Day 2
We woke up at 6am to a porter at our tent door bringing us our morning beverage (for me, coffee, obvi). For the record, before we left Arusha, I insisted to Stacy that she make sure they pack equipment for making real coffee, not the instant kind. Having your coffee brought to your tent is sort of awesome. I was excited to start the day. I got up, went to the bathroom, and saw that we had a great view of the mountain (the day before it was too cloudy from the rain to see the mountain). It was incredible. It seemed so far from where we were. I couldn’t believe that we would be going up to the top of it.
After we had our coffee in our tents, we got dressed and went out for breakfast. Breakfast was porridge, eggs, sausage, and bread. And, of course, more hot beverages. When we went into the tent for breakfast, it was still cold. By the time we had eaten, the sun was out and the day was warming up. I stripped down a layer to my shorts and running shoes for the hike.
The start of the hike was gorgeous. The weather was warm and sunny, we all were enjoying the warmth and the view. After about 2 hours of hiking, we stopped to take some pictures of the view. A few model shots on the rocks, Kim falling off the mountain (posed), and some scenery shots. As with the day before, our porters passed us soon after we started hiking. They were quick and wanted to get to the next camp to set up for us.
We woke up at 6am to a porter at our tent door bringing us our morning beverage (for me, coffee, obvi). For the record, before we left Arusha, I insisted to Stacy that she make sure they pack equipment for making real coffee, not the instant kind. Having your coffee brought to your tent is sort of awesome. I was excited to start the day. I got up, went to the bathroom, and saw that we had a great view of the mountain (the day before it was too cloudy from the rain to see the mountain). It was incredible. It seemed so far from where we were. I couldn’t believe that we would be going up to the top of it.
After we had our coffee in our tents, we got dressed and went out for breakfast. Breakfast was porridge, eggs, sausage, and bread. And, of course, more hot beverages. When we went into the tent for breakfast, it was still cold. By the time we had eaten, the sun was out and the day was warming up. I stripped down a layer to my shorts and running shoes for the hike.
The start of the hike was gorgeous. The weather was warm and sunny, we all were enjoying the warmth and the view. After about 2 hours of hiking, we stopped to take some pictures of the view. A few model shots on the rocks, Kim falling off the mountain (posed), and some scenery shots. As with the day before, our porters passed us soon after we started hiking. They were quick and wanted to get to the next camp to set up for us.
After a few hours, the sun faded quickly to fog and misty rain. We arrived at our lunch site and sat for lunch. We had carried our packed lunch with us – fried chicken, a hard boiled egg, a chocolate bar, orange, and sandwich. The birds circled around us hoping to get some food, so we kept all of our trash in our lunch sacks. After lunch, we started hiking again. It was considerably colder than when we started and my hands were freezing. I have a somewhat common ailment – Raynaud’s disease, where my hands and feet (fingers and toes) freeze quickly due to poor circulation and have a hard time warming up(http://sclero.org/medical/symptoms/raynauds/a-to-z.html) As such, my hands had frozen during the short break and I started running around to get some circulation to them. I threw on my headphones and gloves and jogged while we started hiking. It’s frustrating and the cold was something I feared coming onto the mountain. When I lose feeling in my hands, it’s frustrating and hard to reverse.
After about 45 minutes, my hands had feeling again. The hike was foggy and misty, the terrain had changed from the day before. No longer were we in the rainforest, we were in the moorland, much drier, less green and lush. The hike was over moderate inclines, not too exhausting. After about 2-3 more hours, we arrived at our camp. It was about 2:30PM. Pretty early, and many of us still had energy and wanted to look around more. The mist and fog had cleared away and it was finally sunny and warm. We all tried to jaunt off for a hike, but they wanted to serve us tea. Bea and I broke away and started hiking, but eventually one of the porters came to ‘help’ us, since we had wandered into the swamp. I was frustrated because I just wanted to explore a little, but the guides and porters didn’t want to leave us alone. We succumbed and came back for the tea.
After tea, we took naps, got into warmer clothes, and got ready for dinner. Again, the temperature got super cold once the sun started going down. At 3900M, the camp was colder than the night before. Dinner was similar to the night before – soup, rice, vegetables, bread, and pepper steak. After dinner, we had more warm beverages. Liquids are a huge part of surviving the altitude increases, so they try to inundate us with fluids all the time. While we hike, Peter is constantly saying ‘Sippy, Sippy’, encouraging us to drink our water.
Exhausted from the day, we all went to our tents to go to sleep around 9:30PM.
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