Kili Climb - Day 1 (Sept 1, 2009)

The day started by with being picked up at my lodge with all my gear and getting stuffed into a small bus with six trekking partners and about 24 porters. (Most vehicles here in Tanzania are packed like this as space is limited.) They work for a company called www.teamkilimanjaro.com and they know what they are doing. Our lead guide, James, has done this climb over a hundred times and has a very high success rate. One thing I quickly discovered was that all of the guides and porters were extremely friendly and only concerned about our health and safety. I’ll speak more about our porters later.


BTW, in these pics, you’ll notice that we are all wearing goiters. There is so much dust/dirt that gets picked up along the way, you have to have something covering your boots or that stuff gets in everywhere)



We had about a 100km drive to Kilimanjaro National Park to begin our climb that day and it would be a long one. Unfortunately, James got called away for another assignment but there were good backups on that team that immediately stepped up to take over. On the drive up to Kili, we drove through many interesting villages and surrounding areas. Along the way, locals would all stop what they were doing and wave. Especially the children; they were everywhere -- on the streets playing or working, all mostly alone and by themselves.





Our truck/bus wasn't faring so well as we had to keep stopping to check underneath to see where this loud obnoxious noise was coming from. Eventually, we made it to the main gate and base of the climb (I later realized we drove almost completely around the one side of the mountain to start our climb up the Rongai route.) After a brief stop for lunch (I’ll talk more on the food later), we finally started our ascent as we were all eager to get going.





The first day would consist of a three hour hike to Simba Camp site. We all used that time to get to know each other. My climbing mates consisted of 3 other couples Chris and Catherine from Joeburg (South Africa), David and Courtney from, yes, Alexandria VA (I just can’t get away from Americans can I ;)) and Larry and Nancy. Larry is a professor at a university and for some reason reminded me of one of the members of Fleetwood Mac. Anyway, I have to say, our porters were a bit concerned about Larry's age (65), but he would surprise us all as he really kicked butt. Both he and Nancy do triathlons and are very active. Hopefully, I’ll still be going like that when I'm his age. (Larry would soon to be referred to as Babu - a term of respect (labeled by the porters for age and wisdom) although Larry didn't seem to like it much :)).



Right off the bat as we started our climb, we noticed someone (from another group) being helped back down the mountain due to altitude sickness. Not a good way to start the first day, I must say. I believe we were only at about 2000 meters at that point. But it’s common on a first day to want to hike hard. Our lead porter that day, Nuru, taught us the first in a series of Swahili lines that would define our climb...”pole, pole,” which means slow, slow. There is a method to their madness and as much as we all wanted to hike fast, this was all part of the acclimation process by not using more energy and breathing more than can be consumed. I decided before our trip to document and film as much of this experience as possible, as such I would be called "Mr. Cameraman" throughout the trek.





At Simba camp, all of our porters introduced themselves and did an amazing job of settling us in with dinner and hot water. The camp itself was not very nice or clean (there were out houses they wanted us to use that were not so nice :). But hey, we’re climbing Kili and we are roughing it for the next seven days! Got a great night’s sleep that night, and as it turned out, we would need it.