hiking 5:00:00 [3]
Times are estimates - just not disciplined enough to keep careful track.
Drove to the Lemosho gate and signed in. Met our guides: head guide Onest and assistants MC, Philip, Andrew and Emmanuel. Met my personal porter Amedeus and the cook Feliciano and head waiter David (yes, we had a head waiter!). And then found out that in addition to these folks, there were 50 additional porters assigned to our climb of 11 "clients". We were a spoiled group! They lugged portable toilets, propane tanks for cooking, tables and chairs, tents for each of us, cups and plates and silverware, great food, all our gear and safety equipment including a couple of oxygen tanks and a portable hyperbaric pressure chamber.
Thomson, the company that organized the trek, does top-of-the-line treks and safaris and we really had it good. Our route was one of the longest (9 days total) and because of this, most people are able to acclimatize and make it to the top. The company has a 97% success rate while the success rate for the mountain is more like 45%. Only one of our group was not able to go all the way to the top, and she had a pre-existing heart condition that gave her trouble at about 16,000 ft. when exerting herself. She was perfectly fine at 15,000 ft. where we were camped and just waited there for us to come back down.
Anyway, we spent several hours at the gate going through the official weighings (legal limits on what porters can carry), and then got back in the jeeps to head to the trail head. We were held up for about an hour as a potato truck (the foothills of Kilimanjaro are planted with all sorts of vegetables that are tilled by hand and it was potato harvesting week) got stuck, all the potato sacks had to be taken off the truck, the truck was then able to get unstuck, and then all the sacks had to be reloaded. We eventually made it to a place where the road was too mucky to go further and started about 2 hours lower down the mountain than is sometimes possible.
Distances on Kilimanjaro are measured in time we learned and not feet or meters or anything else.
Hiked in the rain forest in some misty rain for a few hours and eventually made it to our first camp, Forest Camp, at 9,281 feet.
Amedeus was great - his English was excellent, better than all but Emmanuel - and he was very happy to talk about his background and Tanzania and the mountain. He was licensed as a head guide and had led many treks up the mountain, specializing in ones where people wanted to go fast. His brother held a speed record on the mountain. But, he wants to work for Thomson, and so has to start at the bottom and work his way up in their company. But it meant that I got a personal porter who knew a lot and had stories to tell. He carried very little for me - an extra liter of water and some of my jackets and hats as I took off layers during the day, all things I could have stuffed in my pack but he was happy to carry them. It was really nice to have someone who was always looking out for me. He kept reminding me to drink (I hear "sip, sip" every time I see his face). On the third day I gave him my camera and he took lots of pictures for me including many that have me in them which is nice. It was really interesting to hear his perspective on the whole tourist industry and the way he thinks of the people that come over as "clients" and that his job is to make sure the clients have a good time because in the long run that is good for the country.
An easy first day of hiking just getting to know everyone and know the routine.