Day two. Great sleep, body excellent with no aches or pains. Could be that bottle of red I snuck in my pack! Not! It was pretty chilly. Bullfrogs outside my tent making their gutteral calls and colobus monkies screeching! The rental sleeping bag says good for minus 33. Yeah right! That might have been true at original date of manufacture but after being rented out and cleaned hundreds of times, it is sadly lacking in the minus stakes. Up at 6am with a bowl of warm water, breakfast and started our day at 8:30am. We trekked 2 hours up and up, stepping up and clambering over rocks. Flattening out then more of the same for another 2 hours. Lunch finally and a bit of a rest for an hour. Another 2 hours but one and a half hours of that was quite steep uphill stepping up on rocks. My legs tired a bit for sure and I wondered if I would have to rest more. No pain in the legs, just fatigue. My breathing was good and no issues with altitude as we are now over 3,000 metres where the air starts getting thinner. Thankfully it flattened out and we started downwards slightly to Shira Plateau and Shira camp. We had all caught up with the front group who were only about 20 metres in front of the second pack. Kilimanjaro is right in front of us but the top covered cloud with blue sky on its left where it is clearing from. We figured 10 minutes and it would be clear after watching the cloud move steadily across its face. Of course it stopped and it was almost sundown before it cleared. We couldn't see Uhuru Peak - the highest point but it still looked very intimidating!
Our after dinner game was again a bit of a rio, caused usually by the guys. If you were on death row what would your last meal consist of. I can't possibly write the responses but the girls were a little more staid than the guys. What an hilarious night!