What I did on my holidays Part 1

Ok, so technically it wasn't a holiday, I'm just sneaking in a reference to Interesting Times.
Here's a rough account of the first three days of my trek. Yes I know it's been about a month since I've been back so I should've got all this done by now, but it's hard to find time for stuff at the moment.
Hopefully it won't take another month to do the rest.

Fingers crossed anyway :)


Day 1

Technically for me the whole trek started at 17:45 on the Monday when I got the train to Heathrow. For some reason I had to change at Warrington instead of the usual Manchester, but never mind. Then with a little confusion on the tube as to how to get from Euston to Paddington, I caught the Heathrow Express.
I was astonished by the express train as every member of staff seem impeccably turned out and the train itself very clean and neat and there were little tv screens showing news.
However they also showed the prices of £15 for a single 20 minute journey. No wonder they could look nice.
So I got to Heathrow at a little past 11 in the evening. A random wander into the terminal quickly helped me find two fellow trekkers, one of whom was to be my tent mate for a week, David. Bit of an odd coincidence really.
Then Mark from Llandudno Junction, who I'd gone up a mountain with a few weeks earlier, turned up. Slowly but surely more and more people arrived and some slept while the rest of us had endless discussions about training and equipment an how we'd got there.

4:30 rolled around and we saw more trekkers amassing around the check in desk so we picked up our hefty pile of bags and wandered down to meet them. By that point our rep from Marie Curie (Alice) and our two reps from the travel company (Barry and Lucy) so we had people to organise us, which is a good thing a we numbered around 40.

However, the flight crew didn't get out of bed and into position until about 5:30, so our arrival for two hours before check in was fairly pointless. I then met Mitch, who's mum had to drop out of the trek due to ill health (though she's doing it on April 9th instead) and he stepped in. He was the youngest of our group at 19 and was waiting to hear about a university place.

I also met Dionne and Paul briefly. I think Dionne was relieved that while I'm from Wales I was unlikely to speak Welsh to her, as she's from South Wales, but doesn't speak the language. Paul was one of three Pauls, two of which were from Ireland. He was one of the Irish ones, the one not there with his other half.
You following this?

So, after some confusion involving e-tickets, self check-in and where to put your bags when the belt doesn't work we got through check-in, took out boots off for security checks and boarded the plane.

The plane seemed quite nice, which is a good thing as we were on it for quite a while. You see, in order to get to Kilimanjaro we had to transfer at Amsterdam airport. However, this particular morning Amsterdam was shrouded in fog. As such planes couldn't take off and others couldn't come along. it only takes about and hour to fly from Heathrow to Amsterdam and we had an hour and a half in between planes, which sounds like more than enough. However, the time we sat at Heathrow got longer. We started getting information through from the pilot. They could only delay the other connecting plane for so long as it had 270 people on it.

The gate we would arrive at would only be 10 minutes from the gate we would depart from, however it takes longer than that to transfer all our bags in the hold. Time continued to go on, we were given some orange juice, and ultimately told we wouldn't make the connecting flight.

When we got off the plane, however, my glasses must have dropped out of my bag and I sadly lost them. Which was quite annoying as I'd brought three books to read on the trek. Oh well.

Once off the plane we milled around a little aimlessly. The airline were trying to find another flight for us. In the meantime they gave us a five euro voucher for us to get some food or drink and we were told to meet up again in an hour. I went off with Mitch to seek out refreshment. We found a little booth thing and indulged. I got a coke and a chocolate chip cookie. The cookie tasted like a rusk, not the best snack I've ever had.

When we met again, our group was led away to an executive lounge for us to wait in. There were some nice recliner relaxing chairs for us to sit on while we waited. Eventually we were told they'd got us on to another flight the next day. However, they only had limited seats and some of us would have to go to Nairobi. These people were picked out at random, oddly though, both out travel company reps and our Marie Curie rep ended up on the Nairobi flight.

In the mean time we ere taken to a hotel for the night. The hotel looked oddly like a prison on the outside. Inside our room had a double bed with a bunk bed over it. Our group met up for a buffet in the evening, then we all headed for bed.

Day 2

Waking up early we headed back to the airport for a morning breakfast and our check in.
Thankfully the flight was pretty uneventful. I got to watch Casino Royale again and Flushed Away. There were a lot of French people on the flight who weren't particularly considerate to some of my fellow trekkers, but I think I got lucky.

I wasn't so lucky when the flight attendants handed out a card we had to fill in while I was in the toilet. I only realised this when we got out at the airport and everyone was holding a piece of green card. It had details about our passports and where we were going. All stuff we had to fill in for the visas strangely.

I got a card from the man who was checking them and the passports. Sadly, because of me losing my glasses, and the heat, and the tiredness I couldn't focus on the small lettering on the card and I couldn't read it to fill it in. Thankfully I got a fellow trekker to help me out, otherwise I'd have been really stumped.

After negotiating that hazard we then lined up around the dual luggage conveyor belts. Worryingly in transpired that the luggage for two people got lost in the transition from our previous flight. Really not the best start possible.

Leaving the airport we found a few four wheel drive vehicles waiting for us. Bundling out bags and six of us into each we headed of for our hotel. The road was a bit ropey in places and twice we were slowed down by police standing in the road, clearly on the lookout for something.

