August 18 – Anticipation high as Lemosho group makes final preparations

Hello! This is the first of the dispatches for our Lemosho Expedition. I’m calling from the New Arusha Hotel. We just finished dinner – a “very lovely and delicious” dinner, in the words of Fiona, our climber from the Machame group.

It was an exciting day today. Prosper came this evening after dinner to pick up Roger and take him out to the airport so he could claim his luggage, which didn’t get on his flight from North America yesterday. Also, he’ll pick up Sam and Hal who will join us tonight for some late-night packing. We will leave Arusha for the trailhead tomorrow.

Today, Cameron, Keith, Liz and Stacey had a very exciting walk through the town. They ended up going into the heart of the city of Arusha and in to the market. There, they found a young gentleman to help guide them around and they had some adventurous experiences including a young man who whipped his machete out, trying to get the group excited. They shared many stories over dinner of their exciting first day in Africa.

Our guide August joined us this morning and showed everybody the Lemosho Route which we will be taking and giving everyone the update on the route. Everyone is very excited about this route, especially knowing that the first day when we walk through the rainforest, we may be the first group to avoid the mud. August is claiming that our Berg Adventures group won’t have any mud. We’ll find out tomorrow.

We spent the rest of the afternoon packing and are resting now, excited to begin our adventure first thing in tomorrow morning.