Chapter 4

Daniel, Valerie and Darren at the start of the trek, fresh faced.

The guy in the red hat is my guide Daniel, a great bloke always with a huge smile, a huge hat and usually a big fleece. The girl in the centre is the French girl I was talking about earlier Valerie, finally on the right is Darren. The photograph was taken at the park headquarters at the very beginning of our trek, possibly why were smiling J.

From here there is a fairly relaxing 3-4 hour relaxing walk to Mandara huts where you spend the first night of the trek. Travelling through rainforest is a great experience we passed 3 or 4 outstanding waterfalls, and with the heat of the day the water looks so enticing. We resisted the temptation to take a dip and enjoyed the scenery and the feeling of finally climbing Kili. Valerie wanted to go as slow as possible and I wasn’t going to complain all the guidebooks and people I had spoken to advised go slow and drink lots of water if you want to be successful. The guides have a phrase ‘Pole Pole’ which means ‘slow slow’ in Swahili and that exactly what I wanted to do.

One of the most concerning things about going up was seeing people come down. You didn’t have to be a body language expert to work out who did and who did not reach the summit. The exhilaration in people’s faces informed me of their success but more commonly the sheer dejection in others made me think I had underestimated the mountain. I had a lot riding on this and it wasn’t easy seeing other people who obviously felt as strongly as I but who had failed in their quest.

Walking stimulated my mind and I thought about thousands of different subjects leaving all the worries of work and other problems out of my mind. In terms of thinking the trip had already been a success exactly as I had hoped it would be.

Lunchtime came and we unpacked the lunches we had been given at the bottom of the mountain. I was very impressed there were sandwiches, Chicken, fruit, nuts, fruit juice, a cake and a hard-boiled egg. All my concerns about food evaporated as we enjoyed lunch in the shade at the designated picnic benches. The walk wasn’t tiring but it was nice to stop and chat I always enjoy finding out about people. It turned out Darren had a hand in making a popular computer game called ‘Simpson’s Hit and Run’ which we had been playing to death whilst working in Ireland. Valerie told us more about her extensive travels in the passed all over the world. I made a mental note to look for a job in France when she mentioned the 7 weeks holiday.

After lunch we continued our ascent Darren took a faster pace and went in front. We arrived at the first huts at Mandara perhaps an hour or two later. I had expected this next week to be rough, the huts I had been told about were nothing like these. I was very impressed and looking forward to a good nights sleep. We were shown to hut 12 and the porters brought us tea and warm water to wash. Dinner was called and we made our way to the dining hall where we met with Darren again and some fellow trekkers from London called Raj and Manesh. Dinner was an impressive spread with soup for starters followed by a lovely main course or pasta and fruit for desert.

With plenty of time to spare before retiring to bed we decided to take a walk where upon we were delighted to find a group of blue monkeys playing in the trees. It began to rain so we stayed for a few moments watching and photographing the primates before taking an early nights rest.