Kilimanjaro

Well we made it to the top. All 5895m of it. No snow just the remnants of a few small glaciers. It took 6 days to reach the top and one to get down.
Nice views but very cold and probably one of the most expensive hikes we will ever do. More to follow once we have recovered!

I think we have recovered now in Zanzibar (but more about that later).
After spending a couple of days sorting out our tour with one operator who said we would be going with two english and canadian girls (amms wanted some girly company on the hike), he explained to us on the first morning that they were mysteriously in hospital and we were duly handed over to another tour operator (who we'd also been to see) to join 2 young 20 something german males!

We knew that the schedule up the mountain was too tight to acclimatise naturally, in fact we started walking on day 1 at midday and we were at the top of the mountain 4 days 19 hours later - a vertical height difference of 4200m - it is recommended to only gain 300m or so per day (600m max) above 3000m altitude. So we came prepared with our superpills (Diamox) which we took the whole hike. The germans said they knew better (one was a med student) and duly drunk a beer on the first evening!

The hike was very cruisy and luxurious. Alex enjoyed his first hike with porters carrying mess tents, sleeping tents, our pack, our food, tables and chairs even! For 4 clients we had 16 'crew' including a very obliging guide Samuel, an assistant guide, cook and 13 porters (1 of which acted as a waiter at dinner!).

After walking through the lower rainforest the guides told us to walk 'pole pole' (slowly) to give our bodies chance to acclimatise. The germans sped off and arrived in camp 40 mins before us. Two days later though, they were feeling the affects of their first beer and lack of superpill by throwing up, full on headaches, dizzyness - all signs of severe AMS (acute mountain sickness). In fact, the med student was so sick despite starting the diamox, that he had to descend the next day (with some porters in tow!).




After 4 days of pole pole, eating very well (3 course meals with lots of fresh food - better than we eat at home I think), we were feeling good for the summit push. It is popular (or maybe tradition) that one starts the summit hike at around midnight in order to reach the top at around sunrise. We weren't so keen on this idea but were roped into it by the guide. I think it might be so that you don't see all the rubbish and toilet paper strewn around on the ascent route! The down side of going in the night is it is extremely cold with windchill, exacerbated by the fact that you're moving very very slowly due to the altitude. After 7 hours of trudging we reached the top to see the sunrise and the low cloud covering the flat earth below - beautiful and quite an achievement. Photos were quickly taken as it was too cold to hang around too much there (its ironic that it can be so cold in Africa!).

Alex then zoomed down the scree run with one of the guides - one of the best in a long time!

Arusha and Moshi, Northern Tanzania

Our first few days in Tanzania have been a bit strange... we have found the hassling to sell us jewellery, safaris, and batiks (of which we have now bought 5!) to be a bit tiring but we are getting the hang of saying 'hapana asanti' (no thanks in Swahili). We are staying in Moshi, a smallish town which is the gateway to Mt Kilimanjaro - and that is where we are headed tomorrow. We have withdrawn 1 million Tanzanian shillings (a huge wad of cash as the largest note is 10,000 shillings) to pay for the trek and we still have to pay the park fees (US$750 each for the week)I realy really hope the money is going to the country and not into the politician's pockets!

Please wish us luck for making it to the summit as acclimitisation will be difficult in such a short time.

Masai Mara and Lake Naivasha in Kenya

Arrived in Nairobi from Dubai about 10 days ago. As we were a bit nervous about Nairobi's reputation we booked a guesthouse out of town and were picked up straight from the airport. The taxi driver took us a 'short cut' route to avoid the terrible traffic, on a track with massive potholes (not very comfortable). It took us right past Nairobi National Park where we saw giraffe and zebra grazing - not a bad view on a trip from the airport!

Nairobi is actually not as hectic as we expected, Delhi and Kathmandu are much worse for touts and hassles. We have found the people very genuinely friendly and have gone out of their way to be helpful (which is a very different story to what the Lonely Planet describes).

We returned to Nairobi yesterday after 3 days on an organised Masai Mara tour and then 3 days hanging out at Lake Naivasha about 90kms north of Nairobi. The Masai Mara tour was awesome! We travelled in a white minivan converted with a flip up lid so we could stand up in the van and look out on the savannah. Our travelling companions, Sanna and Cliff (a Swedish couple) kept the mood jovial the whole time and our driver John always had an answer to our strange questions about the wildlife. We saw heaps of antelopes (impala, Thomsons' gazelle, waterbuck, eland, dik dik), pumba (warthogs in Swahili), zebra (Alex's favourites!), giraffe (Amms' favourites), buffalo (the scariest animals on the plains), elephants, a crocodile, hippos, 2 lions, and the most amazing of all a leopard (only about 10m away, she sat there calling her cubs for a few minutes - amazing!). We also saw a lot of kills being finished off by hordes of vultures - nature in action. In fact, I think the only one of the big 5 that we missed out on were rhinos.




