Background
For at least the last five years I have threatened my mates with the ultimate holiday to end the millennium. Usually during a session in the pub, after a couple of pints, I would say that in the summer of 2000 we would climb Kilimanjaro and then go on safari. This has always been met with replies of, “yeah, yeah, your round isn’t it?”
Summer ’99 arrived and various problems with people having no money and no commitment meant I went to America by myself for 3 weeks, and returned determined to sort out the next holiday earlier and better. Over the Christmas period I got the chance to speak to everyone again, and put it to them. Again there was not a lot of commitment, but I think they were beginning to realise I was serious!
The 8th of January 2000 saw me walk into Thomas Cook and put forward what must be one of the strangest requests for holiday they have had. I had done my research, and not only did I want to climb Kilimanjaro, I wanted to climb the Machame route; then I wanted to go on a specific safari. Strangely you cannot book the holiday I wanted out of a brochure! After a lot of searching through brochures we found the safari I wanted for a reasonable price with Hayes and Jarvis. While the travel agent phoned the company I continued looking through the brochure. On about the next page a small paragraph caught my eye, ‘Kilimanjaro – The Machame Route’!
The paragraph stated that you need to be fit, but the rewards were worth it because, as I knew, the Marangu route could be crowded, and was generally too quick an ascent anyway. It included a phone number, and nothing more! As we were only on hold to Hayes and Jarvis I interrupted the travel agent, and showed the paragraph to her. We immediately phoned the number. After literally 50 minutes of hold music we got through, made some enquiries, and I was ready to go back to my mates!
Out of the 4 people I wanted to go up the mountain with me, 2 said yes. The other 2 begged off for poncy reasons like work commitments, and lack of money!
The 13th of January 2000 the holiday was booked, and the deposit paid. We were going to Africa!
Build up
If you want to do a holiday like this, then plan early! There are a number of hassles. For a start you need to be immunized against the following:
Hepatitis A
Polio
Tetanus
Typhoid
Yellow Fever
You also need anti malaria tablets, and because the mosquitoes in Africa are some kind of super mosquito you need to take Larium.
You also need a visa to get into Tanzania (at the time of booking you also needed one for Kenya, but they abolished that soon afterwards (they knew I was coming!)).
The currency in Kenya is Kenyan shillings, and in Tanzania is Tanzanian shillings. At the time of booking you could not export either currency out of the country. Closer to the departure time you could get Kenyan shillings, but were still not allowed Tanzanian Shillings.
We sorted our visas out through the visaservice for about £34 per visa. At the same time we made sure our passports were up to date. You must have a valid passport (obviously), but it must still be valid for six months after you return!
As we have walked for years there was not much to get in the way of kit, but a new sleeping bag was purchased, as well as a few items of clothing.
We were as ready as we were ever going to be, and eagerly looking forward to Saturday the 26th of August.
Day 1
I woke on Saturday morning at about 08:00 having been to an office party the night before. No hangover thankfully! I kicked one of my workmates who had stayed the night out of the house and packed my final items of luggage. For some reason I looked at the plane tickets. Two of us were due to travel to the airport by car from Chester to, I thought, Gatwick airport. The other traveller was coming by plane from Aberdeen, and was to meet us in London. When I looked at the tickets I realized we were due to fly out of Heathrow! This was not a problem for me, but Russell was flying into Gatwick at 17:15. We had to check in at Heathrow by 18:00!
A couple of hasty phone calls later, and Russell was woken from a final morning in bed with his girl to find out that he needed to sort out getting to Heathrow. He phoned the airport, and luckily managed to change his flight so he could now get into Heathrow for about the same time. Problem solved!
I reckon that there has to be at least one thing go wrong with any holiday. At least we got ours over with at the very beginning!
A couple of uneventful journeys later and by 17:45 we were all together, checked in, and ready to go.
Now is as good a time as any to introduce myself and the other two.
I’m Steve Nixon, a 23-year-old technical analyst
This is Tristan Jones, a 23-year-old farmer
This is Russell Betney, a 23-year-old perpetual student
We have been walking together for about 10 years, and between us have climbed just about everything worth going up in Scotland, England, and Wales. I was the only one of us three to climb outside of Britain, and the only one to go above 10000 feet (I climbed Taylor’s peak and a couple of other mountains in Rocky mountain national park, and have been to 13147 feet). We were all relatively fit, Tristan had joined a gym about a month before we went, but none of us had done any special training for the climb.
