For no good reason, I have sat on a rough draft of this post for months, while I finished up my clinical practicum for school and started my internship (final step to graduation!) Big brain energy! I was excited to finally get this posted. I hope you enjoy! Date: Tuesday, December 19, 2022 Our first day waking up on the mountain felt surreal. Just like most places in the world, things come to life when the sun rises. It was our first day waking up on the mountain, yet it didn’t feel real. We were hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro. We were greeted each morning outside our tent with bowls of hot water to wash up with by our amazing water porter, Bautista. Next, steaming cups of delicious hot chocolate arrived, courtesy of our server and summit guide for the trip, Shiraz (he told us to call him by the nickname his mom gave him, Baboon!) We got dressed, ate a heartier breakfast than I thought I could (they said we’ll need every bite of energy for the hike, and reviewed our hiking route for the day. This would become our morning routine. Our chef for the trip, Semini, prepared amazing meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day and creatively attended to our dietary request for gluten-free items, which was no issue for him. Almost every morning, everyone was smiling! We were happy to be alive, on this adventure together and to see what amazing food Semeni had prepared us for breakfast. This would be the last day we see green foliage until our descent, given the altitude we would be at for the rest of the trip. Halfway through our hike, we saw the height of the foliage around us get shorter, less lush and more like scrub. A variety of different plants began to appear as the altitude increased. Each day's hike was unique in the type of terrain we would hike and what we would see. This day was no different. We hiked up, up and up and it became so cloudy in some areas that it felt like we were entering another planet, but thankfully we could always at least see the trail in front of us. After what definitely felt like WAY more than 6 hours, we arrived at a very cloudy Shira Cave Camp. This camp is called Shira Cave because the camp is located on the Shira Plateau and there's a cave that people used to sleep in when they would hike the mountain. It's no longer safe to be used for that but we did a quick walk from our tent to take a peek. Learn more about the topography of this camp here. We arrived at camp around 3pm and took a quick nap, it felt amazing to get off of our feet after all that hiking, much of which was rock hopping and some spots with three points of contact for safety. We knew we would have quite a bit of time on the trail together as a group so we switched things up between talking, being in front with our lead guide, taking up the end with our other guide, and what speed different people wanted to go depending on their pace and energy level. Our guides were so knowledgeable about the climate, the topography, the animals (there weren't many!) and the foliage. We spend the hours before bedtime enjoying a late lunch, relaxing around camp, taking pictures of the amazing surrounding area, eating dinner and talking about what the next day would be like. We had another big day ahead! Each night we typically turned in around 10pm, wash up with some hot water and try to fall asleep as soon as we could. For the most part it wasn't hard as we were all exhausted from the day's adventure. Summary of the Day (as recorded by my Garmin Venu Sq):
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