Trekking Day 1: Sunday, June 29, 2014
Lemosho Glades to Big Tree Camp
Hiking distance: 3 miles
Starting elevation: 7800’
Highest elevation: 9140’
Ending elevation: 9140’
Lemosho Glades to Big Tree Camp
Hiking distance: 3 miles
Starting elevation: 7800’
Highest elevation: 9140’
Ending elevation: 9140’
For a couple of hours each morning and a couple more each afternoon, the Springlands Hotel thrums with activity. At around 8:00 am the front gate swings open and in rumbles a trekking bus to shuttle hikers to Kilimanjaro. People swarm the bus like ants, lashing gear to the roof, passing packs through open windows, piling in. Then whoosh! They’re gone. Soon the gate swings open again and in roar two or three safari vehicles that look like armored troop transports. They’re quickly boarded by khaki-clad, camera-laden Safari-goers and disappear by 10:00 am. Each afternoon, starting around 4:00 pm, the process repeats; this time, though, the vehicles arrive full of people who’ve either just come down from Kilimanjaro or who are returning from a multi-day safari.
It’s exciting to observe all the action while anticipating our turn, like waiting in line for a wild amusement park ride and watching the people ahead of you get on and off. On one side of the platform, eager, fresh-faced, clean-clothed newbies press forward with nervous laughter; on the other side, tired but stoic veterans climb down nonchalantly. They’re muddy, dusty, and disheveled yet utterly blasé about their appearance. They’ve been out there; they’ve seen things; they’ve got tales to tell.
Well now it’s our turn. After months of planning and preparation, the big moment has arrived. When the empty bus rolls in at 8:00 am, it has come for us. We press forward with nervous laughter.
Imitating our predecessors, we toss our duffels up to porters on the roof, pass our daypacks though the windows, buckle in and hit the road. Trouble is, the road hits back. Most roads in East Africa are just hard-packed red earth – deeply rutted and ready to do serious damage. Everything in the vehicle, including us, bounces violently up and down and side to side. The ride couldn’t be rougher if we were crossing a washboard in a stagecoach…or the back of a cement mixer. It takes continuous strenuous effort to keep my skull from shattering the window, and vice-versa. At times I fear I might accidentally bite through my tongue. This abuse goes on for hours, and it has a name. Expats call it an African massage.
We spend the morning jouncing though farmland – seemingly endless hectares of bananas, then carrots, then potatoes. We're gaining elevation as we go, but so gradually we hardly notice. Several hours into the trip we stop at Londorossi Gate, the western entrance to Kilimanjaro National Park. We’ve purposely driven almost halfway around the mountain so that we’ll be forced to walk back around to the southeastern slope before summiting, thereby giving us more time to adjust to the extreme elevations ahead.
It’s exciting to observe all the action while anticipating our turn, like waiting in line for a wild amusement park ride and watching the people ahead of you get on and off. On one side of the platform, eager, fresh-faced, clean-clothed newbies press forward with nervous laughter; on the other side, tired but stoic veterans climb down nonchalantly. They’re muddy, dusty, and disheveled yet utterly blasé about their appearance. They’ve been out there; they’ve seen things; they’ve got tales to tell.
Well now it’s our turn. After months of planning and preparation, the big moment has arrived. When the empty bus rolls in at 8:00 am, it has come for us. We press forward with nervous laughter.
Imitating our predecessors, we toss our duffels up to porters on the roof, pass our daypacks though the windows, buckle in and hit the road. Trouble is, the road hits back. Most roads in East Africa are just hard-packed red earth – deeply rutted and ready to do serious damage. Everything in the vehicle, including us, bounces violently up and down and side to side. The ride couldn’t be rougher if we were crossing a washboard in a stagecoach…or the back of a cement mixer. It takes continuous strenuous effort to keep my skull from shattering the window, and vice-versa. At times I fear I might accidentally bite through my tongue. This abuse goes on for hours, and it has a name. Expats call it an African massage.
