Day 3 - July 8, 2013

I have finally typed up my notes from on Kilimanjaro ... I will post them as a post per day ... only because otherwise it would be a 10 page post ... which I think would be quite overwhelming!!!  Pictures will come shortly ... I promise :)  My little inserts in italics are thoughts I've put in after the fact.

Day 3 - July 8, 2013

 I stopped writing notes on Day 3 due to being too cold in the tent to want to write once in bed, except to jot down distances and altitude … so I shall write the rest of this from the jaded memories I have of the experience … lol, I am not actually that jaded and hopefully can remember the most interesting moments.

There will be a repeating theme from here until the end of Day 7 – I am cold, hungry and DIRTY.

For Day 3’s main hike we only covered 3.7km, but gained 624m in altitude ending at our camp at 4303m at the Mawenzi Tarn.

Arriving in camp I actually had a moment of energy burst as I had a potty emergency and, at this point, the rocks were getting such that a privacy break didn’t seem to be up to my level of standards (these standards disappeared within about the next 24 hours).  I managed to pull an almost run out of somewhere and rocketed (all things considered) into camp for the last 200m or so.  This 200m felt the equivalent of a 5k run in terms of exertion and I had a few moments of breath catching on my luxurious toilet bucket.   Yup, I have now changed my opinion of the toilet bucket and love it.  Mostly because I don’t have to squat and secondly because the tent around the bucket stops the dirt (sort of) from blowing into places that shouldn’t experience blowing dirt!!!

After lunch we had to do an acclimatization hike to one of the ridges of Mawenzi (the lower peak of Kilimanjaro) and it was quite steep and a little bit dizzying at the top.  I say ‘had’ … it was optional … but really, when they say they suggest doing an optional acclimatization climb who would say no?!?!  That would only be for sane people and at this point I think my sanity was sincerely up for debate!   But, oh my goodness, the views were FANTASTIC.  We just sat up there (I think it was a couple of hundred meters above camp) and looked down on the world for 15minutes.  This was, at that point, by far my most favorite moment of the climb!