Today we were woken up at 6:30 by our porters with a bowl of hot water to wash ourselves. We then proceeded to breakfast at 7 in the mess tent, where we had omelette and sausages along with our tea. after breakfast, since it was Christmas we opened our gift from mom, which ended up being a box of dried crickets and worms “in case we were hungry on the mountain”. after saying bye to the porters and Santa Claus (our chef who had bought a Santa hat with him and wore it all day long) we started hiking at around 8:30 towards our next camp, Kikelewa camp, located 13km away at an altitude of 3600km.
We hiked through the moorland towards our lunch area, located 6km from the first camp. on the way I started feeling sick and had diarrhoea on the mountain behind a rock because I couldn’t hold it and it was too painful to continue walking. after that adventure (which was probably nicer that the actual toilets on Kilimanjaro) I continued feeling sick like I was going to vomit, but we pushed ahead slowly and I started to feel better.
After our 3h hike, we reached our camp for lunch where we were treated to a cheeky Christmas Nando’s, aka a soup, traditional chicken and chips (which dad couldn’t believe). We rested for a while with some tea before heading off to our camp for the night.
As we started walking we were greeted by a sort of fog on our path, which stayed with us during most of the assertion. Just when I though I felt better after lunch, I was hit with another bout of diahorea and had to take a poo in Mother Nature again.
After another 3h of hiking, we arrived at our camp for the night. There we were greeted with our porters again with a bowl of hot water for us to wash ourselves, before a quick tea and popcorn. our tent ended up being moved to a higher position so we could be closer to the toilets in case we needed to access them during the night. we napped for an hour since Mathieu was now feeling sick but due to a sunburn, he had gotten during the day. We then had our briefing for the following day where it was explained what we would be doing. after dinner dam and eric our CEOs asked us to show them the photos we had taken last night (the astrophotography photos). after this, we then went back to try to get a few more photos before going to bed early.