|
DAY 0 - 1 August 2009 - Rest Day and Pre-climb Briefing
Our fist day in Moshi was a rest day to relax after the mammoth 36-hour journey from the Breslauer hut high up in the Alps. Our plan was to visit the TunaHAKI Centre for Development, a Tanzanian charity aiming to provide a secure future for local AIDS orphans and street children and then meet our guide for the pre-climb briefing. Having enjoyed a good breakfast we assumed, naively as it turned out, that we would simply call a taxi and say, "Please take us to TunaHAKI". If only it were that simple. Nobody had a clue what we were talking about but in the end the hotel found somebody who knew the way and we experienced a 30 minute journey through some of the most impoverished parts of Moshi before arriving, far from the usual tourist tract, in a narrow, potholed, alley at what we recognised from photos as TunaHAKI. Having watched the taxi disappear in a cloud of dust we hoped we were in the right place and wondered what we would do if we were not! We were in the right place and the visit was immensely moving and humbling. Having managed to contact the taxi again and returned safely to our hotel we set out on foot to explore the centre of Moshi and found our way to The Coffee Shop, where we met a New Zealand couple and spent the afternoon talking over coffee and snacks before returning to the hotel for dinner and that briefing. Guide Fred and assistant guide Tino arrived just after sundown and took us though the itinerary for each day, the habitats through which we would be trekking and the risks associated with climbing at extreme altitude. They checked we had appropriate equipment for the expected temperatures and that we had things like trekking poles etc. before asking whether we had any questions. Although the briefing didn't tell us much new we found it really helpful, because it reinforced the research we had done at home. After about an hour we parted company, planning to kick off the adventure at about nine the following day. We then turned our attention to our rumbling stomachs and dinner. Once we had satisfied our appetite we returned to our room quite early to do a final baggage check before getting our heads down for what we assumed would be the last comfortable sleep for a week. This final check wasn't really necessary as we had meticulously re-packed our duffle bags after descending from the Alps and had put all other luggage in a third bag. It was therefore more a case of deciding what to carry in our day packs on day 1 to ensure we stayed dry in the rain forest and warm higher up and of ensuring we could fit everything not needed for the climb, especially camera gear for the safari, into the third bag so that it could be stored securely while we were on the mountain. We then slipped in under our mosquito net to wait for the neighbouring cockerel, nearby Mosque and Christian Church to herald the arrival of Sunday morning from about 04:45, 05:00 and 06:00 respectively. Suffice to say, there was no danger that we would oversleep and miss breakfast before our climbing team arrived to collect us and ferry us to Machame Gate for the start of our mountain challenge! As we drifted off to sleep the magnitude of what the next days would bring began ringing around our heads but after a while we slipped off to sleep.
|
|
