Kilimanjaro day 1

Ok its 4 weeks late, but here is the first days report from Kilmanjaro - Warning they are not quite what could be described as short

Kilimanjaro day 1
Altitude:3000m
Machame hut camp
19:00

The weather at the camp has been fair, with no real wind, the only reason the chill set in was that upon arrival here, I was wearing a t-shirt, damp from a combination of sweat and trekking through the clouds all day, which upon stopping quickly cooled

I dearly hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. Its 7pm and I’m lying in my sleeping bag trying to keep warm. In fairness when we arrived at the camp for 5pm, our tents were still being pitched, necessitating 20mins of sitting around outside, allowing for a very unpleasant chill to set in, and with the subsequent completion of our tents, a frantic run for the sleeping bag in the vain hope that it’s down filled walls would quickly warm me up. After 15mins in my bag had begun to warm up VERY slowly, but I could still feel a chill beneath the surface, thankfully after 2hrs zipped up in my bag like some form of regal blue grub I’ve warmed through!

In spite of being warm now, I am now becoming conscious of my tent size. My home for the next 5 nights is a capacious 2 man tent – which at the moment is fine, I have more than enough space to lounge about and generally expand my stuff into like some form of Noble gas, however as I climb higher, and the temperature drops outside, I wonder if the space will prove to be a negative in terms of keeping it warm.

Our hike up the mountain has been the most amazing experience, genuine rainforest -
- I’ll return to the rainforest in a moment, I’ve just been disturbed - dinner has been brought to my tent!

A porter has turned up at my tent, spreading out a green Zebra print cloth for the floor of the tent, upon which he carefully laid out napkins, plates and a little candle stuck to a tin of beans as a rudimentary candelabrum, which will go magnificently towards extending the life of my batteries.
This is not LIKE being waited upon hand and foot; it simply IS being waited upon hand and foot! The fact that I have two porters, a cook, and a guide, all here to take me, no one else, up the mountain is a bizarre feeling. A feeling that i can only imagine is akin to what it used to be like to actually have personal staff. Without question it is certainly an odd feeling, I have a constant desire to go and do something, or help out, rather than sit here like the Rich White Man, a stereotype I have learned to hate here in Africa. I suppose it’s all relative though, if you can casually afford a Coke or Pepsi in the middle of the day, for no reason other than you fancy it, over here, does make you a rich man.

The starter tonight - oh yes the starter, as I said waited on hand and foot - is soup and bread, exactly what the soup is i don’t know, they all taste suspiciously of chicken stock, either way it is more than sufficient for keeping the bread moist.
Overall this is one of the oddest meals I've ever sat down at; served in my tent on a zebra motif cloth, by a man in a yellow puffer jacket, while I’m sitting balled up in my sleeping bag with my days socks, underwear and t-shirts hanging from the ceiling of the tent! Without question this is a once in a lifetime trip.

Ok next course has arrived, fried potatoes and bits of beef, I really can’t complain at this! I'm hoping that the little candle sitting flickering by my head will help provide some heat in here - not for me, I’m snug as a bug, but some heat and possibly movement of air to help m clothes to dry out - while the rainforest was an amazing place to visit, as the name would suggest it is very effective at soaking you through.

I just can’t get over how odd this all feels, it’s probably augmented by the fact I’m here alone. I feel like a Roman Caesar, reclined casually on my roll mat, casually slicing roast potatoes and beef - potatoes which, i hurriedly point out, are considerably superior to some which would be served in British restaurants

This is getting absolutely ridiculous, the guide has just dropped by to say that breakfast will be about 7:30am, but that porter, or concierge as he also seems to double as, will come and wake me when it is ready. This is insane!

Now dinner is in the process of being digested, I’d better return to the hike, which should really be the main focus of the posting, not the tent service! Today I found myself walking in true rainforest, massive trees, vibrant greens, thick creepers, and it was simply beautiful. Mt. Meru has Montane forest covering its slopes, forest which i had hoped terribly would turn into rainforest at some point on that climb, but never did. On various points of the Meru climb it looked tantalisingly as if the Montane forest was going to give way to Virgin Rainforest, but the woods remained comparatively quite dry and with a real sense of openness. The sense of openness is one of the first major differences I noticed between the two forests, apart from the humidity and overall size of the forest which creeps you on you as you progress deeper, even on the edges of the forest, the density of the life in the rainforest is staggering

While it never actually rained while in the forest, something which I’m a little disappointed by, there were plenty of opportunities to get soaked to the skin, being in the cloud in the forest meant hours of trekking through fine drizzle. Drizzle isn’t really the word to correctly describe it, as that suggests precipitation, as it was, the best way I can think of describing it was like walking through very thick, very wet, heavy mist. It was quite unlike any type of rain I've experienced and frankly being British that’s quite a statement!

