This ain't no 'Toto' song: Kili Climb Day 4-Kiboko Dreams

After the horror of Day 3, we slept well and arose later than those people still doing 6 days. We bid a sad farewell to some of our chums as they took off early for a big day heading to Base Camp before starting to summit at Midnight. Big respect for people who can do this mission in 6 days...

Our day was going to be more leisurely than theirs. After the Barranco Wall, we were going to lunch and stay the night at Karanga camp (4035 metres). A total altitude gain of only a hundred metres or so for the day. The wife was much improved today. After breakfast we took on the Wall. It actually turned out to be quite fun, bit of climbing, bit of jumping up a steep, rocky path up. It was the wife's favourite part of the climb.

Hm, kinda made a rod for my back of sorts. As we were going up the wall, another guide told a woman she climbed like a simba ie lion. I made the mistake of loudly saying I climbed like kiboko (hippo) complete with hippo sound effects. Well, everyone talks to each other and soon I had porters, guides, cooks, everyone saying 'hey kiboko' 'well done kiboko' 'you are strong like kiboko' etc for the remainder of the time of Kili. Maybe, I will get a kiboko tattoo...can't seem to escape a large marine mammal motif..

(us and Guide happy to be at top of wall)

After the Wall, it was a bit of slog up and down through a desolate alpine desert landscape. My face hurt from wind burn. Plus after 4 days my clothes were starting to reek badly. I felt like the right thing to do to add an extra day though. The wife and I still cycled in and out of altitude-induced headaches and feeling like rubbish. Funny sometimes you feel fine going up and then going down it hits you. A delay effect?

After a few hours hiking we saw Karanga Camp through the clouds. As we headed down a big valley to rise back up to the Camp, we heard porters singing in Swahili in the distance welcoming people to camp. The sound was amplified by the valley...beautiful. One of those moments you just had to be there. Digging the energy of the porters and camp workers. How they manage to do their hard work and still smoke, talk and drink into the wee hours at camp, I don't know..Another positive memory was that we had jokingly said to our Guide that it would be great if our cook could make us chipsy mayai (omelet and chips) for our lunch one day. Sure enough when we got into camp, it waited us on our plates! People talk here for sure. Chipsy Mayai at 4000 metres is the best!

I was finding breathing a bit of an effort, it was hard just walking to the long drop and back. So sick of long drops, chlorine tasting purified water, cold nights on thin sleeping mats and hard ground. The wife looked pale, we both had hot faces though. My asthmatic lungs continued to get annoyed at the cloudy air our camp sat in. I just kept puffing away on my inhaler. Didn't sleep very well that night (again), cold and the water I kept drinking to keep headaches at bay meant I had to huff and puff from the tent to the long drop all night. Heard a guy coughing badly all night in a nearby tent...not a good sign at this height. Turned out he was a porter who was later told to head down.

Still it was a beautiful night. Stars and the summit overhead. Way down below we could see the lights of Moshi and Arusha. Funny to see the Searchlights from the Club La Liga Moshi Nightclub so far below. Orange flashes of lightening in a far off thunderstorm. Mount Meru peeking above cloud cover nearby. It was pretty magical. But yeah longdrops SUCK. Especially when you almost drop a glove in, eek.