Today is a rest day, but not really rest. We have an extra day here at Horombo for acclimatization. Spending an extra day at altitude on the mountain here increases our odds to reach the top apparently so we figured it was worth the extra cost. Because we don't have to get anywhere really today, we got to sleep in an extra hour! Woo! It's amazing how much we love sleep right now...

Walking around camp this morning, we ran into Dave taking a bit of a break. He had successfully summited overnight but he had mixed emotions of accomplishment and the realization that it's near impossible for Chris to climb this route in his wheelchair. Unfortunately, this was later confirmed via Chris' blog entry.

At 9am, we took off for a day hike past Zebra Rock to a plateau near Mawenzi Camp. Zebra Rock is just what it sounds; it's a rock that looks like a zebra. Mawenzi on the other hand, is one of the other big peaks on Kilimanjaro which offers a much more rocky and non-snowy terrain which requires actual mountain climbing expertize to climb. The hike was 3.4km long, took us 3 hours and got us to an altitude of about 4200m. At the top of our hike, we got an AMAZING view of our journey for the next couple of days, climaxing (pun not intended) at Urhuru Peak. The weather today felt a lot like yesterday, but a little windier and much dustier along the trails.

After some pictures, we turned around and hiked for 1.5 hours back to camp. This was our first downhill experience and it was kinda tough. My thighs definitely got a workout! Tam was the only person who bothered bringing walking sticks and she said it definitely helped with both up and down hill. I've always been anti-walking sticks as I really never saw the point... My balance is pretty good and with my luck, I'd probably end up just impaling myself on them. Even still, I rented a set of sticks before the start of our trek and have them with my pack, just in case.

Once we got back here, we had lunch and I managed to get in a bit of a nap. Nothing but fun times for us up here! Health-wise, we're all still great and I think we're good to go for the summit. We've been talking to a lot of people here on their way down from successfully climbs. All their stories have definitely been encouraging...

An 8am departure means an 7am breakfast. An 7am breakfast means a ridiculous 6:30am wake-up call! 6:30am might not be ridiculous for a lot of you, but for this cushy office worker, waking up at 6:30am is VERY ridiculous! Our first mountain breakfast consisted of hot tea/coffee, porridge, bread, scrambled eggs and veggies. Apparently enough fuel for a couple of hours of hiking until lunch time which we get to carry with us today in our daypacks.

Today's terrain is through the moorlands. The land is, for the most part, pretty flat with little plants and scrubs no larger than 3 feet tall. It's a little warmer here than the rainforest yesterday, but because of the heavy cloud cover and mist (we are walking THROUGH the clouds after all!), it's definitely much wetter.

The hike today will be our longest hike distance-wise at 13km long covering a vertical ascent of over 1000m. The trek took us just a little over six and a half hours including a lunch break at the 4-hour mark leaving us at the Horombo Huts at 3780m above sea level around 2:30 in the afternoon.

As we were walking into the camp, the mist lifted for a brief 5 minutes or so leaving us an amazing view of the snow-capped Kilimanjaro summit! It looks so far away still and so high that we could not believe we were going to be at the top of that in a couple of days. While we were taking our pictures, we were passed by a guy in a tank top and shorts who basically sprinted passed us with his guide 2 minutes behind! We were shocked as that went against our 'polé, polé' mantra. We learned of the man's identity once we got to camp... His name was Dave and he was American. Dave had started at the gate this morning around the same time we left Mandara and he beat us to the camp, and was planning to hit the summit tonight! Did you get that? He was going to go up to the top of Kilimanjaro and back down in less than 24 hours. Ya. Turns out, he owns his own mountain trekking company out in Colorado and he's been climbing mountains all over the world for over 20 years. His house in Colorado is at 3500m, so this altitude is nothing for him. Dave's mission though was a recon mission for a documentary called One Revolution. He's helping a paraplegic named Chris Waddell who was planning to climb Kilimanjaro in his all-terrain wheelchair and the speed climb today was to do a quick analysis on whether or not it was going to be possible for Chris to even attempt such a feat. Great cause, crazy goals.

I'm definitely a lot more tired today as the route had some really steep and rocky sections. It was a bit of a struggle for everyone as it was the first time in the 2 days we've been hiking where everyone was walking silently with their heads down, focussed simple on left, right, left, right, left, right... The good news though is that we're half way to the top and everyone is still healthy with no issues other than being a little tired. So far so good.

Climb day!

