Day 11.2: Plants and Holey Holes...

... short post today to overcome the depression from the Redskins' loss to the hated E'gles.

Just kidding. They were due for a loss, and contained Michael Vick reasonably well. And as much as Fred Davis tries to take the blame, I still blame not-so-sexy-Rexy (Grossman).

Back to Tanzania, that morning we said goodbye to Kibo for the last time, as we headed down from Horombo Hut.

We came up on this valley that gently slopes down several thousand feet to the Tanzanian plain. It had some seriously large Giant Lobelia trees.

Looking up that valley to Horombo Hut.

You can see the ridge I climbed down to take the panoramic pictures from last week's post in the distance.The clouds are beginning to break in the sunlight.

The skyline was beautiful at this point, but the feature I would like to point out is Kifinika Crater. It's the one in the middle of the photo with a "dimple." Looks small from here doesn't it? Well, it's over 10,000 feet in altitude. Ronald said it was a sacred hill esteemed by the tribes. A place of peace, many meetings of various tribes were held there, and as were ceremonial sacrifices. It was considered both a gateway to the gods, as well as a god itself.

You can see Mawenzi receding for the final time in the distance. The darkness of the rock is most prominent here.

Considering this a "making of" shot. It was part of the sequence where I got the jumping shot at the top of this post. Ronald and Modi look on us with curiosity... as well as a hint of "look at these freaking idiots.'

Slowly but surely, we make our way down the mountain.

These flowers are kind of burned/dried up due both to fires and the dry season.

Some cool plants.

What happens as the Giant Lobelia tree gets taller. It sheds some its lower leaves and just becomes a tree trunk. Far out.

Kifnika Crater gets closer, and of course, I do the very American thing by defiling it with humor. But it just beckoned for this, so I had to try.

A burned out, but still eerily beautiful, flower.

A very much still live flower. Brilliant colors!

Ronald told us what this plant was, but I forget. All I remember are the blue tongue like leaves, and that it is poisonous.

Barack making his way down.

The shiny official bird of Tanzania makes an appearance, now that its not a ridiculous high altitude. Probably first animal we have seen in a week.

We found this rusted gurney on the side of the road. We couldn't tell if it was strategically pre-positioned there (unlikely) or just broken (likely).

The trail flattened out into the plain at this point, and you could see it for kilometers around. Beautiful.

As we got to bigger trees, my Tarzan instincts kind of started kicking in. It's almost as if I could sense the jungle approaching.

And I leave you with this panorama of the lower moorland. Next week... jungle fever!

Day 11.1: The Songs of Kilimanjaro...

... sung to us by our awesome Kilimanjaro guide/porter crew.


This was sung the day after our climb with a full night's sleep (well, except for me - more on that later) and on a full stomach, so we felt 1000% better.

Here are the lyrics for the two songs those interested (and rough translations):

First, the Kilimanjaro song:

• Leader: Kilimanjaro
• Chorus: Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaro... Kilimanjaro, Kilimanjaro mlima mrefu sana (Kilimanjaro, the really tall mountain)
• Leader: Na Mawenzi (and Mawenzi)
• Chorus: Na Mawenzi, Na Mawenzi... Na Mawenzi, Na Mawenzi mlima mrefu sana (and Mawenzi, the really tall mountain)
• Leader: Ewe Nyoka (you snake)
• Chorus: Ewe Nyoka, Ewe Nyoka... Ewe Nyoka, Ewe Nyoka mbona wanizunguka (you snake, why are you circling me)
• Leader: Wanizunguka (you are circling me)
• Chorus: Wanizunguka, Wanizunguka... Wanizunguka, Wanizunguka wataka kunila nyama (you are circling me, you want to eat me)

Yeah, I don't know what the deal is with the later lyrics either. I am sure they have some meaning, but the literal translation is sort of creepy.

And now, the basic words to Jambo Bwana, made famous by the Lion King:

• Jambo, Jambo Bwana (hello, hello sir)
• Habari gani (how are you)
• Mzuri sana (very fine)
• Wageni, mwakaribishwa (foreigners, you're welcome)
• Kilimanjaro Hakuna Matata (on Kilimanjaro there is no problem)

They replaced Kilimanjaro in some verses with Tanzania, our names... you get the idea. Pretty cool!

As you maybe saw in the video, Ronald (on the far left with black hat and shades) was still quite a bit under the weather, hence his half-hearted clapping. Still, he felt better though, and was able to lead us personally down the mountain the rest of the way. He even got enough energy to show us things again, like flowers and other physical features. But more on those guys later.


I begin with the spectacular pictures of the Kilimanjaro mountain side with clouds covering the Tanzanian plain early in the morning. We are still at about 13,000 feet, hence the reason we are still way above the clouds.


A panorama of our tent, the mess tent, and other tents. And another helicopter pad. Apparently they did way more helicopter evacuations from here than higher up for the reasons that will be come clear below.

Horombo hut was kind of a zoo. It is along the Marangu route with actually sleeping huts of similar varieties that you would find in wood cabins or similar type hostels. Because of this, you had much less "rustic" travelers than the other sites. In fact, our tents were set up right next a group of annoying British kids on some sort of school trip. There was no way they were going to actually climb to the top, so this was as high as they were going to go. For this reason, we saw families with small kids, elderly people, and... shall we say... girth challenged. As for the teenagers, they spent most of their time in the Internet cafe (our first electricity sighting in a week), yelling at each other about the Australian equivalent of Justin Bieber, and bathrooms. Oh yes, there were bathrooms... with plumbing. Amazing.


