Hellooo-oh-oh!
The
greeting that we would hear first thing every morning on the trail. It’s around
6:30 AM and Emmanuel is there with his wake-up call and our “bed tea.” He unzips the main entrance flap to our tent and
ducks in. Don and I are actually wide
awake. I feel well rested and ready to
go as I unzip the flap to the inner tent and accept the metal cup that Emmanuel
proffers. Don does the same. The cups are filled with boiling water from a
flask and I add in a couple of tea bags and some sugar from the tray that
Emmanuel holds out. To his cup, Don adds
a sachet of Starbucks decaf from a pack that he had bought at the airport in
Washington and we silently sip from our cups for a bit. We say thank you: “Asante.” Emmanuel grins and
says “Karibu.” I decide to get up and stretch my legs.
The sun
is out and we quickly put out as many of our damp items as we can on the nearby
rocks and bushes in the hope of drying them out, but it’s really not all that
warm. Julio comes by and he and Don
remove everything from Don’s duffel and start trying to organize them into “wet”
and “dry” groups. I have an extra plastic
garbage bag that I give to Don and he stuffs all of his dry clothes into this
before putting them back into his duffel.
The stuff that is damp is laid out to dry and the really wet stuff is
taken away by Julio who says he will try and dry them out in the kitchen tent
where it is warmer. Emmanuel comes by
with two large plastic bowls filled with water for us to wash up. I squeeze out some toothpaste onto my
toothbrush and head out with my water bottle to brush my teeth. There’s a bar of Dettol antiseptic soap that
is provided to us, but I’ve brought along a small vial of liquid Dove that I
use instead as I wash my face in the warm water. When I’m done I actually feel quite fresh and
ready to go. It looks like it will be a
good day with the sun shining down.
Breakfast
is announced around 7:30 AM and we go into the mess tent to find a vessel full
of steaming hot porridge awaiting us. I
have a bowl full of it along with some sugar.
Then breakfast comes in – an omelet of sorts, dry slices of bread,
sausages and some fruit. The sausage
tastes kind of funny but the other stuff is fine; I eat well, as does Don. We finish up with tea and coffee and we both
pop our half-tablets of Diamox. My head
is feeling a little less stuffed, but I figure a Sudafed can’t hurt, so –
feeling faintly ridiculous – I take one of those also, along with an iron pill
and a multi-vitamin pill. This will be a
routine I follow for the rest of the trip: Diamox and my prescription Lipitor
after dinner, and Diamox and multi-vitamins after breakfast!
 |
| Julio and Abdallah |
Julio
brings along some bottled water to fill our water bottles / Camelback bladders. He insists that we each have at least three
liters of water on us. “Water for life,”
he says with a grin. I’m guessing that
this is the last of the bottled water we carried up from Moshi and starting the
next day we’ll probably be drinking water from the local mountain streams. It’s a little before 9:00 AM, and we are
ready to roll. We check to make sure
that our duffels are packed and closed.
Quite miraculously, Julio has managed to find space in our duffels for our
sleeping bags as well, and a couple of porters come by to cover them in plastic
sheets before putting them into the polypropylene carrying bags. Others in the crew are starting to pack up
supplies and dismantle the tents.
Abdallah helps me with my gaiters and then elects to stay behind to
supervise things a bit, while Don and I start off on the trail along with Julio.
Today’s
hike is expected to be a relatively long one of almost 10 KM (over 6 miles)
with some tough hills as we will make our way up to the Shira plateau. We will ascend to about 3800m (about 12,500
feet) before eventually coming down a bit to camp at around 3600m (around
11,800 feet). While I don’t quite follow
the medical reasoning, it seems this pattern of “hike high, sleep low” helps
the body acclimatize faster. For the next couple of days we will not really be
camping at significantly higher altitudes, but on each day we will be hiking
higher than we sleep.
 |
| On the way to Camp Shira 1 |
About
half an hour into the hike it starts raining again. With groans we stop to pull on our rain
gear. Don has actually slept in his rain
jacket last night and he’s been walking in these from when we set off, so he’s
a step ahead of me. It’s not
particularly cold and I feel OK actually as long as we’re walking. Don, on the other hand is not feeling too
great today. Something he ate (or drank)
doesn’t seem to have agreed with him and he has an upset stomach, and he’s
already taken an Imodium in the morning.
Abdallah has caught up with us and he advises Don to drink more
water. For the first hour or so we’re
still in thick forest, but after that the vegetation starts to gradually thin
out. The trees disappear and about two hours in it’s mostly shrubs. Well, maybe not quite shrubs, but nothing is
more than five or six feet tall and there’s nothing with real leaves. At some point the porters and other crew
members overtake us – most with a cheery “Jambo”
as they pass us – and soon disappear along the trail. They’ll be waiting for us at the next camp site
by the time we get there.
The rain
continues to fall steadily as we start ascending up a steep hill, come down for
a bit and are greeted with another steep hill. The vegetation has grown even
shorter by now and we also start seeing more rocks. Around 12:30 or so we stop
for lunch; it’s the same boxed lunch as before. I’m not particularly hungry and
eat half-heartedly.
Don’s
stomach is really bothering him now and he hardly eats. We decide that another
Imodium is in order and he swallows one as we set off again. Ahead of us we can
see another steep hill. Julio informs us
that this will be the last steep climb of the day, and once we get to the top
we’ll go up gradually along a ridge that he refers to as the “elephant’s
spine,” before descending to our camp site.