We woke up today at our hotel in Moshi, Tanzania for a planned 9:30am departure time. The tour guys showed up a little late, but when they showed up, they showed up in a massive bus that was already half full. We were only expecting a couple of people from the tour company, but 21 of them showed up! There is a 3:1 staff to trekker ratio! 1 guide, 1 assistant guide, 2 cooks and the rest were porters. After loading up our packs, we all piled into the bus and headed for the Marangu Gate in Arusha, Tanzania about 45 minutes away. Once at the Gate, we spent some time getting organized, registered and ate. But after that, we crossed the starting point and officially set foot on Mt. Kilimanjaro!

The first day of trekking is 7.9km long covering an altitude/vertical increase of over 700m through rainforest. We lucked out as we didn't get any rain and the ground wasn't all that muddy that day. However, it was still pretty warm and humid and most of us were just hiking in shorts and a tshirt. The day's hike is supposed to be a "starter" hike as it's relatively easy and short to get us started on our week of adventure. What should take 3 hours to do, our group managed take a record time of 4 hours, 45 minutes to reach the Mandara Huts. Apparently, we took 'polé, polé' (Swahili for 'slowly, slowly') a little too seriously.

Once there, our cooks and porters got us set up in our cabins and provided hot drinks. Our cabins were definitely MUCH better than I had imagined before the trip, but still, nothing to brag home about. They were little aluminum/wood teepee structures which had 2 rooms than slept 4 people per room. They were clean, had mattresses and were semi-private. Definitely not bad. Dinner time then rolled around at which point we headed over to the mess hall cabin - a super teepee cabin full of picnic tables where all trekkers ate. We had bread and soup, potatoes, beef, green veggies and a veggie stew. Food wasn't bad either!

It is definitely colder here at night than it was at the base of Kilimanjaro... I'm guessing it's somewhere in the low 10's (Celcius) in temperature. I'm just settled in my (-5 degree C) sleeping bag in shorts and a t-shirt and it's pretty toasty. This is definitely good news as the next couple of days are gonna get colder and I'll probably need to layer up for bed. Some of the girls are already sleeping in a bunch of layers so they may be in trouble later on...

As if it was planned wonderfully by me, the Daily Mail out of the UK posted this article today about how China is slowly and quietly taking over Africa. This has been one of the stories I've been telling people already (although, I was obviously missing any statistical proof) from my little trip there.

The transportation infrastructure in Africa sucks. Most roads are dirt roads and fully of INSANE potholes. For example, our busride to Kirengero included a 20-minute offroading session. According to Ania, the offroading used to hover around 2 hours a couple of years ago. Why the decrease? Because the roads in Africa are being paved and they're being paved by the Chinese. At first I was shocked as I didn't expect that at all. But it didn't take long to realize why China is investing so much into Africa - natural resources.

I'd say it's a pretty good deal to trade some thousands of kilometers of asphalt for tons of ore, minerals and diamonds.

So I've been back for about a week and a half now and have probably told my stories about a million times, plus or minus. The smart move would've been to post this last week and just refer people here, but who said I was smart?

Our trip basically started off in Nairobi where after landing and getting through Customs and being in the country for a whole 30 minutes, the first disaster of the trip struck -- my bags decided to not come off of the carousel. The bags came round and round and round and my bags were not there. For any other trip, it wouldn't have that big of a deal, but I kinda needed the stuff in there in order to even attempt Kilimanjaro. After panicking a little bit, I went over to the lost luggage desk. This being in technologically-advanced Africa, they obviously could not even scan in my luggage tags with a computer to tell me where my bags could be. They were gone, plain and simple. After about 30-40 minutes, defeat kicked in, we gave up and started our way out of the terminal to meet up with Ania. That's one someone suggested I should take a look at the other carousel where another flight from London just landed. Thinking that would never work, I walked over and lo and behold, there was my pack and big duffel bag of donations! Turns out that when Tamara and I checked in for our flights here in Toronto, they switched the tags on our bags so my tags were on her bags and vice versa. Because we were on different connecting flights out of London, our bags got split up too, but on each others' flight! Phew!

From there we hopped on a van bus and headed to Njagaa Child Hope orphanage about an hour and half away in a small, small town called Kirengero near Nakuru. Spending a day and a half here was definitely an eye-opening experience. The 50+ kids (who ranged from 4-15 years old) living in very non-modern conditions and with so little possessions, they were the happiest, most sincere kids ever. They love foreign visitors and volunteers, not because they are bringing them stuff and to fix things, but because they generally love everyone. Once we pulled up, all the kids basically swarmed us to say hello and were so excited to show us around the place. They are one big happy family and all the kids help out around the orphanage and look out for one another. At no point, did we see any of the kids fight, get angry or upset. They were happy 100% of the time. During this happy time, we spent most of it playing with the kids, but we also had a chance to lose a race with a 12 year old Kenyan, stand on the Equator, visit their school and even took part one of their daily chores -- getting water. The orphanage doesn't have running water, nor a working well. As a result, the kids have to take a bunch of buckets and jimmy cans, hike down a rocky, dirt path for about 10 minutes to a small stream in order to have water for the day. This was NOT an easy task. Leaving the orphanage after spending just over a day there was tough and I can see how a longer stay as a volunteer would definitely create such a strong bond between you and the kids that it would be near impossible to leave.

