Hiking time: 9 hours
Total distance: 15 km
Starting attitude: 3840m
Final altitude: 3950m via 4630m
Habitat: montane semi desert
Awoke to the most beautiful site of Mount Kilimanjaro out our front door. Everyone who got out of their tents shouted comments of disbelief and amazement.We proceeded to breakfast of maize porridge, avocado, eggs, toast, and delicious ginger tea to help with all the nausea.
We packed and headed out for a huge day 8-9 hours of climbing up to 4600m to something called the lava tower. I was given Baraka and Prosper as my guides and they were wonderful. I had a terrific climb and even bit the bullet when Baraka asked to carry my day pack, what an easier way to climb. I even was with the whole group the whole time and got to eat lunch with everyone. We took off for lava tower and it was beautiful except it started raining, snowing, sleeting and eventually hailing - not fun. We rested at the top to acclimatize and then were told its a 5km downhill to camp - nope. Started with a sheer rock face decent which you could of died doing because it was wet and slippery, then another uphill then 3 hours of rock, water, hail, and crap to the camp. I was so upset, in pain, and soaked when I got there that I needed to hide in my tent for a few minutes because I was so pissed off. It's so hard.
I made it to dinner of potato soup, pasta, beef sauce, and pineapple. I was so tired I left, got changed, put in ear plugs, wore my eye mask, toque, and took some Advil.
Tomorrow is going to be brutal too. 12km up to 4800m camp for 8 hours of climbing then we will get to rest till 11:00pm where we begin our 7km ascent to the top.
Have had so many doubts these past days, wanted to stop, turn around, and just go home. We are over half way now so no going back.
I am actually afraid of the going down part because today killed my knees coming down from lava tower.
We'll see.
