January 12th 2007

Walking Time 4:30 hours / Altitude Difference 1800 - 2990 m / Temperature 25° C / 3 hours Rain

Day X (the first of many to follow) finally had arrived. It was time to start our ascent all the way to the top – or maybe not (all the way)...

I’ll be writing my travelogue as seen by a person who isn’t an expertise at mountain climbing and one who also hates camping (many mountain climbers might laugh at the „problems“ we coped with and some campers might not understand why I prefer to sleep in a warm and comfy motel room instead of a cold sleeping bag lying in a damp and partly frozen tent!).

Michel, me and our complete equipment for the ascent

We said our good-byes to Michel. He wished us good luck and we wished him a nice time while catching up with his wife who was already relaxing on the beach of Mombasa!

He left shortly before we got picked up on time at 9 am African Time (equivalent to 9:45 am European Time!). We drove to Moshi and the rest of the crew got in. Surprisingly another hiker also joined us - Martin from England. He was 32 years old and worked as a computer programmer for Siemens. He was single and always worked until he had enough money to start a new adventure – pretty cool. He had visited the Himalaya, Cambodia, New Zealand, South America and etc, etc, etc.. He actually didn’t have any equipment with him whatsoever, which left us thinking. And he wanted to do the ascent in 6 and not in 7 days like us…?

 Later on the yet another hiker (no surprise anymore!) joined our group – it was Baz from the world renowned town of Ipswich in England. He too, had journeyed around the world and had actually met his German girlfriend in South Africa. Baz, whose real name was Barrie, was 34 years old and lived with his girlfriend in Nuremberg, Germany, where he studied.

Machame Gate

After buying several goods on our way (meat hanging outside on a hook…) we arrived at the Machame Gate. We had to register ourselves (like at all camps) and finally started to hike the mountain. We received a lovely packed lunch box which had everything in it to get you full although I wasn’t really familiar with all the tasty stuff inside.

We walked through the rainforest and got acquainted with each other. It was a very nice and relaxing start. We had to walk slowly and I found that pretty hard to do. But our guide always told us, "Pole, pole!" – slow, slow.

Beautiful scenery, all easy going, until it started to rain. Not much only a light rain so that we only put on our ponchos. That was a very big mistake which we were taught later on. It starting to pour – raining cats and dogs actually. At that time we didn’t have any chance to put on our rain pants anymore. We were wearing water-proof boots but the water was running in them over the top – shit! Then it was time for our lunch box which we ate standing under a tree while it poured and poured and poured. Well, the bread inside wasn’t dry at all…

Our English friends were hit more severely than we were because they didn’t even have jackets in their day packs with them. At some time I took Baz’s camera and wallet and put in my dry backpack.

Martin & Baz

After reaching the Camp Machame everybody’s mood had risen all of a sudden – it had stopped raining. Well, I was thinking to myself that is was normal to rain while you walked through the rain forest and wasn’t worried at all. The campsite was divided so that each group was separated from the other ones – and it was very clean.

Tina smiled although our boots were soaked - but the best was yet to come. The duffel bag which had all of our clothes in it had just one small error – an error only if carried upside-down. All the water had run down the sides and into the seams of the zipper – double shit – everything was wet!

Seeing our tent for the first time I thought to myself, „Oh, looks a little bit cozy doesn’t it!“ But, hey -  no problem – I knew everything would work out great – of course it would, wouldn’t it? So we scattered our clothing over the rocks to dry them because the sun had come out again!

The crew made us some tea and fresh popcorn and everything was pretty cool again!

Afterwards we had spaghetti Bolognese in our „dining room tent“ when all of a sudden Tina cried out. “What’s wrong?” „I don’t know!“ But then we all saw what had happened – half of Tina’s tooth had broken off. Tina was a wreck – what next?  

And then the sun went down. We finished our dinner and had to learn our next lesson. After the sunset dew immediately settled in and EVERYTHING we had tried to dry was as wet as it was when we had arrived…

Tina and I said goodnight and went into our tent. I believed that it wouldn’t rain anymore tomorrow because we had left the rainforest. Tina was exhausted, and feeling totally down and unsure and… Tina fell asleep – it took me a while.  I had to get out in the middle of the night after drinking so much water – what a stress. But wow – I saw a sky that I had never seen before – were there really so many stars up there? Shooting stars by the minute. Tina who already had a headache had nightmares afterwards, too. My breathing was pretty heavy and in the morning I started to get cold  inside my sleeping bag. I slept without my clothing and had the shorter of the two foam matresses – the coldness coming up from the ground. Unfortunately it would not be the last night I was to be cold…

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