After a long 13+ hour bus ride to Mwanza, we ended up in Ania's current hood. We had a couple of days to relax here before starting our safari and Kilimanjaro adventures. On one of the days, we visited the Watoto wa Africa orphanage and the story here was very similar to the story in Kenya. Lots of great kids living in not-so-great conditions. And like the Kenyan orphanage, when we distributed out all of your generous donations, it was like Christmas for all the kids! Everyone got new outfits, new toys and a fresh supply of medical ummm... supplies.

Then we headed to nature's zoo, the safari where wild animals roam free. 2 days was spent traveling through the Serengeti and the third day was spent driving through the Ngorongoro Crater. We managed to see a TON of different animals, but didn't see an leopards which is apparently pretty rare to see. The list I have include: monkeys, baboons, vultures, giraffes, lions, elephants, hippos, wildebeests, gazelles, antelopes, cheetahs, warthogs, storks, rhinos, jackals, flamingos and hyenas. Not bad!

Next was Kilimanjaro. I'm going to save the details for future posts, but the gist of the story is that we hiked for 6 days total with grueling summit day to the top!

And what do you do after 6 days of ridiculous hiking? You go to Zanzibar for a week to lie on the beach do nothing. We originally planned to do some more traveling through Kenya, but we got lazy and decided to stick around on the island until our trip had to end. Definitely not a bad decision...

Tam and I are back in Toronto. Our flight into London from Nairobi was delayed leaving us little time to get through the transfer points, customs, and gate check-in. We literally sprinted through half of Terminal 3 at Heathrow before the Air Canada golf cart buggy picked us up and drove us to the gate. We're not sure if the others on the same delayed-transfer made it, but we were certainly one of the last people (if not the last) to get on the plane.

Unfortunately, our bags were not able to sprint as quickly as us, or wanted to stay behind and see a little more of London. They missed our flight and nothing came out Pearson when we showed up. Good news is that they made it onto another Air Canada flight arriving in Toronto at 4pm today and they'll courier our bags out to us tomorrow. Which is fine as I didn't want to unpack and do laundry today anyways.

More updates on the trip and especially Kilimanjaro later.

We're all safe and sound here at Ania's place in Mwanza, Tanzania. So far, everything has been going as planned... Although some busy markets and bus stations in Nakuru and Nairobi where a little scary and sketchy, we've run into no major problems. Except I learned 1 valuable lesson though -- don't try to race a Kenyan regardless of whether or not the Kenyan is a 12 year old girl. The jist of the story is that I fell and I lost. Badly. But I'm ok both physcially and emotionally.

To no surprise, the internet is really really slow here and flickr isn't liking me right now so no pictures yet. We're here for another day before heading into the safari where there should be internet as well in our lodges/hotels. So maybe I'll get in another update or 2 before we take on Kilimanjaro!

See you in 3 weeks! Maybe sooner if we can find internet...

In less than 48 hours from now, I shall be on a London-bound airplane and officially, our 3 week adventure will begin. Here is our rough plan:

June 15: Land in Nairobi, Kenya. Drop off big bags and head to orphanage just outside of Nakuru, Kenya.
June 16: After spending the night at the orphanage, visit Equator, head back to Nairobi and catch an overnight bus to Mwanza, Tanzania.
June 17: Arrive in Mwanza around 3:30pm. Relax.
June 18: Check out the city and stop by the other orphanage.
June 19-21: Safari: 3 days, 2 nights with 1 night in the Serengeti and 1 night Ngorongoro Crater.
June 22-27: Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro! 6 days, 5 nights avoiding death and sickness.
June 28-30: 8am flight on the 28th to Zanzibar and spend time on the island relaxing for a few days.
June 30: Leave Zanzibar and travel overnight to Mombasa, Kenya.
July 1: Wake up in Mombasa and head to Watamu/Malindi in Kenya. Snorkel, beaches, Gede ruins.
July 2: Head back to Mombasa and spend day there visiting Fort Jesus and the Old Town. Hop on overnight bus to Nairobi.
July 3: Wake up in Nairobi, and head on bus to Lake Nakuru. Spend day in town and at park watching flamingos, leopards and rhinos!
July 4: Head to orphanage bright and early for the day, then back to Nairobi for the evening
July 5: Spend the day in city, stopping at the "Carnivore" before our 11pm flight home
July 6: Back in Toronto!