It’s
relatively late when we awake (or actually, are awakened by Emmanuel with the
customary hello-oh-oh) the next morning.
The sun is up and it looks nice outside.
I brush my teeth, and wash my face one last time using warm water from
the familiar orange, plastic bowl, and silently give thanks for the fact that I
will not have to crash in a damp sleeping bag in a smelly tent ever again! After laying some of my wet stuff draped over
a nearby clump of shrubs (not sure why, since it really doesn’t matter any more…)
I head to the mess tent for breakfast one last time. Emmanuel comes in with his usual smile and
the usual breakfast. I down some
porridge (although Don doesn’t) as well as some eggs and chappatis. Both of us pass
on the burp-inducing sausage though!
We head
back to the tent and pack up – no need to worry about stuffing the sleeping
bags into the duffels any more, or about mixing dry clothes with damp clothes
or dirty clothes with clean clothes! A
little after 8 AM we step out and ask Julio if we’re ready for the tipping
thing. He chuckles and asks for a few
minutes to gather everyone. Don and I
duck into our tent once more to make sure we have the Ziplock bags ready, and
suddenly Don turns to me and says: “You know what, I’m going to give an extra
ten bucks to everyone in the crew – hope you don’t mind.” I once again marvel at his generosity and say
“Don, I’m pretty sure we’re already giving them WAY more than what they were
expecting.” He says “Well, yeah. But I figure an extra $130 is not going to
bankrupt me, while an extra $10 each probably means a heck of a lot to each of
these guys.” He certainly has a
point. I insist that he should
personally hand the extra money to each crew member rather than putting another
ten bucks into each Ziplock bag.
 |
| Crew lined up for performance |
We step
out and the crew is all lined up with Julio standing a bit to the side. “They would like to sing a song for you both,
he says.” Don and I fire up our cameras
as the crew starts with the famous “Hakuna
Matata” – they’re all swaying to the beat, and Dickson turns out to be the
main musical talent as he leads them and the others join in the chorus. As they end, we all applaud and Don and I
start toward the line to hand them their tips, when Julio stops me. “You can wait until they are done - they want
to sing another song” he says. So we
stand back and enjoy another great rendition of some other song (all I follow
is the word Kilimanjaro every now and then).
Everyone seems in a good mood.
Julio says something to them in Swahili and then as promised, he starts
to call each of their names out one by one.
Each one comes up to shake our hands, and accepts the Ziplock bag with
the tip and the extra ten bucks from Don, while the others in the crew hoot and
holler and cheer. I watch from the
corner of my eyes after the first couple of porters and note that they count
the money and seem quite elated. We
first go through the nine porters, then Emmanuel, then Hamza (the cook), then
Abdallah and then finally, Julio. When
Julio comes up he says self-consciously “No, that’s OK – you can give it to me
later.” But the rest of the crew is goading
us on, so I stuff the money into his pocket and they break out into loud
cheers.
The line
slowly dissolves and many of the crew members come up and shake hands again with
me and Don – some of them high-five us, others embrace us. Some of them are
also hugging Julio. Then Julio says that
they want to do one more song; hey, who are we to say no?! We clap hands in rhythm and cheer at the
end. Around 9 AM we are ready to set
off. I watch as John dismantles and
folds up our tent one last time and Ricky rolls up our duffels in a plastic
sheet and sticks them into the carrying covers.
Some of the porters actually take off before us today, as does Abdallah
– not sure why, since he’s usually with us.
Julio, Don and I start downwards and start to descend rapidly. Very soon
we are in the middle of succulents, giant heathers, larger shrubs and even a
few small trees. The path we follow cuts
through the vegetation that has now reasserted itself all over.
