Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Water for washing, gets us all giggling everytime, as does, so about the water . . .
Greeted by our cook with 'water for washing' at roughly 6.30ish tends to be the morning rise. This little guy is so cute with his red bandana and bowls of hot water for us to apparently wash in. I use wet wipes as I find these suffiecent enough.
Breakfast, oh yes the local oatmeal greets me again, fab. Also we have mounds and mounds of toast, omelettes, sausages, fruit and teas, coffees, hot chocolates. The canadians dig into their peanut butter on toast with butter and jam while I'm repulsed by this, I stick to eating the whole container of local oatmeal as noone else seems to be into the stuff, and me not into the rest of the grub so we all win.
This morning we end up waiting about an hour just hanging around. All the groups have a sitting time, there are two sitting times half an hour apart from what I gather for breakfast. But entenze slept in, so that leaves us all waiting around and we set off later than schedueled and after the majority of the other happy campers.
We continue to trek through the rain forest. Roy and bruce continuing to be eaten by ants. We are trekking about 5-6 hours everyday going 1000meters higher each day.
We go from forest slowly the trees becoming less and less where the path has been dug out and uneven rocks lead the way. The trees become bushes and we start seeing flowers, and weird trees that none of us have seen before and old mans beards hanging off the small twiggy trees. The ground here tends to have a steep bit of scrambling up the rocks followed by. Stretch of pretty much flatness.
We reach harambo hut, aka rat hotel. Due to our late arrival, due to our late start, we get the bunks above the dining rooms, must be at least 20bunks upstairs, which is pants compared to the huts we could have sleeping 6 people.
We have tea and popcorn and biscuits, which we did yesterday before we climb that extra couple meters to zebra rocks and come back down.
You can tell now that there is less oxygen in the air, and its getting colder on the nights. I'm sleeping in my thermals. At this point people with altitude sickness are suffering, rox is really struggling to breathe so the group during our trek tends to be me and judy at the front followed by bruce and stephan with mama and papa sticking with rox and shermin.
Everyone but me has been suffering from some form of altitude sickness for the last two days, things like tingling fingers and toes, headaches, nausea, the s***s(not surprising I'm constipated, have been for a while, didn't go on the safari as the toilets where you get swarmed with flies aren't the most appealing). What was a big shock for me was the meeting before the day of the climb everyone was asked if they had their meds, well I was like, meds, what meds. So as it turns out their is a prescription altitude sickness med you are meant to take, so everyone but me, rox and shermin are. This also I was very blasay about as you are meant to stop taking your anti malerias aswell as above 1800meters the mozzies don't go but I'm still taking mine
We passed mizuri I believe its called mountain, which is topped with snow.
The views from this hut you can see for miles.
So I got speaking to the irish couple in the bunks opposite who are lovely.
Before tea I played a bit throw and catch with a rugby ball with some portes and a guy I met that morning at the last hut, some soccer player from america.
We get water for washing and have our evening meal. Which is good food for mountain food. Except that they put pancakes down, slightly sugared I believe with the soup, everyone just picked them up and started dipping them in their soup, I was like guys what you doing, that's just wrong. But this is down to food going off and stale. People are just desparate and just eat whatever for fuel. I just have 3 servings of soup each night as there is plenty left over, people like leaving room for meat! But desparate or not just eat pancakes and soup separate.
But shermin had also for breakfast yesterday had a mouth of avocado, mixed with a mouth ful of porridge and something else like peanut butter on toast, I just couldn't get over it! But I think he was too ill to care or think about a horrendous mix of food!
The meeting that night to brief us about the following day, it was during that very meeting that mountain madness began.
I was completely oblivous that we were climbing the peak the following night, during the night. So prepared as always for trekking in the dark, I had my wind up torch that ithe parentals had bought me for christmas. Everyone else their trusty battery powered head torches. Wind up is great for short burst of light, but a 7 hour trek in darkness, not so good. But that was tomorrow, we had bigger issues at hand.
This was our last water point. What we did was day one bring your own water, then everyday up the mountain you carry your water mine being 4litres, which get refilled at breakfast with water collected from the mountain and boiled. So I get to drink the attractive refreshing murky brown with floaters water. It is delicious.
But back to the point, as this is the last water point, we need to fill up all water bottles and take up to kibo hut as water isn't there, as its all frozen and at present under quite a lot of snow to say the least. However, we need only carry what we need and put spare bottles in our porter bags.
This to our german spy is just going way over his head. Entenze explains 3 or 4 times and moves the conversation on. Only for the german to be, so back to the water, this happened multiple times which, leads to mountain madness of the whole group being in hysterics at rox's hysterical laughing at stephan. We wrap up the meeting and stephan is still consfused about the water.
At bed time I was just about to drop off when a very loud 'f***ing hell' gets screamed from stephan in the bunk below. A rat had ran past his face, these rats I had noticed running around at tea time, which is one of the many reasons I always take top bunk.
Lots of people didn't dare sleep that night as they were worried the chipmonk style rats were going to crawl all over them while they slept. My main concern was the window. I was right next to the window, which I had asked if it shut before kipping there or I wouldn't of kipped next to it if I knew the long stick handle thing with holes in it had broken off at the first hole. So as the wind was being rather windy, and rather cold, the window kept opening and banging. So I tied a couple bobbles over the stick thing and over walking poles in a half a kip attempt to fix the window, slight improvement but I'm afraid to say was not a great success, if found in the same situation create a better closing device! So I didn't sleep much and had to pee a few times outside the hut in peeing sync with bruce, I woulda gone more but it was too cold, I was cold in my bag. Mental note to wear more layers to bed tomorrow night.xx
- comments