February, 2001
Rich and Cheryll
Odendahl joined sailing friends Kate Fitkin and Bill Pierpont for the trip to
Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro International Airport at the southern base of the
dormant volcano of the same name.
Kilimanjaro is located three degrees south of the equator just south of
the Kenya/Tanzania border. We connected
through Amsterdam where we met Rich’s friend since kindergarten, Jeff
Wilson. Jeff was travelling from his
home in Eugene, Oregon. In Tanzania we
were met by representatives of our outfitters, the Marangu Hotel, but not our
luggage. KLM had left it in Amsterdam
and there wasn’t another flight scheduled for two days. They agreed to pay to have porters bring it
to us on the mountain when it did arrive.
We spent our next day
working off the jet lag and touring the quaint village of Marangu with a local
guide named Ludwig. Ludwig showed us the
houses, which range from basic to very basic to extremely basic huts of bamboo
and mud construction with grass roofs.
The afternoon was spent in the storeroom of the hotel renting equipment
for the climb should the bags not arrive before we were too far up the
mountain. This was also billed to
KLM. Fortunately, we had the foresight
to put most essentials in our carry-on bags.
In the evening we had a briefing for the climb along with three other
groups which would also be starting the following day.
The scene at the
hotel the next day could best be described as well orchestrated chaos. Guides and porters were carefully working
through checklists for our supplies.
Equipment was tested. Our duffel
bags were placed in cornmeal sacks, then in heavy plastic bags, and finally
into burlap bags which the porters would carry on their heads. The loads were distributed and weighed, and
each porter carried around 50 pounds. We
each carried daypacks with our lunch, water, cameras and rain gear. Our guide, Geoffrey, had been recommended by
Rick Davis, a friend of mine from college.
Geoffrey was assisted by five personal porters, one for each of us. There were two assistant guides who doubled as
porters except on summit day, a cook, and two other porters to carry the
food. Our National Park fees subsidized
the local economy to the tune of $2125 for the group. This included entry fees, hut fees and rescue
fees for both us and the porters. We
were driven a few miles to the park gate at 6400 feet above sea level and
started our climb to Mandara Hut at 9000 feet.
It was an easy three-hour climb through a beautiful forest, although it
rained for the last hour. Geoffrey
carried a tablecloth and thermoses full of tea for our lunch stop. Mandara Hut is actually a collection of small
A-frame huts with bunks and mattresses.
Cheryll, Jeff and I shared a room, which was about 9’ by 9’ and intended
for four climbers. Kate and Bill shared
another hut with a couple from England.
There was a separate large dining hut with long wooden tables and
benches, and the porters and guides huddled without sleeping bags in a separate
cooking hut. It was cramped, but comfortable. At dinner, the assistant guides became
waiters. We were served with cloth
napkins and tablecloths, and the fare consisted of a little meat, large
quantities of rice or pasta, vegetables, fruit and tea, lots of tea. This was Jeff’s 40th birthday and
he appeared to enjoy the simple celebration.
The second day’s
climb was to Horombo Hut at 12,500 feet.
Most of the hike was above the tree line with spectacular views into the
valley below. It was sobering in the
morning when a group of porters passed us running downhill carrying/wheeling a
climber on a stretcher. We never found
out what had gone wrong. We trekked for
five hours and were assigned another basic six-bunk hut without heat for two
nights. The Horombo dining hall was
populated by several creatures which Cheryll prefers to think of as “African
Chipmunks” as opposed to “mice”. We
planned an extra night here to help us acclimatize to the altitude. Sleep was getting difficult in the thin, cold
air. The temperature dropped well below
freezing at night. A few hundred yards
from camp there were flush toilets plumbed into a spring with very cold running
water. I washed in a pool at the base of
a small waterfall next to camp. Our
luggage arrived the first evening via three very tired porters who had walked
from the main gate in one day. We sent
our borrowed equipment down with them the next day. We spent our acclimatization day climbing
toward Kilimanjaro’s second highest peak, Mawenzi. Mawenzi can’t be reached without serious
technical climbing, so we limited our excursion to 14,300 feet and three and a
half hours round-trip. We descended to
Horombo and met Kim, a Canadian schoolteacher currently working in Turkey. Kim was climbing alone, and Horombo was full,
so she was assigned our sixth bunk.
