Quick Trip to Pangani and Back to Dar

After Kilimanjaro, we have one night in the hotel in Moshi before we are on the move again, leaving Karyn to fly back from there to Ireland then back home, we head toward the coast. Leaving in the morning on a bus, its two seats per row on one side and three on the other packed with people. The bus ride to Tanga shows us a landscape that goes from the mountain induced green of the Kilimanjaro region to a parched desert, letting up an becoming more tropical as we approach the coast. Tanga is just a bus station, people crowd around us to “help” the wazungu. On a bus to Pangani, along a dirt road, the sea just out of sight to our left as the sun approaches the horizon on the right.

When we arrive in Pangani, I meet Doctor Vera, Robi’s girlfriend of many years, when she picks us up at the bus station and shows us quickly around the town before driving us back to her house. Her house is amazing, and we have a small house right next to the main house to ourselves. The plot is in her name, from before the government stopped allowing foreigners to lease land. She designed and had the house built herself and it is wonderful, with much of the common area always open to a breeze through glass-less windows. Can’t do that where I come from. And the house overlooks the ocean, on the edge of a small bay, on the cliff above the coconut husk-covered beach. Really, though, we spent the two days we had there relaxing on the porch, which was good, especially after Kili. Vera is extremely nice and we enjoy ourselves greatly. We even make up a recipe and make pumpkin pie, which turned out better then I expected (I admit I've never really been much of a fan).

Soon, though, we had to head back to Dar, to get back to Musoma on the Friday flight. Another set of bus rides ensues, the first leg of which is in a daladala, the small Toyota Hiaces that go everywhere and are always packed full of people because the big bus isn’t going today. At least that part was short, because it certainly was not comfortable the way they pack people into those things. The bus to Dar was much better, but long and by the time we arrive in Dar at 6:00, we have done a circle by bus that totals more than 50 hours. Starting with the trip from Dar to Musoma when we arrived, to Moshi for Kilimanjaro, to Tanga/Pangani and finally back to Dar. By the way, I don’t recommend it. I am relieved to be flying back to Musoma tomorrow, getting a round trip ticket to also fly back when the trip is over on November.

So now we have less than 24 hours in Dar, so we find a hotel for the night – the Econolodge: cheap but clean. The next morning, we have a few hours to do what we need to get done and to make the most of it, I go looking for a bread pan and brownie pan while my mom goes to deal with immigration and the airplane tickets, which have been reserved but not paid for. I wander the city for a couple of hours looking for the pans, coming to know the city a little bit better. Finally, I give up on the pans and go to the grocery store where I was planning to get olive oil and there they are: the perfect pans. My mom and I meet back at the hotel just in time to check out by the 11 o’clock check out time. And we head to the airport, asking the taxi driver to stop at a grocery store on the way for olive oil.

The airplane ride is short and it’s good to be home – back in Musoma.

Kili: Descent

The way down was short and in a few short hours of hiking down, we leave the clouds and snow above us and plants welcome us back from that barren land. By the end of the day, after an easy four-hour hike, we were at camp, back in the land of trees without trees just 100m above the camp on that first night, which seems so long ago now. Everyone is pleased to be out of the cold. By this point everyone was ready to be home, or at least back at the hotel where we can shower.

Walking down, although much quicker than the way up, was far more painful. The downhill hiking was not good on the knees, even with the hiking poles that were supposed to be helping. But we were almost down and we pushed through the last day’s 3-hour hike back into the rainforest that surrounds the foot of the mountain and finally back to the parking lot where the bus back to Moshi is waiting for us. The climb was undoubtedly a great experience, but we are all glad to be back to civilization, with a bed, shower and some more variety in the food.

Kili: The Final Ascent

It’s 11 o’clock all to quickly and we wake up and get on a few layers of our warmest clothes for the climb to the peak. We are served our tea, coffee hot chocolate and some glucose biscuits and we are off. We have eight people: the four wazungu, our two guides, our assistant guide and James, who turns out to be a cook training to be an assistant guide. Right away, they take backpacks: Fredi takes my mom’s, Innocent takes Karyn’s and Francis takes Patrik’s. Since I have mine on, they don’t take mine. I can carry my own backpack – or I want to try to at least. Besides, that means that I have my water on me at all times.

