phase two: uhuru and ngorongoro

I will be back in Canada in less than one week! The time spent here in East Africa has flown by, as usually happens with trips. Our trip has clearly been divided into two very different sets of experiences. Our time living and traveling in Uganda and Rwanda felt like a very rich and rewarding cultural experience where we lived like "locals". We ate local food and took local transport and had many eye-opening conversations with doctors, teachers and random strangers, all who call Uganda home. I became accustomed to local quirks like the subtle wave of your hand to call a cab or the casual method of jay-walking even if a car is barreling towards you. Even after we had left Mbarara, our time spent traveling in southwestern Uganda and Rwanda still felt decidedly "local": hitchhiking, taking local minibuses (called matatus), staying in local churches, and even getting tours of the local Rwandan hospitals. We felt like we were well off the tourist trail and even kind of got used to everyone staring at us. They stared as if we were wearing a giant clown costume. So "local" remains firmly in quotes because throughout the experience, we were still wholeheartedly foreigners worthy of a stare-down.

After stepping onto a plane in Kigali and flying to Arusha, Tanzania, we entered a world of pure and uninhibited tourism. Our plans in Tanzania first began with a 6-day trek up Kilimanjaro, followed by a 4-day Serengeti safari and then capped off with a beach holiday on Zanzibar. This is the quintessential Tanzanian itinerary and the reasons are clear: climb the highest mountain in Africa for bragging rights, see lions and elephants while singing "Circle of Life" and then relax on beautiful white sand beaches with a cold drink. It's the classic tourist trail and if you ever come to Tanzania, I highly recommend the itinerary, even if it is cliché.

Marya and I were so proud of backpacking a wee bit when in Uganda and Rwanda but that stopped when we got off the flight at Arusha. From then on we were spoon-fed like children by a tour company called BaseCamp. The travel forums said it was hard to backpack Africa and it's very true; if you want to climb Kilimanjaro you are required to go with a guide and arrange your own transport to the mountain because no public transport goes there; if you want to go on a safari, you need special permits and your own vehicle. BaseCamp was our lazy man's solution. I've never been on a multi-day tour such as this one. I've never been picked up from an airport by anyone other than family. So it was strange (and admittedly wonderful) to be like a child once again and let someone else arrange your food, accommodations and transport.

The tallest man in Africa

First on our spoon-fed itinerary was to ascend to the lofty heights of 5895-meter Kilimanjaro. The itinerary was spoon-fed but the trekking was certainly not. However, if you ever feel compelled to drag yourself up to the places where the frigid wind never stops and the air is all like, "I'm too cool to be up here so I'll just thin myself out", then I would recommend BaseCamp as a tour operator. Midrange prices, but so worth it! As a disclaimer, our amazement with the company may have been because of our exceedingly low expectations after bad experiences with other treks and tour companies in South America. For the trek, we were joined by Chris and Joel once again after they had done their own thing in Rwanda following the end of their medical elective in Mbarara. Marya and I had told them some horror stories of our near-death ascent of 6088-meter Huayna Potosi in Bolivia, so we were preparing for the worst. Because of this, we had also opted to take the Marangu Route up the mountain which was purportedly the easiest. As an extra caution, we even included an extra acclimatization day at 3700 meters to try to maximize our chances of successfully standing on Uhuru Peak, the highest apex of Kili.

I don't for a minute want to make the trek sound easy...BUT, the first 4 days of the hike are relatively easy. The path is wide and clear and almost always a very gradual incline along rolling hills and valleys. Furthermore, if you're climbing Marangu, you get to sleep in private, wood huts for the first 3 nights. Marya and I were expecting shared shacks with tin roofs and thin air mattresses but the huts were quite nice and the mattresses were so thick that we all slept like babies on the mountain. Flush toilets and even (ice cold) showers (which we never used). There was a big communal dining hall and our cook was a legend. If you want amazing, delicious food for a whole week, maybe you should climb Kilimanjaro. We were so well-fed that I'm pretty sure I gained weight on the trip which, for those that know me, should be a physical impossibility of the universe. This is a trek that can theoretically be done by anyone; one woman was doing it on her own as her 60th birthday present to herself. We saw another group of women who looked well beyond 70 although we never confirmed their age and maybe they'd just failed at anti-aging techniques.

