Adventure Report: Climbing to the Roof of Africa - Mt. Kilimanjaro

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A bit of background

Sometime last year a colleague of mine was planning a road trip to Kenya. I figured this was the perfect way to spend my leave, and said I would join in order to help reduce costs.
Then I had the very bright idea of climbing Kilimanjaro, as it was close to Nairobi (where my friend was planning on going).
That's it, I made up my mind; I was going to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro!

And then I started to research the costs. Gulp.

Long story short, my colleague's plans changed, and now I no longer had wheels up north. Well, I had already committed. I would fly. Even though that would add quite a bit to the costs.

I planned and researched for months. Eventually I decided on a company and route.

Adventure Alternative
Machame, 7-day route.


I had wanted to do the 8 or 9 day Lemosho, but there weren't any open groups that suited my dates.

I booked my flights through FastJet:
JHB-DAR, DAR-JRO / JRO-DAR, DAR-JHB
Came to about R5500, including checked luggage on each sector. So all-in-all, not too bad.

The climb was:
1250 Pounds, excluding airport transfers (15USD each way), gear rental (came to about 30USD), toilet rental (42USD per climber, there were 5 of us), and tips (I thought it was 200USD, but the rest of the group were told 120-150USD each).

Then extras for food and water and drinks at the hotel, as well as post-climb souvenirs.

So, the dates were set. The climb was booked. Flights paid for.

Training? I did a little bit. Then stopped. It is difficult to train to climb a mountain in a flat country (Botswana).
But, I figured I survived the Argus (took me 6hrs50min), so I could survive hiking a mountain...

NOTE: My camera GPS didn't always record altitudes correctly. The ones I post are based on what I pulled off the Adventure Alternative website. I have also looked at 3 other websites, and each has different altitudes for the camps. Go figure. So I apologise if it is 100% accurate.

NOTE 2: Sometimes the writing style varies. Some days I managed to jot down stuff almost immediately after it happened. Other days I wrote it that night, or the next day. The idea was to write it "now", as it was happening, to try give you the idea of exactly what it was like being there.

:patch: :3some:
 
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