Kilimanjaro 2 : A typical day

A typical day for us would be:

• 

  Hot water for cleaning

  Wake up at 5am (the official wake up call would have been 6am but for some reasons, most of us were up almost an hour earlier), have hot beverage at 6.30am, wash up with HOT water at 6.45am, breakfast at 7am and leave on the dot at 7.30am. [THANK GOD we do not have faffers!]. For breakfast, porridge, eggs (lovingly carried up the mountain by the cook himself as no porters are allowed to touch them), toasts, sausage, diamox and hot beverage are served by 2 waiters (Ernest and Aloyce), on a table with table cloth no less. Oh, Ernest and Aloyce totally ignored me when I volunteered to help. It was not allowed!

  

  Waking at dusk

• Walk to lunch spot/ the next camp. Along the way, we have breaks for toilet (in the bush) and/ or snacks. The boys discuss work, share jokes or we will have trivia/ riddles. The guides nag at us to walk “pole, pole” (“slowly, slowly” in Swahili, which the boys, with their long legs, obviously cannot comprehend) and drink water. Jonas takes photographs of us and updates the blog and google map so that family members/ friends can follow our progress (or in Anna's words - stalk us). 
  (http://www.teamkilimanjaro.com/blog/?s=Gewi&submit=Submit) 

  
  
  The walking pace is way slower than what I am used to (slower than those of Raquel's and Toño's). The porters overtake us with their heavy loads and maybe run down the mountain again for a second load and pass us again.

  

  Precious water in transit

  

  Our tents were already set up

  
  

  By the time we reach our lunch spot/ camp, the tents (including the toilet tent) would have been set up and someone would already have hot water ready for washing up and drinking and pop corn (our snack) would have been in the making. Spoilt huh?

  
  

Pop corn time

• 

  Have lunch and continue with trek/ rest until dinner. If we were not trekking in the afternoon, we either go for a walk/ read/ discuss the route/ take a nap/ play card games (we played card games only on 1 afternoon though).
  

Hmmm.... the strategy is...

• Have dinner at 6pm. Again, we were spoilt by Team Kilimanjaro - the 3 course meals were hardly repeated in the 6 days (and we had a good time guessing what will be served). Altitude sickness can reduce one's appetite but most of us did not face this problem. In fact, Ernest had to go source for more peanut butter (we finished a bucket) and chocolate powder for us.

Cooking our dinner (and no, I did not cheat by going to the cooking tent to find out what is for dinner)

Our candlelight dinner at 6pm

• Jonas comes into our dinner tent and begins with “Hi guys, how's everyone doing?”, checks on everyone of us and briefs us on the programme for the next day.
  
  
• Brush our teeth and tuck ourselves into our sleeping bags in huge 2-men tents by 7.30pm. [Although we spent so much energy breathing (yes, it was hard work) and walking, I honestly worried about getting a tummy for going to bed so soon after dinner. Talk about priorities/ being vain. Team Kilimanjaro feeds me better than how I fed myself whilst in Spain. It will be a joke if I look fatter than before I climbed Kili.]
  
  
• Sleep intermittenly. Although I listen to my usual sleep playlist on iPod, it takes longer than usual for me to fall asleep and I will wake up after an hour or 2, check the time and try go back to sleep again.
  
  
• Wake up to go to the toilet tent in the middle of the night (I was honestly quite worried that it would be blown away).