Mount Meru

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We climbed ten thousand feet in less than forty eight hours, camping twice along the way. Five minutes before sunrise, Darlene and I gained the summit and Marco joined us as the sun rose over Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. We were the first to summit that day just ahead of a massive group of Slovenians, who just missed the sunrise but immediately commandeered the tiny peak, ill-tempered.

Upon touchdown in Tanzania three months prior, we really believed we would climb Kilimanjaro, bag Africa’s highest peak, bask in the bragging rights and, coupled with the Serengeti, we’d do Tanzania right. We did do Serengeti, though we kinda went in the backdoor. But we never thought we’d be on the summit of the other mountain, staring across at the snows in Hemingway’s yarns.

Then again, nothing in Tanzania went the way we expected. And it was all for the best.

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Elephant Cloud

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