First stop - Base Camp #1 - Mandara Hut!!!

Mon. June 18^th 3:28pm

[just arrived at first base camp] So far so good. I’m just….setting in. Nice long hike. Really kind of a walk through the park – crud, there’s ant everywhere – and uh, we got up here and there’s these Kalabask black and white monkeys, really cool. Camp, is kind of a open clearing. Quite the hustling bustling place. This things like right out of a movie.

Mon. June 18^th 5:46pm

It’s a good 60 degrees out, although it feels chillier! Sitting in the mess hall, we hiked up to the crater and for the first time in my life I could actually feel exhaustion from altitude. Just climbing up a little bit – 100 ft./200 ft. feel completely drained – feels great! Umm, really enjoying the camp here. Looking forward to tomorrow morning……..Hoping to get some good shots of the mountain tomorrow too soo, we’ll see. So far so good.

Tues. June 19^th 8:17am

First night on Mt. Kilimanjaro: quite the interesting experience. I had the blessed company of two ‘love birds’ that were uh not satisfied with making out for the entire night. That was interesting. I think that was enough to bring the food back up to the surface. At 9pm I was off to the bathrooms to uh puke chunks of spinach and whatever I ate for dinner. It was quite the glorious experience, so I had to walk that off. Woke up around 6/6:30, finally got out of bed around ¼ to 7am. It was a long long night. Didn’t have much for breakfast cause I couldn’t eat much. The temp. out here is probably just above freezing……looking forward to a good hike today and hopefully a better dinner; cause uh….that was pretty bad.