Mike Kim Travels...: Day 8.1: Ascent into the Clouds...

... but housekeeping first calls.

First and foremost, Happy Birthday Mom!

Congrats to William, as our journey made the Virginia Tech Alumni Magazine. May have had something to do with a certain Hokies gnome. But we'll get to that picture later.

And Sergey updates his blog with pictures of Botswana and the Okavango Delta. The responsible tourist in me must plug visiting Botswana, as it is one of the few African countries that actually governs well.

Back to our stomachs.

I figured the best way to explain the food was to just go through our day.

This was a very typical hot breakfast, which we had every day we were there, whether at the hotel, on safari, or at 16,000 feet. Overeasy eggs, a delicious crepe or other carb (bread, English muffin, etc), and some sort of non-perishable meat, such as a hot dog. Interestingly, we learned that raw eggs and cooked chicken don't need refrigeration. Who knew?

Pretty much every meal, but especially breakfast, included fruit. Well, that was most truly. On the safari we had fruit every day, but it (understandably) became scarce toward the end of our Kilimanjaro journey. After all, everything had to be carried up. The oranges and watermelons were good, the mangoes and pineapples were great, and the red bananas were out of this world - they were small, had the texture of a banana, but were extremely tangy. I have tried to find it at various grocery stores here in the States, but nothing comes even close. If anyone has leads, I would be eternally grateful. William lost his appetite at about 14,000 feet, and only thing he would really eat was fruit. If you knew William, you would realize how odd a statement that is.

Some days our carb would be oatmeal or porridge, which is what is in the container in the middle. If the weather was nice, and it usually was in the mornings, we would eat outside. Resha is actually very happy in this photo, despite her smirk. William is exceedingly happy.

That is me taking my Diamox. One with breakfast, and one with dinner, like clockwork. With Kibo in the background. Sweet!

This was our lunch on about half of the days. We actually ate hot lunches a lot more than we would have thought, as on Kili, we would mostly hike in the morning, and then make camp by early afternoon. On the other days, however, mostly when we were in transit, this was out lunchbox. And I must say, for a lunchbox, its contents were pretty awesome. The centerpiece was roasted chicken with native spices - sort of a combination of KFC and curry. We also got a crepe or bread, usually whatever was leftover from breakfast, chips (some delight-fully spicy), hard-boiled egg, muffin, biscuits (tea crackers), and a juice box.

Sometimes we would get these long curry chips instead of potato chips, which was fine with me. In truth, this was about twice as much food as we could eat. On safari, David had actually stopped at a Western-style supermarket (it had armed guards and was pretty empty - most of the food is beyond the financial range of regular Tanzanians) so we could get snacks, but we were so well fed we barely ate any of them, and actually took some with us on the plane to Dubai. And mind you, we are on the budget safari/trek.

The juice box was great. It was usually orange or mango, and much thicker than normal juice back home. It was sweet, but you could tell it was natural sweet, and not added sugar sweet. Somewhat surprising to me, by the end, Resha and William got very sick of the lunchbox food, and so didn't eat much of it on our last day. Maybe if I had eaten for another week, I would have gotten to the same point.

Of course, our most prominent lunchbox experience was with Charles, lest we forget. And after mildly testing him, we have determined lions don't like cooked chicken.

On most of the trek, however, like I said, we made it to hot lunches. As we got to higher altitudes, it would get cold relatively quickly in the day as the sun became hidden by clouds, so we would eat in the tent, like above.

The lunch menu is probably the most recognizable to Westerners. This particular menu was fried chicken, coleslaw, french fries, curried vegetables, and a slice of pineapple. Delicious. But what was most remarkable was not the quality of the food, which was great, but the time constraints under which it was prepared. Let me explain. Our morning schedules on the climb would go like this.

7:30AM - Wakeup and washup
8:00AM - Breakfast
8:30AM - Pack our personal gear
9:00AM - Begin ascent
10:00AM - Get winded and take a break after 2-3 kilometers
11:00AM - Get even more winded and take another break after another 2-3 kilometers
Noon - Arrive at our camp/altitude for the day after final 2-3 kilometers
12:30PM - Washup
1:00PM - Lunch

Now, the astute among you see a problem. How in the world could the cook be in two places at once? And with all his gear? And still have enough time to prepare all that food? For us and all the guides and porters? As you will see in a future post, that's entirely because these teams rock. Specifically, the cook's day will look like this.

