Today we woke up at 6am and got to see the dun rise over mount Kilimanjaro from Dad’s balcony. we then got a cold shower because we couldn’t figure out how to turn the hot water on, and then went down to grab breakfast.
returning to our rooms, we put the final touches on our bags and bought them down for the porters to weight and put the rest of the luggage in storage, particularly my suitcase. We then got on a medium sized bus to go to Marangu gate to get our permits for our truck. Before arriving there we stopped to buy some supplies from a local supermarket. at Marangu we got out of the bus for a while and waited for our guide to get the permits for about an hour before we got back on the bus where I managed to grab a nap, before we finally reached our destination at around 12.
When we arrived, we grabbed our pack lunches and prepared our water bottles by filling them all up. Our tour guides led us u the start of the mountain through a pine forest which looked very similar to the ones in Europe. We started our climb at around 1950m above sea level and walked towards our camp for the night which is located at 2750m.
On our way we encountered a lot of locals tending to their fields of potatoes or beans. we encountered children singing and helping take care of the cattle and got to see 3 different species of monkeys jumping around in the trees.
After a while we left the forest area and entered a rainforest zone before arriving at the camp called Simba camp, located on a little open space, we got there after a 6.14km hike which took us 3h. There we were greeted by our porters which were already there and who had already set up the camp. They served us some hot water buckets so we could wash ourselves. From there we went into the mess tent where we had some popcorn and hot chocolate.
We then had our guide take our heart rate and blood oxygenation level to make sure we were fit enough for the next few days of hiking. My oxygen level was at 93%, the highest between the 3 of us, we were told it was important that it shouldn’t go under 60% over the journey. After a quick game of president, of which dad ended up winning we had a meal with cucumber soup, meat pasta and avocado, which was very good.
Finally, Mathieu and I went outside for an hour to take some photos of the stars, we even went down into the nearby stream to take some cool photos which unfortunately didn’t end up working.