Saturday, October 16, 2010

Wed 15th Sept - Day 2 1st Cave (2600m) - brekky

Oh what a beautiful morning! oh what a beautiful day....


check out the sunrise!


6am
6:30am
Mt Kilimanjaro and Mwenzi Peak
  
Kili Sunrise
I was up and about nice and early this morning - 6am! feeling much better after a good nights sleep.  Am loving my new silk sleeping bag liner, it adds a whole new level of warmth to my sleeping bag. Totally didn't expect that and woke up all hot and sweaty at one point and had to stick my feet out of the bottom of the sleeping bag to cool down - this bodes well for when we get higher, I always seemed to be cold in Bhutan - now I know why! 
Another good result was the extra sleeping mat....I have 2 :-) we all got given a mat and I brought my own as well - am thinking I might just be onto a good thing!
It was lovely being the 1st one up (apart from all the cook crews that is) - had the campsite to myself - it was so peaceful and quiet and i could just sit and enjoy the sunrise and watch the camp come to life.
At 6:30 Lucas the assistant cook came round with hot tea - for some reason on trek I always seem to drink black tea with 2 sugars - at home I never have sugar in tea - its quite odd. Must be an altitude thing and my body just needs the energy. Anyway I'm not going to analyse it too much - so black tea with sugar it is!
With tea we start the daily routine of packing up the tent - silk liner into its own baby stuff sack, sleeping bag into bigger stuff sack, roll and squish the air out of self inflating sleep mat, roll and shove into its stuff sack, yesterdays clothes into dirty clothes bin liner, long sleeved trek shirt + thin thermal  + thin fleece into day sack, water bottles outside tent for filling, boots and gaiters on, kit bag outside tent for the porter to collect, then brekky at 7.
A word about clothes here - because we're so limited with what we can bring certain things have to be restricted - so this might sounds gross to you but 1 pair of undies lasts 2 days - just turn them inside out the 2nd day! I can't quite bring myself to wear those disposable paper knickers...eeuuwgh scratchy! 
Heather is trying them though...
I've only brought one sports bra so thats going to have to last me all week, and I've only brought 1 short sleeved t shirt, so thats getting another wear today, only have 1 pair of fleece leggings which will last me all week - didn't like the safari pants I had yesterday, so they are now parked in the kit bag. 
The good thing about going so slowly is that I didn't get sweaty at any point yesterday - usually on trek I set off at my usual pace and get all hot and sweaty within about 10mins then as soon as we stop I have to pile layers on to stop getting cold cos my clothes are wet. I'm thinking that there could be something to this slow thing....
The only luxury I've really allowed myself is new socks for every day and all my fleece jumpers for the cold.

Off to brekky - I love trek brekky, its so eclectic! Everyone has porridge, but with my coeliac diet I've been given something else - I believe in Victorian times it would be called gruel - no idea what it is, but with 3 teaspoons of honey and 2 teaspoons of strawberry jam in it, its hot and passably edible! I also got fried plantain - very bland so I pour more honey over that - then this is the good bit fried eggs and fried frankfurters! The cook, Nesto is looking after me really well - I got my own bowl of soup last night as well.

So fat and happy its time to set off - today is going to be 6-7 hours walking with a vertical climb of about 1000m which is quite a lot. that will take us to about 3600m where its probable that altitide symptoms will start appearing. When doing the Inca trail in Peru, the 1st few days in Cusco which is at 3000m I definitely had mild altitude symptoms - nausea, headache general weakness and shortness of breath, so I'm sort of expecting that to kick in today. I am taking diamox so we'll see how that goes.

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