I realize as we are leaving the camp that I forgot the camera (I have my little camera and an extra battery for both in my pants to keep them warm and functioning, though) and I run back to get it. I am breathing hard when I get back to the group. Running is not recommended at this altitude. And it’s hot so I take off my outer jacket (down and soo warm. Thanks, Dad) and unzip the two underneath that. And we begin walking up the mountain following the trail of lights that can be seen making their way up the mountain. It becomes quickly apparent that my mom can’t keep up. She is suffering the symptoms of altitude sickness, especially the nausea, and she slows down, and Fredi stays with her.

At first, it is easy. We walk at a steady pace, sometimes over a gravel-covered slope, sometimes clambering up a rocky incline and at times walking along a clear ridge. We run into other groups some – are going slower than us while a couple pass us on their way up the mountain. The dry rocky ground slowly starts acquiring a layer of snow or ice and the patches of snow become larger and more frequent. The nearly-full moon lights our path and Karyn and Patrik follow my example and turn off their headlights, which are made unnecessary by the bright moonlight. Stars are clearly visible as they twinkle in the sky, the moon illuminates a few clouds above us but the clouds that had devoured the camp earlier are gone. It is cold, but I am prepared for that and I actually take my outer gloves off for at intervals to cool down. As they had warned us, Karyn and Patrik’s water pipes from the camel pack froze quickly and I keep mine working only by holding it up and allowing the water to drain back into the bag after every drink.

My initial alertness starts to fade as the night wears on and I keep track of the passage of time by the movement of the moon overhead and the progress of one particularly bright star that was on the eastern horizon and twinkled with an astonishing variety of colors when we started but as it moved up in the sky, it lost its bright colors. At some point, Fredi catches back up with us after taking my mom back to the tent – her altitude sickness was just too much. We trudge on up the mountain. Patrik’s smoker’s lungs betray him and he falls slightly behind Karyn and me. We continue on up the mountain. A cold wind picks up and I put on my balaclava to keep my face warm.

It starts getting darker as the moon goes behind the mountain and Karyn lights her headlamp. I am little more than sleep walking at this point. I have gotten into a rhythm with my poles and I keep right behind Fredi, opening my eyes only to make sure that I am still following and am not in danger of falling into any abysses. I notice that the shadow of the mountain cast by the moon on the clouds far below is lengthening toward the horizon and know that morning will come soon. And finally we are at the top.

A strong wind greets us as we crest Gillman’s peak and, afraid the jacket that has been hanging from my backpack strap will blow away as well as to keep warm, I put on the big down jacket. We aren’t quite there: Uhuru peak is up a path to our left. The horizon brightens as we start up the path and I fumble with my gloves and cameras to get a few pictures. By the time we reach the highest point in Africa, the sun is well and truly up and we get a clear view of the crater and our surroundings for a moment before the clouds begin to roll in around us. We get our pictures with the sign proclaiming that we have reached Uhuru peak (5895 meters), we soak in the glory of the moment for a minute and we start heading back down.

Karyn and I are exhausted and we slowly slide through the loose gravel every step as we walk back down the distance that we just spent six hours climbing. We rest plenty and it takes us more than the estimated 2-2.5 hours to get back to base camp. Karyn says that she is more tired than she has ever been – as tired as she is after running a marathon. The clouds have again swallowed the camp by the time we reach the tent and it is hailing/snowing. My mom is awake and congratulates us but we quickly crawl into our sleeping bags and are soon sleeping.

Kili: Day Five

When I wake up at 5 to go visit the outhouse, the moon, a couple of days until full, has gone down and the stars are magnificent. When I return to the tent, I grab the camera to get a picture of the mountain silhouetted against the star-studded sky. It’s cold and it takes a few tries to get the focus and exposure right in the darkness and my fingers are frozen when I go back into the tent to get warm in my sleeping bag.

But I can’t go back to sleep and after tossing and turning for a couple of hours, the sun had come up and people had begun to stir, making noises in the cooking tent next door. I have begun to feel extremely nauseous and I get up, hoping it will make me feel better but find myself instead on the verge of throwing up. The rest of the morning is not pleasant and although I have nothing in my stomach I proceed to empty it out another couple of times. I am certainly not going to let this sickness stop me from climbing the mountain, though, so I assure the guide that although I’ve just thrown up, I’m feeling ok and I manage to eat some of the porridge that we have for breakfast every morning and Fredi convinces me to try to eat some of the singed bread, the smell of which certainly does not help my stomach but I eat a piece to make him happy and then we pack up and get ready for the day’s hike.