Kibo in the morning. Hard to believe that just 24 hours before, we were literally on top of that. Looks so far away and small now. But my hatred for it still lingered that morning, albeit dissipated... slightly dissipated.


As I wandered around the camp about after breakfast (William and Resha were still asleep at this point), I noticed this rocky point in the distance. With a path! Sensing an opportunity for some great photos, I made my way out to this point... about 20 minutes.


The sun was really awesomely rising at this point, especially with the ridiculously blue sky framing it.


Anyways, I made it to the rocky point and turned around to find a suitably awesome framing of Horombo camp, Kibo, and Mawenzi. So, I took a bunch of the panoramas. I spent another few minutes just enjoying the beauty and the (relative) quiet, as the camp noise just disappeared into a dull hum. After snapping out of it, I headed back to being our journey down.




But first, I couldn't resist one last completely unintentional timelapse sequence of jumping over clouds into the Tanzanian sky...


... and also couldn't resist giving Barack some airtime either.




This started out as me trying to do a half-axel, but ended up as just trying to jump over clouds.


Finally all awake and feed, we took one last picture at Horombo before heading down.

So what did I do that kept me up at night? Glad you asked. I had the awesome task of figuring out everyone's tips. Some people said you could just give all the money as a lump sum and give it to the head guide to figure out, but not only were we told by others that the head guide usually screwed everyone over when you did that, AND Ronald, to his credit, gave me the list of guides/porters and told me to give everyone tips individually. So there ya go.

Given all this, here are more constraints I had:

• You wanted to tip everyone the "normal" amount, plus a little extra so you don't look cheap.
• You wanted to give everyone a good mix of Tanzanian and American bills, since while the official exchange rate was 1,500 shillings to one dollar, the street exchange rate was more like 1,000 shillings to one dollar.
• This may sound self-serving, but we were also warned against over-tipping. While seemingly very generous, it apparently creates resentment among different groups and unrealistic expectations better on. Better just to tip "well," and not exorbitantly.
• You had to do this for 14 people.

So, I did what any nerdy engineer would do. I made a huge matrix with the amounts I wanted tip each person on the x-axis, and the mix of bills I had on the y-axis. Accordingly, it looked something like this.

• $20 $10 $5 10,000 5,000
• Ronald $95 xxx x xxx
• Jonas $100 xx xxxx xxx
• Goodluck $85 xx xx xxx xxx
• Mohamedy $70 xx xx xxx xxx
• Godlisten $65 x xx xxx xxx
• Godliving $65 x x xx xx xx
• Daniel $56 x xx x xxx
• Samuel $56 x x x xx
• Moses $56 x x xx xxx
• John $56 x xx xx xxxxx
• Adam $56 x x xx x
• Khalifa $56 x x xxx x
• Ebenezer $56 xx xxx x xx
• Robert $56 x xx x

I wish I was exaggerating, but this is the only way I could think to figure it all out. And I simplified here on the distribution, for in real life, I also had one dollar bills, 1,000 shilling notes, and change to deal with. And scratch marks as I constantly had to rearrange to make the bills work. And then I had to keep them in the right order, so I knew what to give to who. Took me about three hours to do in the dark, after climbing down from freaking Kilimanjaro.

But the amounts we gave are actually accurate. So how did I figure out the amounts?

Here is what the Kilimanjaro Porter Assistance Project suggests:

• Guide - $10 per day
• Assistant Guide - $8 per day
• Cook - $7 per day
• Porter $5 per day

Being the good liberal I am, I wanted to make sure that I took care of the porters first and foremost. They did a tip top job on the climb without nary a complaint, and some even engaged in conversation with me despite their limited English. Hence, I felt a 60% premium on the baseline was well earned. I then multiplied this by 7 days (the length of our trek) to arrive at $56.

I then worked on the higher end. I had read in other places that guides usually got around $15 a day, and cooks around $12. Given that was double what the porters got, I didn't add an additional premium there. So, I came up with $105 for Ronald and $85 for Jonas. HOWEVER, because Ronald was sick, Jonas had taken the lead in guiding us around. While Ronald did take the lead in the planning, in the end, Jonas did the heavy lifting, especially for summit day, so I readjusted so that Jonas got a bit more at the expense of Ronald.

Goodluck did a great job as cook, and was quite the sharp guy, so I gave him his full due. The waiter/tent captain/dishwasher threw us for a loop. I hadn't seen those positions before, and thus didn't know exactly what to do. So, I split the difference between cook and porter for them. On first glance, it seemed like Ronald just gave them positions just to get them a little extra in tip (and as Mitch would say, titles cost nothing), but on reflection, I felt they did do a little extra.

I gave Mohamedy slightly more, since he also acted as fill-in guide with Jonas when Ronald was sick. William took a liking to Godliving, teaching him the exploding hand-grenade fist bump, and he had the unfortunate job of not only cleaning our food scraps, but also taking care of our water. And Godlisten was definitely the hardest worker, acting not only as tent captain, but general crew captain, and also carrying the heaviest loads. So, I felt they both also deserved the little extra.

So I leave you again with the musical stylings of our awesome crew. I hope you guys are still doing well...