Day 1 Kilimanjaro Machame Gate to Machame Hut

Monday February 7^th.

1800 m to 2900 m

Up early, had breakfast and then decided to go and rent a big winter coat and long johns (top and bottom). Checked my big backpack and waited for the van. Left by about 8:30 and drove to Machame Gate. Checked in there and waited for a couple of hours while the guide (Emmanuel) paid the park fees and registered us.

Finally started by 11:00. I am in a group of one, the other two were Russian men who are doing the 6 day trip and I am doing the 7 day. So I have a guide, a cook and three porters! Then we began. Immediately the dirt road started uphill. I started out in shorts and a t-shirt as it was quite warm. The path was a rock and gravel road that started car wide and shortly afterwards narrowed to two people wide. It was steady walking uphill with some steep rough stairs.

There were lots of other people walking, plus guides and porters carrying our stuff. There seems to be no limit on the number of people per day who can climb each route up the mountain. And there are six different routes.

Most of the hike that day was through the rainforest. I enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells as I walked along. Whenever a porter walked by I would be assaulted by the pungent aroma of unwashed bodies and clothes.

I started out well, set a good pace that I was comfortable with. We walked for 3.5 hours and my legs were tired by the end, but my breathing was fine. The last little bit, the rainforest changed to more of small bush and scrub land environment, called moorland. I was the first tourist to reach Camp Machame Hut campground. I beat a group of porters and my guide! He had told me to start out pole pole (pronounced pole-eh, pol-eh and means slowly, slowly - it is the mantra of the mountain) as he stayed behind to do something with the porters. He never caught up to me until we got to camp. So, basically I walked alone.

Finally arrived at Machame Hut about 3:00. I waited for my porters to put up my tent and give me my duffel bag of warm clothes. I put on warmer clothes, as it had already cooled down a fair bit, to about 15 degrees, and climbed into my tent and read a chapter of a novel I picked up in South America in one of the hostels, called “The Whistle Blower”, it's an adventure/romance novel and a good read. One of the porters, Paul, brought me a bowl of hot water to wash in and a tea and popcorn and cookies. There are no shower facilities anywhere on the mountain and all drinking water is collected from the mountain streams and then boiled.

They had provided me with a lunch box – fruit juice, boiled egg, sandwich, samosa, peanuts, banana, cookies, pound cake – some of which I ate on the way up and the rest I ate when I got there. Stayed in my tent until dinner time, about 6:00. Dinner was – egg in hollandaise sauce with bread, cucumber soup, overcooked fish with yummy cooked veggies sauce, lots of roast potatoes, and a cooked cabbage and tomato. Yikes! Way too much food.

The two Russian men have an eating tent, I eat on a chair outside my tent and we share a private toilet tent, about the size of a closet with a porta pottie in it!

You are in the tent, in the sleeping bag as soon as it gets dark, and you are there until light. There is no electricity anywhere on the route and there is nothing to do at any of the campsites. You certainly don't feel like walking anywhere. And it got quite cold and damp at night. I slept in long johns, socks and my fleece inside John's sleeping bag. But I slept pretty well.