We spend the morning jouncing though farmland – seemingly endless hectares of bananas, then carrots, then potatoes. We're gaining elevation as we go, but so gradually we hardly notice. Several hours into the trip we stop at Londorossi Gate, the western entrance to Kilimanjaro National Park. We’ve purposely driven almost halfway around the mountain so that we’ll be forced to walk back around to the southeastern slope before summiting, thereby giving us more time to adjust to the extreme elevations ahead.
Along with a dozen fellow trekkers, Mo' and I stagger off the bus, check that our teeth are still in place, and rummage through our little bag lunches in a picnic pavilion while Deirdre signs in and pays our park fees. In the meantime, hundreds of men jostle about, shuttling supplies, sorting gear, and weighing it all.
What with all the men, supplies, and olive drab vehicles on the grounds, Londorossi Gate has the feel of a military outpost. Porters and guides don’t wear uniforms, though, or even t-shirts with company logos, so I can’t tell which of the men are assigned to our trekking group. I can’t even tell how many trekking parties are at the gate right now, so I ask Deirdre for the stats. The answer is jaw-dropping. No fewer than 54 men have been hired to take our group of 14 tourists up this mountain. That includes one lead guide, 7 assistant guides, 6 kitchen staff, and 40 porters – a ratio of nearly 4:1. I start imagining what our camps are going to look like with several trekking parties of similar size all sharing the same sites. Deirdre reads my face and nods grimly.
She had already cautioned me about this over the phone several months before the trip. I had been trying to convince her that Mo’ and I were excellent candidates for the trek on account of our rugged and austere backpacking practices. She didn’t disagree, but she made a curious statement about expectations. “This is not a wilderness trip,” she warned me. “People come to Kili to reach the top, not to be out in nature, not for peace and quiet. Camps are going to be noisy. You might even want to bring earplugs.”
Now I get it. If we are joined this evening by just one or two other trekking parties, we’ll be sharing a campsite with between 150 and 200 people. Moreover, campsites will get even more crowded each evening as trails converge near the summit. Not a wilderness trip indeed.
After about an hour of mustering forces at Londorossi Gate, we get back on the bus and spend another hour bouncing up the western slope of Kilimanjaro, rising rapidly out of Tanzania’s farmlands into a rainforest. When the bus finally stops to drop us off, I see no discernible landmarks, nothing that says, stop here. It’s as if the driver had been instructed to keep going until he was deep into what looked like the set of Jurassic Park, then kick us off and return to base. There’s still plenty of drivable road ahead of us, but we need to start walking now to give us time to acclimate. The ride from Moshi has increased our elevation by 4,000’ in just a few hours, so we can’t afford to drive any higher. We’re given a few minutes to pee – men on one side of the road, women on the other – and then we’re off. Sort of.
Our lead guide, Johnny, doesn’t take the lead. Instead he puts his second-in-command – an assistant guide named Robert – at the front of our line. Then Johnny turns to us with a broad game show host smile and instructs us to stay behind Robert. “Robert sets the pace,” Johnny tells us cheerfully, as if he’s wishing us all a happy birthday. “If you pass him, you won’t acclimate. If you don’t acclimate, you won’t summit.” Seems simple enough, but it's not.
We fall dutifully into line behind Robert and start shuffling forward with faltering, uncoordinated half-steps. I have never walked so slowly in my life. This ponderous gait will become easier in days ahead, but for the first few hours it seems unmanageable. What's more, we keep bumping into each other. We’re each moving at different speeds, after all, so our line expands and contracts like an accordion. Pardon me. ’Scuse me. Oops, my fault.
We’re only hiking 3 miles today, but it will take us the rest of the afternoon to reach camp. And that's intentional. We slept at 3,000’ elevation last night, and we’ll be camping above 9,000’ this evening, way up in AMS territory. Slow and steady wins the race, especially when the race is held at altitude. Still, I feel both frustrated and silly stumbling along like this, and I don't think I'm alone. We look like the world’s gloomiest conga line, or, considering the outfits, a funeral procession for L.L. Bean.
