Tanzania Travel Tale

Mount Kilimanjaro, November 2018

Greetings Readers!

Later this month I have an interview for you with a friend who is a member of Trusted Housesitters and she has been able to plan vacations in the United States, Europe, and Australia while staying at people’s homes for free and watching their beloved pets. I will have a discount code to offer to you if this piques your interest. 

But for this issue, in order to continue the get to know me theme for one more issue, I figured I would share a travel story from when I climbed Kilimanjaro. Summit day, to be exact. I mentioned in the last issue and I have not relived it in awhile. It has been edited a bit from the first time I wrote it but I’ve tried to keep it as close to the original as possible. So let’s jump right in. Due to the length, I am only sharing the story today and books, no links.

Kilimanjaro: Summit Day

Titling this post so bluntly is both exciting and scary. And that accurately describes my feelings about summit day when we got started, so it is very appropriate. I also felt like the best header photo of this would be from the plane window when we flew from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro airport. We never reached a flying altitude higher than the mountain itself, which is 19,341 feet (or 5895 m) above sea level. That’s high/tall/big/scary, whatever you want to call it.

So I left off with saying we had an early dinner on Friday evening and our guides told us when they’d be waking us up, what to dress ourselves in, and what we’d be eating before leaving at midnight on Saturday. The lights were out in our bunk around 7:30/7:45 that evening, but then the Swiss group came in a little later than us and they were turning the lights on and off for 30-40 minutes doing who knows what while they were rustling around getting ready to go to bed. So all 6 of us in our bunk room (Me, Zoë, Karlie, Lisa, Greg, and Mark) slept for about two hours? If even that! Also, Mark and Greg were not snorers but some of those Swiss guys were so I don’t think that I slept much at all. At 11:15 Jimmy (our food preparer and morning coffee/tea porter) came in and flicked on the lights and started setting up hot water and plates of very plain shortbread cookies for us to munch on as our pre-climb snack.

When Jimmy came in, I think most of us were awake anyway and started to put on our layers. Rashid had told us, 4 layers on top, 3 on bottom! I thought that was nuts but I am glad that I listened. How do you wear three pairs of pants, you ask? I wore my warmest merino wool baselayer, hiking pants, and rain pants that I borrowed from my friend’s husband. He wore them to hike the Appalachian Trail and told me “It’s our own sisterhood of the traveling pants!” and that will crack me up for the rest of my life. I think a few people wore lined ski/snowboard pants and base layers and were comfortable, basically, we all needed a wind and water proof top layer and warmth close to the body. There were no trees at that elevation, obviously, and there was a lot of wind. Four layers on top for me was baselayer top, fleece zip up, lightweight down jacket, wind/rain jacket. We also all had to have: a winter hat, sunglasses, ski gloves or mittens, headlamp with extra batteries, our boots on our feet, enough water, a snack, our hiking poles, and the lightest pack we could carry. We had our four guides that day and a few porters with us. The porters, bless them, carried hot water, cookies, ginger tea for our sensitive tummies, a stretcher, and oxygen tanks. I will just go ahead and tell you that thankfully, no one needed the last two.

When we started eating, I slowly sipped ginger tea and water and tried very hard to eat cookies but just was not in an eating mood or state. My stomach was feeling unsettled and had been since the day before when we reached 15,500+ feet I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen later on the mountain but I knew that I was going with the entire group and not staying back at the stuffy stone huts!

We got packed up and were outside and ready to go at midnight and started our final trek up the mountain. It was completely dark and all you could see were stars and headlamps. And sometimes, you could not tell which was which. We walked very pole pole (slowly slowly in Swahili) and were walking switchbacks with our headlamps the whole way up, in a line of 12-15 people. We stopped every 15-20 minutes for water breaks and so they could ask how we were doing. Since it was in the middle of the night, everyone was quiet and I don’t know if that much stopping is normal, but it probably was, because we were hiking from 15,000+ feet that day to 19,341 feet, that is a large elevation gain. And even though we were walking switchbacks it was still a steep hike and tiring.

