Having never been to Africa before, I found the journey incredible.

Note: Originally posted on https://colossalkiliclimb.wordpress.com Nov 2010

We’re back! In fact we’ve been back 2 weeks now, apologies for the late updating of this blog.  Things have been a bit crazy since returning!  I’m going to break the write up of the big climb into smaller chunks… there is a lot to talk about.

Day 1

Day 1 and I already had concerns.  How was I going to get to work in rush hour with my massive rucksack and my day sack? Travelling on London Transport at rush hour is hazardous at the best of times, let alone when you take up the space of 4 people.  But I got up, finalised bits and pieces and headed off.  The journey was relatively pain free (apart from a few tuts and evil glances on the bus) and I made it to work in one piece. Phew!

After a busy day at work I logged off, shut down and prepared myself for the second hazardous journey of the day – the tube ride to Heathrow.  The office gave me a lovely card, played some African-themed music and applauded me out of the door.  I had to make a quick escape as their loveliness was making me a bit emotional! I arrived at Heathrow Terminal 3 (luckily I checked in with Fitz on the way as I was headed to Terminal 2), located the other girls and checked in – very relieved to offload my rucksack, but also relieved that I was well below weight-restrictions.  We met a couple of others from the group, and were relieved to discover they were very nice!

We headed off to get some food and to try and still our nervous chatter. Before we knew it, we were entering gate 29 and preparing to board the plane.  I think it’s fair to say we were all having minor panic attacks at this point, it was all about to become very real…

Day 2

Overnight, we experienced Air Ethiopia.  We tried to sleep (some more successful than others), we tried to keep ourselves occupied on the 7 hour flight by watching a film, by reading, by eating.  Eventually, we landed in Addis Ababa, our first stop of the trip.  After checking out what the airport has to offer (not a lot) we settled down on the airport floor for a couple of hours before boarding our next flight.  Everyone was bleary-eyed and feeling a bit mucky, but this was nothing compared to how we would be feeling in a few days – it was a good start to a very unhygienic trip.

We settled in on our new flight and were told that we would be stopping in Nairobi to pick up new passengers and to refuel.  There was a collective sigh by this point – we really just wanted to get there. After what seemed like another never-ending flight, we landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport – we were finally in Tanzania!

Stepping off the plane was a shock – we walked into a wall of heat.  We were all in our walking boots (as we had been told to) and we all had our thick jackets with us to save space in our bags. Not quite ideally dressed for a Tanzanian afternoon.  After passing through a sweaty customs, we headed outside to find our minibuses waiting for us and re-stocked on water as our luggage was passed to the roof.  We loaded in the minivans, tired, smelly and apprehensive and began our journey to the hotel.

Having never been to Africa before, I found the journey incredible.  A long, long stretch of road, with very little for the eye to see and people just walking. And walking. And walking. Cycling also seemed a popular method of transport.  The driving was erratic – seatbelts were very quickly put on as we sped down the road.  Small children waved at us.  Women waved at us. Men waved at us. I got a chance to practice my royal wave (note: needs much improvement) as we sped along.  We saw women carrying small children and balancing massive parcels on their head. We saw small children looking very sweet in their uniforms as they walked from school.  We saw donkeys. Lots of donkeys.

And then the drama started…

Whilst driving along, there was quite a loud bang. A few of us looked around, but seeing nothing out of the ordinary, forgot about it.  Until 3 mins later when we quite dramatically slowed, skidded and veered to the side of the road.  The words spread to the back of the minibus like a whisper on the wind ‘puncture. puncture. puncture’. We piled out of the bus as chances of being rear-ended on this road were pretty high.  We piled up on the side of the road, seeking shade from the relentless sun.  People who had been walking or cycling on the road stopped to help our driver and our group leader.  They located the spare tyre and began the changing process… only hit a snag when it was revealed that the jack didn’t lift the van high enough to get the old tyre off and the new one on.

In the meantime, we were still stood there… taking in our surroundings and feeling a bit shell shocked I think.  We got chatting to two of the guys on the minibus – Steve and Melv, who would become good friends throughout the climb.  They are experts of inane chatter (I’m sure they’ll readily admit to this) and really helped us pass the time.  Just when the other bus was told to come back from the hotel and pick us up, we had some success and the new tyre was on!  We piled back on the minibus, anxious for a nice shower and to finally get to our first destination.

We got to the hotel, located our bags and were given our room numbers.  We headed to our room and had a quick turn around time as we had a briefing and a kit checklist to get through.  I had a quick shower and we headed down with all our stuff to check we had everything and to repack in a sensible order.

I found the kit run-through incredibly useful. But also quite nerve-racking.  There were elements I didn’t have. Or wasn’t sure if what I did have was good enough.  But, there was nothing I could do by that point.  So we repacked, dumped our stuff back in our rooms and headed down for some food.  The meal was quite quiet – we didn’t know others in the group very well, everyone was tired and increasingly nervous.  So we all headed off to bed early, some people having not slept at all on the flights, plus we had an early start in the morning – we had to be at breakfast with all our stuff packed at 7am. Little did we know that 7am would soon feel like a luxury.

Our first 2 days of the trip were done!

Catdog xx