What with all the men, supplies, and olive drab vehicles on the grounds, Londorossi Gate has the feel of a military outpost. Porters and guides don’t wear uniforms, though, or even t-shirts with company logos, so I can’t tell which of the men are assigned to our trekking group. I can’t even tell how many trekking parties are at the gate right now, so I ask Deirdre for the stats. The answer is jaw-dropping. No fewer than 54 men have been hired to take our group of 14 tourists up this mountain. That includes one lead guide, 7 assistant guides, 6 kitchen staff, and 40 porters – a ratio of nearly 4:1. I start imagining what our camps are going to look like with several trekking parties of similar size all sharing the same sites. Deirdre reads my face and nods grimly.
She had already cautioned me about this over the phone several months before the trip. I had been trying to convince her that Mo’ and I were excellent candidates for the trek on account of our rugged and austere backpacking practices. She didn’t disagree, but she made a curious statement about expectations. “This is not a wilderness trip,” she warned me. “People come to Kili to reach the top, not to be out in nature, not for peace and quiet. Camps are going to be noisy. You might even want to bring earplugs.”
Now I get it. If we are joined this evening by just one or two other trekking parties, we’ll be sharing a campsite with between 150 and 200 people. Moreover, campsites will get even more crowded each evening as trails converge near the summit. Not a wilderness trip indeed.
After about an hour of mustering forces at Londorossi Gate, we get back on the bus and spend another hour bouncing up the western slope of Kilimanjaro, rising rapidly out of Tanzania’s farmlands into a rainforest. When the bus finally stops to drop us off, I see no discernible landmarks, nothing that says, stop here. It’s as if the driver had been instructed to keep going until he was deep into what looked like the set of Jurassic Park, then kick us off and return to base. There’s still plenty of drivable road ahead of us, but we need to start walking now to give us time to acclimate. The ride from Moshi has increased our elevation by 4,000’ in just a few hours, so we can’t afford to drive any higher. We’re given a few minutes to pee – men on one side of the road, women on the other – and then we’re off. Sort of.
Our lead guide, Johnny, doesn’t take the lead. Instead he puts his second-in-command – an assistant guide named Robert – at the front of our line. Then Johnny turns to us with a broad game show host smile and instructs us to stay behind Robert. “Robert sets the pace,” Johnny tells us cheerfully, as if he’s wishing us all a happy birthday. “If you pass him, you won’t acclimate. If you don’t acclimate, you won’t summit.” Seems simple enough, but it's not.
We fall dutifully into line behind Robert and start shuffling forward with faltering, uncoordinated half-steps. I have never walked so slowly in my life. This ponderous gait will become easier in days ahead, but for the first few hours it seems unmanageable. What's more, we keep bumping into each other. We’re each moving at different speeds, after all, so our line expands and contracts like an accordion. Pardon me. ’Scuse me. Oops, my fault.
We’re only hiking 3 miles today, but it will take us the rest of the afternoon to reach camp. And that's intentional. We slept at 3,000’ elevation last night, and we’ll be camping above 9,000’ this evening, way up in AMS territory. Slow and steady wins the race, especially when the race is held at altitude. Still, I feel both frustrated and silly stumbling along like this, and I don't think I'm alone. We look like the world’s gloomiest conga line, or, considering the outfits, a funeral procession for L.L. Bean.
For three hours we shuffle continuously uphill through thickening rainforest canopy. Monkeys chatter insults from the tops of giant podocarpus and hagenia trees, all dripping with beard lichens. Competing with the monkeys are noisy birds, such as turacos, which, for no evolutionary purpose that anyone can deduce, sound almost exactly like colobus monkeys. Even our guides can’t tell them apart. If not for the well-maintained trail, it would be easy to believe that humans rarely come this way. This place is so wild, in fact, that up until a few years ago armed rangers had to accompany trekkers on this part of the climb to protect them from an assortment of predators and also from the notoriously ill-tempered Cape buffalo.