The strange thing is that as soon as we begin hiking, I fell better and again stray off the path slightly onto the volcanic scree to take photos. We hike through the mist much of the time, but it’s a short day. After only three hours of climbing, only the last part of which was very steep, we reach the base camp, Barafu at 4600m. We eat lunch (cucumber soup as usual), my mom puts on every piece of clothing she brought against the cold and we sleep in preparation for tonight’s nighttime ascent.

We wake up for dinner when they bring the bowls of hot hand-washing water (as usual when it’s cold, and it certainly is, Karyn wants to be tiny so she can get in) but my mom doesn’t leave her sleeping bag. The whole camp has been engulfed by the clouds and a light hail or snow has begun falling. Food is different tonight, though: a potato stew is all we have for dinner. I have a few bowls (and one more at Fredi’s insistence) but my mom, in her sleeping bag, has only one small bowl. And we go back to sleep again to get every possible minute of sleep before we must wake up to begin the last climb.

Kili: Day Four

After tea in bed and a leisurely breakfast for a later 9:00 start today, the day starts out with an intimidating slope. Coming down yesterday into the valley where last night’s camp, Barranco camp is located, we had seen the steep path climbing out on the opposite side. This morning, it’s covered with people, the porters and wazungu wending their way up the steep grade. This section is the closest we come to rock climbing as we pull ourselves up the rock shelves that make up the bottom of the path. Our guides give my mom and Karyn a hand on the trickier ones. As we continue, the rock scrambling gives way to a steep path full of switchbacks. At some point during this climb, our assistant guide innocent takes my mom’s backpack for her.

After one final steep rock scramble, we’re at the top of this particular climb, enveloped in clouds and not able to see anything beyond the mountaintop sometimes, although the wind would wear the clouds thin enough to see where we were headed for a few moments. For now, we go down. A short descent before another ascent. We can see the camp where we’ll stay this night, but we still have a very steep descent and another ascent before we reach it. Ironically, after all the ups and downs today, as well as the steepest terrain yet, we have hardly changed elevation at all and Karanga, where we will spend the night, is at virtually the same altitude as last night’s camp although it is far more exposed than the other one, which accounts for the coldness and lack of vegetation here as compared to our last camp.

The short, 4-hour hike for today means that we’ve made it in time for lunch. Had we decided to do a 6-day hike of the mountain we would be moving on this afternoon to climb to the next camp. We have the whole afternoon free and we take a nap. After that nice nap, we walk over to a cairn, visible from our tent, that looks impossibly tall. It is as tall as I am and yet it somehow stays standing. Karyn decides that we ought to build our own, and we do. Then clouds roll in and we are blind in the fog on the short walk back to the tents.

Kili: Day Three

Day three is the first really long climb. We start the day early with tea, Karyn and I are reluctant to wake up so early but we do. The ground is again covered in frost and the hand washing water from last night is frozen over with a film of ice. It is a cold morning but as we begin the day’s hike, we all begin to warm up and shed the outer layers.

We climb up and away from any vegetation and soon the ground is a barren hill studded with volcanic rocks, people wending their way among the boulders like a line of ants extending into the distance. Clouds threaten to engulf us as the wind picks up and Karyn puts some gloves on her ears; we all put our extra layer back on. The wind drops and the clouds lessen and I am about to take off my sweatshirt again when we reach a flat section where a couple of tents are pitched. One of them is our cooking tent and part of our team has stopped to set up the cooking tent and table to serve us lunch – cheese and tomato sandwiches (cheese!! Not too common here) a hard boiled egg, juice box, the cucumber soup that everyone else was starting to get sick of and some glucose biscuits.

When we start again, Francis, officially Patrik’s guide leads us up the rock-covered slope. Soon, far ahead up the hill, a tall rock formation comes into view. I stare at it for a few minutes before it dawns on me that this might be the Lava Tower to which they told us we would be hiking today, 4600m. We continue up the barren slope, which isn’t extremely steep, and we eventually come to the place at the base of the “lava tower” that is to be our highest point for theday. After a short rest, I get out my poles to ease the impact on my knees as we begin heading back down. After a steep descent, a short ascent and a much longer descent we begin seeing some signs of life. Green vegetation, especially the sinecio (trees that remind me of llamas)becomes more common as we go back down to our camp at 3900m, just one hundred more than last night. I run off the path a couple of times to try to get a good photo and I fall a bit behind, but it’s downhill and I catch up again. And tea and mahindi pop is waiting for us on the table in our tent.

