Kilimanjaro & Meru - Page 9

Uhuru Peak (5895 m) - Mweka Camp (3080 m)

Like skiing, we slid down scree fields. Since we saw little at night, I assumed that we were taking a completely different path downhill. It quickly became quite warm, so we swapped our winter hats for sun hats and slid on. After a few hours we were expected by our team with tea just before Barafu Camp. They congratulated us and sang their beautiful song again: Jambo, jambo Bwana, habari gani ... A super team, quite heart-warming 🙂. Around 10 o'clock in the morning we arrived at Barafu Camp and had, guess what? Something for lunch. Richard had asked us the night before if we would walk to Mweka Camp after the summit, so that we could all get home early the next day. The normal plan was the preceding Millennium Camp (High Camp). But many were longing to see their families. So it was clear for us.

It went on like this for quite a long time today, even if it was only downhill. At the beginning there were still comfortable paths, but further down they had built ugly stone paths where you had to be highly concentrated to avoid twisting your ankle. What was striking today was the rapid change into the different vegetation zones. While we were still in the ice, we changed over the stone desert and grassland into the tropical rainforest. Here at Mweka Camp we stayed the last night. The highlight here was a summit cake that our dear cook had baked for us in the cramped tent. We also shared it before our team really started dancing again: Jambo, jambo Bwana ... 🙂. But then it was time to call it a day. It was a long day.

Mweka-Gate - Usa River - Addis Ababa - Vienna - Frankfurt on the Main

The path to Mweka Gate was actually an easy one. However, it was raining and the stones and wooden posts on the steps were slippery. Only the porters shot over them again as if they had all-sticking gecko feet. When we arrived at the gate, Richard took care of all the formalities and we got our certificate. Afterwards, our travel company had organised lunch for us. Everything was relaxed. That changed after the return journey in Moshi. I had asked Richard whether I should get the tips before or after, as my dollars were no longer sufficient. He said that later would be enough.

So we ran through Moshi, sweating, we visited 6 banks, almost 100 ATMs, everywhere we only got partial payments or nothing at all. In the meantime, some street vendors were following us, who noticed that we wanted to withdraw money. Our team was sweating in the bus and wanted to go home. After 2 hours we had all the Tanzanian shillings together, a fat packet of notes at the exchange rate, and we could finally get out of the city. In the end our team was happy and so were we, some of them stayed in Moshi, others still had to go to Arusha. We were dropped off at the lodge in between. We were a bit sad never to see these hard-working, smiling guys again.

The first night back in the normal bed in the lodge we slept like the dead. In the morning Richard came by again, we will miss him very much. Around 2 pm we were picked up for the airport and the seemingly endless journey back began. The highlight was the sightseeing flight of our pilot around the only partly cloud-covered summit of Kilimanjaro. It couldn't have ended any better.