So safari in swahili means journey. Of course now it means a particular type of journey.

We did a 7day camping trip accompanied by a ebeneze our driver-guide and julius – our cook (same guy from our volunteering week).

Two of the days were walking days in the Ngorogoro highlands with a massai guide. sweeping craters with grasslands with massai cattle  and dotted with traditional mud huts.

The other days were game drives in the national parks. We saw lots of animals: zebra, giraffe, lion, elephant, gazelle and lots of beautiful birds. The highlights were the sheer numbers of wildebeasts in the serengeti plains during their seasonal migration and two cheetahs eating their kill.

we are flyint this afternoon to zanzibar.

lava tower at dawn mt meru at left and shadow of kili at right.

shira 1

walking down the baranco valley with giant senesian trees

We made it! our whole group summited. left camp midnight and made it back 11am.

we will go another 2 hours down to millenium camp later this afternoon.

The trip was difficult, but I think both of us were expecting worse. we experienced no altitude sickness, apart from feet being cold we were warm enough elsewhere (I wore 6 layers of clothes and weather was perfect)

It was quite a sight seeing a caravan of head lamps following the trail up. The stars were also magnificent.

We arrived at Stella Point for sunrise and then continued the extra 160m up to uhuru peak along a ridge. The glaciers have receded significantly since Jennifer climbed kili 13 years ago.

update: on our way down from base camp this afternoon, rain finally caught up with us – better after ascent than days leading to it 😉

We are at base camp!! Barafu means ice in swahili so we are expecting cold. It was sunny just moments ago. now we are in a cloud.

our day was short  today wake up at 7am with hot drink at tent. 7:30 get small bowl with washing water. 8am breakfast by when we need to be packed and hand over water bottles. leave around 9. today arrived at around 1300. we get lunch. other days acclimatization hike at 3ish for a acouple of hours (today no). around 4pm hot water for washy-wash  and then afternoom tea. 1830 dinner followed by next day briefing. in our tents by 8ish.

today is different we start our ascent around midnight so early dinner and short nap.

off to pre dinner nap.

I am disappointed I cannot upload the photos. but even postint the text only has been failing. On purpose have been turnint on phone to take pics to post.

if you want previews just google our camp names+kilimamjaro and look at images.  Also our route has been the 8 day shira route.

we are sleeping lower today for the first time. also seems like i have data on my phone so sitting in tent and trying to transmit the previous day posts. Till now we’ve had pretty quiet campsites, karanga is a tent city.

Today we had one of our longer days. Hiked for 6 hours in very diverse scenery. Started going down following a stream with unique dr suess like trees. Then we climbed baranco wall a steep 400m ish scramble. We had a packed lunch with zuccini soup on top and then walked 2 more hours through the mist going down then up to our camp.

we are sleeping lower today for the first time. also seems like i have data on my phone so sitting in tent and trying to transmit the previous day posts. Till now we’ve had pretty quiet campsites, karanga is a tent city.

Today we had one of our longer days. Hiked for 6 hours in very diverse scenery. Started going down following a stream with unique dr suess like trees. Then we climbed baranco wall a steep 400m ish scramble. We had a packed lunch with zuccini soup on top and then walked 2 more hours through the mist going down then up to our camp.

we arrived this afternoon at lava tower. on our way we crossed paths with the most popular route , the machame route and got a sense of how many people climb the mountain. there was a caravan or porters on the ridge. we feel lucky to go via a longer , more serene am scenic route. It also helps immensly with acclimitization and likelihood of a succesful ascent to the top.

Staff of African walking company have been great. We are 7 climbers supported by 33 staff: head guide, three asst guides, a cook and 28 porters, some of whom have specialized tasks. We have a private portable toilet – The toilet porter/tech is female- a rarety among mountain staff.

The food is exceptionally good considering where we are and some dishes we’d happly have at a restaurant. We have 3 warm meals daily. freshly made soups, fresh vegetable salads, fish, chicken, rice, fries etc. we get papaya, pineapple,watermelon or mango as well. We eat quite a lot. did i mention there is also afternoon tea with popcorn or roasted peanuts.

more about our routine in another post.

sun over kili. day 3 . so far so good. no altitude symptoms so far. we are going up very gradually and walking at ants pace set by the guides. at each camp we do an extra hike up for aclimitization. i.e. hike higher than we sleep.

(deleting image from this and aother posts as syncing from the mountain is failing. will post later)