Julio
exchanges pleasantries and carries on conversations in Swahili with porters
from other parties who overtake us. He’s
in a talkative mood and much of the conversation seems to revolve around the
tips that they have received. He tells
me that a group of French climbers had really stiffed their crew – they had
apparently tipped each porter $20 for the whole six-day Machame trip. That worked out to a daily rate that was
about one-third of what we had used to figure out what we should tip the
porters in our crew (and this before
Don’s extra contributions)! We are both a bit shocked that anyone could be that
cheap. Another story is that with the
Norwegian party, one guy had gathered money from all the other climbers in the
group to hand to the guide, but that he had pocketed some of the money and not
given it all out for the crew. I find
this rather implausible, but hey, who knows!
The
bottom line though is that I realize what a huge deal the tip is to these folks
– a decent tip can at least double what they earn from their tour companies. Julio
tells me that most porters average $5 to $6 per day in wages; Ahsante is one of
the better companies to work for and pays $7 to $8 per day. Apparently there are no government-mandated
minimums because of opposition by the tour companies who are worried they will
lose some of their lower-end customers (e.g., students on a budget) if they
raise their rates. So instead, the idea
is that individual climbers will make up the difference via tips, based on what
they can afford. I’m so glad that we
(and really, Don more than me...) have been very generous – certainly, our crew
deserves it.
On the
way down we catch sight of something strange – it looks like a long narrow
shopping cart on a single wheel that is parked to the side of the trail. “We call that the Kilimanjaro Taxi,” says
Julio with a grin. It’s for taking
people down rapidly when they are seriously mountain sick. The climber is usually wrapped in a sleeping
bag and strapped into the cart and then four porters grab the handles at the four
corners of the cart and wheel it downhill with their patient in it. We stare at the contraption in wonderment.
 |
| Kilimanjaro Taxi |
About an
hour-and-a-half after we leave, it starts raining and so out come the rain
pants and jackets. Hey, it would not be
appropriate if it didn’t also rain on the last day! Julio points in the distance and we can see
Mweka Camp at the bottom of the hill. This was the alternative option to
Millenium Camp where we had crashed last night.
Don and I exchange glances. Ha -
I know that there’s no way in hell that I could have possibly walked all the
way there yesterday.
We
overtake a young Indian looking woman who looks to be in her early twenties (and
also looks to be in pretty bad shape as her guide helps her along). It turns out that she and her companions
(they’re all college kids from Buffalo, NY) had set off for Uhuru at around
3:30 AM (a full three-plus hours after us), but they had run into the same
snowstorm we had encountered at Barafu. Except, it had hit them a few hours
earlier because they were higher up – right when they were reaching Stella
Point. As a result, the last stretch
from Stella to Uhuru had become impossible to navigate and they’d been forced
to turn around and come down. Wow, what
a bummer – to get so close and to not be able to actually reach the
summit! Don and I console her and I say
that they still reached the rim – it’s just as good. However, we talk later and decide (and Julio
agrees) that their guide was not very sensible – why on earth would you leave that late from Barafu? And once again, we are both grateful that
despite all the precipitation before and after, we’d been blessed with good
weather at the time we most needed it!
Around 11
AM we descend through a muddy, rutted path and all of a sudden we are at Mweka
Camp. Abdallah is there to greet us with
his usual smile. Turns out that the
reason he’d rushed down from Millenium Camp is because Mweka being the last
stop before getting to the park exit/entrance, all guides are required to check
in with the authorities there and get their team’s garbage weighed to make sure
nothing’s being left behind on the mountain (as Julio had said at one point:
“We leave nothing behind on the mountain except for our footprints!”); thus Abdallah
had been sent down early to take care of the formalities so that we wouldn’t be
delayed when we got there.
We barely
pause at Mweka Camp, and very soon we’re entering the same rain forest terrain
we’d been through on our first day from the gate at Lemosho. The vegetation gets increasingly dense and
diverse, and the trees get increasingly taller.
The trail through the forest is a man-made one with steps at regular
intervals, and it’s not anywhere near as appealing as the one we went up on to
get to Big Tree camp on the first day.
