Monday 13 February,
Yesterday we finally left Nairobi. It was nice to leave the Town and head
out for the countryside again. First we had to drive to the Kenya-Tanzania
border where we had to get our Tanzanian Visas. The road to the border is
new! So it’s a quite comfortable ride to get here. After the border it’s
another 3 hours to reach Moshi. This Morning we had had to do our final
driving to the Rogai Gate at, 1950m It’s about a 2 1/2 drive from Moshi on a
remarkable nice road. We passed true many villages and banana plantations.
At the Gate the scenery changed to pine forest, higher up the pine got
replaced by what we call Montane forest with lots of nice flowers between
the small trees. We put up camp at the 1st cave at around 2650m
Tomorrow we will continue to the 2nd cave at 3450M. We are looking forward
to this. Today we already had our first glimpse on views on the Kenyan
plains, so tomorrow will be even better!
Arnold Coster, Expedition leader
Hello this is Jonathan Barbero with the SummitClimb expedition to Mt.
Kilimanjaro. We left Moshi this morning after enjoying a nice hotel that
featured cheap beer and a good breakfast. We arrived at the Rongai
trailhead, had lunch, and hiked about 2.5 hours up to camp 1 at 2600 meters.
There are about five other groups of British trekkers ascending with us and
enumerable guides and porters around camp. Everyone is in good health and
resting easy as of 4:00pm today. The weather is quite nice, with sunshine in
the morning, and predictable rain showers each day around now. The
mosquitoes have been mercifully few. Hello to my friends in San Francisco
and my family in Ohio!