Our fourth day on the
mountain retraced the previous day’s route and then continued across the saddle
between Mawenzi and Kibo, Kilimanjaro’s highest peak. The vegetation became
sparse and then disappeared altogether.
The views of Kibo were incredible.
We looked at the daunting route for the next day’s climb. It was extremely steep, and most of the route
was on loose gravel (scree). It was
strewn with large boulders and covered with snow and ice for the top 1000 feet
or so. The evening was spent at the very
spartan Kibo Hut at 15,500 feet. That’s
as high as Cheryll and I had ever been before.
Kibo Hut is a single stone building for climbers and a second for porters. It has five rooms with twelve bunks
each. It wasn’t crowded and we got our
own room for the five of us. There were
three outhouses with nothing more than a hole in the floor built out over the
edge of a nearby cliff. There was a
fence to keep oxygen-deprived climbers from stumbling over the edge during any
late night visits to the facilities.
There was no water other than what was carried up by the porters. We felt pretty good, but the altitude made
breathing difficult and deep sleep impossible.
Our guide told us to try to rest and that he would be back at 11:00 PM
to wake us.
During the evening,
Bill started to accumulate fluid in his lungs.
We believe that it was the onset of High Altitude Pulmonary Edema. The only cure is rapid, immediate descent. Bill made the difficult, but very wise
decision to start down. We helped him
pack his things, and he started down under his own power with two porters at
midnight. He rested at Horombo for three
hours in the morning, then continued to the park gate. He was fine after a couple of days of rest at
low altitude.
We put on all of our
warm clothing and the climb for the rest of us started under headlamps at 12:30
AM. It got colder as we slowly ascended
the steep slope. We only stopped to
catch our breath, have a drink and change our headlamp batteries. Cheryll said she was glad that it was dark,
because she would have had doubts in daylight being able to see what lies
ahead. We could see the lamps of other
groups on the mountain, but Cheryll didn’t want to open her eyes when a climber
from another group was escorted down past us.
Occasionally Geoffrey stopped to have a discussion with the assistant
guides in Swahili about the best route.
Jeff recognized the word “hatari” from his Swahili phrase book being
spoken several times. “Hatari” means
danger. We plodded on, occasionally
scrambled over and around large boulders.
The sunrise behind Mawenzi was spectacular. The last hour and a half to the summit were
spent in the icy rim of the crater. We
had to be careful and make good use of our poles not to be blown off the slippery
path by a gust of wind. All four of us
reached Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro’s Kibo Peak, the highest point in Africa, at
7:30 AM. It was 10 degrees F and the
winds were about 40 mph. It was
exhilarating, an accomplishment like nothing we’ve ever felt before. Geoffrey sang "Happy Birthday" for
me. I was running on pure
adrenaline. Cheryll had been chanting
“Sisu, sisu,….”; Finnish for strength and stamina. The ten minutes at the summit made every
minute of training and planning worthwhile.
We made it back to Kibo around 11:00 AM, had lunch, rested for an hour,
and headed down to Horombo. We spent 14
hours hiking on February 2nd, and, after a brief 40th
birthday celebration at dinner, slept for eleven hours.
On our sixth and
final day on the mountain we hiked six hours to the park gate. We were passed by another climber going down
on a stretcher. Back at the hotel, we
bought beer for the guides and porters and were presented with certificates for
our accomplishment. The hot shower felt
great.
The next three days
were spent on a safari to Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara National
Parks. The concentration of wildlife was
exceptional. We stayed at the luxurious
Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge and spent many hours in our Land Cruiser watching
elephants, rhinos, buffalo, zebra, giraffes, lions and countless other
wildlife. Kate tried to keep score, but
it was impossible.
