Day Two - A Little Bit of Hypothermia

     As is so common when I travel, and even when I don't, I don't sleep well. I got two "naps" during the night, one for an hour and the other for 30 minutes. I had hip issues (old injury plus falling during the evening) and back issues.
     There were 3 of us in a "3" man tent - which meant we were very, very close to each other. My sleeping bag was touching the side of the tent and as the temperature dropped and we crossed the dew point, condensation was  all over the inside of the tent and consequently, soaked through my sleeping bag. I got colder and colder as the night went on. As well, we were on a drastic slant and I kept sliding towards the door. Every half hour or so I had to hoist myself up to the top of my sleeping mat - stop reading this, go get in your sleeping bag, and once you are all tucked in, try inching your way along the floor. Then imagine doing it uphill with your nylon sleeping bag.
     The guides didn't want to get us water the night before - we don''t know why, but they were very insistent that we could get it in the morning. We tried to explain how long it would take us to sterilize the water but they didn't seem to share our concerns. Water was finally delivered after breakfast, and, as we tried to explain, it took well over half an hour for everyone to get water and sterilize it. Some are using drops which you just put in the water and its ready in thirty  minutes but that isn't always effective against cryptosporidium. My group is using steripens, which sterilize a liter of water in 90 seconds, but considering three of us need 4L of water each, it does take some time. Nevertheless, our escapades convinced the guides we need water in the afternoon when we have lots of time to fool around with it.
     The walk was on a flat shaled path about 2 feet wide for the first three hours or so but then was steep with high steps up onto rocks. It was very, very hot in the morning when the sun shone but cold when the clouds closed in. I am really enjoying the walking, much more than I thought I would,  but I wish it had been over just a little bit sooner today.

  

  We ate lunch and sterilized our water and then sought shelter in our tents when the rain started.

One of the porters brought us some hot water in a basin to wash in, and just when we had a few bits naked for washing the leader sent out a call to start the acclimitization hike. The sun was now shining and because I was a bit flustered trying to go from bathing to walking, I mistakenly left my sweater and jacket on my sleeping bag instead of in my back pack.

     Of course, you can see where this is going. As we ascended the mist rolled up the mountain and the sky clouded over and the temperature dropped, It was OK when we were walking but then we stopped to hear some speeches. The idea is you spend some time at a  higher altitude and then descend to sleep to help with acclimatization. I can't really tell you what the speeches involved because the early stages of hypothermia were starting. I was shivering and a bit confused. Melissa kindly offered me her extra layer which I put on but was unable to do up - due to my size, not my lack of coordination.
     Finally we went back down (I don't like down very much, which doesn't bode well for the last two days of the trip) to supper. The pumpkin soup was hot and delicious. Tonight was pasta shells with vegetable sauce and avocado for dessert, which I skipped since my guts were a bit dodgy and I didn't think it was a good idea.
     Sunset was around 6 pm and by bedtime at 8:15, it was feeling quite cold out.

Thoughts on the day:
     I drank 3L of water during the hike and didn't pee once. I did pee after we came to camp and through the evening and it was clear like it should be, but I found it a bit worrying at first that I hadn't gone for so long.
     Diamox  symptoms - I've had none beyond the immediately noticeable increase in respiration rate when I was walking. Others are already experiencing the transient numbness in their extremities.
     I am also taking ibuprofen and ginko for altitude and adding tylenol at bedtime for aches and pains. I've not had any headaches and my feet feel pretty good, baring the ankle I twisted last night going to the bathroom.


Please, please let me get some sleep tonight.

Dsy One on the Mountain

Sunday February 10, 2013

      As is so true anytime a large group tries to do anything together – it's hurry up and wait. First we were to meet at 7:30, then it was 7 – so we showed up only to find out there was no meeting, just bring all your stuff down to the parking lot. Then it becomes take your stuff and go for breakfast, come back with all your gear after you eat so the trekking company can check out what you're planning to bring to ensure it's appropriate. We stood, and stood, and stood and finally loaded up, leaving at 9:11. Since we had planned on a 9:30 am departure, we were actually very, very early for African time.

      We were in two buses with a third empty bus. We stopped on the side of a highway in what I assume was a small town based on the number of people hanging about in their Sunday best and proceeded to pick up our porters for the trip. I'm not sure how they fit 100 guys onto that bus, but they must have done so, since that was about the number we ended up with. Each porter can carry 20kg plus his own gear up the mountain.

      It took about two hours to get to the departure point. My bus stopped for an "au naturel" pee break on the side of the road in some nice bushes, and the other bus stopped to pick up fresh meat for the trip. And no, it wasn't roadkill....I think....

      The drop off point is more waiting and waiting and waiting. We signed into the registration book and eventually got some boxed lunches to consume before starting off. What actually took so long is the dividing up and weighing of the gear. They have a large scale and all the baggage is weighed. They have it down to such a science that sometimes two cans of something will be removed from a bag and be replaced by a loaf of bread, or other similar changes.