At 20:00 we boarded flight KQ0101 Kenyan Airways flight from Heathrow to Nairobi. The plane was older than me! It shook, and wobbled, it got us there!
Day 2
We landed at 06:40 local time, and were met by Benny. Hayes and Jarvis run all their African operations through Rhino Safaris, and Benny was the Nairobi customer contact. He had arranged transport to the Landmark Hotel were we had a small briefing covering the safari the other two couples who had arrived on our plane were doing, and our bus journey to Tanzania! Rhino Safaris do not run the Kilimanjaro climb for Hayes and Jarvis, and had been asked to arrange transport to the Keys Hotel Moshi, and then return travel for Monday the 4th of September. What we did in between was up to us!
That afternoon we went on a tour of Nairobi, visited the museum, the snake farm, and the Karen Blixen museum. Very informative for all the wrong reasons. Nairobi has become the place I would least like to live. The poverty, the rubbish, the roads, and the blatant abuse of money by those with power; together with the fact that everyone who saw us either saw us as a source of income, or just seemed to despise us makes Nairobi a hard place to like.
The real shocker to us was the temperature; here we were in spring, less than 150 miles from the equator, and it was 15 degrees and overcast! We spent the rest of the day sleeping ready for the journey the next day.
Day 3
We had all repacked the night before, and now left our safari stuff with the hotel. A quick breakfast later, and we went to the bus. We were travelling with the riverside bus company who travel daily from Nairobi to Arusha, and then from Arusha to Moshi. The bus stopped at a few other hotels in Nairobi, and then headed out to Arusha. The road we took is the main road through East Africa, and I would hate to see the smaller roads. At times the bus drives off the side of the road because it is smoother than the tarmac! Sometimes the tarmac just stops for no reason, and then continues 500 metres later. Workers dig extra holes in the road, and then I can only assume leave them dug and go and dig some more!
It takes a while to get to the Kenyan Tanzania border. Once there we got through with no problems, out visas were in order, we didn’t look the terrorist sort, and we smiled at all the right jokes! You hear about people having major problems at the borders but I cannot add to them. The only problem is the ten or so Africans who surround the bus trying to flog you worthless junk that nobody could ever want. If you don’t like this sort of thing do not go to Africa; you get it everywhere!
We continued on to Arusha. The bus stops at the Novotel for you to change to another bus to Moshi. Sounds simple? Not for us! Of all the years, months, weeks, and days we could have picked to try to travel from Arusha to Moshi, we had to pick the one when Bill Clinton wanted to travel from Moshi to Arusha! Pleas that Bill should wait while we got to where we wanted to be fell on deaf ears. Don’t these people know who we are?! Four hours we had to wait. It only takes an hour to travel to Moshi! We did get a glimpse of the man himself, with Chelsea and Hilary, and about a hundred support vehicles! The daft thing was that even though Bill Clinton the president of the United States was coming to the Novotel for an important conference we were allowed into the hotel, we were allowed around all the grounds, no one stopped us doing anything. If you were in charge of security for the president of the United States would you let 3 scruffy looking young people wanted unrestricted around the same area that your boss is due to be in?
Eventually we left for Moshi, and were awarded our first glimpse of the mountain. The sun was going down, and rising out of the clouds was this huge white monster. I was the first to see it, as I knew roughly where I was looking, and what I was looking for, and the sight was fantastic. Unfortunately the light was really bad, and the mountain just blends into the cloud in the photos we took. You’ll just have to go there and see it for yourself!
We arrived at the Keys hotel, had some tea, and then gathered in my room. Russell and Tristan were not over-enthusiastic about the forthcoming climb. There seemed to be very little organization, and no amount of explaining that this was the way things were done in Africa was going to reassure them. We agreed to sleep on it and see what happened in the morning. I put their lack of enthusiasm down to lack of sleep, and being tired from the journey. We slept.
Day 4
After breakfast we met the old guy who runs the climbing tour company, and he explained the route, showed us maps, and introduced our guide Fanuel.
Our gear was loaded onto a Land Cruiser, we were given our lunch, and then we were off. It took about 45 minutes to get to the trailhead with a short stop in Machame for food supplies. We were unable to glimpse the mountain again due to the cloud cover.
At the trailhead we put on our walking boots, and then went to sign in. You have to give your name, tour operator, and passport number at the every stop. Once the formalities were completed we were ready to start walking.