Our Air Tanzania
flight to Zanzibar was cancelled, but we caught a later one on a different
airline. The islands of Zanzibar are
part of Tanzania, but separated by 20 miles of the Indian Ocean and a
completely different fundamentalist Muslim culture. It has a reputation for decades of peace, but
two weeks prior to our arrival; there had been several casualties at a
political demonstration. All that
appeared to remain of the situation was regret over the fact reports of the
violence had resulted in cancellations by 90% of the tourists who are
responsible for nearly half of the island’s economy. We rented a four-bedroom beach bungalow and enjoyed
a couple of days touring the island, snorkeling and relaxing on the beach. Jeff was glowing after putting his new
diver’s certification to use. Cheryll,
Kate and Bill got henna “tattoos”. We
watched the sunset each evening while enjoying a two-hour dinner at a table set
on the beach with white linens. There
was gourmet food, crystal and Kilimanjaro beer.
It took 36 hours to
fly home including a twelve-hour layover in Nairobi. We hired a cab and visited Karen Blixen’s
house from “Out of Africa”, a giraffe farm, and had a wild game dinner at “The
Carnivore” restaurant.
It was an excellent
adventure and a 40th birthday party that I’ll never forget. Cheryll is more than a little concerned about
what adventure I’ll cook up for my 50th birthday.
Appendix A: The
Statistics
19,340 feet –
Altitude at the summit
50 miles walked in 36
hours
1200 miles walked in
preparation over the past year
6 inoculations
required for each of us
2 or 3 porters for
each climber on the mountain
3 hungry hopefuls standing
outside the hotel gate for each porter on the mountain
12 porters who
mysteriously appeared to carry our bags to our rooms at the Ngorongoro Sopa
Lodge
16,000 frequent flyer
miles earned
1500 Tanzanian
Shillings (about two dollars) - cost of a bottled beer at Mandara Hut
25% of the East
African population is HIV positive
100% of our group has
Type A-Positive Blood; a wonderful coincidence since we didn’t want to have to
depend on the local blood supply
3 pairs of socks worn
on summit day
-36 degree F wind
chill at the summit
20 chemical hand
warmers provided by Jeff’s girlfriend Deb were wrapped around our water bottles
which were stuffed into socks to keep the liquid from freezing
22 lions seen in
Ngorongoro Crater
2000 Shillings –
Government controlled price of a kilo of cloves on Zanzibar – the “Spice
Island”
14 passengers who got
off the airplane in Zanzibar
1964 – Year in which
Zanzibar gained independence by overthrowing the Sultan
0 – amount of ice
used in the Zanzibar market to keep the meat and fish fresh
$20 – cost of a visa
to spend a day in Kenya
34 - size of the
zebra print boxer shorts Rich received as a birthday present
Appendix B: Top Ten
Lessons Learned in Africa
10. Kilimanjaro isn’t just a mountain; it’s a beer, too.
9.
Always pack
essentials in your carry-on.
8.
The first
price quoted for anything in Nairobi should be ignored.
7.
You can show
up without a reservation and have a hotel to yourself two weeks after a violent
political demonstration.
6.
Five friends
can share tight quarters for two weeks without friction and come out smiling.
5.
Gazelles are
very similar to hartebeest.
4.
The literal
translation of the frequently spoken Swahili phrase “Hakuna Matata” is “No
problem”. The actual translation is more
like “Yeah, there is a problem, but I’m not going to let it bother me”.
3.
If you’re
staying at an African luxury game lodge, five porters camp outside your room in
the early morning to pounce if you try to carry your own bags to the lobby.
2.
Zebra meat
tastes better than crocodile.
1.
If you don’t
push yourself, you’ll never find out what you’re capable of doing.
Appendix
C: Our Theme Song
Kilimanjaro
(Sung
to the tune of Gilligan’s Island)
Just
sit right back and you'll hear the tale, a tale of a painful trip,
That
started on this tropic mount, inside these well-worn boots…
The
porters were strong mountain men; the guides were brave and sure.
Five
climbers started for the top that day
Their
feet would become sore... Their feet would become sore.
The
weather started getting cold, the snow did start to fall.
If
not for the knowledge of the fearless guides,
Cheryll’d
be at the mall...Cheryll’d be at the mall.
The
group limped down to the starting point at Marangu Hotel,
With
the Sea Captain... the Check Chick too.
The
Middle-Aged Guy... and his Wife.
The
Computer Geek... the malaria pills and big thrills
Here
on Kilimanjaro!
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