Once at the hotel, we dropped off our bags and headed to the bar area where Hannah was waiting. Hannah had been in Africa since December and had been waiting at the hotel for our arival for a day or so. We were given some food and the group from Nairobi arrived. Everyone was still pretty tired from two days of travel so it was off to bed. The rooms were fairly basic, the beds were like bits of wood with sheets on them, but even the heat couldn't keep me awake, thankfully.

Day 3

Up bright and early ready to head off on our trek finally.
We met up for some breakfast then convened at the front of the hotel for a variety of 4x4s and a bus idled waiting for us.
I got on the bus (you can see me leaning of the window of it in one of these pictures http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s40/kilimanjaro2007/?start=all )
I started to wish I'd got in a 4x4.

Unlike the trip from the airport, the trip to the mountain was along some very dubious roads. They were made from a reddish earth and quite riddled with potholes and trenches. The bus was much slower than a 4x4, as evidenced by everyone else overtaking us, despite our bus setting off earlier than anyone else.
Even more concerning was the feeling going round a corner of being very close to tipping the bus over.
Still the slow pace allowed us to enjoy the scenery.

Many of the trekkers were waving and saying hello to the locals as we passed. We got a few different reactions, some looked a bit perplexed, others disdainful, but largely we received cheerful waves and hellos. A lot of the children were clearly wise to the whole tourist trade thing, asking for money or chocolate. You could hardly blame hem.

The buildings we passed in the towns were pretty shabby looking, though the numerous catholic churches we passed seemed better built. I'm pretty sure they had more schools than the density of the population would need mind you. But I suppose in heat like that you'd rather not wander too far to get to school.
I liked seeing shops like the Brilliant Grocery Store and Las Vegas Hair Dressers. We saw a few people baking earth into breeze blocks and of course many places growing bananas. There were fields with swathes of sunflowers in them, again, you can see them in the pictures.

We pulled up at a lovely grassy area. There were a few squat buildings and some decidedly ropey toilets. We sat on a bank and ate the packed lunch we'd been provided with while our porters sorted out all our bags. Because of the size of our group (I think it was 38 trekkers with two reps and two doctors) we had

77 porters and ten guides. The travel company has put a cap on the weight a porter can carry at 15kg, though that didn't include their own equipment. It was pretty clear the porters had no problems with such a measly weight. Not only were they carrying our bags with all our stuff we didn't generally need during

the day (sleeping bags, change of clothes etc) they also carried their own things for the mountain, tents for us all to sleep in, a dining tent we'd take our meals in, food and cooking equipment and lots and lots of water.

While we waited we had a few group photos taken, including one with just the trekkers from Wales, I was quite shocked to get that picture back and see how I towered over my fellow countrymen (and women). It's easy to forget being tall you know. Still, pictures and lunch over and done with it was time to start walking.

The terrain was pretty basic to start off with. It was grassland with a few small trees, it was quite pleasant. We turned onto some dirt tracks where some school children kept pace with us until passing our group and calling encouraging words from further along.

It's probably around this point that I should comment on pace.
Our starting height for the trek was about 1700m. That's about 1 2/3 the height of Snowdon, so soon we were at double the height of Snowdon. Altitude doesn't have the best of effects on the body giving you sickness and fatigue (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_Sickness for more details)
The best thing to do with such a thing is walk slowly. As porters passed us they would tell us polé polé which is Swahilli for slowly. However at this early stage it wasn't too taxing and it was just a gentle stroll.

The foliage eventually got denser as we entered jungle altitudes. Here the path was well maintained and it reminded me an awful lot of the paths through the Welsh Mountain Zoo. Sunlight filtered through the canopy as we trekked through the cool forest. Creepers hung from tree to tree and though I missed them, a few monkeys were spotted by members of our group.

After about four hours of trekking we suddenly emerged at our camp for the night. There was a large clearing surrounded by bushes where the porters hade set up a number of cream and dark green two man tents. We each picked out a tent and put our bags and sleeping stuff away. Through a little archway in one of the larger bushes was another clearing where a large, long tent had been set up for our food.

Also at the campsite were toilets called long drops. These consist of a small wooden shed structure with a hole in the floor inside. Throughout the trek I largely avoided these and opted instead for discreet bushes, especially as one of the long drops had some wasps hanging around in it. The bushes weren't entirely the best of places to go, however, as one female trekkers found out. She'd wandered along the path to find a quiet place when she came across two men with guns. They told her to go back as they were guarding the camp from any wildebeest or leopards that may come along. Sadly we never got to see any of the larger African wildlife.

It soon was time for tea and we headed for the tent. Meal times were similar for each day, we file into the long tent and peer at each other in the gloom, or be blinded by someone's head torch. We sat on small camping stools which rocked unsteadily on the uneven terrain, trying desperately not to kick over the cups on the floor. We were provided with large flasks of tea or hot water and tins of coffee and a substance called Milo. Milo is akin to hot chocolate and became a favourite among our group. Mealtimes would ring with cries of pass the milo as various ends of the tent required the powder.

The meals themselves were astonishingly varied considering the porters were carrying it all up. We had a variety of meats, there was pasta, rice, chips, pancakes, chicken done in a variety of ways, soup every meal and a whole host of others. Until the altitude took my appetite I was thoroughly enjoying the food. We were encouraged to eat lots throughout in addition to drinking at least 3 litres of water a day.

The meal came to an end and we emerged into the darkness outside.

It was a beautiful, clear night. The stars shone brightly in the sky, swirls and clusters visible in the pitch black. I've got to say, without light pollution the night sky is a lot nicer. We stood gazing up for some time before we climbed wearily into our sleeping bags ready for the next day.