Whilst Fanuel sorted out our porters we were told to head off up the trail behind our assistant guide. Just to get in perspective what we were about to do I had brought along a GPS, so the figures given throughout should be fairly accurate, although sometimes it took me a while to get a signal from enough satellites for an accurate height reading. We have all climbed Scafell Pike in the Lake District, which is just over 3000 feet; Kilimanjaro is 19341 feet. At the trailhead we were already at 6000 feet. Basically we were to climb 6 Scafell Pikes and were starting at 2. Only another 4 to go!
The trail from Machame trailhead starts off as a wide track through the forest, it is not at all steep or strenuous; however we were told that right from the beginning to walk slowly. “Pole, Pole” would be heard many times over the next few days; this is Swahili for slowly, slowly. At some point on the mountain one of the guides told me, “There is no hurry on Kilimanjaro, there is no hurry in Africa!” We walked for about 2 and a half hours as the trail wound it’s way up the mountain steadily becoming narrower with a few slightly steep bits over tree roots, and a few tentative circumventions around muddy spots. We then reached a clearing where we stopped for lunch. The lunch was not much to look at, a meat pasty, a sandwich, a banana, and a couple of other bits and pieces but as it had been packed at the hotel we were to look back fondly at it in the days to come!
Fanuel caught up with us at this point, and the assistant guide disappeared up the mountain. It is worth noting that the package he was given to carry was Russell’s other rucksack with his and Tristan’s stuff in; even though it was a perfectly good rucksack, he carried it on his head!
Fanuel let us finish our lunch, and then led us further up the trail. Another 2 and a half hours of walking saw us climbing ever higher, and moving along a rocky spur to just below the limit of the cloud where we reached our first camp; Machame hut.
Our porters had reached the camp before us, and were in the process of erecting two tents. We put our stuff down, and started to help with the tents thinking that two three man tents would be cosy as there were three of us, Fanuel, our assistant guide and three porters. Just as we were starting to help one of the porters came over to us and motioned that we should sit over to one side. He then produced three folding stools! They had carried seats up the mountain for us! We could not believe it. The tents were soon up, and three carry mats were produced, and they started to put 2 in one tent and 1 in the other. I pulled up Fanuel and asked what was going on. He replied that the two tents were for the three of us! The rest of them would sleep in another tent. I could not believe it, but that was the way it was going to be. We decided to sleep the three of us in one of the tents, and put the kit in the other. This done we sat outside the tent, put a little bit onto our video diary, and waited to see what we would get for tea.
The first thing to approach us was a thermos of hot tea, and a large tray of popcorn! Yes, popcorn! The porter who brought it over first brought a tablecloth, and breaking branches off a nearby bush he made us a table. We were amazed at this point, but settled down to tea and popcorn. A short while later another porter appeared with plates, knives and forks, and napkins. He then folded the napkins, and set out the table like we were in a hotel, and not sitting 10000 feet up a mountain.
For the meal we were brought soup and bread, followed by meat and fried potatoes with a vegetable stew; all this with more tea. The food was fine, the meat had been well cooked though; although as we had seen were it came from that morning we thought it just as well!
Meal finished we went to bed. It was only about 20:00!
Day 5
We all woke up during the night at about 02:00 needing the toilet! It is not fun getting dressed at 02:00 just to stagger outside, relieve yourself, stagger back and get undressed again, but it is too cold not to get dressed! We were then woken at 07:30 for breakfast. This consisted of bread, more of last nights meat, some kind of omelette, cucumber, and then porridge. Now most of you reading this will read porridge and think, like we did, of oats, lumps, stodge etc. A few may think of Ready brek. What we got when we lifted the lid was watered down wallpaper paste! I was the only one to try it, and it was tasteless mulch. I tried adding some honey to it, but here honey was much sweeter than ours, and made the whole thing taste like sugar water. It was horrible. I had to throw it away. Tristan got rid of the rest of the porridge in a bush!
After breakfast we packed up, and set out up the mountain. The first part of the trail led steeply up a bank behind our camp, and soon broke out to a small ridge just above the cloud level. A quick scramble to the top of a pile of rocks and we were rewarded with our first proper view of the mountain. Wow! It looked large, and a long way away.
We walked for about 5 hours again stopping about half way for lunch just after a small rock climb up some steps that my guidebook called an 8m scramble! If that was a scramble let me at the proper climbing routes! The route led us further along the rocky spur we had climbed before crossing a couple of other rocky spurs, and finally coming out onto a plateau below the mountain. This is called Shira plateau, and a 30-minute walk along the plateau, away from the mountain saw us at the campsite. We were now at 12500 feet.
