December 21 – First Dispatch from our Kili Team

Hey everyone, this is Sharon West speaking on behalf of Kevin, Annette and Sandy where we are now up at Machame Hut.  We had a really good day walking through the rain forest, we had some rain off and on but everyone is feeling really good, very strong.  We have got a team of four and we are feeling really good and bonded with each other already.  We also have seen some breathtaking scenery as we have been walking along a very high ridge that drops down on both sides, it’s just amazing.

The beauty and the people of Tanzania are wonderful and right now we are with a group of 22 porters, guides and cooks along with the four of us.  Plus we have one extra mule with us by the name of Sandy who is one of our teammates.  She is looking for extra weight to carry because she is in training for doing adventure racing so we are more than happy to share our loads with her.  So that has been a lot of fun.

We keep asking her what the altitude is because she has an altimeter on her wrist so we all sound like little children asking her ‘what height are we... what height are we’?  We are having a lot of fun together, we are very excited about tomorrow and even though we got more rain we are still looking forward to it.  It has been just a great experience so far.

One of the really cool things today is we had lunch in a tent with many other people along the trail who would stop and look at us and longingly want to come in and share this great lunch that Berg Adventures put on for us inside the tent.  Everybody else not with our team had to stand on the side of the trail and eat in the rain while we were having a good time in the tent.

I will go for now and we’ll give you a dispatch when we can.  Thanks again, we are having a great time and we all love each other and we are doing super!  Bye for now.