Porters pass us as we hike, each one laboring under an appalling amount of gear. We feel guilty about the loads they're carrying on our behalf, so we step off the trail to allow them to pass. They don’t need our charity, though. If we don’t hear them coming they find alternate routes around us – sometimes through thick vegetation – without so much as asking us to lean one way or the other. As if to demonstrate the point, one porter even takes a call on his cell phone without stopping. He’s sweating profusely under a heavy backpack and using one hand to steady a huge duffel on top of his head. I fail to take his picture because I'm not able to juggle my camera and trekking poles at the same time. I am humiliated.
Our campsite this evening is called Mti Mkubwa, Swahili for Big Tree. It’s named for a large-but-not-particularly-remarkable podocarpus that shades the center of the site. The sun is setting as we arrive, which on a normal backpacking trip would mean pitching camp in the dark. But this is not a normal backpacking trip. The porters arrived ahead of us. Our tents are already up. So is a big dining tent. And two Porta Potty tents. There's nothing for us to do except get comfortable. It’s embarrassing.
Mo’ and I pick a tent at random and start moving in. In the time it takes us to unfurl our sleeping bags, a porter delivers two bowls of piping hot wash water to the tent’s vestibule. By the time we’ve washed our faces, we’re informed that thermoses of hot water are waiting for us in the dining tent. We are invited to drop in for tea, instant coffee, or hot cocoa before dinner. I am beside myself with discomfiture. Teddy Roosevelt didn't have it this good, and I, Senator, am no Teddy Roosevelt.
Porters pass us as we hike, each one laboring under an appalling amount of gear. We feel guilty about the loads they're carrying on our behalf, so we step off the trail to allow them to pass. They don’t need our charity, though. If we don’t hear them coming they find alternate routes around us – sometimes through thick vegetation – without so much as asking us to lean one way or the other. As if to demonstrate the point, one porter even takes a call on his cell phone without stopping. He’s sweating profusely under a heavy backpack and using one hand to steady a huge duffel on top of his head. I fail to take his picture because I'm not able to juggle my camera and trekking poles at the same time. I am humiliated.
Our campsite this evening is called Mti Mkubwa, Swahili for Big Tree. It’s named for a large-but-not-particularly-remarkable podocarpus that shades the center of the site. The sun is setting as we arrive, which on a normal backpacking trip would mean pitching camp in the dark. But this is not a normal backpacking trip. The porters arrived ahead of us. Our tents are already up. So is a big dining tent. And two Porta Potty tents. There's nothing for us to do except get comfortable. It’s embarrassing.
Mo’ and I pick a tent at random and start moving in. In the time it takes us to unfurl our sleeping bags, a porter delivers two bowls of piping hot wash water to the tent’s vestibule. By the time we’ve washed our faces, we’re informed that thermoses of hot water are waiting for us in the dining tent. We are invited to drop in for tea, instant coffee, or hot cocoa before dinner. I am beside myself with discomfiture. Teddy Roosevelt didn't have it this good, and I, Senator, am no Teddy Roosevelt.
After washing up, Mo’ and I peek into the dining tent. Fourteen folding chairs surround a long folding table set neatly with plates, mugs, and silverware. Two big trays of fresh popcorn await anyone in need of an appetizer. Just outside the tent is a folding table supporting a big water jug for hand-washing, along with a bottle of hand sanitizer. We are told that if we leave our empty water bottles and Camelbak bladders on that table at the start of any meal, porters will refill them with filtered water by the time we’ve finished eating. Mo' and I place our empty bottles on the table and apprehensively make our first visit to the Porta Potties.
