April 9
April 9 My friend Brian told me that Africa was a place hard to leave. It is difficult to put my finger on exactly why, but part is the sheer exuberance of the place (granted, I only visited east Africa). I could never tire from hearing Swahili (unlike many European languages or some of the […]
April 8
April 8 Having to wake up at 5:30 after the last week of trekking seemed the height of stupidity, but I couldn’t waste my last day in Tanzania, so off I went on a bus to Arusha. At 1.5 million people, it is the second largest city in Tanzania. There I was met by Jackson […]
April 7
April 7 As if the last few days were not strenuous enough, Gideon and Abu had Anna and me up and packing at 6:00. We had a 19 km hike down off the mountain, and Gideon started at what felt to be a 5 km pace. It was downhill but not always an even track. […]
April 6
April 6 Commencing a long hard hike at midnight seems ridiculous, and it pretty much is. I asked the guides about the rationale for such a strategy. After all, we had spent days acclimating to the altitude, it seemed unwise to disrupt diurnal patterns just at the moment we were readying for the big push. […]
April 5
April 5 Stretchers are not usually something you want to pass on a hike. Up here they have ones made with a steel frame and a single centered spoked wheel like one on a heavy mountain bike. Halfway up to Kibo huts they were rolling down a man wrapped in a sleeping bag and cargo […]
April 4
April 4 1000 meters– it is a good rule of thumb for acclimating to altitude. I tried to follow it in Nepal on the Annapurna Circuit, and here it is built into the trail. On this approach, there are clusters of huts set apart not by distance, but height. The first huts (Mandara) were at […]
April 3
April 3 Wildflowers were the order of the day, though it started with white-faced black colobus monkeys, the same ones I heard making a strange, indescribable sound in the early morning. We started the day hiking out of the rain forest, the trees so covered with epiphytes that it was difficult to distinguish their actual […]
April 2
April 2 The terrain is much different from what I’ve been in lately. Broad flat plains with that distinctive dark red soil that signals volcanos. A lot of agriculture here–good sized fields of corn along with banana plantations. All the labor seems to be done by hand. While driving to Kilimanjaro park, we passed many […]
April 1
April 1 Kilimanjaro (and the rainy season). The flight out of Dar Es salaam was uneventful and short. By noon I was walking across the tarmac at Kilimanjaro International Airport– a place that lifted my mood. It is simple, well-maintained, and has a 1950s feel to it, a time before airports became armed camps. Caught […]
March 31
March 31 Parting. I had not seen Charlie since just after his graduation last spring from Haverford College, so exploring Dar Es Salaam these past days was pure pleasure, but that does little to dampen the inevitable sadness a parent feels when a son or daughter heads off on their own again. I’ve spent most […]