[LOTS of giggling in the background!!!]
Hi! This is Sue from 4 800 on Mt. Kilimanjaro. For those of you Edmontonians – that’s 24 Manulife buildings stacked on top of each other, which is Edmonton’s tallest building!
I am filling in for Jim today and we are at Kosovo camp - A Berg Adventures exclusive, thank goodness! Because 200 meters below us is the VERY busy Barafu camp and it is really busy with people from all over. We are really very happy to be up here. It is really, really cold.
There is a full moon and we are looking right now through a cloud to see that there is a little village lighting up down there. Today we started off in our tents with a high wind battering at our sides and it felt like a rocks being thrown at us to wake us up early this morning. When we woke we found the sun just rising above the Uhuru Peak and the full moon was about to set on the other side just beside the larger than life Mt. Mawenzi.
Today we traversed the mountain so that the winds that ripped our tents at night, side slapped us as we made our way from 3900 meters to 4800 meters. We managed to tackle all of the steep ascents which we now call all of our ‘Great Walls’… [Uncontrollable laughter!]…We have all these challenges behind us and all those steep walls, yet we know that we have greater challenges ahead starting at 5:00 tomorrow morning – Summit Day!
We went through Prairie Desert today. The everlasting clouds that have surrounded us for the past few days have disappeared letting way to Helichrysum plants which are only above 5000 meters, we weren’t above 5000 meters , so they seem to be crawling down below their usual spots. We often wonder (aloud), how we can get five star restaurants, food and service! So, thank you to our head cooks and our servers Erik and Nelly who give us such great service.
Tonight we can see Uhuru peak within arms reach, it’s so close we can taste it. That will be our challenge for tomorrow!
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