Saturday, July 1, 2023; Day 2

It was an uncomfortable night– the sleeping bag and my body temperature were comfy, but the ground was so, so hard. I felt like I didn’t sleep much at all. More than the body aches I felt from sleeping on the ground, I was worried– I had 7 more days of this, and surely it would only get worse. For the first time, I found myself wondering if I’d made a mistake in embarking on this adventure.

That said, at 6am, we enjoyed our first instance of the greatest luxury of this trip: coffee delivered to our tent’s doorstep.

I took my daily Malarone pill, my first half-dose of Diamox, and my first anti-diarrheal pill. Looking at my pill case, I decided that I’d mis-counted my thyroid medication when packing and would have a dose fewer than I’d need, so I took only a half dose (later, I realize I was wrong and I will have just enough).

Breakfast is tasty and traditional; I enjoy the grilled egg. My PulseOx checkin is 94%/77bpm. After breakfast, we all brush teeth outside our tents, and I feel vaguely guilty about my toothpaste spit joining everyone else’s on a pile of rocks. Eww.

After packing up the tents, we’re all putting on sunblock and Jason H’s is smeared unevenly on his face. Sherri is trying to point out where he needs to fix it when I pull out a portable camp mirror and hand it to him. I get both a laugh and cement my new nickname from the Doctor, who’s wearing one of my loaned bandanas — “Eric is now ‘REI’… because he brought the whole store.”

Before we set off, we huddle in a circle and learn a chant/song, which sounds like “Tuna Panda Lima Kilimanjaro Ju Ju Ju” – and means “We’re climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, up up up!” We also learn a call and response; when a guide shouts “Kilimanjaro,” we shout back “Hakuna Matata!“

Today’s hike was mostly a long uphill, the first half a finely maintained dirt trail and the second comprised of giant rocks almost like a staircase.

Early in the hike we paused for a snack and water break inside a tree tunnel– one of my very favorite sights ever.

At lunchtime, we doffed our gear and relaxed on a flat plain, availing ourselves of our toilet tents that had been set up on the edge of the plain.

The dining tent got quite warm in the afternoon sun (I even hung my solar panel on the side), but a nice breeze cooled things off outside. The lunch menu itself wasn’t very interesting; there was some sort of pasta salad, bread, and deli meat.

Some birds hung around outside, hoping we might leave something tasty behind.

A cloud started rolling in after we finished eating and before long we were on our way, enjoying some relief from the sun but hoping it wouldn’t rain. Jason H. kept an eye on our altitude as we went and we cheered as we crossed 10K and then 11K feet.

The second part of the hike was a winding path between hills and along ridges, sometimes allowing us to look back with a bird’s eye view of the trail we’d been traveling.

At some points, the path became almost a rough staircase made out of rock:

Later in the afternoon, we reached a rest spot with cellular/text access, so I sent out a few text messages at AT&T’s exorbitant $10/day international rate. It was really nice to chat with my 10yo even briefly. I had expected to be entirely offline for 9 days, and was surprised to discover that we’d have some level of service at all of our subsequent camps.

We were amused to watch Liza trying to call her broker back in New York to talk about her real estate purchase. A group of teens hike by, a handful of them chatting about Marvel movies (“Batman is, like, legit!“), and us old folks realize that this is the only time we’ve seen teenagers without their faces buried in smartphones (they’re forbidden by the youth group). The youth squad passes, and we turn back to our own phones, amused.

An hour later, we summited a ridge, turned east and finally saw Kilimanjaro across the broad plateau. It was the most exciting view of the trip thus far. The summit still hid behind a cloud, but we could finally see the ascent, at least.

It seems impossibly far away, but we’re actually not far from the night’s camp, Shira 1, which is barely visible in the plateau.

Shortly, we came to a small rock clearing with a clearer view and all mugged for cameras and selfies with Kili in the background.

Not long after we came down to the edge of the hills. Just before we entered the broad plateau, a crew of porters met us and took our backpacks for the last mile or so, another pleasant “surprise” arranged by our guide. The walk was now easy though– mostly flat dust where the greatest worry was the trains of other groups’ porters flying by.

We arrived at the camp, signed the logbook, and took turns posing for photos at the Shira 1 sign with Kili in the background. Finally it felt like we were really doing this thing!

The Shira camp was large, and a number of other groups were already present, but we had plenty of room.

I pulled out my solar panel to try to catch the last few hours of daylight.

We had an hour or two of idle time before dinner, and I wandered around taking photos, the clouds even now acting as a spoiler.

During a cloud break, my brother called everyone outside to capture the sight of the moon just over Kili:

Before dinner, I had to break out my “heavy” outer coat as the temps fell. It was a military-styled coat with velcro for patches, and I’d put my Space Camp flight patch from age 11 on the side. I felt a bit silly considering the actual military folks on the trip, but a few of us spent a few minutes at tea talking about space camp, which was fun.

Dinner: Beef stir fry over rice. PulseOx: 92%/92bpm. Our comrades’ luggage still hasn’t arrived.

After dinner as I was climbing back into my tent, a gust of wind blew up my sleeve, and my teeth began to chatter. I was gripped by my first and only panic of the trip. I couldn’t recall my teeth having chattered in many years– perhaps even a decade? And even when they had, I always had a warm house not far or long away. If I was already this cold while wearing my heavy coat on day 2 at just 11800 feet, how could I possibly survive the rest of the trek???

(I didn’t think to bring my thermometer outside, but it was probably somewhere in the 30s Fahrenheit.)

I climbed into my mid-weight thermals and bag and felt much better after half an hour or so. I later realized that my “heavy” coat was basically worthless, and I started wearing thermals and my puffy coat to dinner.

I had to use the chemical toilet thrice during the night (not awesome, given the freezing temperatures) but I did get a nice view of the stars and the full moon. It was too cold to look for long, but it was neat to see Kili’s silhouette in the dim pre-dawn light.

Tomorrow, we’ll head to Shira 2, which will turn out to be my favorite camp.

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