I Climbed Kilimanjaro

We are soon approaching the end of 2014 ladies and gents. So I am ceasing this opportunity to reflect on the most memorable experiences of 2014, starting with my trip to Africa with the school!

January 28th myself and nine others landed in Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania, Africa. 

First things first, an impromptu photo-shoot at 5am in the airport. Because, why not?

Presenting to you the four ladies embarking on this journey! From left to right: Amal, Myself, Harriet and Georgie. Bare in mind that it was 5 o'clock in the morning.

And here is the whole team! From left to right: Daniel, Youseff, Harriet, Amal, Robert, Georgie, Will, Myself, Mr.Chaffer, Ms Renniks.

Kili team unite! 

Touchdown in Kilimanjaro International airport! January 28th 2014.

Team shot while waiting in line to sort our visa's out.

Quote of the day *to Robert* "Sir please could you open your eyes" "they are open".

 Harriet looking larger than life...too the hotel!

After driving for a couple of hours through the streets of Tanzania we arrived at the most beautiful hotel. Each and every one of our mouths dropped when we arrived. Can you blame us?

 It was two to a lodge with a backdrop of a mountain. We stayed here for one night and I had the pleasure of sharing a cabin with Amal. It was only when we arrived here that we were told two of us had to merge our belongings into one bag to climb the mountain. Now, for boys this is fine because they don't have face cream, hand cream, foot cream, face wipes, dry shampoo, deep heat, lip balm, food of all food groups, plasters, headbands, hairbands, bobby pins, toilet roll, fluffy socks, fluffy pj's, hand sanitizer...you get the point. For Amal and I this caused our stress levels to rise beyond levels of comprehension. With the help of Will and Robert and a call from home, we managed to sacrifice bottles of dry shampoo and baby wipes to supply the two of us. Though it was heavy, I felt awful for the porters...

Note to anyone planning on climbing kilimanjaro, no matter how much you tell yourself you need every toiletry on planet earth, you don't! You honestly need the absolute bare minimum, after a long day of walking it's the last thing on your mind. And on that note you tend to use the same items of clothing everyday too, apart from tops and knickers.

The morning of our journey began, first thing's first - Team Shot! You may notice a new team member, Hozaiah. He was our team leader, guiding us up the mountain. 

Fun fact: he has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro over one hundred times, he couldn't be specific because he has lost count!

Here marks the beginning of our journey up Mount Kilimanjaro.  Before we could even start the trip we had to register ourselves on the mountain which gave us the perfect opportunity for another team shot!

 This was the real beginning.

See you on our walk up the mountain!

10/10 for the most unflattering photo, but this was taken at our first pit stop on route to camp 1. Quote of the day today was "how do you peel an egg?", a question Will asked and this was my reaction. 

Onwards and upwards my friends, see you at camp 1.

Having walked five hours, we arrived to the most beautiful welcoming by our porters. Singing the most amazing African songs while we danced with them. This was our first introduction and talk about a good first impression! 

Caribo (welcome)  to camp 1!

We ate a delicious meal in our "messy tent" which was the tent set up for breakfasts and dinners. Who would have thought you'd get a three course meal up a mountain with candles and flowers on the table!

La la salama (goodnight) from Amal and I in our homely tent, named Dave.

Jambo! A word we learnt on the first day which means hello! Today our walk was far more liberating, we walked above the clouds and it was such an amazing feeling. For the first we could see the progress we had made. For all the geography lovers look at the blanket of clouds.

A favorite photo of mine from the trip, it was this spot also that 

I learnt another African phrase "Powakacheezi kamadeezi" - i'm as cool as a yellow banana. I definitely over-used this saying during our climb!

'

Our girlie team photo! And in the background you can see one of the peaks  of Kilimanjaro, the smallest one.

And again, this time with  Ms Renniks squeezed in too!

See you in five hours time!

And we arrived at camp 2, which was buried in a cloud - an awesome feeling actually. We ate our three course meal, drank hot chocolate and then called it a m

La la salama from Bella, Amal and Dave (the tent).

Good-morning, having fallen asleep in a cloud we woke up too clear blue skies and for the first time we whipped out our Kilimanjaro hats (we all picked one up on the way to the mountain).

Today's walk totaled to eight hours, this was two hours in and we were all fed up already. Today was most definitely one of the toughest. But we played a game, day in day out, to keep us busy whereby we had too say a name, a job and a food for each letter of the alphabet. By the end of the trip we had names such as "annabellarina".

Our tiring day was instantaneously brightened when we were again greeted by their joyful singing and dancing. And despite feeling on the verge of sleeping for ten days, we all managed to collect the energy to dance and sing too! It was actually one of the best parts of the day: we'd start our day singing and dancing and end it in the same way. 

La la salama from camp 3. See you in the morning!

This very chilly morning began with a selfie brushing our teeth on the mountain, it had to be done!

Just like every morning, were awoken with a warm cup of coffee from the porters. But this time we were accompanied by 4 layers, a big coat and a bobble hat!

That wall on the left, that is called the "breakfast wall"...you guessed it, you climb it after breakfast! 

So here we go!

These men were absolutely incredible, every day they would run and by run I literally mean it, up the mountain with our big bags balancing on their head. As well as our tents, food, toilets, tables...you name it! They'd take the shorter route because there was no need for them to adjust to the altitude, so this meant that by the time we got to camp they had already put up our tents and placed our bags in them. 

This was the view from the top of the breakfast wall! Every day so far had been an upward hike through forest, the vegetation getting sparser the higher we trekked. But today started with rock climbing which was so much fun, despite how daunting it looked!

From this day onwards we made an effort to take a selfie or picture together every day, if only we had a selfie stick...