      The porters pack everything into large woven plastic bags, tie the end shut and then place the bag on their head or on their shoulder/neck just above their back packs. The amount of gear being carried is incredible and not evenly shaped. One guy carries four tables that we will eat off of balanced on top of his head.

      There are 34 of us, and 104 porters and guides with us. They have to take everything we need up the mountain with us except water, which we get from streams at the campsites. That's a lot of food, tents, sleeping pads, chairs, propane tanks, stoves.....you get the idea how much stuff is going with us.

      These porters carry this gear and basically trot by us on their way up the mountain, all the while admonishing us to go “pole pole”, which means slowly, slowly. We need to go slow to give our bodies time to acclimatize and they need to go fast so they can have the camp set up by the time we get there.

      When we finally start up the mountain I get in last place in the line. I hate the thought of holding people up and figure the last place will be the safest for that. The path was wide and well packed down and I was able to chat with the guide. His name in English is “Living” and is something very similar meaning in Swahili – his dad wanted him to really live his life and named him appropriately. I learned about the 5 climate zones, the people who live in and maintain the park and in turn are able to farm the arable land near where they live. Corn, beans and something else are the most common crops around here. One of the villagers passed us with some plants under his arm, and Living stopped him and got one of the beans off the plant for me. It was about the size of a pea pod, but shaped more like green beans. It was reddish pink and the beans inside were white, similar to what we call Navy beans.

       We passed a "store" set up for the tourists along the side of the path that sold pop and a few snacks. The ground just past the store had a few plastic packages strewn around, which is unusual as this country has been very free of litter so far. These 2x3 inch flat envelopes of clear plastic hold poor mans' gin and can be purchased for about 500 Tanzanian shillings (TSH) which is about 30 cents Canadian. Rich guys can buy their gin in bottle but the poor man buys his like this.

      We hiked about 4 hours and the trail was gradual (every single trail was “gradual” according to the guides, which leads us to wonder if “gradual” is the only descriptive word they know or they are just laughing at us!)

     The campsite for the night is just a semi flat spot on the side of the mountain at a location called Simba or First Cave. Our tents are so crowded together I fell over the tie  down lines while going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I twisted my ankle and woke the people inside the tent.

     Supper is served in one of three dining tents on tables, with table cloths and small camping "chairs" - which are so small only one of my butt cheeks can be on it at a time. Since the mountain is not flat at this point everyone gingerly sits around the table and tries to move as little as possible, otherwise we will all go down like stacked dominoes. We have a vegetarian tent and only one male vegetarian. We always make him sit at the downhill corner to catch us if we  fall over. Supper is soup, a main course and fruit for dessert.. We are all tired, its late and eating is a bit of a chore even though the soup is delicious (cream of leek - made fresh because I saw the leek peelings).

     It becomes dark when we are eating and none of us had enough foresight to bring our headlamps to dinner. The porters don't use artificial light and can easily guide us to our tents even though I am in danger of falling over at any second.

     Glorious walking today on a wonderful trail!

African Arrival

Sadly I was awake at 0330h. Can't say I was particularly excited, just awake. Around 430 I gave up trying to sleep and tried to finish my library book - almost made it, will have to take it out again to read the last 20 pages.

We left home at 0900 and picked M up on the way. We  are flying KLM, with the first leg from Edmonton to Calgary operated by West Jet. The check in process seemed to take a fair amount of time but M and I ended up on the last two seats together so, worth the wait.

Our plane was delayed (imagine that) because they couldn't get the bridge out to the plane. After 45 minutes they decided to move the plane to another gate. This is the Edmonton airport we are talking about, its not like all the gates are full - they should have decided that after 10 minutes.

Thirty minute flight to Calgary, so barely enough time to get snacks and a drink of water. The bonus of sitting in the very last row is they give you lots of extra snacks. Fiona our steward said they were for the African kids we'll meet but we all knew there was no way the snacks would make it all the way to Africa. They did, however, make it to Amsterdam.

Our two connections at Calgary and Amsterdam passed uneventfully with less than an hours wait at each airport. KLM had very nice planes - the Airbus with a two -four-two seating pattern. They appear to be quite new airplanes and yet come with cigarette disposal areas at the rear of the plane. Both KLM flights were absolutely freezing!

I got about an hour of sleep on the first flight - missing dinner, and then a couple of 45 minute to 1 hour naps on the second flight, each of which were about 8 hours long.

When we arrived in Africa it was already dark, so no views of the mountain. KLM does have a nose wheel camera so you can see the ground as you come into the airport - it was very cool!

We exited the plane and walked across the tarmac to the building - no problems with the "bridge"here as the rolling stairs seemed to work well. Passport control took only a few minutes and I had a chance to try out my Swahili. The lady processing my passport looked tired and not all that enthusiastic about her job at that moment. When I took back my passport I thanked her in Swahili - that got a look straight into my eyes and a big smile. As I've found when travelling, people really do seem to appreciate the attempt to speak their language and "thank you" is a word you get to use a lot.

Eventually all 7 of us on that plane got all our luggage (although M, Helen's and mine was off in a few minutes) and we headed off into the countryside.

