January 10th/11th 2007

Finally, we were ready to start our adventure! Matthi picked us up very early in the morning and drove us to the airport in Stuttgart. Thanks to checking in using the internet everything was easy going. Our flight to Amsterdam was quite the opposite – there was a storm raging and it rained like hell. Our little KLM Cityhopper bounced up and down so hard that even Tina got sweaty hands…

The airport in Amsterdam is very beautiful and actually has very many flower shops (“Flowers from Holland”). We even could have bought ourselves a pair of original wooden shoes, although I guess they wouldn’t have really come in handy on this vacation. We settled for a small bottle of Jameson – no harm in taking a warming Whiskey with you…

After 8 hours of flying (it was a day flight) over all different types of beautiful landscapes ranging from plains, over the Alps and the great Sahara desert we landed at the Kilimanjaro-Airport. I had received two application forms for a visa from our travel agency – they were white. Tina had noticed that everybody else was filling out green ones and said so. I said that it wouldn’t matter because they were actually all the same. Well, after standing in the queue we finally reached the desk and quickly learned that bureaucracy had by now also hit Tanzania. We had to fill out green forms and stand back in the queue – shit. The funny thing was that the lady at the desk didn’t even glance at our forms but only showed great interest in the $ 100 we had to pay!

A pleasant taxi driver from our hotel drove us there using extremely broad roads which had extremely big holes in them. We arrived at our hotel at 11 pm and actually hadn’t seen anything of Tanzania yet. And btw, where was the Kilimanjaro anyway?

In our room I shoved our two separate beds together removing the night tables (we were on vacation, right?!).

Afterwards we laughed at the awkward-looking shower construction. Although the shower functioned more than good.

We went to the hotel patio and enjoyed our „welcome beer“ sitting outside at “t-shirt-temperature”. Although we were very excited we both fell asleep almost immediately. We woke up the next day feeling good and ready to enjoy our day off!

We went to the patio where we were to have our breakfast – and there it was – oh my God – the mountain which we were to ascend showed itself for the first time in all its magnificence! Btw, this picture can be seen under the following link (the webcam had been mounted just above our breakfast table):

http://www.kilicam.com/

We had a hearty breakfast and met Michel. He had just come back from the ascent. He was totally worn out and said that he wouldn’t even do it again for 10,000 Euros in cash. It must have been very strenuous – also because of the weather: a lot snowfall and sleet. He asked us if we had climbing irons with us – they would definitely come in handy. Oh, well, no – we didn’t. Tina was getting more and more nervous listening to his tales. But he also told us that it had been a very unique and fascinating experience for himself.

After breakfast we decided to take a small walk. Several Natives passed us by and I always greeted them saying “hello” or “good morning”. An older man took the time and explained how the greeting ceremony in Tanzania was done. One said, “Jambo, habari?” and the other one replied “Nzuri!” – only if you did feel good of course! We missed our travel agent who came to our hotel at 10 am and left 3 minutes later – well, what the heck (it was actually the only time that anybody was ever on time)! He came back and we discussed everything and also met our guide “Deusi”. It would be only the two of us doing the ascent being accompanied by a crew consisting of 8 porters. He was pleased to find out that we had all the necessary equipment with us – it made him happy and us, too.

In the afternoon we took a taxi to Moshi. We wanted to do a bit of sightseeing in the city but actually experienced something totally unknown to us until that day. We got out of the taxi and there we were in the middle of a pulsating city full of people, cars, trucks, bicycles and EVERYBODY was looking – no actually staring – at us. Tina and I were the only tourists in the entire city to be seen. It was totally crazy – they were eyeing us as if we were from outer space – it was actually kind of scary  - and we both had a feeling of being somewhere where we weren’t supposed to be. Don’t get me wrong – nobody wanted to harm us – we were just in a totally strange and unknown world. I guess the citizens of Moshi just couldn’t understand what two white people were doing in their city! We started walking up and down the streets and were so astonished at everything we saw. Everybody was doing something “strange”. One guy pushed a bicycle packed with garbage past us. Another one was riding a bicycle to start a generator so that yet another could use a small machine. A truck driver backed up and damaged a wheel-barrow. The driver and the owner screamed at each other for a while until finally the driver just got in his truck and drove away. All of a sudden a boy came up and wanted to sell us a self made walking cane – the funny thing about the cane was that there was a foot long knife hidden in the shaft, which he was pretty proud of. Pretty nice but not actually allowed where I come from – in Germany they do have something against carrying deadly weapons hidden in walking canes. So I said no thank you! Another one wanted to give us a tour of the city – he didn’t take no for an answer but left us after receiving $ 2 from me. After that we were close to becoming nervous wrecks and jumped into the next taxi we could flag down and headed for our hotel. There were two Keys Hotels in Moshi so we ended up at the wrong one first. After the taxi driver got the right address we finally arrived “home” after driving through a jungle where there was no housing whatsoever – “let me outta here…”. I didn’t take any pictures of this adventure because I just didn’t have the guts to get my camera out…

At this point I would like to say that we got to meet so many beautiful people in Tanzania, which were always willing to help, who were friendly and obliging and who were just happy to be alive, despite the fact that they truly lived a life in hardship. Their constant smiles radiating true contentment. This was one of the most moving experiences I witnessed during this journey. And I’d like to try to always keep these pictures in mind.

Back at our hotel we met up again with Michel, discussed a little more and had our last beers (only before the ascent of course!). Nervous, unsure and totally worn out from the day’s happenings we went to bed and fell asleep immediately...

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