It being only 13:30 we were at a bit of a loose end, and passed the next 6 hours reading, resting, admiring the view, and generally not doing very much. About 18:30 was teatime, seeing a repeat of last nights meal with the only difference being the meat was recognizable tonight as chicken. As soon as we were finished it started to get dark so we went to bed. It was cold when the sun went down, and there was nothing else to do. It was about 19:45!
Tristan and Russell had to get up through the night; I couldn’t be bothered!
Day 6
Up at 07:30 again, and the first thing I did was rearrange my rucksack. 3 years ago I dislocated my shoulder canoeing, and occasionally I get the odd twinge in my upper back because of it. Carrying a rucksack for 2 days had given me more than a twinge, and I emptied most of my unnecessary weight into my other bag that a porter was carrying. Poor guy!
Breakfast was the same as the day before with a repeat of the porridge. Unfortunately Shira plateau is rocky, and we could not get rid of the porridge. We just had to leave it.
I had spoke to Fanuel during the previous evening and had asked that today, instead of following the low level route to the next camp, we could climb up to lava tower hut before dropping to our camp. My guidebook had recommended this as it was scenic, and helped with acclimatization. Fanuel had expressed doubts, but relented, and that was to be our route today.
Not long after setting out I started to get a headache, and as we crossed 13000 feet, it was becoming too much. We stopped and I took some acetazolamide and some ibuprofen. For those who don’t know acetazolamide is a diuretic that is supposed to help with altitude sickness. We carried on walking; my headache got no better. When I stopped the headache got worse, when I walked I couldn’t concentrate. Eventually I just shut out everything, and just concentrated on walking. Thankfully the walk wasn’t strenuous, and the height climb was gradual. About 3 hours into the walk the patch split, and we continued upwards to lava tower. The extra height gain was not large, only about 200 metres; my guidebook had made it sound much larger, I can only assume there is a second, lower level path to the third camp that no one used that day.
We ate lunch at lava tower. None of us felt great, but no sickness as yet, just headaches. Lava tower looked impressive above us, and we joked about a quick ‘gnash’ up and down!
Lunch over we headed down the other side of lave tower, and very rapidly lost height. Lava tower had been at 14200 feet, the highest any of us had ever been. It hurt! The way down from lava tower was very steep, and the jolting did not help my headache. After 1 hour we rejoined the path, and 1 more hour later we reached camp. It had taken us just over 5 hours. Fanuel had estimated 7 hours to us the previous evening. He was quite impressed.
As we sat looking at the fantastic view, I took some paracetamol, and my headache disappeared. The view of the mountain was amazing, and only slightly spoilt by the worrying sight of the Barranco wall that we would have to climb the next day. We were now at Barranco hut situated at 13100 feet.
We had the now common ritual of tea and popcorn followed by tea about an hour later. As we were finishing tea the sun started to disappear, and it got cold. Very cold! We quickly went to bed. Only Tristan got up through the night.
Day 7
Both Tristan and myself woke up needing the toilet. Lets just say that things were a little looser than I would have wanted! A couple of Imodium accompanied the paracetamol and that seemed to settle things. I couldn’t face breakfast, and just nibbled at some cucumber. Just looking at the meat and the omelette made me feel ill. The other two had no problem eating my share. Once again the porridge wasn’t touched.
We set off after breakfast, and slowly made our way up the Barranco wall. The going is not difficult, but there are some very small scramble sections. At the top the view was amazing, but the altitude sobered the occasion slightly. We were all feeling a little rough, and just wanted to carry on. We spent the next 2 hours walking up and down over valleys before dropping very steeply to another valley where we stopped for lunch.
The previous days lunches had been sandwiches, fruit, etc. prepared by Fanuel and handed to us in the morning. Today he had apologised for not having anything to pre-make lunch with, so he cooked us basically another breakfast. We finally found out what happened to the porridge. One of the porters reheated it, and drank it straight out the bowl! I almost threw up!
