Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Moivaro Lodge cont..



On arrival the staff greeted us with warm towels and watermelon juice. We were then showed to our lodges.

Cute stone houses with thatched roofs, very rustic but set in lots of greenary. I love it.

Running theme but then we made our way to the bar and time for some Kilimanjaro and Serengetti beer yum!!

Again the sturdy ones stayed up until 3am local time and ended the night singing.

We were once again sensible!

I feel good but a little gypy tummy, I think Malarone related.

I'm sat in our porch with Anne whilst the sun shines listening to "Jambo" and singing in the trees, bliss.

The biggest mother F****** of an insect just joined us. I have no idea what it was but I'm sure if it bites it could take your hand off!

Some of the group are popping into Arusha prior to our 3pm briefing but I'm gonna chill, repack and drink water.

I'm just struggling to do up my duffle bag after taking all the essential stuf packed in my hand luggage (incase they lost our bags) and putting it into my duffle but according to my scales it is dot on 15kg!

So tomorrow the adventure begins. It's hard to believe sat in this heat that in a few days we'll need down jackets!!! More water I think!

18th March. Moivaro Lodge, Arusha, Tanzania.



11:20am.


Well we're here! I meant to write in this from Birmingham and from Amsterdam but OMG the time flew.


It's already a crazy adventure. Arriving at Birmingham and seeing Navy Kili Hoodies and pale blue TCT T-shirts everywhere!

Naturally we congregated in the bar in departures! No late arrivals, everyone eager, excited and scared.


My camera got broken in customs, it still works but the lcd screen is blank apart from the top right hand corner. This means all pics will be a surprise (thankfully they came out pretty good) and I can't change the menu from auto settings! However I'm in a group of 43 so I'm sure we'll get a few good shots between us.


We landed in Amsterdam about 8pm and made our way to the Park Plaza hotel. Oddly we ended up in the bar, of course that was for food!!!


Myself and Anne were very sensible and turned in about 10:30. Some peoples faces at breakfast (Dan) suggested the 01:30am drinking session after starting at 4pm was not such a good idea!


On the actual 16th (departure day) I think we were all so excited that no-one had slept. I woke up at 5:45am and by 6:30 had done a million manic chores. Then the texts and facebook comments started. Everyone was wishing us luck whilst we were panicking about do we check through to Kilimanjaro and keep day sack or do we take everything off at Amsterdam??


In the end 50/50 mso no need to stress.


The flight to Kili was very good. It's quite the oddest thing to look up and see people you know from work on every row!


Arrival in Kili was 21:30 Kili time (18:30 in England) and we walked into a heat cloud.


The airport is small and their was a little anxiety whilst everyone waited for their luggage.


However not much time later and everyone had luggage and we were seated on 3 rickety buses for a 36k drive to Moivaro lodge.



The Journey


I've now been back 10 days. I made it to the top, to Stella point. It was hard and took me a long time. I am gutted I didn't make it to Uhuru but apparently anything from Gilmans point onwards counts as a successful summit so hurray! I kept a diary whilst I travelled. It may be influenced by my hypoxic state but I will attempt to write it up. Tomorrow we have our Kili party so I need to get back on track with keeping this in chronological order.

I've raised over £3500 for charity. That is the biggest success in my eyes and I thank everyone that supported and sponosed me! Now to go back in time xxxxx