We arrived in Moshi
on Thursday evening. We didn’t know how difficult it would be to
book the climb. Somebody said that in high season you will have to
wait 1 week to get a free vacancy. The latest possibility for us
would have been to start the hike on Sunday.
It turned out to be very
easy to book a tour. All over Moshi there were agents trying to sell
the tours. We managed to book the 5 day hike on the arrival day, so
we started the hike on Friday morning.
After we rented all
the equipment that we needed, our team, led by the great guide
David, drove us to the Marangu Gate. Besides our guide and assistant
guide, there was a chef and some porters who carried the food, water
and all the other stuff we needed. That day we just walked for 3
hours through the rain forest. Although we didn't see any animals,
it was a nice atmosphere and a new experience for all of us. We
arrived at the Mandara Camp at 2700 m.
On the second day we walked six hours through moorland. To our right we saw Kilimanjaro and to our left a thick layer of clouds that lay below us. In the afternoon we arrived at the Horombo Camp at 3720 m. To help us acclimatize, our guide took us an extra few hundred meters higher and then walked back with us.
In the early morning
of the third day, we started walking up to the last Camp, the Kibo
Camp at 4703 m. We walked for 6 hours and when we arrived in the
afternoon, we went to sleep pretty soon. The reason for this was
that we were going to get up at midnight to climb to the summit
before sunrise.
When reaching Gilmans Point we knew the worst part is over. From Gilmans Point you still need more than an hour to reach the peak but its more or less easy walking. From Gilmans Point we could see a big fire at the bottom of the mountain. Finally we reached Uhuru Peak, the highest point of Africa at 5895 m. It’s impossible to describe what we felt. After all the hours of planning and weeks of travelling we really made it. Months ago we had this picture in our heads: the three of us on the summit of Kilimanjaro and we made it happen. Nobody got altitude sickness and had to turn back. We arrived at Uhuru Peak right before the sunrise over Kenya, which was unbelievable beautiful.