Once we started walking my stomach grew more and more unsettled. I hate to be so graphic but I feel like this is information that is part of this journey. Every time we stopped, I felt worse and worse and was looking for a large rock to use the bathroom behind, in the dark, but then the feeling passed. It was extremely frustrating for me. I was communicating this to Rashid, our head guide, and they kept giving me hot water to drink, which was somewhat settling. Finally, sometime around 2:30/2:45 am and 17,000+ (thanks to Mark for his watch and for calling out this info every so often) I stopped, threw down my poles, ripped off my gloves and tossed them aside and dropped to my knees and started vomiting. Immediately, I had all four guides plus a porter, holding my hair, rubbing my back, and holding me up so that I didn’t fall or throw up on myself. It was the nicest experience that it could have been in such a situation. Quite honestly, not much came up, but I felt a tiny bit better. Part of me wanted to tell them to go on without me because I felt icky and my stomach was still turbulent, but then I realized I’d be sitting in the dark for a very long time or walking down the mountain with a porter or a guide who also probably wanted to go to the top, and I also wanted to get to the top! I also don’t think they would have left me, that is not the guide’s job at all. I was going up or going back down.

So, I apologized to everyone because we’d just had a break before I’d stopped us. But my apology seems so silly in hindsight, because I can’t help that the altitude affected me and they’d all stopped a bit ahead of me and were probably also happy for the quick break since the hiking was getting steeper and we were all tired. But Jody said “no, no apologies, this is a team effort!” So I stood up and we all kept going. I was told later that John was also not feeling great at this point and that he quickly passed by me so as not to witness me vomiting because he felt it would have triggered him to do the same. I can sympathize.

After that, I didn’t feel great, but I was drinking more hot water at each break and feeling a wee bit better. I kept looking above us to see if I could see the top where we would reach Gilman’s Point, the first peak that is a little higher than 18,000 feet. I saw stars and headlamps and they blurred together so that I didn’t know where the sky started and the mountain ended, and I wanted to know. But, I didn’t want to ask anyone where the actual top was because it felt like a kid asking a parent on a road trip “are we there yet?” and I just chose to be surprised.

But we kept walking and gaining elevation. I figured we would eventually be walking on flat land around a crater to get to the last peak once we got to Gilman’s. I don’t know what time it was but at one point, we were doing less traversing and seemed to be flattening out and I stopped looking down at my feet to look outward and saw the faint glow of the sunrise at the horizon line and I almost started crying because I knew it meant it had been many hours and we were close to the Gilman’s point. I tapped whoever was in front of me and pointed with my pole at the horizon and then whoever it was said “you guys, the sun will be coming up soon!” We all perked up a little bit and shortly after that, maybe 30 minutes, we reached Gilman’s Point. 

We sat for a bit at Gilman’s and had more hot water, ginger tea, and shortbread cookies at Gilman’s Point. Then Rashid announced that we had TWO KILOMETERS until we reached Uhuru Peak, the tippy top that we all wanted to get to. At this point, I thought John was going to die because we all saw his face fall and Karlie was not happy. John thought that was the top and I think he felt as poorly as I did by the time we got to Gilman’s and Karlie was mad that we had another 2 km to go and it was not completely flat. 

Shortly after Gilman’s they all stopped us to remind us to put on sunglasses. We had all reached toddler status at this point. Just imagine a bunch of pouty, exhausted adults wearing multiple hoods over winter beanies, some of us still in headlamps, giant ski gloves, runny noses galore, we were a sight for sore eyes. Some of us had trouble putting our glasses on and had small hissy fits. I refused to take off my 2 hoods and beanie and just put my sunglasses on over them and tightened the cord and looked like a major dork. I did think about how dumb I would look in any pictures but decided that I did not care. At this point, one of the guides was also carrying my pack, and had been since I vomited because the waist strap was making me feel worse and that is part of their job as guides.

From Gilman’s, we walked to Stella’s Point, just another “point” along the walk and source of more angst from some of us who thought it was the final peak (not me). I had seen enough photos of the highest point, Uhuru Peak, to know that it didn't look like the same and as we approached it I knew we had farther to walk. I looked off to the side and saw the last point way in the distance and it was FAR. I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to announce how far away it was. But our guide, Rashid let us stop briefly at Stella’s and then pointed at the sign for Uhuru Peak in the distance, and up an incline. I think some of us were ready to cry. I was, but thanks to adrenaline I knew that I had it in me to move very slowly toward the final peak, I mean, we’d made it that far, I would drag myself to the last point if I had to, seeing it in the distance was the only motivation I needed at that point.

