sun over kili. day 3 . so far so good. no altitude symptoms so far. we are going up very gradually and walking at ants pace set by the guides. at each camp we do an extra hike up for aclimitization. i.e. hike higher than we sleep.
(deleting image from this and aother posts as syncing from the mountain is failing. will post later)
Last night we went to bed around 7pm and got up at midnight to go up to the top of mt meru (4,566 m/ 14,980 ft). We started from saddle hut (3,570 m) and climbed during full moon for about six hours. The scenery during the night was magnificent and then when descending we had magnificent views of meru crater and ashcone (I encourage you to search for images online).
We both had some symptoms of altitude sickness, but we just went slowly and with the help and encouragememt of our guides made it to the top.
On the day two we got to talk to some of the other hikers. Two japanese women from the japanese embassy in cairo, a group of medical workers from minnesota volunteering in arusha and an intern at the imternational court for the genocide in rwanda ( court is located in arusha)
Is this backpacking? Arrived at first night campsite on four day climb up Mt Meru. Spotless wood cabins with bunks for four, solar powered light, showers and toilets (also spotless), and our porter just handed us felt covered hot water bottles. Now that’s a first.
Ok. Aside from luxury camping at the Hilton Meru, we passed through canopies of moss draped Dr. Seuss trees and saw Colobus monkeys leaping around high up above as well as a girafe munching away. Most extraordinary landscape today was Meru Crater Looked like direct inspiration for James Cameron’s Avatar.
Pictured here is a giant ficus. So big a car can pass underneath. I believe its actually two ficus grown together to create an underpass.
Couldn’t get this image into the last post. so here it is.
Habari..we’ve been in tanzania for a week now. we have been staying in N’datou a small village outside Arusha in north TZ.
We can see mt meru towering above the village. we start climb it tomorrow and be on the mountain for four days.
During our stay here we volunteered at a local nursery school. The kids are aged two and a half to six and spend three and a half hours there. it is a private school partially sponsored by our outfitter Duma Explorer. They study english, Swahili, math and bible. The local language is amehru but primary instruction is all in swahili. secondary imstruction im TZ is in english.
We taught the kids ‘the hokey pokey’ and ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ and also worked with them during individual activities. They have very few resources but some kids have made great progress yet others that are stuggling. Even the latter will likely have an advantage over others once in public school.
The children are very sweet and well behaved.
The kids’porigi time.
We have been taken care by Julius who cooked for
us and has been helping us with our swahili.
julius
The village has only one paved road leading to a missionary hospital. Most people grow corn, coffee and bananas as cash crops in addition to other work that they can find.
i am typing this on my phone, so excuse me for being lax on capitalization formatting and spelling. i have some audio files also waiting for posting, but have been struggling with technical difficulties. stay tuned.
tutaonano …. see you later
We had a few days of hopping from city to city flying each morning and arriving mid day. A day in Soweto (Jennifer has a forthcoming post). A day in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania and then took a small plane to Arusha this morning. if you zoom into the photo you can see our first look to Kilimanjaro peeking through the clouds.
In Dar and Arusha, lots of people in the street, hawking , fixing stuff and making things like furniture. Across our hotel in Dar we saw construction workers on a four story building working barefoot with no machinery whatsoever let alone scaffolding or hardhats. In that respect, south africa is the “Royalty” of Africa – Much more developed despite it still having millions living in poverty.
we got our first glimpse of the indian ocean when we arrived this afternoon in Arniston. we are staying in a cottage that is thatched with native grass. we are a few kilometers from cape agulhas – the southernmost tip of africa and the boundary between the atlantic and indian oceans.
posting from phone or tablet so will be not as attentive as we’d normally be to spelling ,capitalization and punctuation.
some catchup posts to follow.
We celebrated the New Year by climbing the Klein–Hangklip (Afrikaans for “small hanging rock”) above Rooi Elis to see the sun rise.
We are staying with Marti & Illah and their children who bought a house here in Rooi Els a few years ago and spend summer and winter holidays in South Africa. It is a small town within a nature reserve. Today was incredibly windy – Illah wanted us to pick mussels at the beach for lunch, but the wind was very strong and waves were too big- so we had to be satisfied with watching the big waves crashing on the rocks.
The wind here is notoriously strong – can gust to 160 Km/H – one of the reasons there were many shipwreck around the Cape of Good Hope.
We are all packed and apartment cleaned – leaving this afternoon to South Africa. Seems like it went by so quickly. We are excited about the next phase, but at the same time sorry to leave the Ornano Apt and neighborhood.
Since we got back from London its been busy. We had Melisa and Dan visit from Seattle and Christina from Rome. Plenty of food and wine and walking around. We also went to a few Jazz and Jam sessions this month. We also started getting busy with planning the next phase of our trip.
