After a meeting with our guides the night before Freddy and Clemence, and a reasonable nights sleep we were up and good to go! Last shower for 5 days and a good breakfast - bags are organised and we are ready. This day there was lots of hanging about. We got our packed lunches (yum), mine was gluten free, that didn't last long and our bags are loaded into the taxi, that would be the taxi with no shocks! Note to self - don't sit right at the back of a taxi in Africa!
After stopping to pick up the chef and some of the porters, some groceries and stopping for lunch, we finally arrive at our starting point. Its pandemonium there are porters everywhere, not to mention some dispute between the park rangers and the porters themselves which got quite noisy. However, at this point the porters are given your "12kg" bag to carry as well as their own stuff and whatever else has been allocated to them. They are trained to apparently carry up to 20kg's however this didn't stop me always worrying about them, its a tough job.
And so by mid afternoon we are off, our first leg! We start walking at what feels like a slow march, its almost a joke its so slow and it does take some time to adapt but by the time you summit you are well conditioned. I think this is where people go wrong as they walk much faster at this point which doesn't allow your body to acclimatise.
We walked for about 3.5 hours and arrived at our first camp. It was packed to capacity and took awhile to adapt to our environment.
Godrey and our beloved toilet, we paid extra for this but man was it worth it! Well others queued up for the long drop which could often be on the other side of the camp, our little chemical toilet was always close at hand. Makes a huge difference when you are freezing and need the loo in the middle of the night, which unfortunately is often the case as you drink up to 5 litres of water a day. And so after a nice dinner its off for an early night, its been along day. Tomorrow we start at 8am.....
After a meeting with our guides the night before Freddy and Clemence, and a reasonable nights sleep we were up and good to go! Last shower for 5 days and a good breakfast - bags are organised and we are ready. This day there was lots of hanging about. We got our packed lunches (yum), mine was gluten free, that didn't last long and our bags are loaded into the taxi, that would be the taxi with no shocks! Note to self - don't sit right at the back of a taxi in Africa!
After stopping to pick up the chef and some of the porters, some groceries and stopping for lunch, we finally arrive at our starting point. Its pandemonium there are porters everywhere, not to mention some dispute between the park rangers and the porters themselves which got quite noisy. However, at this point the porters are given your "12kg" bag to carry as well as their own stuff and whatever else has been allocated to them. They are trained to apparently carry up to 20kg's however this didn't stop me always worrying about them, its a tough job. 
And so by mid afternoon we are off, our first leg! We start walking at what feels like a slow march, its almost a joke its so slow and it does take some time to adapt but by the time you summit you are well conditioned. I think this is where people go wrong as they walk much faster at this point which doesn't allow your body to acclimatise.
We walked for about 3.5 hours and arrived at our first camp. It was packed to capacity and took awhile to adapt to our environment.
Godrey and our beloved toilet, we paid extra for this but man was it worth it! Well others queued up for the long drop which could often be on the other side of the camp, our little chemical toilet was always close at hand. Makes a huge difference when you are freezing and need the loo in the middle of the night, which unfortunately is often the case as you drink up to 5 litres of water a day. And so after a nice dinner its off for an early night, its been along day. Tomorrow we start at 8am.....
1 comment:
Well done Sue, nice blog to.
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