Our picture everyday turned into a picture at every stop!

The trail behind us felt never ending. We had two hours left at this point and we had resulted to singing songs for entertainment.

This right here was one of my favorite memories of the trip. We had been trekking for eight hours, peaking altitude and rock climbing. All in all, we were extremely tired with a couple of tears and a lot of stress. It wasn't until we had to walk up the final stretch that every, single one of our faces lit up.  All of the porters came to the edge of the cliff face and began to sang to encourage us up the final stretch! It was absolutely incredible, a feeling and memory I won't ever forget.

Caribo, this is camp 4!

We had a spectacular view;  at night the sky lit up with stars and our camp site looked over glowing Africa!

Goodmorning! We were awoken with our usual hot chocolate/tea or coffee to our tent, followed by a three course breakfast and finished off with a sing and a dance with the lovely porters.

 Today's trek began slow and steady, "pole pole" they'd say. Which is pronounced "pol-ley" and it means slow.

Everyone, looking less than impressed.

Our photo of the day. 

This was taken on our final pit stop before reaching camp 5, we could see it but let me tell you it looked a lot closer than it really was. You'll also notice another team member that hasn't made an appearance in the other photos but this is Will, he met us at the hotel and was our tour guide.

We made it to camp 5! Just as we were walking towards it, it began to hail but none the less we still sang and danced with the porters. At this point we had learnt the beautiful African songs.

The faces of excitement to see our tent, Dave, after six and a half hours of walking!

We had become a little delirious from a severe lack of sleep combined with an overload of physical exertion - together combined meant that putting on of a shoe to be hysterically funny (a had to be there moment I think).

When the clock struck 7pm, Amal and I wondered back to Dave, and it was lights out. Until 12am. Awoken to alarm clocks to embark on the hardest, most mentally challenging part of the journey so far. We ate, even if we didn't want too, we had too. Before starting our trek to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

We layered up: hats, buff, thermals, ski trousers, coats, gloves (two pairs), thermal socks under our normal socks and put our head torches on. We were ready to go!

Picture this, pitch black darkness all around you with the only visible sights being the floor and the person in-front of you.  When you looked up you could see a trail of little lights, which resembled lanterns slowly floating upwards. One by one we slowly, step by step, trekked into the darkness.

 Three hours in and your mental strength kicked in, it would be the easiest decision to just say right thats it I can't do this anymore. But it would also be the hardest decision because why now? After all these days of trekking why not finish it off. And that was it, that was why we didn't stop.

Four hours in and it felt never ending. Two of the boys suffered altitude sickness and were taken back down to camp. Shortly another boy was taken down too. Which left Robert, Amal, Georgie, Harriet and I. 

Five hours in and our water bottles started to freeze up. Robert's motivation for me was "Bella think about the bum you'll have after all this walking" my response wasn't so kind...though I did think about it!

Six hours down and one more to go. We stopped for a short five minutes to drink tea and coffee, the warmth was definitely needed! 

After seven hours of solid trekking in the pitch black darkness we had finally reached Stella point - an altitude of 5739m. And right there and then I felt mentally and physically weak. I remember turning to Georgina and Amal and we all broke down crying; wanting to finish, wanting it to be over and done with. Seconds later the darkness started to break. A crack of light started to fill the sky and the sun began to rise. This moment right here was the turning point, we could see what we had accomplished and we could feel the success. And that was our motivation to trek the last 45 minutes to the summit...

This was the sun rising around us. 

Photographic evidence to show that we, Park House English School Kilimanjaro team of 2014 hiked 5895m to Uhuru summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Here I am, standing on the roof of Africa.

And I felt invincible! 

This was Stella point, on the way up it was too dark to see!

And after 10 minutes at the top it was time to descend. This is what we had been climbing up for seven hours, it was actually a lot harder on the way down...many of us fell...numerous times! But we were going down feeling on top of the world.

This is a snap of us returning to camp having just summited Mount Kilimanjaro!

Can you guess what we did now?  NAP!

But not for long, after two hours of napping we were awoken to food and then we had a four hour walk down to our next camp. This was tough. 

See you in four hours!

We arrived at camp 6 and this was our final camp! 

See you in the morning.

A group shot with the porters followed a sing and dance to motivate our final trek down.

From the expressions on our faces can you guess what we were doing today? 

We were going to have a shower and sleep in a bed! 

Our faces were a little swollen because of the altitude change...Georgie's face made everyone giggle!

Our final photo of the day! 

We left our final camp thinking that it was the last time we'd get to sing and dance with our porters. But when we reached the end of the trail there was a huddle of men standing at the bottom whistling at us. At this moment in time we all grinned from ear to ear and skipped down towards them. Here we were greeted with a flower necklace and a drink before we joined in for our last sing and dance.

Here we took our boots off and washed our feet with soap and water! 

On another note, the men kindly washed them and popped them in a bag for us. And Amal and I managed to loose our boots on a trekking trip...thats right we accidentally left them there!

Thankfully the hotel managed to get them back too us the following morning. 

This lovely gentlemen was my favorite, he constantly had a beaming smile on his face and never failed to be kind and homely towards us all.

Who would have thought it, a buffet at the bottom of the mountain...result!

We said our goodbyes and hopped on the bus back to the hotel!

And heres what you have all been waiting for, the final snap of the journey. One with our certificates! 

If there I could tell you one thing about this trip it would be that it is the most mentally challenging experience of my life. It challenged my beyond my limits but I can strongly say I came out a stronger person. A truly life changing journey and I am beyond grateful that I was able to embark on it at this age. 

Definitely something crossed off my bucket list!