Nevertheless, the surroundings are beautiful, and for a change it’s not
raining, so we do get to enjoy the forest more than we did on our way up. On
the other hand, the downhill trek is absolutely killing my feet – my knees are
holding out better than I’d expected them to, but my toes are knocking against
the front of my Merrells and it’s painful as hell. Damn, why did I not buy a larger size shoe?
Surprisingly,
we see lots of people heading upwards as
we walk down. Julio tells us they are
taking fresh supplies up the hill and that while most of them are headed to the
camp at Mweka, some will actually be going up to Millenium, and a few might
even be going all the way up to Barafu. That just blows my mind! At some point we overtake a group of cheerful,
garrulous young women (who sound very Jamaican) – it turns out they’re part of
the party from Buffalo that had to turn around and come down from Stella Point
because of the snow. One of the guides is leading them down, ahead of the other
woman we had encountered as we were arriving at Mweka Camp.
We plod
on, and around 1:00 we stop for lunch in a clearing in the forest. Unfortunately, it’s raining like hell once
again – hey, there’s a reason it’s called the rain forest! This time we have in our lunch boxes a (very
pathetic, if I may say so…) samosa, in addition to the usual chicken leg,
sandwich, little muffin, Snickers bar, and juice. I ask Abdallah how much longer it’ll be and
groan silently when he says it’s about two hours more. Honestly, I cannot wait for this to get over.
The rain finally lets up and we pause
several times to take pictures – mainly of bushy tailed black and white monkeys
that we spot high up on the trees in the forest. I have a major misadventure here as I drop by
SLR while changing lenses, and it basically stops functioning. So much for any more pictures, I guess.
 |
| Black and white monkey in the trees |
Around
2:30 we’re almost done and the trail actually becomes an unpaved road. All of a sudden, we have to step aside to make
way for a 4x4 Toyota that is rushing upwards.
Julio tells us that the woman from Buffalo that we’d seen earlier at
Mweka Camp is in bad shape and needs immediate medical attention. About ten
minutes later the vehicle speeds by us once again going downwards. The Jamaican women wave to us from inside –
looks like they were picked up too along with their friend. Slightly after 3 PM, we finally see Mweka
Gate ahead of us. The end of the trail! We pause and take several pictures, some with
just Don and me, and some with the two of us, as well as Julio and Abdallah. I can hardly believe it; we are done. Or more to the point, we did it. It is not
anti-climactic at all.
 |
| End of the road |
 |
| At Mweka Gate |
Mweka
Gate is the equivalent of the gift shop that greets you near the exit of every
museum in the US. Except that there’s no
formal store; just a horde of enterprising vendors who descend upon you with
every imaginable souvenir/keepsake/knick-knack that they’re peddling. Some of the stuff is quite beautiful, but
being from India originally, I know exactly how this works. Everything will be priced about four times
higher than it should be priced. I steadfastly
refuse everything they offer up because (a) I really have no interest in adding to all the stuff we already have at home, and (b)
if I really want something, it’ll likely be much cheaper in Moshi. They rapidly lose interest in me and converge
on Don. Before I can warn him, he starts
bargaining with one of them and winds up buying something that he could have
bought for far, far less. Anyway, in the
global scheme of things it doesn't really matter that much, it’s a nice
souvenir and I’m sure that the vendor could really use the extra ten or twenty
bucks he made!
Julio
heads to the office at the gate to take care of all the paperwork and Abdallah
helps both of us take off our gaiters. I
give him my gaiters as I had promised earlier. They’re brand new, but frankly,
I don’t see when I’ll ever use them again, whereas he’ll use them quite
regularly. The pair he’d been using during the trek looked pretty bad – they
were held together with a strip from a blue plastic bag! Don and I slowly walk toward a Land Cruiser
with the Ahsante logo that is waiting for us – a horde of vendors follow with
pleas and exhortations to look at what they have to offer. There’s no sign of the rest of our crew. Obviously,
they got here long before the four of us and they've all left for home and
their families. I have no idea how they
got back home from the gate - perhaps Ahsante had a bus for them, or maybe they
took public transportation. Our duffel
bags are already loaded in the vehicle as we crawl in. The driver is Joseph, the same guy who’d
picked us up at the airport on Christmas day when we had first landed in
Tanzania! He congratulates us warmly on
our successful climb.