Commodes in East Africa come in so many interesting styles and configurations that I’m tempted to publish a coffee table book titled Toilets of Tanzania. (Trademarked!) By far the most common privy in East Africa – and indeed in most developing nations – is the long-drop toilet, so named because you don't sit on it. Rather, you squat down and drop your payload a very long distance through a hole in the floor. The long-drop toilets at Big Tree are shockingly clean considering the number of people sharing them. Yet they're still pretty disgusting. So Mo’ and I deeply appreciate the Porta Potties our group is renting from Zara. For an additional hundred bucks per day (per potty) a porter sets them up for us, including the privacy tents. In addition, he empties them daily into the long-drop toilets, cleans them, and then hauls them uphill to our next camp. It's quite possibly the best money we’ve ever spent.
When our group assembles in the dining tent for our first in-camp meal together, food starts arriving in waves. First, banana sandwiches. Then vegetable soup. Then pasta with cabbage slaw. Then dessert. It’s way too much food, but the porters eat the leftovers so nothing goes to waste. Dinner service is so efficient that we’re all off to bed by 9:00 pm despite our late arrival in camp.
Unfortunately, Mo’ has a headache. Back in our tent she takes some Advil, drinks a lot of water, and we cross our fingers that this is not an early symptom of AMS. “I blame Ethiopian Air,” she says. “No doubt about it,” I agree. "There's no recovering from that."
Despite the lateness of the hour, our camp is as hectic and noisy as Deirdre had promised. Fragments of conversations penetrate our tent from all directions, some in English, some in German, most in Swahili. As we worm down into our sleeping bags Mo’ gets a little snippy about all the commotion: “I hope they don’t plan to party all night,” she says gruffly. But the noise isn’t a party, of course; it’s the porters washing our dishes, purifying our water, and finally – after taking care of all our needs – setting up their own tents and eating their own evening meals. When I point this out to Monica she hangs her head with guilt. “Ugh!” she grunts. “I’m a terrible person.”
“Te absolvo,” I reply, blessing her aching head with a lazy, pontifical wave of my hand. “This is not a wilderness trip.”
Commodes in East Africa come in so many interesting styles and configurations that I’m tempted to publish a coffee table book titled Toilets of Tanzania. (Trademarked!) By far the most common privy in East Africa – and indeed in most developing nations – is the long-drop toilet, so named because you don't sit on it. Rather, you squat down and drop your payload a very long distance through a hole in the floor. The long-drop toilets at Big Tree are shockingly clean considering the number of people sharing them. Yet they're still pretty disgusting. So Mo’ and I deeply appreciate the Porta Potties our group is renting from Zara. For an additional hundred bucks per day (per potty) a porter sets them up for us, including the privacy tents. In addition, he empties them daily into the long-drop toilets, cleans them, and then hauls them uphill to our next camp. It's quite possibly the best money we’ve ever spent.
When our group assembles in the dining tent for our first in-camp meal together, food starts arriving in waves. First, banana sandwiches. Then vegetable soup. Then pasta with cabbage slaw. Then dessert. It’s way too much food, but the porters eat the leftovers so nothing goes to waste. Dinner service is so efficient that we’re all off to bed by 9:00 pm despite our late arrival in camp.
Unfortunately, Mo’ has a headache. Back in our tent she takes some Advil, drinks a lot of water, and we cross our fingers that this is not an early symptom of AMS. “I blame Ethiopian Air,” she says. “No doubt about it,” I agree. "There's no recovering from that."
Despite the lateness of the hour, our camp is as hectic and noisy as Deirdre had promised. Fragments of conversations penetrate our tent from all directions, some in English, some in German, most in Swahili. As we worm down into our sleeping bags Mo’ gets a little snippy about all the commotion: “I hope they don’t plan to party all night,” she says gruffly. But the noise isn’t a party, of course; it’s the porters washing our dishes, purifying our water, and finally – after taking care of all our needs – setting up their own tents and eating their own evening meals. When I point this out to Monica she hangs her head with guilt. “Ugh!” she grunts. “I’m a terrible person.”
“Te absolvo,” I reply, blessing her aching head with a lazy, pontifical wave of my hand. “This is not a wilderness trip.”
All our photos from June 29 are online here.