6:30AM - Wakeup and make breakfast for crew
7:00AM - Eat and feed crew
7:30AM - Make our breakfast
8:00AM - Packup personal and cooking equipment while we eat
8:30AM - Supervise rest of crew
9:00AM - Begin ascent
10:30AM - End ascent (yes, what would take us three hours only took them 1.5)
11:00AM - Setup camp
11:30AM - Make lunch for crew
Noon - Feed crew
12:30PM - Make our lunch

One word to describe this: amazing! Another word: superhuman! Yet another word: crazy!

Now, of course this being a former British colony, we had tea time every day. Well, not everyday on the safari, but certainly on the trek. And this was the drink menu for pretty much every meal and team time. Kilimanjaro is actually known for its coffee, so I pretty much stuck to that, and it was delicious. The tea was good too - very strong. Since bringing packaged drinks were so heavy, we only really had bottled water on our first day, and juices for our boxed lunch.

Tea time was often accompanied by some sort of carb, like biscuits or popcorn. Tea time was usually right after we had gone on our afternoon altitude hike, which I covered in last week's post.

William likes tea time.

Dinner invariably began with some sort of soup, accompanied by crepes or bread. The soups were usually some sort of vegetable ground down to miniscule form (Goodluck used a grater, but Hans only used a knife!), and mixed with spices and milk. I love soups in general, so this was my favorite part of the meal.

Soup time in the tent.

The main courses consisted of a carb (rice or pasta), a spiced protein (chicken, pork, beef, beans), and cooked vegetables.

This tomato-less meat spaghetti was very good, but my favorite pasta was one which Hans made out of shredded carrots that had a sweet taste to it that I never would have thought have worked. Delicioso!

Yet another pasta dish, obviously meatier. The spices all tasted the same after awhile - a form of mild curry that wasn't too spicy.

Resha enjoying yet another meal. The only meal that significantly deviated from the above menu was our lunch after our ascent. For that one, Goodluck prepared an enormous stew with huge hunks of chicken, potatoes, carrots, and onions with a light tomato-based gravy. We were so tired at that point, however, that combined we ate maybe a third of what he prepared, despite his exaltations that we needed to eat to regain our strength for the trek down that very same day. I ate as much as I could, but fatigue unfortunately won out.

So the question begs, did the crew eat what we ate? The short answer is no. They primarily ate the above corn flour mixed with water that ended up tasting like and having the consistency of mashed potatoes, but saltier. I had a taste and it was actually quite good. With it, they would eat boiled down veggies or greens with a little bit of spice added to it, and some chicken. Their menu was much less varied than ours, but everyone was well fed. How do I know this?

Well, that goes to the longer answer to the above that Goodluck always made about twice as much food as we could eat, so when we finished (mind you, our appetites shrank massively in altitude) the crew would be free to eat whatever is left. On several occasions, however, I would see the various members of the crew come over, look at what was left, and turn it down, instead preferring the more "traditional" dish I detailed above. I assume that if they could afford to be picky, no one was starving.

Anyways, that's it for food. Back to the trek.

This is the day when we would literally hike to new heights. We would start the day at around 11,800 feet, and end the day at 14,500, or higher than any point in the lower 48. Pretty sweet! The above is the beginning of the day at Kikelewa camp, with Kikelewa cave to the left, and Kibo rising to the right. That was not the direction we headed, however, as we went to the left to Mawenzi... the other peak.

From Kikelewa, we began our first day which was pretty much a straight ascent.

While the gradients the other days were gradual enough that you arguably couldn't tell you were ascending, on this day it was up, up, and away into the clouds.

Apparently a fire of some sort had swept through this part of Kilimanjaro not too long ago, so there were a lot of burnt rocks and foliage. Ronald said the fire had started during the dry season (which we were in the driest part of) due to lightning.

The rocks also began to change, as your typical shale began to change into lava rocks.

A photo from the top of the valley we had just ascended. A testament to beautiful desolation.

William doing his thing, and Resha doing hers. At 14,000 feet.

More shots of several hundred feet down into the valley... and my Superman impression.

Like most mountain hikes world-wide, this was a pile left by various climbers for good luck. As we were not above invoking divine intervention to reach the top, we participated as well.