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Today marked the start of the hike. We woke up around 5:15 AM and after showering (for the last time in 6 days) we went to breakfast. There are a lot of roosters in the lot next door to us which makes noise ALL day. Not surprisingly, it was already making noise when we woke up. Also, there are air conditioners in the rooms. Simko and John had turned theirs to 'arctic winter' before going to bed and in the middle of the night it sounded like a Mack truck in the corner of the room. After investigating, the A/C had turned into a solid block of ice.
Breakfast at Bristol Cottages was as slow as any breakfast we had ever eaten. One had to choose their type of eggs, and then bacon or sausage. It took at least 30 min to come back with the food, and generally it wasn't what was requested. Somehow 'bacon' meant 'sausage' and 'sausage' meant 'both bacon and sausage'. Anyways....
The hour-long breakfast eaten, it was time to finish the final packing. Anything not required for the hike was locked in a room at the lodges for safekeeping. The majority of the gear was packed in a duffel bag for the porters to carry. The only exception was a relatively small day pack which was packed with water (~ 5 Liters), rain jacket, fleece, sunscreen and granola bars. One of the last items packed was toilet paper. We weren't sure if it was being provided or not on the mountain, so we stuffed any from the rooms we could find into the duffels.
Simko and John had some time prior to being picked up for the hike at 9:30 and decided to go exploring around town for souvenirs, bandanas (for the hike), sandals (for Simko), etc... Ironically, yesterday we could not get away from being heckled on the streets when we didn't want to buy anything. Today no one even looked interested in us....must have been too early. We did find the post office not far away. Noteable not only due to its run-down state, but also the picture below shows most all signs here are sponsored by Coca-Cola. The store gets a free sign, and Coke gets to advertise on half of it. The post office doesn't sell Coke....
After the short walk, Simko and John headed back for Bristol cottages to check out and get ready for the hike. A van rolled through the gate right on time with Azizi and some of the other guides. As we are hiking the Machame route, we headed for the Machame gate which was a ~45min drive away. There is a lot of vegetation on the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro as we passed banana, coffee and many other farms on our way to the starting point. We also drove through many small villages. Most people, even children, walk on the road (or very close to it) so the van would come through with horns blaring. They had no intention of stopping....pedestrians definitely do not have the right-of-way here. We did have to stop for a military procession of 'dangerous criminals' who were being transferred to a different site. We also saw a cow being transported in an interesting way as well on our way up the slopes:
We arrived at the Machame gate at ~10:30. There was a paved parking lot which was full of other hikers, porters, guides and everyone else. We left our duffel bags in the back of the van and did not see them again until the first camp. The six of us were ushered to the building right by the gate where we came through to sign in. There were people shouting to us through the gate (they were not allowed to come through) trying to sell us gaiters, poles, water or any other number of things for the hike. We had to sign in a large book with our names, passport #, occupation, address along with other things. Once complete, we headed to a large pavilion next to that building to wait.
We were given our boxed lunches, which ironically are from Chrisburger and contain the same chicken which Steph, Cindy and Simko had ordered yesterday and didn't care for. It was our option whether we wanted to eat the lunch right away....we all ate it. While we were doing this, our porters were getting the gear organized and weighed (they do regulate how much each porter carries to somewere between 30 and 40 lbs each). Other groups were in the pavilion as well while we were waiting.
Finally, around 12:30 Azizi and Godfrey came over to the pavilion to tell us it would be time to go soon. We asked some other hikers from New York to take a group picture of us in front of the gate, then we used what we figure will be the nicest bathroom facilities we will see for about a week and it was time to go.
The saying 'Pole Pole' or 'slowly slowly' describes the hike and you hear it may times from the porters passing by. This is done to help prevent altitude sickness. This was the rainforest section of the hike. It sprinkled on and off lightly for the first 1.5 hours of the hike but suddently it started pouring as hard as we had ever seen. All had rain gear, but nothing which could hold up to that amount of rain. There is certainly a difference between waterproof and water resistant. We placed our jackets over our packs to keep them as dry as possible, but most everyone had water in their boots by the time the rain let up.
We took a break in a clearing after the rain had stopped. It was in the sun, so we used this opportunity to try to dry out some of the wet clothes. There was some light rain over the course of the rest of the hike, but nothing like we had experienced earlier. We arrived in camp around 6:30 PM where we had to sign in at the registry station and then Azizi took us to our camp where the porters were still working on setting everything up. It was nearly dark, but the summit was visible from our tents for the first time on the trip. As it gets dark around 7, we had to hurry to get things unpacked and set up while there was still light. John washed his face and feet (in that order) in the bowl of hot water provided shortly after dark. Simko fell asleep.
Around 8 PM one of the porters came to our tents to get us for dinner. The dining tent was in a separate area from the sleeping tents. They posted one porter by our tents to watch our things while we ate and then the rest of us used our head lamps to traverse the muddy trail to the dining tent. The setup in the tent is amazing. There is an actual table with table cloth and chairs. Azizi eats with us but the rest of the porters do not. This dinner was:
- pumpkin soup + bread
- potatoes
- fish
- vegetable sauce
- tea
Dinner was over around 9:00 and then it was back to the tents to get ready for bed. Wake-up call is at 7 AM tomorrow. Hopefully there will be no more rain!
Start: Machame Gate (5997 ft)
End: Machame Camp (9948 ft)
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