Kilimanjaro - My Journey to the Roof of Africa

Kilimanjaro (Day 2):

Machame Camp to Shira Caves

Sunday, January 13, 2013

I slept pretty well last night. I got up at 6am and started packing up my bed. I ate a lot for breakfast sitting on the chair next to my tent. I had a great view of Kilimanjaro from my breakfast spot. We hit the trail at 8:20am and walked for the next 5.25 hours on a steep and treacherous trail to Shira Caves. Sometimes, we had to climb up on rocks. I have no idea how the porters do it. It was hard enough for me using my poles and carrying my daypack only. They carry those huge and heavy loads on their heads supporting them with their hands and just walk up the rocks like hakuna matata. They go slowly but still faster than me. I walked very slowly all day long.

We stopped for lunch at a very pretty spot. I walk only with Faustin. He is leading me checking constantly if I'm able to follow or not. The New Yorkers left before us. We kept leapfrogging each other all day and they got to camp right after I did. Unfortunately, it started raining after lunch and it rained for the next three hours. I was pretty miserable in the tent. The bottom of the tent was getting wet and I made it even wetter with my wet rain gear. I put on a lot of clothes because it got really cold due to the rain. I started blowing up my mattress but it's a very slow process and I'm still not done with it.

In the meantime, they brought me tea, peanuts, and biscuits. The peanuts made me really happy and I started feeling a little better. While I was munching on the peanuts and was sipping my tea, the rain stopped. My spirit lifted right away. I drank the second cup of tea outside. Now I'm sitting outside on the chair. It's still pretty foggy but the fog finally lifted in my immediate vicinity and I was able to take some pictures. There is only one toilet nearby and it takes a few minutes to walk to it. It's pretty nasty as well. Dinner will be at 5:30 and I still have to blow up my mattress before that. Today, we walked 5.3 kilometers with 818 meters elevation gain.

I finally blew up my mattress before dinner. I also walked to the Shira Caves and peeked in. I ate dinner outside and even the sun came out at dinner time. The clouds opened up on Kili and I had a great view of the mountain from my chair.

It's only 6:30 right now but I don't know what else to do. I will probably retire to bed soon after reading about tomorrow's hike. By the way, today Faustin introduced all my porters to me. Goodliving is my waiter and I have Peter and Gaston for the other porters. I think we picked up Peter at Machame Gate.