Okay, now that I've spent the last paragraph making the trek sound easy lets follow up with some ugly facts. Firstly, it's cold. Even by the second night, the nights are chilly and by the time you get to the 4700-meter Kibo Huts (the last sleep before summit day) you're in long johns and thick jackets even at midday. Secondly, summit day is hell. The first 4 days are RELATIVELY easy, while still tiring and dusty. The 5th day is hell. You go from 4700 m to 5895 m, a 1200-meter gain. You climb at night. We woke up at 11:30 pm and, in a fog, we threw on our 6 layers of clothing and ate a small "breakfast". The ascent to summit first begins with a gruelling four hours of switchbacks up a steep scree slope. This is followed by a psychologically gruelling two hours along a freezing, wind-blown ridge which contains several false summits that destroy all remaining hope in your soul. Thirdly, it's really bloody cold. Did I mention that already? I'm pretty sure I would've lost fingers to frostbite if Joel hadn't had extra finger-warmers. The frigid wind along the final ridge is numbing and makes you lose all sense of sound and feeling. Fourthly, the air is really thin. I was getting bouts of nausea from altitude sickness as far down as Kibo Huts. Shockingly, I didn't vomit as I think my body realized that vomiting would only be a waste of precious energy that detracted from energy that could be used to gasp for air. By the summit, I think all of us had mild headaches and I was definitely mildly delirious which may have been due to altitude but more likely due to lack of sleep. I was in a fog as I reached the summit. I thought we had lost Chris and Joel and our guide. I said hello to someone, thinking they were Joel but they were actually some random stranger.  We were walking so slow, possibly slower than a literal snail, simply because we could not get enough oxygen to our muscles to move faster. Marya and I managed to will each other onward up the ridge towards to the summit.

Okay, now that I've spend the last paragraph making the trek sound so hellish that no one would ever willingly think to climb the mountain, let me say first of all that we all made it! It's a battle and a challenge but we did it! I stood up there for a few brief moments as the tallest man in Africa. We also had a beautiful, clear night with a moon so bright that we didn't even have to use headlamps for most of the ascent as we climbed through the night. And a clear night was capped off with a gorgeous sunrise high above the clouds. It's 6 hours of hell but you get a 5895-meter sunrise at the top plus 6 full days (minus 6 hours) of good times and easy trekking. Plus, you get to go DOWN after summiting.

Memorable moments of the descent were when we were motoring down the ridge, flying at breakneck speed compared to our snail pace on the way up; we came to a slight uphill along the ridge and all four us attempted to continue at our breakneck speed up this imperceptible uphill section. It left Joel collapsed on a rock, Marya doubled over gasping for air and me with fresh waves of nausea washing over me. It was a quick reminder that, even though we'd summited, we were still well above 5000-meters and had to go slowly! Even on the most insignificant-looking positive grade. The second memorable moment was that scree slope I mentioned earlier. On the way up it was a hellish set of unending switchbacks. On the way down, it was a fantastic scree run! Bounding down Kili through soft scree was a great way to spend a morning. We lost almost 1000 meters of elevation in less than an hour. Sweet, sweet oxygen, beautiful and thick.

Lion King is so accurate

After our successes on Kilimanjaro, our remaining activities were a breeze. Now, all we had to do was sit in a jeep for four days, watch cool animals and eat delicious food from the same cook who joined us for both the mountain and the safari. We bid goodbye to Chris and Joel as Chris headed to Europe and Joel to Zanzibar. Marya and I thought our safari was going to be with a bunch of other people based on how they do similar tours elsewhere in the world. We were shocked to discover that it would just be us, a guide/driver and a cook. A private safari?! I was expecting to be crammed into a bus full of gawking tourists and carted around in a somewhat contrived safari that took us through what amounted to a large zoo. This was not the case. All in all, this was one of the most amazing experiences I've had.