The campsite is more protected that the one the previous night. It’s in a valley between two ridges of the mountain, the main Kibo peak rising behind and above us. On the opposite side, the mountain descends into the clouds and haze and somehow it gives me the distinct impression that the sea is right there, that just beyond where the mountain drops out of view, the cliffs plunge down into the sea. The moon rises above the mountain and tomorrow’s hike looms above us as the sun sets.

Kili: Day 2

There is frost on the ground this morning. We put on some warm clothes and have our tea and breakfast. Pack everything back up and head off. Through the land of trees without trees, up and up. My mom has her poles out, having borrowed mine later on in the previous day’s hike when she was getting tired and hers were packed. Mine are still hanging by my side. As we had expected, we rapidly warmed up as we began the climb and I keep my sweatshirt hanging from my camera-belt. As I had the previous day, I continued taking out the Canon Rebel from its case on my hip to take pictures. Since I was the only one taking pictures as we walked, I was the photographer. When we stop I am not the only photographer so I am here, you see?

The plants continued thinning throughout the day and on the particularly steep sections there were traffic jams with all the porters and wazungu on the trail. The plants gradually disappear as we ascend the mountain and although there are still many bushes and a few scattered, moss adorned trees, it looks extremely barren and not particularly welcoming. I’m sure the hanging moss adds to that affect as well as the bushes, the ones with white flowers and grey leaves and look like they were taken from a black and white photograph.

While we walk, the fog threatens to envelope us a number of times, but it doesn’t stay for long and sun comes back out. While we walk, it is pleasant and cool, but not cold. I walk in a T-shirt but it doesn’t seem so warm when we stop to rest, so I put on my sweatshirt.

After four hours walking, we reach the camp. Our tent is already set up for us and we are soon served lunch. We rest and read in the tent for a while, though Karyn and I move outside when the sun makes it unbearably warm inside the tent for us, my mom is apparently comfortable somehow. At 3 we’re served tea and we go for a short walk before dinner. I don’t know what the point of the walk was, exactly. We walked over to the Shira hut, a weather station with a radio tower and a gigantic fancy outhouse (I will still call it an outhouse though, for some reason). My mom and I talk to our assistant guide, Innocent, whom we hadn’t even met before, in a mix of Swahili and English, a good way to practice my Swahili.

It’s a bit colder tonight at 3800m and the campsite is somewhat exposed and windy. After dinner, we pretty much just go to sleep. What is there to do up there after the sun goes down, anyhow?

Kili: Day One

Our guide is half an hour early and we are still eating breakfast when he gets to the hotel at 8:30. We finish up and go out front of the hotel, leave the backpack full of unnecessary stuff for Kili (computer, some spare clothes etc.) at the hotel. At the bus, we meet Patrik, our companion hiking for the next week. He’s Swiss, middle-aged, wearing shorts (adults don’t wear shorts here so it’s just something I noticed). And inside the bus are already some of our porters, whom we really never would know individually.

Bus on over to the office, my mom counts out stacks of Tanzanian money (the biggest bill is the 10,000/= or ~$8 so it looks like a lot) to pay for the climb… for one of us anyhow. The other two (including Karyn – she had already paid my mom in dollars we needed for rent) were to be paid by mom’s credit card, which didn’t work. We’d find out later that small amounts would work but this was to much for Tanzania and we would have to call and it became quite an obstacle because Citibank is just fun like that. But they let us go anyhow and we’d pay after climbing.

Through the back of the building, into a courtyard and into a little supermarket (small but still would have been amazing to have in Musoma) to buy some water and chocolate at our guide’s suggestion. Then we were off. The bus is more full now, all the seats packed with porters although we wazungu still have a seat each to ourselves.

We drive toward the mountain, indistinct in the haze – the volcano sloping gently into the haze as it approaches the ground. Up the hill, the bus struggling somewhat on the steeper inclines and we reach the Machame gate. People mill around, waiting their turn to start the climb. I haven’t seen so many wazungu since I got to Tanzania, but there are still a lot more porters than tourists. We sign the book with whatever information they needed and wai for whatever other paperwork needed to be done, the porters’ loads weighed to make sure they aren’t carrying more than 20 kg and to keep track of trash. And we are off.