After lunch we climbed up the equally steep other side of the valley, and made our way around the mountain. This part of the walk was the only part my book did not have a description for, but looking at the map I had estimated it would take 4 hours. It took 4 hours to reach lunch! As we continued around the mountain we could see another rocky spur heading up the mountain, and Fanuel told us that was the Mweka trail which we were to join to move up to Barafu hut our last stop before the summit. The trail looked no more than a mile away, and only about 100 metres above us, but it took ages to reach it. It was getting harder to walk, and harder to breathe, but the effect was so subtle that we didn’t notice it until we were on the final approach to Barafu hut. We could see the start of the camp above us, but the trail became slightly steeper before reaching it. We could only walk a few paces at a time before having to stop and catch our breath. Slowly we made our way upward. Our porters already had the camp set up when we reached it, and whilst Russell and Tristan had tea and popcorn, I went to bed.
We had walked for 8 hours; it was just after 3 o’clock. I slept until about 17:30 when Fanuel woke me. As I was assuring him that I would be fine for the summit attempt I threw up! I was not in a good state, but I was determined to go on. We sorted out our clothes for the attempt, got our supply of water together, and I convinced Russell and Tristan to help carry my kit so all I had to carry was my camelback with my water in. I went back to sleep while Russell and Tristan had some tea. They then went to sleep too.
Summit attempt / Day 8
We were woken at 23:00 and immediately wished we hadn’t been. It was VERY cold. Even sitting doing nothing our pulse rate was above 100 bpm. It took a little while to get dressed and put our boots on, and then we loaded Russell and Tristan’s rucksacks and were ready to head out. To give you some idea of the temperature we had all walked the previous day in a thin pair of trousers and a thin fleece top. We were now dressed in thermal trousers, normal trousers, and waterproof over trousers, thermal base layer, mid fleece layer, fleece, and gore-tex jacket, woolly hat, and gloves.
We left camp at about 23:40 at an altitude of 15300 feet, and set off up the mountain. We were all wearing head torches, and the only thing we could see was the small patch of light on the ground in front of us. Fanuel led the way through the rest of the camp and on up the trail to the summit.
The next seven hours were agony. We walked at a very slow pace, all feeling extremely tired, suffering from aches and pains, headaches, feelings of nausea. I was the worst hit, and was the one who dictated the pace, we were walking for what felt like ages between each rest break, but was probably only 15 minutes. At each break we all collapsed onto rocks and fought to catch our breath for a few minutes before forcing ourselves back to our feet to carry on.
We met a number of other people going up the mountain, all of them in the same situation, but nobody going the wrong way, nobody giving up as happens on the Marangu route. At about 6 o’clock the horizon started to lighten, not enough to see by, but clearly getting lighter. Above us was the Rebmann glacier glowing white in the darkness, and somewhere above that Stella point. We struggled on.
At about 06:25 I called for another break and sank down onto a rock. The horizon was very light now, and daybreak was not far off. We sat there for about five minutes, and I could not get up. I physically had no energy left; I could not stand up, I was finished.
Fanuel came over to speak to me, and I explained the situation. He was very understanding and said that he would carry on with Russell and Tristan to the top, and when I was ready I was to climb to Stella point if I could with the assistant guide, but either way he would give me a certificate with Stella point on it. He moved on with Russell and Tristan, and I just sat still for about 10 minutes.
I then reached into my coat pocket and pulled out some Kendal mint cake. As I started to nibble on the mint cake the sun came up. The sight was fantastic. Mawenzi was off to my left, and in the far distance other peaks were visible above the cloud. I just sat and watched for about five minutes finishing my piece of mint cake.
What you have to realize was that the mint cake was the first thing I had eaten in about 36 hours, and my body was just about finished. However, after eating the mint cake I was able to turn around, and as the sun had now come up I could see Stella point. It was about 40 metres above me! Russell and Tristan were both there waving at me to come up. The assistant guide helped me up, and then we set off up the mountain. It took me less than 10 minutes to reach Stella point with the assistant guide telling me to slow down the whole way! I just went from boulder to boulder pausing slightly at each to catch my breath. I knew that if I stopped that would be it, and so I pressed on.
I was exhausted when I reached Russell and Tristan at Stella point. They were not much better, it had taken them over 20 minutes to reach Stella point, and they were just about done from the effort. We all had a piece of Kendal mint cake, and looked at the rest of our journey. From Stella point my guidebook reckons that it takes about an hour to reach the summit, and the height climb is 100 metres. If I had reached this point in the dark I doubt I could have gone on, but with the sun up we could see the summit, and it looked possible! Fanuel asked me if I could go on, and I just nodded and set off thinking everyone else was behind me.
