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...

Day 10.6: The End of the Longest Day Ever...

... and just when you think you can't walk anymore, it's amazing what oxygen and a little downhill (or vice versa) can do for you.

The panorama above was meant to show the cool Giant Lobelia (lobelia deckenii) trees in the shadow of Kibo and the nice cloud formations. The false color is just a nice side effect of the process.

(Picture courtesy of UltimateKilimanjaro.com)

So, back to the climb... as you can see from the height profile map I posted previously, day 6 of the climb is ridiculously long. You start at 11PM at 15,430 feet at mile marker 24. From there, you climb for 10 hours to Uhuru Peak at 19,341 feet (and the longest four miles ever), climb down for 4 hours and 4 miles back to Kibo 15,430 feet, eat and take a nap for two hours, and then hike another 4 hours and 6 miles to Horombo Hut. Now, by the time we get back to Kibo Hut, we are pretty much walking zombies. However, a bit of food, oxygen, nap, and roughly downhill makes those 6 miles surprisingly easy.

As you can see, the first two miles are ridiculously flat, with Mawenzi just taunting us in the distance. That's Jonas and Modi in front of us. Ronald was still crazy sick by this point (although he did wake us up to tell us to pack - very nice and apologetically - thanks Ronald!), so Modi took over for him... except his English is bad, and he doesn't really know the trails. But he smiles a lot and is a nice dude.

Closer view of Mawenzi with clouds overhead providing interesting shadows.

Me basking in the glow of the descent, and William just wanting to get it over with. Spoil sport.

This is looking back at Kibo Hut. The clouds are really starting to come in now, and it has gotten noticeably colder without the sun and some wind has started to blow, which is a bit unusual considering we have had no noticeable wind on any part of the journey up to this point.

This is a closer view and a panorama view of trail threading between Mawenzi and the higher parts of the Saddle.

And this is the 360 panorama with both Kibo Hut and Mawenzi.

This sign makes more sense if you are ascending along the Marangu Route. For us, it was still nice to have markers, however, as the Rongai route strangely had a lack of signs. William is starting to feel like a person again.

After three days, we come back to the land of vegetation... or at least recently burned vegetation with black rocks.

One thing you will notice on this vegetation is hail. That's right, little ice crystals. I say it with a little bit of a grimace, because I had to greatly curtail my picture taking on the Saddle, because for a good hour of it, there was hail hitting us sideways. Just when I didn't feel headachey from the altitude anymore, the ice took over. Unfortunately, my jacket didn't have a hoodey, so I was reduced to turning my hat sideways to block most of the ice. It kind of worked, but my face still ended up crazy red and raw. Luckily, I was so tired and sore that it didn't really bother me that much.

This sign is also more relevant on the ascent. I guess this is where our porters went to get water at Kibo Hut. It was here that we ran into a bunch of people (Australians, I think) doing the ascent with ski poles. They were pretty tired, especially the ladies. They had worn a lot of layers and were getting warm, and so were contemplating taking some off. We warned them about the hail, however, and so they quickly decided that they could use the "extra padding" later on.

The circle in the distance is a helicopter landing pad. I guess after the crashed plane/helicopter we found on the Saddle, this was the closest they could get a helicopter safely, unless it was a true emergency. Every once in awhile, Ronald told us that people had to be airlifted off due to altitude sickness or other issues, which is also part of the reason the fees are so high - something like $7 each day goes to the rescue fee.

This was probably the last real uphill we came to, as the Saddle officially transitioned into moorland. We were not happy about it, but it was mercifully short.

I'm not sure why Resha is sticking her tongue out.

And we look back again at Kibo, now encased in the hail cloud, and how far we have come. Hard to believe we were at its base only like two hours ago.

The clouds are pretty magical at this point... and I am non-delirious enough to really enjoy it.

This is the first of the really tall Giant Lopelia trees we got close to. As you can see, I am doing my best California treehugger impression. It grows by the leaves at the top dying and then getting pushed lower while the new leaves on top keep growing.

The clouds broke a little toward Mawenzi, so we could still make it out in the distance.

But in our immediate surroundings, we entered treeland, which was a sight for sore eyes.

Me doing my thing.

Lopelia trees as far as the eye can see. Pretty cool.

We're getting pretty near Horombo Hut at this point, and as you can see, I still think people are crazy for wanting to go all that way to Kibo Hut from this point.

We finally reach Horombo Hut, which is actually a bunch of huts. But more on that next week.

For now, we watch the sun descend over the gentle slope of the mountain and the Tanzanian plane. Magical...