Walking along a broad ridge, the mist gradually thinned, allowing a contrast to return to the world which had previously been washed out by the low cloud. It was only at this point that you could truly appreciate the colossal size of the canopy, the largest trees easily 3 to 4 stores high, leading to you craning your neck back in an attempt to take in the awe inspiring size of the forest.
As we walked, it was like being in a video from Mrs Scales' geography lessons at GCSE. Giant buttressed root systems, covered in thick vines, rose from the forest floor to support trunks up to 4m in diameter, and in turn these trunks raising a canopy so far overhead it was frequently hidden by the clouds. That in itself was a terrific experience, being so high, and similarly being under a forest canopy of such height that often there was cloud obscuring our view of the trees overhead.

Thick branches would snake over us, with vines hanging low over the path. The branches themselves bowed with age, with leaf litter collecting in their hollows and dips, building up over time to form loam, allowing for the massively ancient trees to be festooned by other plants like some kind of natural hanging garden. Across the myriad of greens occasional pin pricks of colour would catch the eye, tiny ice blue flowers, delicate in the extreme but standing proud, as a bold divergence from the uniform green of the other plants

A subtle change could be perceived as we climbed higher. As we progressed along our route, after 3 hrs in the jungle, we began to transition into scrub like woodland, with the size and majesty of the forest diminishing at the same rate as the canopy dropped and the trees thinned. While at chest level, the towering 12ft ferns of the dense under forest were replaced with chest high grasses rather, until the forest finally melted into high scrub as we have seen on Meru. By the time we hit camp, we had already been clear the forest for a good 15 mins, a low wind was blowing, putting a chill in my damp clothes

The camp is a series of large clearings in the scrub, where the brush had been cleared back a soft dark volcanic soil was left exposed, and provided to provide a surprisingly pleasant soft surface for our tents ground sheets. The overall site is made of 8 different clearings, all sitting like black petals around a central administration building, with each camp separated from its neighbouring camps and auxiliary buildings by islands of scrub.

In spite of being told that it was now the slow season, I hadn’t fully understood quite how slow that was - there was only one other group climbing, an Australia couple. A very pleasant pair we met several times on our hike to the camp, the different timings of our breaks, as decided by the guide, leaving us overtaking and being overtaken in a massive version of leap frog

- Now that a interesting noise to shoot across the valley as dusk falls! - i think it may be a troop of baboons having a fall out, the noise sounds very sharp, the cross between a dog barking and a man banging on sheet metal with a hammer. One thing is for certain, it is an impressive noise that carries well. I’d like to think if I was an animal involved in a dispute, I’d be the animal able to make that sound, the disputer would easily concede. I wonder what other wildlife we’ll come across as we travel higher? We’ve picked up the same type of crow as would try and steal food when we were climbing Meru, but at least there are no tin roofs now for them to clatter about on!

Yes where was I? Leap frogging Australians. Speaking of set stops, my guide on this climb is a heavy set, chain smoking man called Raphael. He has been climbing Kilimanjaro as a guide for 3 years now, having worked his way up from porter, to cook, to assistant guide, to the top job over the previous 5 years. In spite of his experience (although probably related to his smoking - I personally think he keeps Camel in business singlehandedly) he is depressingly slow when it comes to walking up hill. Oh when he's on the flat or going downhill he's like greased lightning, but the minute the ground starts to rise up he slows to a crawl, I wouldn’t mind so much, but the pack I’m carrying in 5kg more than his! I think a difference in our stride length augments the problem; I keep having to stop after walking three steps to prevent me walking up his heels. Looks like most of my photography will be done on the uphill sections, allowing me to shoot to my heart’s content and the quickly recover the distance that will have build up between us, allowing me to stretch my legs.

In terms of stretching legs, compared with Meru, even the first day on Meru, today Kili has been an absolute walk in the park, easy paths, wonderful views, and a pleasant incline, I really don’t know what i was worrying about (famous last words). I accept there will be difficult sections, but i don’t think it will be as gruelling as Meru was in terms of day to day walking (such a naive fool). That said I’m sure that the ascent from the final camp at 4600m to Uruhu peak at 5895m won’t exactly be a picnic, especially considering what the temperature was like on Meru's summit at only 4500m. I'm sure the later stages of Kili will give me a whole new meaning to the word "cold"