Soon,
Julio returns to the Land Cruiser having completed all the paperwork and we set
off on our ride back to Moshi. I give my
windcheater, and my rain jacket and pants to Julio since I figure I’m not going
to lug these back home. He promises that
they will wind up with some of our crew.
Once again, we pass through small villages and farmland. At one point Joseph pulls up before a
roadside bar/tavern. Don had been
curious about the local hooch and Julio had said that we could try some mbege if we wanted. It’s a local drink made from fermented
bananas, that people typically pass around and share, and we can see several men
at the tavern imbibing the good stuff.
However, neither of us is really in the mood – certainly, my stomach wouldn't be able to handle it! So we
pass on the opportunity and roll on. As
we get into town we stop to let Abdallah off since his home is right along the
way. He and Julio actually live pretty close to each other and he offers to
carry Julio’s stuff back to his house – Julio can’t get off because he’s the
head honcho and has to go back to the Ahsante office with us for a debriefing
and to take care of paperwork.
At
around 4:30 PM we get to the Ahsante office.
Julio disappears inside somewhere – he’s getting us our “official”
certificates that attest to our success in reaching the summit! Doreen is there
to greet and congratulate us. She
invites us to sit down on the comfortable sofa in the lobby and brings us a
guestbook to sign and leave our comments.
I’m a little disappointed that we don’t have a more formal debriefing –
Don and I both want to tell them that we’re thrilled with what we got from
them, but we also want them to know that we are upset about the screw-up with
the kit-bags! We’re there for about twenty minutes and my legs are feeling
strangely rubbery and sore when we are ready to leave.
When we
pull up outside of the Weru Weru Lodge it’s a little after 5 PM. The receptionist is the same woman who was
there when we left and welcomes us back with a shy smile. While she takes care of our reservations and
fusses about to find our room keys, another employee floats by with fresh
fruit juice for us. Julio helps retrieve
the bags we had left behind and then gets ready to leave. The plan is for us to meet him again
tomorrow. Ahsante will provide us with
transport into Moshi and Julio will accompany us to help with buying souvenirs
and other junk to take home, and possibly join us for lunch before we get back
to Weru Weru and leave for the airport.
Don and I are both exhausted, but slightly emotional as we exchange
handshakes with Julio. It all seems so
unreal now that we’re back in “civilization” and I scratch my head as Julio and
Joseph head out.
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| Barranco Bar at Weru Weru Lodge |
Our
rooms are not yet ready, so we repair to the outdoor bar for a well-deserved
beer. There are several local brands, but the unanimous recommendation from the
folks behind the bar is a lager called Kilimanjaro (“If you can’t climb it, you can at
least drink it” goes the t-shirt logo).
It proves to be most excellent. The bar area is mostly deserted, and the
few people there look at us in amusement from a safe distance; I’m sure we
smell. About ten minutes later we are
told that our room’s ready and we head there.
Our first job is to empty out the duffel bags and air out all the stinky
stuff. The little balcony outside the
room, as well as the stairs leading up are soon adorned with clothes, shoes,
and other smelly remnants from the climb.
Don allows me first dibs at the bathroom, where I gratefully kill a lion
(well, several lions actually…) and take a long, long, hot shower, and shave
off a week’s worth of fuzz from my face.
I can’t recall ever enjoying a shave and shower any more than this! I’m hesitant to lie down when Don goes into
the bathroom in case I pass out completely before dinner, so I get out of the
room and wander around the grounds while I wait for him.
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