It started out as a road, other climbers, wazungu and porters, around us as we begin the ascent. The greenness of the rainforest at the foot of the mountain is astonishing, quite a change after the rest of the country, thirsty for rain, and its typical wide savannas. We continue in that forest for much of the day, although the road changes to a path with stairs cut into the dirt, carefully lined with small logs. The vegetation also changes subtly and when we stopped for lunch under a tree on the side of the path to eat a simple bagged lunch, the trees were covered in moss and the undergrowth had thickened noticeably.

The plants continued changing as we climbed, sometimes among other wazungu and porters, sometimes on our own. The scenery has just decisively changed with much more sparse vegetation around us when we come upon the first camp. The trees were shorter and leafless, draped with a light green moss that reminds me of that fake spider web stuff sold around Halloween. But there were still many other green bushes, tall and dense. I recognized the trees draped in moss as something I had seen in the photos from Markus’, our Swiss neighbor in Musoma, climb and I had, accidentally the first time, begun calling this vegetation “the land of trees without trees.”

After checking in and signing another book, we are lead to our campsite. Our tent is green and quite large, part of it for sleeping with two separate compartments, one for my mom and Karyn, the other for me. The rest of the tent is to be our dining room for the next week and is all but filled with the table and four chairs (after we invite Patrik to join us… they had brought him his own dining tent and table). As we drink our tea and eat our dinner (pasta with veggie sauce and potatoes) it begins to get cold, even inside of the dining tent. First coldness since getting to Africa now that we’re at 3000m, we put on another layer, finish dinner and get into our sleeping bags to sleep.

Kili: Before the Climb

Karyn arrived one week before we were to leave to climb Kilimanjaro. The plan was for her to get her business done in Musoma before we left. She finished her solar cooker workshop on Friday afternoon and we started packing our stuff for the climb. The power went out so we did that the next morning instead, before our bus at one. I just threw all the warm clothes and hiking boots that I had brought for the climb into the black, waterproof duffel bag (my mom bought two just for Kili).

So we go to the bus station/market in the center of Musoma in time to wait for the bus. Karyn took pictures and looked for some nice fabric to buy and we waited. The bus came, a large red bus with spider webs over the sides and we loaded up the bags and got on relatively painlessly (although one man that helped us with our bags demanded to get paid for it, threatening (I think) to take them out and leave them on the ground otherwise… I told him we hadn’t asked for help and I would have argued for longer if I could speak better Swahili and it wasn’t only 3000/=, less than three USD)

At any rate, we were on our way on another long bus ride, through Kenya and back into Tanzania to Moshi. This bus was somewhat more comfortable, with two seats on either side of the aisle rather than the 2+3 configuration of the other. We also had some more legroom and my knees weren’t constantly hitting the seat in front of me. And the window next to me opens. We drive North through Tanzania and the land gets greener. The 20 hour bus ride was broken up by a stop for customs at the Kenyan border, filling out a piece of paper for each country, one for leaving one for entering and buying a transit visa. Food stop in Nairobi, arriving at midnight, not able to see much of the city in the darkness. Back into Tanzania, this one is a much more high-tech border control point, complete with passport scanners and webcams. It is getting cold on the bus – the windows don’t really close – the luggage compartment is open and someone is doing something in there so my mom sneaks in there, armed with her solar flashlight keychain, to get a jacket out of my bag under the bus. The opposite of last bus ride’s sweltering heat even through the night, this time we each put on a jacket.

My time in Kenya was quite short – the sun was up only for the first couple of hours after we entered Kenya at around four. From what I saw, it is very similar to Tanzania, at least in the Rural areas. It is very green this time of year, like the northern-most part of TZ but unlike most of Tanzania that has been suffering a drought. Maybe it is only this part of Kenya as well. Since it was dark by the time I got to any big city, from what I saw out the window, I could have still been in Tanzania. Corrugated metal or grass roofs, little wooden stands selling fruits and vegetables. Shops are painted with the colors and logos of cellphone carriers or other random companies. I still don’t know exactly how the companies get the shop owners to agree to that.

We got to Moshi, a large, touristy town at the base of Kilimanjaro at 10 on Saturday morning, ending the second and hopefully last 20-hour bus ride of my life. We check into the hotel. It’s a nice place provided by the Kili climb company and there are wazungu all over the place. And we can see Kilimanjaro. The guide for the climb comes and he tells us the whole schedule for the climb, which would take the next week. We get one last night in a proper bed before heading out the next morning.