If you find yourself in East Africa and feel disinclined from subjecting yourself to the rigours of Kilimanjaro, I can still wholeheartedly recommend BaseCamp as a safari tour company. I would also say that, unless you are an avid animal photographer nut or an obsessive bird watcher, a 4-day safari is plenty of time. If you're like me, then your sole goal of a safari is to see an elephant and a lion and say, "cool, bro" and I would say a 4-day safari is perfect. Some people go out there for 11 days and, honestly, I think I would get bored. Giraffes' long necks and goofy faces can only amuse me for so long.

I would also say that unless you are an animal nut or a creepy leophile, then don't waste your time at other parks. Do Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. It's famous for a reason. I never blogged about it, but I went on two safaris in Uganda and, after experiencing Serengeti, I can safely say the Ugandan safaris were a waste of money and time, compared to the fascination of the Serengeti. For me anyway, as a "cool, bro" kind of ignorant, gawking safari tourist.

Let me also say that with any safari, there is a huge element of luck in what you see. And Marya and I got insanely lucky in our short four days. First of all, if I haven't built them up enough already, our BaseCamp safari guide, Fityayo, was unbelievably impressive and very authentic. He would take us away from touristy areas and drive out to more remote areas away from crowds. I swear he could spot a pair of lion ears 5 kilometres away. The things he spotted were absurd. And, importantly, he TRIED to spot things. Other tour guides just use radios, don't even look and wait to get a radio signal from another guide telling them where the action is. Fityayo didn't even use a radio. He spotted stuff all on his own.

With the help of our guide, we were lucky to see all "Big 5" animals. Lions, buffalo and elephants are easy. But we were super lucky to see an elusive leopard and we spent 2 hours waiting patiently for him to move out of his tree. He finally did and we got to see him just as the sun was setting. We were even more lucky to spot a super rare rhino in Ngorongoro Crater on our last day. This one was particularly impressive because Fityayo spotted it first, before any other guide did and it was so far away! It was a grey speck that appeared small even in binoculars. Because he spotted it first, we got some time alone with it and it walked closer and closer to us. Soon, a few other jeeps had driven by and saw us looking and suddenly, via radios, all the jeeps in the crater were converging on us (and the rhino) to give their clients a good view. We left when it got busy and I felt a misplaced sense of pride at having been there first even though it was all Fityayo. All I'd done is sit there, being a tourist.

One more piece of ridiculous luck is that we actually got to see a female lion stalk a warthog through high grass in perfect Nala-Pumba style. We watched the drama for nearly 2 hours and, it sounds corny, but my heart was actually racing the whole time as we waited for the lion to strike. A stalking lion is a terrifying sight. I never want to have those eyes on me as a target. Finally, Nala lunged when she thought she was close enough but, in a flurry of dust, Pumba got away. I didn't see it, but what followed was probably a conversation with a meerkat and a recognition of long lost friends between Simba and Nala.

The number of animals in this place is absurd. Giraffes become common place. Elephants become "meh". I think in the four days we saw baboons, giraffes, elephants, lions, lion cubs, leopard, rhino, wildebeest, gazelle, hartebeest, hyena, hippo, crocodile, zebras, monkeys, warthog, cheetah, vultures, ostriches, buffalo, tons of birds and probably a few other I can't think of. It's insane. And I was a skeptic beforehand. I thought it would just feel like going to the zoo except in a vehicle. But, thankfully, it felt so much more authentic than that. The authenticity was increased by doing a camping safari. No fences around the campsite and if you had to go to the bathroom at night you were to check the surrounding bush for the glint of eyes and leave the tent in pairs and pee near the tent. At night we heard a few lions one night and a couple other creatures sniffing around and walking near the campsite. Who says you can't sleep in the lion enclosure in the zoo?

I'll talk more about Zanzibar in my next post!