At the top of Africa, and around - Part 1

As a first storytelling (hei, it's Richard here), I decided to use my trip to Tanzania and mainly Kilimanjaro in april 2011. As always, we need to choose a destination (or destinations) from the almost endless possibilities, then plan when to go, what to do, how to do it, how much time to spend for each part of the trip; the last point going against people that take things as they come and are not so strict regarding time frames, but I'm sure that for some trips, a proper planning is essential.

It was february 2011 and I had just started in a new job. In 2 months time there would be Easter holidays and of course I wanted to use the opportunity to travel for some days. I tried talking to a few friends trying to motivate them for a road trip somewhere in UK. I had seen a nice post about one in Ireland which gave me some ideas, namely http://www.xbhp.com/gier/travelogue/ . Unfortunately, at the time at least I thought so, no one was really interested in it. Talking to a friend from work, Stian, I mentioned my plan and he came with a better suggestion, Kilimanjaro!

Yes, I had wanted to go to Kilimanjaro for some time, and I don't know how it didn't come up in my mind before. I had heard stories, seen pictures, and thought that it would be an amazing place to go. On that same day he told me that he was really interested in going there, we talked and decided to go together there. We started looking for tour companies, flight tickets, other places to go after Kili, etc. There are too many companies offering hikes to Kili, and it is time consuming finding a good and not so expensive one. Also many of them don't have the prices on their website, and/or do not say what is covered in the price, and therefore you have to send an email asking for a quotation and what is included; it is really important to be certain about what you are paying for.

As important as finding a good company is to decide which route to take to reach the top. There are 6 possible routes, each with its own characteristics. There are enough descriptions around, so I will not say much about them. What I can say is, don't go for a short route, or at least try to get some extra days for acclimatization to avoid the symptoms of altitude sickness. Routes which take 5 or 6 days have lower success rate than longer routes. Pay attention that when companies says 7 days, for example, the first of those could be just your arrival at Arusha or Moshi, before starting the hike on the next day.

Image from http://www.tanzaniasafaristz.com/kili-route.htm

When we were researching the routes we saw that Rongai is a route that starts on the opposite side of all the other routes, and closer to the Kenyan border. While checking for flights our best option was to fly to Nairobi and take a bus from there to Tanzania, so that route sounded a good option. We still considered the Machame route which is one of the famous ones, and by reading a bit more we grew fond of the Lemosho route. Talking about reading, we got ourselves a really good reference book about kilimanjaro by Henry Stedman, where he covers a lot of useful and interesting information, including some nice route charts with elevation gain and drop.

So, the plan was to go in the middle of April, during the rainy and therefore low season. We were worried that it might be difficult with the rain to hike for so many days, and reduce our chances of summiting. The Lemosho route was said to be one of the wettest ones, and Rongai the driest one, but we were already quite happy with what we had read about Lemosho and we kind of wanted to risk it. In any case, we were sending questions about those 2 routes, and Machame, to a great number of tour operators, in Nairobi, Arusha and Moshi, but our preference was Moshi, which is much closer to Kili. To cut a long story short, by the middle of march, we decided on a company apparently from Nairobi (called Adventure Kenya Safaris), which had offered us a good amount of service and the Lemosho route on 8 days (6.5 days up and 1.5 days down), for a really good price. They would pick us up from the airport in Nairobi, give us the hotel for that night, give bus tickets to Moshi, the hotel before and after the trek, and a bus ticket to Dar Es Salaam. And we were supposed to be just the 2 of us, so it would be quite an exclusive trip, thanks to the low season :).... but then we found out that an american couple would join, which was completely fine with us.

Ok, we had that arranged and by that time we knew we were going Trondheim → Oslo → Brussels → Nairobi → Moshi → Kilimanjaro → Moshi → Dar Es Salaam → Zanzibar → Nairobi → Brussels → Oslo → Trondheim. With accommodation secured up to Dar Es Salaam, I decided to look for a couchsurfer in Zanzibar, and by my surprise I found one! He replied me quite quickly and was ok with hosting us for 4 nights, and we were really happy about it!. Meanwhile we had to take care of some vaccinations (Hepatitis A - Diphtheria / tetanus - Yellow fever), medicine against malaria (Malarone vs Lariam), arrange some dollars to pay the outstanding amount for the trek, check for proper clothes, go up and down some hills to get in better shape...

Finally on the 14^th of april we started our trip. Already in Oslo the first happening: We were suspected of stealing a guidebook !? Yes, we spent quite some time checking some guidebooks about Tanzania, and also Kenya, but ended up not buying any. A few minutes after leaving the bookshop, we were stopped by a policeman who started asking questions, and we explained that all was just a misunderstanding, so all was ok then.

Reaching Belgium, we had a whole afternoon in Brussels. We both had been there before, so we just wanted to walk around in the center taking a few pictures and drink some good belgium beer. I had stopped drinking beer 1 month before since I somehow thought it could be good for my preparations for Kilimanjaro (go figure...), but being there I couldn't miss that chance. At a pizza place I got a cherry beer called Kriek, which as far as I remember was quite ok.

Afterwards we went to 2 places Stian had reccommended, Delirium Cafe and Rhumbar, both with a great selection of beers. At Delirium I got a traditional Delirium Tremens, one of my favorites, and at Rhumbar I tried Hopus, which was served in a special way: with a yeast shot on the side (on the picture below, already gone). That shot was strange, don't know exactly how to describe it... but the beer itself was well worth it. Another new trial for the night was a Bersalis Tripel, but that was just so so.

Then it was time to head back to the airport to spend the night (the flight to Nairobi was scheduled for 10:30 the next morning). We were so tired that we almost missed the stop for the airport.. we had fallen asleep and the driver didn't see us; luckily we woke up just in time before he left the final stop.

At a starbucks in the airport, such a coincidence: there was a waiter, Bari, from Guinea that had lived in Norway for some time and he was really happy to meet people from Norway, or living there, as is my case. He even offered me a discount on a packet with 2 stroopwafels, which I like a lot! It's rare to meet people that have connections to Norway so randomly like this, so that was cool :)

On the next part the real adventure begins!