As I set off I remember looking around me and starting to sob. Russell told me later that the same thing happened to him. There is nothing to compare to being there, seeing the crater at the top of Kilimanjaro, and the glacier that runs along the side of it. Along with the fantastic sight before me was the feeling of almost accomplishing a dream, almost not accomplishing a dream, physical and mental exhaustion, and a lack of sleep. I walked on towards the summit, smiling and sobbing most of the way there, but not once stopping to catch my breath. I was running on almost pure adrenaline (coupled with the pure sugar I had just eaten) and wasn’t going to stop until I reached my goal. In all it took my just over 20 minutes to go from Stella point to Uhuru peak the top of Africa, and I reached the top at 07:20. Russell and Tristan were 20 minutes behind me, which shows just how fast I was actually going!
The feeling of reaching the top was even more intense than when I set off from Stella point. I sat at the top looking at the crater before me sobbing for about 10 minutes, and then just sat smiling and laughing until Russell and Tristan joined me.
Once we were all together we sat and congratulated each other while Russell and Tristan caught they’re breath. We then took the obligatory photos, added some more to our video diary, and just enjoyed the view.
All too soon it was time to start back down. We retraced our path to Stella point with Fanuel leading, and then spent 1 and a half hours slowly moving down the steep path it had taken 7 hours to climb. The ground was made up of very loose gravel, so we were able to rest our legs by almost skiing down the mountain! Even with the loose surface my feet hurt. I have always had problems coming down hill, and cannot remember when my big toenails were not in the process of falling off or growing back!
When we returned to camp we were exhausted. One of the porters brought as some blackcurrant squash; the only flavoured drink we had our entire time on the mountain. Fanuel then allowed us some time to rest before heading on. We spent the time lying in our tent too exhausted to do anything, but unable to sleep due to the heat and the feelings we were experiencing after completing the climb.
After an hour Fanuel brought us some soup, which I managed to eat, and then we packed up and started out, down the mountain. It was 11:45; we had already been up over 12 hours, and had been walking for more than 9 of them!
As we headed down the track towards Mweka hut my feet really started to hurt, every time I put my foot down my big toes hurt, and on the occasion my boot hit a rock it was agony. I have always set a quick pace going down hill, and this time was no different, I figured I could get to the camp, and then do something about my feet; there was nothing I could do on the trail at any rate. About half way down to Mweka hut we passed a ranger hut where we rested for a short while. As we set off I asked Fanuel how much longer it would be, he told us it would be about 2 hours. I realized my feet would not make it.
We carried on with me leading, I tried to ease the pressure on my toes by kicking my heals at each step, but nothing was working. After about 45 minutes I had to stop. I took my boots off, and my toenails were a lovely shade of dark red. I decided to walk in my socks, but Fanuel wouldn’t let me. He told us to carry on slowly, and he would hurry to the camp to get my more comfortable shoes that I had brought for the evening around the camp. Before I could protest he was gone. About 40 minutes later we hadn’t got much further as the best I could manage was a hobble. One of the porters came up the track to meet us carrying my boot bag with my shoes in it. I have never been so happy to see someone! I put my trainers on, and the extra give in the toes allowed me to move at something resembling a normal pace. It still hurt, but I could move. It took about an hour to reach camp. We celebrated with a coke as they were selling it from the hut.
I managed to eat some tea, and enjoyed another coke; and then as the sun went down we went to bed. I was too exhausted to notice when Tristan got up during the night!
Day 9
We were due at the Mweka trailhead today, but to reach it we had about a 4-hour walk down a very steep trail through the forest region of the mountain. There isn’t much to say about the journey other than it was very steep in places, very muddy, and very slippy. We all made it down to the old logging road that marks the last section of the route without incident. My feet hurt the whole way, but as I was wearing my trainers I could keep going. The only drawback to wearing trainers was the total lack of grip in the mud; but I made it.
We reached Mweka trailhead, and went to the office to collect our certificates. At this point I had mentally finished the mountain, so when Fanuel told us that the van didn’t meet us here, but stayed a further 15 minutes down the track I almost collapsed. My feet were killing me, and I honestly didn’t know if I could walk much further. I had pushed myself to reach the trailhead. Anyway, I gritted my teeth, and just ignored the pain in my feet to reach the bottom where we were met by the van, handed some lunch, and driven back to the Keys Hotel.
We spent the afternoon cleaning ourselves up, and relaxing. You have no idea how good a shower feels after 6 days on a mountain. Even with extensive cleaning it took a few days to remove all the grime from our skin!
We enjoyed our first ‘proper’ meal in days that night, and then had a well deserved early night in a proper bed.
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