Kilimanjaro Climb Day 3

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The hotel grounds are beautiful and green. Breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, sausage, fruit, bread, and O.J. Great way to start the day! Across from the common area there is a garden with trees, and when you look up the trees part to give us our first look at Kilimanjaro, it's breathtaking. Really. And I'm scared.

Orientation was better than I thought it would be, the group seems like a good bunch - fun people. The oldest in our group is 71. Shoshanna and I are the youngest in the group, everyone else appears to be in their 30's or 40's. Ron, who is 71, is the father or two other climbers; Jon and Toby. I think it's really nice that they are doing this together.

I hope I can do bonding things with my son err... child(ren) later in life. Two years ago my parents, Shoshanna, and I rode together in a three day 225mi bike ride for Chron's disease, and that was awesome. I rode with my dad a lot during the ride and got to know him even better which was fantastic. Tom and I have been to a few backgammon tournaments together, and he, Shoshanna, and myself may go to Costa Rica next year.

Sorry about the tangent, the guides Eliakim, (El ee ah kim), and Guidance (how fitting) were very professional and put safety first. They seem fun but are definitely no-nonsense when it comes to bring prepared and being safe. This includes letting them know when you do not feel well so they can try to help you before turning you back.

Shoshanna and I went into Moshi today with a guide and a driver. The roads are very dusty and it was hot and dry. We stopped into three shops, the first shop had fixed prices and we bought some gifts and souvenirs. There are really some beautiful handmade pieces and we hop everyone likes what we got them. We proceeded on to two more shops where there were no prices listed and prices were negotiable.

It was a lot of fun negotiating, and I thoroughly enjoyed being on the consumer side of things for a change, and having the leverage. Like my consumers, however, I did not know the 'real' values of those items, so I had to assign a value in my head and work from below that value. I wasn't too hard on them though, part of being here is helping the local economy, I feel like I could have worked slightly lower prices, but my main goal was to just not get ripped off.

Our driver took us to a football (soccer) field per my request, but unfortunately there was no one playing at the time. Lucky Africans...

Back at the hotel grounds, we enjoyed a nice cold bottled water (1.5L) for $1, and cleaned up a bit. We had our first group dinner, there are 11 of us in all, two of whom came late due to a missed connection. They are Kim and Steve - in their 50's, and will be the only people from our climb joining us for Safari afterwards. They are then traveling to Madagascar for a week before returning home to San Diego. I'm not sure if I was from San Diego that I would vacation at all. 😊 The rest of the group is comprised by Jerry, Murray, Larry and Rob (swat guys from Florida), Ron, and his sons Jon and Toby.

At dinner Shoshanna ate pasta, avocado, potatoes and rice. I had beef, chicken wings, pork chops, potatoes, avocado, spaghetti, tomatoes, green beans, and banana bread. The beef was the best, but all the food was good. I had seconds on the beef.

During dinner we learned more about each other, Shoshanna and I having no experience are the least experienced here. Everyone in our group is so well-traveled, I don't understand how ordinary people do it. We didn't get into anyone's profession (I guess we're all here to get away from that for a spell). Some of these people have been to Prague, South America, all over Europe, especially Italy, and Toby has been to the base camp of Everest. I know it's about 70K to attempt a summit of Everest, so to go to base camp is probably about 10K. I asked Toby if he would attempt a summit and he said no. I would not either.

We some some people come back from the Kilimanjaro climb and they looked like hell. They said the weather and the trek were brutal. Thanks, you could have lied!

Well, we're still excited, tomorrow we ascend to 9,500'. We hope to get some great pictures to share with everyone. Tomorrow we will be hiking through the rain forest portion of Kilimanjaro and the forecast is for heavy rain, go figure...

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