Porters weigh their loads at the ranger station before beginning a trek. They are limited to carrying 15 kilos of supplies plus their personal gear. Mostly they carry the gear on their heads or shoulders, not like a backpack.
The day began in sunshine at the Impala Hotel in Arusha with the loading of our duffels full of gear into the Land Rover. We drove a couple of hours to the “gate” to the national park. We registered and the porters brought their loads to be weighed. Porters are restricted to carrying 15 kilos (about 32 pounds) plus their personal gear. Our crew consisted of the guide, two assistant guides, a cook, a waiter, a camp manager and a dozen or so porters. That seems like a lot of people but there is also a lot of gear and fresh food to carry.
I would like to say our arrival at the park began well, but it didn’t. First, the total fees for foreigners to enter the park and camp and climb Kili is something like $500 or more per person for an eight-day expedition. Plus there are fees for the porters, cook and guides that we have to pay. (All these fees are scheduled to go up July 1.) We had prepaid the outfitter to cover all this but their bank transfer had not gone through the day before. Our lead guide asked if any of us had a credit card that could be charged there at the gate with reimbursement to come later. Although we had the means to help, it seemed unprofessional at the least, so we declined. It took an hour, a number of cell calls and some scrambling back in Arusha to get the fees transferred. By now it was raining pretty hard off and on and we still had to drive some miles to the trailhead. Then the battery in the Rover died and the vehicle had to be jump started. Then the windshield wipers didn’t work, either. Nonetheless, we headed out on the muddy road to our jumping off point, but we were stopped well short of the trailhead. The muddy road became impassable, even in a four-wheel-drive Land Rover. But the crew set up a table and chairs for us to use for lunch. I looked at some of the other trekkers. One had a Camelback water system like mine, but I noticed his hose was covered in insulation. I briefly wondered what I could do at this point to keep my water from freezing before it got to my mouth during our summit push. I would have several days to stew about this. Meanwhile, the Rover went back to pick up the rest of the crew and gear. With all the delays, we didn’t begin our trek until about 3 p.m. – and at about 7,300 feet above sea level short of the actual trailhead by several hundred feet vertical and about three or four kilometers.
And so our trek began rather inauspiciously.
Some of the next few hours were spent negotiating a slippery, muddy, puddle-laden road. After that, the real trail began. In places it was a steeper-than-stairs, grab-whatever-you-can climb up and down a muddy slope through a dense rain forest. At times, the trail became a stream bed for runoff from the mountain. Part way up we saw the only non-human mammals we would see the entire trip: a couple of shy colobus monkeys. As we hiked, the mud got everywhere. Then it got dark and the headlamps came out. I didn’t limp into camp at 9,200 feet until 7:45. A.J., with the benefit of youth and his athleticism, got to camp about an hour and half before I did. The first thing he asked me when I showed up was the location of the showers. I laughed out loud. Apparently A.J.’s guide – named Godlove, so help me – had told him there would be showers at the camp. We came to learn that Godlove had an unusual sense of humor. Elizabeth, Phoebe and Yiannis didn’t get to camp until sometime well after 8. We were all a little miffed because this first day had been pitched as a pretty easy walk. If it hadn’t been so muddy and slippery it might have been easier, but I would not have said “easy.” But the camp crew was wonderful. The tents were set up when we arrived, although mine had a broken zipper on the rain fly. The crew took our muddy gear and did their best to wash the mud off, even if we all knew in our hearts it would not dry by morning. Little did we know how rare dry gear would be the rest of the trip.
We had a dinner of soup, spaghetti noodles with a vegetable sauce, fish, and mango and avocado salad. One of the best meals of the journey it would turn out. I went to bed at about 11 already pretty beat up by the weather and the muddy climb in the dark. But between the Diamox and the exhaustion I slept soundly.
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