Don has to slow down a bit because of his stomach and Abdallah and I
decide to go on ahead leaving Julio to accompany Don. The elephant’s spine actually turns out to be
much longer and much tougher than I had anticipated. I am not totally wiped out, but it’s starting
to get pretty tiring with the thinner air.
A little before 2 PM Abdallah stops me and points downwards and to the
east. In the distance, I can see a flat
area with the silhouette of a small shack and several tents. “Our cam-pee” he proclaims with a smile. The rain has stopped and invigorated by the
sight of the end of today’s hike we start to gradually descend to the famed
Shira plateau. Soon we’re walking on
relatively flat ground. Glancing back we
can see Don and Julio at the top of the hill, starting their descent. We decide to stop and wait for them to catch
up.
When
they are with us, I ask Don how he’s feeling and he says he’s much better after
the Imodium. I reassure him that he
should be fine, but if things don’t get better I do have the Cipro antibiotic
that I have brought along – just in case!
We start walking slowly and at around 2:30 we pull into camp Shira One. There’s a wooden hut that houses the park
stuff on duty and we head straight there to sign in – there is an official
register and all climbers are required to sign in at each stop (apparently
Julio had signed for us the previous day at Big Tree camp!). The purpose is to make sure that everything
is kosher and we have a license/permit, and also to have information on record about
climbers in case there’s some sort of medical emergency.
 |
| Shira Plateau |
We see
that our tents are already all up. I peep
in and see that the sleeping pads have been unrolled on either side and our
duffel bags are in-between. One of the porters (I think this is the guy called
Ricky) comes and fist bumps Don and me.
“OK, very good” he grins. The
camp site is not particularly crowded and only has a couple of other
groups. About a hundred yards away we
can see a group of climbers actually heading away from the camp. Julio tells us that these are people who are
actually headed to camp Shira Two – our destination for tomorrow. “They are on a schedule that is one day less
than with you and Don. But your plan is better.
You only have a short, easy hike tomorrow and you spend more time
getting used to the altitude,” he says.
Well, Don and I are certainly thankful that we don’t have to go any
further today. A six mile walk doesn’t
really intimidate either of us the least bit, but today it sounds like more
than enough! Julio says tea and snacks
will be ready in an hour but we both tell him that we’d rather skip it and rest
in the tent until dinner.
I notice
that members of the crew have been using large plastic drums to collect water
from a stream that runs right by the camp site, and I remind Julio that we’d
like the water to be fully boiled before sending it through the Katadyn filters
that they have brought along. Don’s
stomach is still unsettled and he heads off to one of the lavatories. There are about three or four of these on-site
– each one is basically a wooden shack with a deepish trench and two slabs of
stone on either side. I decide that I
should probably use one too and armed with a roll of toilet paper, I pop in and
out of a couple before I find one that is marginally less disgusting than the
others. When I get back to our tent I clean
my hands thoroughly with a wet-wipe followed by some Purell! Hmmm, being constipated for the rest of the
trip might not be a bad option at all…
Don and
I are both tired, and we kick off our shoes, unroll our sleeping bags, and
decide to take a nap. I am suddenly cold
– my rain pants and my gaiters have been awesome, but my rain jacket hasn’t
really kept my upper body as dry as I’d have liked. I curse myself for not
spending a little more on a better quality one. Luckily, my fleece jacket (with
the Pitt Industrial Engineering logo…) is dry and I pull it on as I unroll the
fleece sleeping bag liner that I had brought along and crawl into it. We both
sleep soundly until Emmanuel’s voice awakens us announcing dinner. “Hallo-oh. Soo-poo!”
he says. I glance at my watch and see
that it’s a little before 7 PM. The sun
has set and we both struggle into our shoes.
My hands are disgustingly dirty from the mud on the laces and I ask
Emmanuel for some warm water to wash up. The mess tent table has been set – complete
with the red table cloth, the two bottles of ketchup, the sugar, the hot water,
the Nilo and of course, metal plates, cups, bowls, and cutlery. We start with pumpkin “soo-poo” and some sort
of pancake. Don’s stomach is still a bit
dicey but he downs a full bowl of the soup, as do I. Dinner consists of rice,
chicken, cabbage and mango slices. Don’s
stomach doesn’t want to accept anything more and I’m not all that hungry either
so the food goes more or less untouched.
I hope that they don’t dump the stuff and that someone actually does eat
it. On second thought, that’s probably a
pretty stupid concern - I’m pretty sure food isn’t going to be wasted!
Julio
wanders in to the mess tent as we are finishing up. He tells us that tomorrow is the easiest day
of our trek – only three to four hours of walking and very little altitude
gain. “No rush to wake up. We can leave
slowly, and we will have a hot lunch when we get to camp” he says. He inquires about how we are feeling, and if
we have any nausea, any headaches, any sickness. Also, he tells us we should fill up our water
bottles and canteens before crashing for the night and add any water treatment
drops/tablets that we want. My two water
bottles still have plenty of water but the Camelback is empty so I fill this up
and add a Katadyn Micropur tablet to it – I have brought along a bunch of these. Not sure it’s really necessary given that the
water for tea/coffee that we have been drinking has not been similarly treated
and we’ve had no problems with this!
Anyway, it can’t hurt I guess.
It’s
a little past 8:30 PM, and we decide it’s time to call it a day. As we tuck
ourselves in, I ask Don how he’s feeling, and he says that his stomach seems to
be settling down and that he feels better.
He doesn’t look great though. And
quite frankly, neither do I. We’re both
damp and cold and smelly. And we’re both
wondering what the hell we’re doing here, and if we can put up with this for
much longer – we still have five more nights to go! Hmmm, maybe tomorrow it
won’t rain?
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