Kilimanjaro Climb - Day 1

I'll let the journal I kept while going up Kilimanjaro and the photos do the talking for the next series of blog posts.

Kilimanjaro Climb - Day 1

So my day started around 6am after a horrible and restless sleep the night before.  I was anxious and nervous for the day's climb.

Shannon (she did a day trek - 3 to 4 hours up and down) and I got packed up around 7:45am for an hour and a bit drive to Kilimanjaro from Arusha.

After registration and both my debit and VISA card not working - eventually the VISA did - to pay for my park fees (630USD) we started climbing for about 4 hours starting at 11am.  With lunch breaks and everything we got settled into camp at 4pm.

The first leg was through a rainforest, literally a rainforest with waterfall and dense foliage.  And lo and behold it rained.  And rained some more and rained even harder.  By time we got above the clouds - the camp is at about 3500m high, we were past the rain, but everything is wet and damp.

I have a bit of a headache, but I can tolerate it.  Just hope it doesn't get worse.

I'm climbing with Felix and Sasha (two cool folks from Australia) and a crew of 10 who have got to be the strongest people in the world carrying all the stuff.  Impressive.

Everything I needed for my Kill-A-Man-Jaro adventure

We took the Machame route up

The rainforest

Still fresh and clean at this point

That's a waterfall in the background

Left to right: Felix, Me, and Alex (one of our guides)

Nice view

My home for 6 days and 5 nights.  It really did end up feeling like my home by the end of the trip.