The final trudge from Stella’s to Uhuru Peak was slow, Rashid was taking the slowest steps forward and looking back with each step to say something to encourage us. Some people were saying how cold they were, the sun was bright, it was windy, we were practically dragging our poles at that point. Zoe was in front of me and I heard her whimper and wave her poles in an annoyed and exasperated manner and I sped up just enough to get beside her and look and say in the most unsure voice ever “we are so close and we can do it” and I was almost crying when I said it because I was so tired and unsure of whether I actually believed it myself. It seems so ridiculous to say how tired we were, this was not Everest, but it was difficult!

The very last push from Stella’s to Uhuru was 600 feet more in elevation, but it was almost 7 am, the sun was completely out, and we were so tired. It was the most difficult part. When we finally got to the very top and could stop, we all threw our poles down and hugged and cried and were so jubilant. I tear up thinking about it now. It was the hardest physical thing I’ve ever done. More difficult than a marathon, for sure.  We reached the peak at 7:15 am after starting at midnight. I’d walked all night and I had barely eaten anything at all the night before, I’d had little to no sleep, and I’d been walking up a mountain at a very high elevation for 7 hours and 15 minutes.

We took our photos, probably over 100 total between all of the phones and the people taking them. We spent a little time taking photos of the top of the mountain from all angles because there are glaciers up there! And we were on the rooftop of Africa and really so excited to have all made it, despite the fact that some of us felt sick (headaches and upset stomachs). We spent about 20-30 minutes up there and then were pretty much like, okay, let’s get the hell out of here and get back to camp for more oxygen. We all had headaches and were tired and it wasn’t like some helicopter was coming to get us, we had to come down the same way we got up there.

It is the best thing I’ve ever done with a really cool group of likeminded individuals and I am so happy I have these memories of the journey up that mountain with them. They are memories and experiences I will never forget.

Consuming is just reading this issue!

Books and audiobooks:

Since the last issue I’ve still been listening to Norwegian Wood and so far so good.

I finished How Iceland Changed the World, The Art Thief, and Led Zeppelin: The Biography. All three were incredibly enjoyable for different reasons. 

I’ve been to Iceland and as mentioned previously, I enjoyed learning a lot more about the country and the role it has played in major role events. Each chapter told a different story and was in chronological order, more or less. It felt like a fast read because the author had a way of presenting historical information so that it did not read like a textbook. There were amusing bits here and there as well.

The Art Thief is a true story about a young man who stole millions (maybe billions) of dollars worth of art on on his own with his girlfriend in the late 90s from small European museums, estates, and churches. He did not have complicated schemes and he did most of it in broad daylight. His boldness was quite astonishing. This was a very fast read and I would not consider it a thriller but it was thrilling. Highly recommend, and it read like fiction for all of you non-fiction haters.

Led Zeppelin. Period. What a wild bunch of guys. I have always liked their music, still do, but before reading I knew almost nothing about them. In fact, I knew two band members names but I could not have told you which one was Robert Plant or Jimmy Page if you showed me a photo of the band. 

I learned so much about their song-writing process, their prolific output while in studio sessions (at least before drugs made Page and Bonham sporadically reliable), and how punishing their tour schedule was. I also really enjoyed learning about how they got started as the Yardbirds, how close all of the musicians were in that era of the late 60’s like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to each album during the day when I had just read about it and learned about how the songs were put together, the sound they were going for, how they double tracked vocals for one song, etc. I like to know “how the sausage is made” and I know that is not everyone’s cup of tea. 

Even if you don’t like Zeppelin at all, I’m sure you’ve heard at least one of their songs and know that Robert Plant’s voice is unmistakable. If not, go listen to Rock and Roll, Black Dog, or Immigrant Song for a good idea of his range and style. All of this to say that I am not quite sure how he can still sing after their epic tour schedule and 3-4 hour shows throughout the late 1960s and all through the 70s.

You should pick up a music bio or memoir of your favorite band or artist and you will probably not be disappointed. I love learning about the creative process for other people and especially musicians. Bob Spitz is a great biographer, none of that book felt dry or tedious. I have his book about the Beatles as well but I need a few palate cleansers before I dive back into reading about rockstar life. :)

That’s all for this issue,

I hope you enjoyed!

Sonya