The Rest Of The Trip!! 28th August - 6th Sept

So, unfortunately for the rest of the trip I failed to keep my diary going... But, on the 28th August we started the day with the porters congratulating us on getting to the top, and singing a few songs for us - which was great! Then we carried on down the bottom of the mountain, Simon and I took quite a long time... But we got to see a few animals on the way down!

Chama-Chama-Chama-Chama-Chama-Chameleoonn

 The picture I took wasn't great, but we saw a very cute little chameleon crossing our path, which our guide gave a lift across the path to. We also saw loads more of the monkeys we'd seen on the first day (the ones that look like tree skunks). And last but not least we saw a baby blind mole rat which was scuttling around the path.

When we were nearing the end of our trek down the mountain, we got picked up by the mountain 'ambulance' (as it was getting quite late) which meant we got a fun, off-road drive down to the bottom of the mountain! When we got to the bottom, we had to sign out (so they knew we'd left the mountain) - which they'd kept open for specially for us! And then had some very delayed lunch of cold chicken and chips before getting a lift back to Mama Moshi's, where we were greeted with a cheer from the rest of the team. We were excited to finally get a hot shower... Until it turned out there'd been power cuts, so there was no hot water... Sad times... But we troopered on and had a celebratory meal and beer with the rest of the team before getting an early night ready to head on Safari the next day.

Elephants in camp!

On the 29th we headed to Tarangire National Park for our lunch and then an evening game drive. When we arrived we were amazed to see how close the animals were to our camp, there were so many elephants just walking around our camp! After being given our tents, we went on our evening game drive, where we saw loads of animals, but to name to most important - we saw elephants (obviously!), giraffes, zebra, ostriches, lions and a leopard. (So now, I'm going to show you a few of my best photos)

When we finished the game drive we came back to camp for a meal, and got ourselves to bed ready for another early morning, as we were doing a morning game drive the next day. 

Leopard just chilling in the tree

So, the next day we woke up bright and early for breakfast before our morning game drive. Today's game drive was incredibly successful, as we, very luckily, got to see some cheetahs! It was very exciting for everyone when our driver heard there were cheetahs around and we headed there!

Cheetahs underneath a tree

(Annoyingly I can't get all these pictures to go in the places I want them to.. grr..) Anyway, after that we headed back to Hostel Hoff (near Mama Moshi's) ready to travel to Zanzibar tomorrow!! 

We shared  a delicious meal, and played some card games (and petted the very sweet dogs that lived at the hostel) - they were genuinely very cute, one of them kept climbing into peoples laps so they would pet them :D 

I've decided I'll continue on a separate blog post, as this one's a lot longer than I thought it would be!! So I'll try post about our time in Zanzibar ASAP!! And then I can get back to blogging normal arthritis-y stuff! (blegh)!!

Hope you're enjoying reading about my time in Tanzania!!

TTFN,

Ta ta for now! :)

                                                       

Day 7 - DAY 5 OF THE CLIMB! SUMMIT NIGHT!!! - 27th August

Jambo!! Today I OFFICIALLY REACHED THE SUMMIT OF KILIMANJARO!!!! Along with everyone else in the team (28/28!) which is pretty epic!

We woke up at 1am and set off at 2am, so everyone was shattered to begin with. All you could see was head torches moving along the path for the first few hours, and then we got to see an incredible sunrise.

Just as the sun started to rise!

Seeing the sun rise was a brief bit of motivation to keep going, as before that it was just cold and dark... But, the motivation was short lived, as carrying on going upwards just became harder and harder. The path we were walking on was a scree path, so every step we took, it seemed like we slipped back another half a step, which was what made the day really hard.

The hardest bit was getting to Stella Point, as it was so steep, on scree path and we just had no energy left, as well as a lingering headache and generally not feeling great from the altitude. We got very close to Stella Point when Simon just seemed to shut down temporarily, I don't really know what happened to him, but he just seemed to stop, and he sat down and we were both scared he wouldn't make it to the peak.

After not long he was helped up to Stella Point, and we were greeted with fellow team mates, guides and a cold ginger tea. After a little rest, we all set off on an hour long walk to the summit - where we came across the rest of the group all on the way back and we all stopped and congratulated each other, which was nice.
The walk to the summit was a steady ascent, so it was nice compared to the walk to Stella Point. Except for the lack of oxygen we all had. But seeing all the glaciers was amazing, - and they'll probably only be around for another 20 years because of climate change, so we were pretty lucky to get to see them.

High above the clouds and a glimpse of the glaciers

I finally arrived at the summit, with Simon, Katie, Will, Ro, Dan, Emma, Gabbie and Josh (and a group of guides), and the views were beautiful!! We took lots of cheesy photos with the signs and most of us had a little cry - it was amazing we'd all got that far after a year of planning and preparing.

All of us at the Summit! (photo courtesy of Gabbie Majer)

We only spent around 15 minutes at the summit before we had to begin our descent. (You're not allowed to spend long there due to lack of oxygen). Initially, 2 guides kind of linked my arms and pulled me down, but then they decided it'd be easier to take turns piggy back'ing me down (as I can't walk downhill very well) to the camp we stayed at last, for some late lunch!

After that we carried on down further (walking and piggy back'ing) until we finally got to our camp for the night! Which I was pretty glad for, to say the least!

It's been an amazing (but pretty hard) day, and it still hasn't quite sunk in that I've climbed Kilimanjaro!!

Lala Salama! 

(P.S. I apologise that I took so long to blog this, I suddenly got quite busy and completely forgot!!! My bad!!!)