Arriving in Kilimanjaro and meeting our guides

Hi Everyone!

My apologies for having taken so long to update my blog. I’ve been back from Kilimanjaro for a little more than three weeks now. The first week was difficult adjusting back to the Vancouver time zone from Africa’s 10+ hrs as well as catching up on things. I am happy to report that I have fully recovered from altitude sickness (pulmonary edema) and back to my normal self.

I was not able to update my blog while I was in Africa due to sporadic internet access and its slowness when available. I had to wait to return to Vancouver for proper internet access with high speed connection. Sorting through 10,000+ pictures and videos took many hours. In addition, much to my surprise the media (radio, TV, local newspaper) reached out to me for follow-up interviews to the Kili Challenge in my first week. I’ll provide the links to all these interviews at the end of my Kili Challenge blog updates as they are like cherries on top of a bowl of ice cream, wonderful concluding chapters to a story that captures the imagination.

Let me start the Kili Challenge with some start-up summaries:

Departure Date: September 7^th

Arrive Kilimanjaro: Sept. 8^th

Our plan was to arrive 2 days early at Marangu Hotel to adjust to jet lag and acclimatize a little before starting the climb on Sep. 10^th. Unfortunately, our flight from Salt Lake City got delayed for about 5 hrs causing us to miss our connecting flight in Amsterdam. We were re-routed by "red-eye" to Kilimanjaro via Nairobi (Kenya) arriving the next morning, Sep. 9^th, one day late. Salim and Safiya had arrived a day earlier as per the schedule and managed to adjust to TZ’s time change without too much trouble.

That afternoon, Shamus, a Kili climber extraordinaire (he’d climbed Kili 25 times) gave us an overview of what to expect on our planned climb on the Rongai trail. It was an excellent overview in spite of me fighting my jet lag. In any case, the next day (Sep. 10th, Saturday), we all got our gear checked, packed and ready to start our journey.

Here is where we begin our journey.

Safiya, Salim, Bill, Spencer

There were 19 crew members making up our climb team in addition to us four climbers. It was an amazing entourage assigned to help us summit Kilimanjaro. We were each assigned a Guide plus 3 porters. Among them were 1 cook, 1 assistant cook/server and 1 porter certified to handle the emergency oxygen supply if needed. A total of 19 support staff! All I can say is they were an amazing crew.

We’ve met some amazing people on our journey and Michelle and Melanie were two “Wonder Women” we’d encountered at the very outset of our journey. Our climb schedule was for 8 days but they had planned to do a summit round trip in 6 days. They were going to start 1 day later than us and come down 1 day earlier than us. Melanie was from Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, and Michelle was from Vancouver, our very own home town. Both agreed that it was a challenge that pushed them to the limit and were glad they had put much effort into their training and preparation beforehand. More about them later.

Our gear, duffel bags with all our individual equipment and layered clothing, have been assigned to our respective porters and our 19 support crew and Guides are ready to climb into our transport for Rongai Trail’s main gate.

From Marangu Hotel where we’d started, if I remember correctly, around 11am, it would take us about 2 hrs to reach Rongai Trail gateway into Kilimanjaro National Park. En route was a lunch stopover at a small town, Lekafue.

Salim getting out of the truck and heading to our lunch destination.

Safiya enjoying her lunch at the town bar. Merangu Hotel had prepared a box lunch for us to take along as our first day’s lunch. This was a precursor to daily lunch boxes provided by our crew’s cook and they were big lunches filled with a balanced diet, sandwich, fruits, drink, desert, etc.

After lunch, another hour’s ride brought us to the Rongai Trail’s gate. Check out this video report.

… and the Kili Challenge journey begins as we start our climb to our first camp, Simab.