The Trail of Tears

The second half of day two, out of the cloud forest (yesterday as I write this), the sun finally came out and we had a great view of the summit. We went on a 4-hour hike at a normal to fast pace for acclimation. It was beautiful, and the first time I felt like I got any bit of a workout on this trip. Dinner the day before, a chicken stew, was delicious, but unfortunately did not sit very well with me, so I had a hard time falling asleep (it also dropped below freezing for the first time, which didn't help). This made the day a little more tiring. It was, however, my favorite day so far, probably because the weather was perfect.

Today (day 3), our head guide, Joshua, had to turn back because of a tooth problem, so we had a new guide, Nico, who led us not quite as pole pole (which means slowly slowly) as Joshua from our base camp at 3700 meters up to 4600 meters. The views during the entire hike were incredible. We were above a blanket of clouds staring at what previously I have only seen out of an airplane window. The hike uphill was not strenuous, but was incredibly dusty at times, prompting tears despite sunglasses and coating all of us with a thick layer of dust in addition to what we inhaled and ingested.

At 4600 meters, for the first time I felt the effects of the altitude and had a bit of a headache. The climb was just for acclimatization purposes, though, and after lunch, we descended on a different side of the mountain back to 3800 meters, where we will camp tonight. We are all feeling pretty well and debating switching to 6 days and summitting tomorrow night at midnight. However, since there is no hurry to get back to Moshi since we can't change the start date of our safari, we might just keep it at 7 days, which will guarantee that we enjoy our summit night more. Otherwise, we would hike for 7 hours tomorrow, arrive at camp around 4, eat a little and try to sleep, but would need to wake up before midnight to start the summit climb--which actually looks relatively difficult.

Through today, the actual hiking has been easy, with all of us agreeing that the downhill into the valley tonight was the most dangerous/annoying due to all of the dust and loose rocks. No injuries though. I'm not even sore other than a touch on my lower back, but that is definitely due to sleeping on the rock every night, since our sleeping mats are about as thick as a typical afghan you might throw on your couch. We are back at a campsite in the clouds for tonight. Sam and I have been playing cards every night and all of us have been reading. If it wasn't so cold once the sun went down, it would be even more relaxing.