We stayed in a cute tented camp just outside the park near a semi-traditional Masai Mara village which we visited one day. The people were so incredibly friendly, they showed us how they made fire by rubbing sticks together in a couple of minutes, Alex practised jumping with them (the one who jumps the highest is the strongest warrior), and of course they wanted us to buy their beautiful beaded jewellery and handcrafts.

Our phone with special international sim card we bought in the UK didn't last long - I left it at the masai mara camp (by mistake of course)... its gone forever. Phones are pretty reasonable here as the majority of calls are made on mobiles and everyone has one (even the Masai people!), so we have bought a cheap replacement.

The last 3 days we stayed at a beautiful campsite on Lake Naivasha (with pink flamingoes) and basically did our own thing. We hired bicycles one day and cycled through Hells Gate National Park, one of the few parks where you can cycle amongst the wildlife. It was pretty amazing to have nothing between yourself and a giraffe, or more scarily a buffalo! Cycling through the small villages was cool too with all the school kids shouting 'how are youuuuuu, how are youuuuu!' to us along the way. We also went down a gorge (a canyon) similar to some of the ones we've done in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, although this one had hot water springs in it. Our guide for the canyon (everyone must have a guide so I guess it gives someone a job) was nice although I'm not sure he understood everything Alex was asking him. One conversation went like this:
Alex: Do you rockclimb? Guide: Yes.
Alex: Do you rockclimb on the Fischers tower? Guide: Yes.
What grade is Fishers tower? Guide: Yes.
Full credit though I guess he does have to contend with a lot of different English accents each day!



We have been catching Matatu buses for short trips. Matatus are shared minivan taxis which always have the music blaring and are often plastered in stickers advertising some American celebrity (eg. Beyonce, Martin Luther King, God is Great and such like). Carrying our backpacks on the matatu isn't that easy as they are often packed with people, but we managed!

Today Alex visited the dentist as his tooth started hurting the day we left the UK - great timing. After full x-rays, everything looks all fine and the tooth doesn't hurt now anyway!

Tanzania tomorrow.

Dubai Ramadan City

Our one day stopover in Dubai has been interesting. We are visiting during Ramadan and at the hottest time of the year so things seem pretty quiet. Stupidly decided to walk to the spice and gold souks from our hotel shown 'just down the road' on the map. 40 minutes later we hopped in a taxi for the last few blocks as we were sweating more than when do a 40 minute jog! To escape the heat we spent a couple of hours in Dubai mall - the biggest in the world - and with an amazing aquarium. Watched a scuba diver feeding the fish whilst another diver kept watch for the sharks with a stick to prod them away if need be.

Our funniest experience was lunch. The fast food places were selling food (everywhere else was closed cos of Ramadan) but we were sternly told not to eat it in a public place.... mmmm everywhere is public in a shopping mall! So, a tip off led us to the baby change room where we quickly gobbled down our lunch. I have no idea where everyone else was taking their food to eat it - their were queues of people buying food.

Last day in England

We had 2 flukey whirlwind catch ups at pubs in Surrey (for some reason!).
Ann-Marie's Gran-gran, aunt Erica and cousin Hilary last night.



Then through the internet we found out Katie was in town today as well, so we couldn't resist catching up to hear all the aussie gossip!

Biarritz, Bordeaux and Fontainebleau

5526 kilometres later (phew!) and the Duke (named because part of the number plate is DKE) brought us safely back to Kent, England for a couple of days of washing and relaxing before heading off again - to continent number 3 - Africa.

We stopped by at a few of the Atlantic coast beaches on our way north from Spain. Biarritz was nice in amongst the rocks and also a wild beach west of Bordeaux called Cap Ferret. We usually quickly become bored of walking around cities, probably since we're not really into museums, although Bordeaux was very picturesque architecture-wise.



Stopped by Fontainebleau on the way back for a spot of bouldering!



5526 kilometres later (phew!) and the Duke (named because part of the number plate is DKE) brought us safely back to Kent, England. It is great sleeping in a proper bed after camping around the whole of Europe (or staying with friends). We have a couple of days of washing and relaxing before heading off again - to continent number 3 - Africa.