Good morning! Water is still there in abundance and the porters bring us a bucketfull of warm water and some bowls for washing.
Door engravings
Sanitary conditions are not all european:)
A great breakfast!!
Throughout the whole trip the cooks did an amazing job and could always keep us happy and satisfied.
Actually Haryaksha should be writing the report because he was writing down and noting things like the names of the flowers that are unique to Kilimanjaro NP all the time. He also noted when something special happened to somebody important on the mountain and so on...
On the other hand it is said that one picture says more than thousand words and since I have over thousand pictures I am doing it:)
Since we have a distance of 20km horizontally and 1000m vertically ahead of us we depart from Mandara Hut at 7:30 am.
We start in the rain forest, but the vegetaion changes soon into grass and moorland.
The porters are absolutely amaizing: they start after us, overtake us very soon, and after arriving at the destination they prepare food and accommodation.
Mawenzi is the first peak you can see along the Marangu route.
The motto of the climb is "POLE POLE" which means "slowly, slowly" in Swahili.
Why? Very simple: when you go slowly, you use less oxygen and it is less likely that you will suffer from the AMS (acute mountain sickness)
Above 3000m you start feeling the altitude - no problem for our guides however...
In the spring a huge area was burned in a bush fire.
Felix
long way to Horombo...
Here is our first sight of the Kilimanjaro summit.
Peter and Aharan
Sharing our lunch..
...its just too far...
finally! the Horombo village.
Kaspars carried his Canon with the fantastic 70-200 2.8 lens all the way up and took some great shots. Plus we had a lot of fun!
Haryaksha as usual:)
The first thing after arriving and putting down our daypacks (the big, heavy backpacks were carried by the porters) was to run into the dining hut and grab some tea with popcorn. Even if the combinations sounds a little bit strange, up there at 3700m it was a perfect starter before the dinner!
We spent three nights at Horombo and had GREAT SKY all the time! Most of the time with clouds below us - that really makes you feel elevated. (apart from the thin air)
Rupasi beholding the clouds in the evening sun.
A candle light dinner concludes the evening.
