Preparation and Climb 1 - July 3 2022

Diary entry

As a note: I have modified the text very little in my daily log. The log is coming directly from my journal.

The start

Today we started the day at our hotel, we then had breakfast and sometime after 8 we left for the Rongai Gate.

After arriving at the gate we had some food ( which was a packed lunch ) and signed in. After a while of waiting for, admin or something, we started our walk. I officially started the hike when we left the little hut where we ate breakfast.

The walk

During the walk up the mountain we walked past Protea ( South African National Flag ) and the Scottish national flower. Something which I found very interesting about the Scottish flower, was the higher we walked up the mountain the bigger and more flowers the plant had. At the lower altitudes there was only one small purple flower.

The guides were very nice, but didn’t speak English well ( English is not their first language ). For our tour group, English were the guides third language, Swahili being their second. Although part of the guide training they have to learn a language. Trying to communicate with the guides sometimes takes a while to express yourself, although I really enjoyed the communication and the random conversations I had with individuals hiking to our first camp!

Simba camp - 2671m

We had soup/fish/potatoes/veggies for dinner, soup was the starter and the potatoes were cooked really well ( This was something that did not really change. ) We had soup or some sort of liquid food for the first dish nearly every single meal with quite a few carbs and protein.

My evening oxometer was 97, hopefully it stays this high, although Sean said you will not really be feeling the height today.

It really is amazing how cold it gets. I got cold during the night, and I also needed to pee a lot as a result of the diamox.