It is a highly rural area and about 100m from the airport there was only blackness all around us. They drive on the left here and even though I was in the back middle seat of a 10 person van, I still found it a bit freaky to see the cars coming towards us on that side.

They have a lot of speed bumps, or perhaps, in keeping with the Kilimanjaro theme, speed mountains along the highway - these are the widest speed bumps I have ever seen and often seem to be in the middle of nowhere.

We came upon one very bad car MVC where a smallish car (Subaru Legacy sized) had crashed mostly head on into a semi - the police men were examining the wreckage with flashlights and all the responding vehicles were parked with their blinkers on. No flashing overhead lights - which really looks weird. The policemen were wearing reflective vests, but no one was directing traffic or anything like that. I'm not sure if there were any ambulances in sight as I'm not sure what the emergency vehicles looked light beyond blinking lights.

As I am writing this I can hear the morning call to prayer which was quite faint at first but is now getting louder - as if they called everyone and now they are actually praying over the loud speaker. Very cool, although if I am sleeping tomorrow morning when it occurs I might not think so.

We arrived just passed 2230 local time (1230h on Friday afternoon at home) 27 hours after I left home. We were greeted with some freshly squeezed juice - passion fruit and mango maybe?

I am in room eight tonight by myself. It has two twin beds, which are made up individually with blankets and then pushed together. The beds are hard  - the only harder beds I have slept on were in Hong Kong. I took out my sleeping bag and slept on top of it for some extra padding. It didn't help much.

The air conditioning is a floor fan, which I promptly put on high. I woke up in the middle of the night and was cold, so had to get up and turn it off. While writing this morning I had it on low but that made me cold - weird as it is quite warm in the room My watch says it is 27 degrees in the room.

The bathroom has a flush toilet and since I am south of the equator I checked for rotational direction. It is clockwise, which may be due to the angle the water enters the toilet bowl. I was going to check in the shower last night but I couldn't figure out how to get hot water so had a pretty brief shower..

I slept for about 4 hours and have woken up at 0330, which is a frequent wake up time for me at home. Perhaps I have successfully made the time change.

Prayer is over now, I think I will have a snack as breakfast isn't until eight, and then start getting my gear packed for the mountain.

Kwaheri for now...

Final Bits Before the Airport

Some final thoughts 90 minutes before I leave for the airport:

Packing - all my gear is safely stored in two bags. They are divided differently than they will be once I embark on my trek. In the blue carry on (which is the only bag going up the mountain) I have the things I deem essential or that would be very hard to replace in Africa if my luggage is lost. Everything else, including my sleeping bag is in the red one. According to the KLM website I am 4 lbs under the allowance on each bag.

 


In some ways it seems like a lot of gear, but the majority of it is for the mountain. In other ways, I am going for three weeks and don't seem to have a lot of stuff with me. Regardless, I have what I'm taking, anything else I will buy there or do without. After all this planning I would like to believe I have everything, but that is just folly. I'm sure I've missed something that will seem perfectly obvious once I get there.

So, I started posting January 21, 2012 - just over a year ago and the date is finally (or already- depending on how I'm feeling) here.

Summary -
I've done a fair amount of training in my opinion - none of it overly hard but more requiring consistency. Do I wish I had done more? Of course I do - until I meet the mountain, doubt will exist.

Injuries - I started training with bursitis in my left hip and a dodgy right shoulder. I finished my training with two dodgy shoulders, a sore left hip but not in the bursitis spot and sore feet. I have orthotics for my boots now, but in reality my feet still hurt when I walk more than two hours, especially if I have to go fast. That being said - we do not walk fast on the mountain, but each day is longer than 2 hours. Do my feet hurt enough to make me stop - I sure don't think so. I have lots of analgesia with me!

Weight - I've stayed the same over the course of the year but my pants are a bit looser. I put my treking pants on this morning, which I haven't done since before the snow came and breathed a sigh of relief when they fit!

I have compression socks on for the airplane ride - they are kind of squidgy in my boots, so even though I vowed not to add anything to my luggage, I think I will be adding a pair of bamboo socks for inside my boots.

My family has spent the last week telling me how much they'll miss me. I will miss them too as we have never been apart this long. Still, I am the lucky one because I will be out of my usual environment and seeing new things while my husband will go to bed without me and my kids will miss my hugs.

Pretty much all the people I know who've wished me well on this journey in the last week have ended the conversation with, "Take lots of pictures". Well, since you asked.... I have had some practice sessions with my camera this week and now know how to take a panaramic shot and video. I am taking two battery back up systems (one solar) with me to ensure I have juice for pictures. As well, there are 34 of us trekking up this hill together, perhaps we'll share some of our more spectacular shots with each other.

 I may have sporadic internet while in Africa so will be writing my blogs the old fashioned way - on paper - as the days progress and then will upload them individually when I have time and internet. So, although they will be posted in order, they will be late.

That's it from this country I think. At around 2 pm on February 13 in the Edmonton time zone, I will be beginning my summit push. Have a thought for me. When you wake up on Valentine's Day - I will be on my way down!

Take care my friends - stay safe, and I will do the same!