6 July 2022

Diary Entry

I’m writing this while doing a time laps of the camp.

Man this is awesome. I am so dirty though. All the people are amazing and I am enjoying the interactions.

I have two crows/falcon things with in two meters of me. They are walking towards me as I am writing this! Really quite amazing to see, although quite scary. Scary because they are wild animals, The two that are here must be a pair. They are grooming each other while watching me,

The clouds are coming over/past me and it is getting pretty chilly. Amazing that the birds done seem to mind. They are behind a rock.

Everyone in camp is currently sleeping or just spending time. It really amazing how quickly the weather changes here. Between or withing a minute it goes from really hot . warm to freezing cold.

The pair has just found food, and their talking changed.

Today we went on a short 2 hour hike, up to a geolocation spot overlooking the camp. We wrote our name in it and left our agenda there. I never knew about this before. Its really quite interesting how they work, There is a app you can download to retrieve the locations and record it, Sean was telling me about it. We did some jumping to try get a cool looking photo or video. (Interesting how that worked out.

After the shortish break we walked a few more meters/ hundred, to get to a ridge line, overlooking both the camp and Mt Kili, what an amazing view. It is one of the most spectacular views. The scary thing is we will be starting that in two days! What a thing I must say. We get to test our going down skills, which was also quite something, slow yet fast!

The “train” is amazing to watch, there are so many moving parts. So many things have to work. Very interesting to see / experience.

I must also say, the team of porters and guides are really amazing! The toilet man / engineer team is great always making sure everything is operating well!

There are 3 teams here now, one left this morning. So very likely they are summiting tonight.

We have a group of Norwegians as well who have 3 tents. We are by far the biggest crew here. No other team has as many tents as we do.

We have 3 large porter tents, 3 tents for guides, 2 toilet tents and 8 tents for us. There are 3 of us who have single tents. The group is currently playing cards, “Sh” don’t know, sounded fun, but the looser has to run around the water with only a bandanna and shoes. woops for the looser I guess.

We have completely above the clouds, in the mornings it looks like a white ocean. An amazing view. Although at the moment we are in the clouds / the cloud come and go from our position.

I was constipated until today, and I thought it was about time, so I had a really large dosage of coffee, it gets my stomach to go and it is amazing to feel like I am now.

We had a view of a group of porters staring to pitch their tents today, I must admit, they are fast… efficient.

The cooks also make amazing food! They start to prepare the food from much earlier then we are up. It is amazing to watch them prep, They start with getting the “fresh” food or what ever can be kept fresh to this point.

I must say the public toilets are really not as bad as I had expected. Yes they stink but all the ones I have seen are really not bad, smells almost like a farm.

Everyone has such interesting stories!

Tomorrow is a early start need to wale up early, 5:30 breakfast at 6:30 and we leave 7:30 to get to Kibo.

We need to have quick access to wind proof gear, in saddle it gets very windy. Its going to be a very interesting walk tomorrow. I need to make sure I am hydrated and sun block.

I am missing Monique and our Cats!

After Notes

The Train

The train was referred to by Sean, its essentially the logistical and organisational requirements for getting a team up to the top of this beautiful mountain. If one thing stops working, there is a impact and as a client, I probably would not have noticed / been told about the issue.

Public toilets

The toilets were not bad up until this point. Unfortunately I was unable to go to them at Kibo, nor any of the camps on the way down from the mountain. Our ascent was on the less busy side of the mountain and Kibo was the first time we were on a main ascent path.

Going to the bathroom in the evening was amazing, we were on Kenya’s side of the mountain and when I went to go to the bathroom ( public ) there was an breath taking view of a city, with the night lights. It really was something to behold