some snacks to re-energize us (popcorn and cake! Best. Snacks. EVAR.), then fell into our tents to bitch about the End of Day Two. And for the first time in my life, I was grateful to see the inside of a tent.

Tomorrow: Ms. Destro VonDustenstein  gets smart…