I soon realised second day was meant to be shorter, just the four hours trekking, but as it turns out short doesn’t equal easier. Figure that! Now we were definitely climbing a mountain.
As we started we thought we might be lucky enough and not get torrential rain. We had good chances as well as the morning started of misty with no rain. But that didn’t last long. Bugger!
Not feeling as wet as the day before we felt it’s about time to man up and get going. And God did we do some serious climbing through narrow steep inclines littered with rocks, crossing streams whilst playing hopscotch with rocks, traversing wet rocky ridges with sheer drops and walking the odd flat narrow rocky bit.
Now, climbing Kilimanjaro was one of the best things I could have done and I am thrilled I managed to go to the top.
The guides
Whilst the terrain was harder on day two I found it better as it was shorter and more adventurous and I couldn’t have done it without our guides Wilson and John. They showed us the best routes all the way and kept encouraging me when I felt I was about to faint.
Both climb Kilimanjaro twice a month as guides and you can tell. They see climbing Kili as just another day at work whilst I was soldiering through the wet and tough bits questioning why I am doing this again!?
The guides were absolute heroes though and they play a vital part in the challenge. I wrote an inside into a Guide’s life on the Kilimanjaro Tours blog. If you want to find out more about Wilson and John you can read the article here.
End of Day two – hip hip hooray!
We arrived at Shira camp a lot earlier than day one, so we had extra drying time (whoop whoop!).
As I sat in the Mess tent (the dining and chilling out tent) I looked outside for shadows aka I was sun spotting. Fortunately, the sun delighted us with his presence for a bit so everybody rushed to dry their things.
At this point I dreaded the fact I had to go on an acclimatization walk to help me adjust to tomorrow’s altitude. Luckily, the guide came and told the group it was going to rain and so all drying had to come inside and we went back to our tent for some rest until dinner.
For the equipment the guys bring up the mountain they put a pretty impressive feed on and that warms you up a treat.
This is the second part of Lloyd’s diary guide to tackling the beast – aka: Climbing Kilimanjaro.
