(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
During the summer climbing season,
I fly directly from my trip to the Alps, to
Nairobi, Kenya. As we arrived in
Nairobi, a taxi took us and our gear to the
Serena Hotel, which
was located right outside the city. As this was my first visit to a 3rd world
country, Nairobi was a semi shock to me. We had hired a taxi to give us a
driving tour of the city, and we drove past a shantytown outside of Nairobi that
was home to 2 million people in very small area (that's bigger than the Seattle,
Tacoma and Portland combined!).
While waiting for the taxi to
pick us up, there was a political protest going on in front of our hotel -
video (NOTE: All videos are large, approximately
3 MB. Be patient as it downloads - it will take a long time. If you are unable
to play it using
Windows
Media Player, try opening the file using
Apple's Quicktime player.)
It was an interesting introduction to Kenya, and thankfully it was NOT
indicative of the trip.
The next day we drove
from Nairobi, to Arusha,
Tanzania in
a rather large van
. Along the way, we noticed
Masai all along the road
-- more on the Masai on the
Safari Page. Once we got to the Kenyan/Tanzanian border
,
we were hounded by people (mostly Masai) trying to sell us anything and
everything.
It was worse than
Tijuana.
Once thru, we traveled on 
(notice the Masai huts) to Arusha and our
hotel.
That day we finally met our
guide,
and we went thru an extensive
gear check. The
next day, we packed up
and headed to Machame Gate
,
the entrance point
for the "whiskey
route" up
Kilimanjaro.
Our expedition (which consisted of 72 porters!
) started up the route in some
"shoe-suckin mud"
,
whereas Vern and
Elaine
tried to mimic the porters for a while
. Eventually, we took a break
and the porters set up lunch for us
. After 6 hours of hiking thru
calf deep mud for 18 km, we made it to Machame Camp (3000 m) where our tents
were already waiting for us
and tea and popcorn were
ready in the mess tent.
Vern was his typical joking
self.
The next day we began the 9 km trek
to Shira
Camp (3840 m), it was at this point I realized how strong our porters really
were
(he's carrying my boundary bag which weighs roughly 35lbs and a water jug on his
head -- this same porter ended up carrying my stuff for the entire trip). As we
climbed along, we came across some great vegetation -- most of which is only
found on Kilimanjaro.
(Impatiens
Kilimanjari). While the morning rambled on, so did the ominous fog.
.
In the moorlands, we stumbled upon more astounding vegetation, notably Senecio
Kilimanjari
-- but I'll talk more about these plants later. At about 12:30, we stopped for
lunch
and continued our trek to
Shira. Along the way
, we found more native plants, these are Lobelia deckenii
,
which take many, many years to grow. Notice the dead leaves at the bottom of the
plants. This plant (along with the Senecio Kilimanjari) have evolved in such a
way that these dead leaves provide protection from harsh climate of Kilimanjaro.
Each winter, the leaves on top will die and fall to the side of the plant.
Hence, the taller the plant, the more leaves that are required, so in this case
the taller plants are the older plants. Anyway, we kept moving on thru the
moorlands and our view of the mountain cleared up
.
We were almost to Shira, and the vegetation became shorter
as our altitude increased into the high moorland
. Finally, we reached the
Shira Camp
and the wind was howling,
thankfully, our porters had our mess tent set up and popcorn and tea were
waiting for us
. It's tough climbing in
style, isn't it? :-) Vern brought along his famous
musical accessories, and sang to
us at each camp along the trip.
The story continues as the next day we were off to the Barranco Camp.
