2024-2025 Africa!

Family vacations sure are fun. This was kind of like an extremely escalated version of the vacations I used to take with my childhood bff and her family. Those were mostly skiing, but still, highly reminiscent, especially the post-dinner philosophizing. Most noticeable was that LuDad claimed that "every man wants to be the Emperor of China". 

Alex and I aren't big hikers, but we made it! Alex was completely fine and I barreeeelllyyy got there i think. I assumed I was the worst off, but we were doing the same route as these 4 girls, and saw them more or less every day. On the last day one of them said she'd thrown up every day after day 3 and sometimes multiple times per day. She was HOARSE... So I guess it could have gone worse!!

Climing Mt Kilimanjaro (I'm so f*cking noob, it's actually crazy)

Day 1 Lemosho to Big Tree Camp:

EOD stats: Pulse 89 bpm, O2; 96%

All went pretty well on the first day. I carried a side purse on me to carry my camera and gopro. This was a huge mistake, although I suspect it would have been kind of fine if it hadn't rained. I had to don my rain pants and poncho. These items + the purse made the going really terrible.  Also by the end of the first day, the soles of Alex's shoes had peeled nearly off! That's what we get for thinking that any reasonable "boot" is good enough as a hiking boot.  Alex's boots were like 10 years old too, so there's that. The trail up Mt Kilimanjaro was littered with boot soles, so apparently we are not the first to encounter this problem, lol.

Amazingly, a porter named "Mwakepitu" HAD THE ABILITY TO FIX THE BOOTS. He sewed the sole back on and they were from then on, completely working boots!!! Highly recommend Top climbers.

Day 2 - 12/25 - Big Tree Camp to Shira 2 Camp

EOD stats: Pulse 98 bpm; O2 83%

All went... okay... for me... on the second day.  I think I was a little annoyed because I learned that my watch cannot record an all-day hike. If I could have purchased a garmin watch on the mountain, I would have. Eric's watch was just fine. The Apple Watch is not for people that are serious about exercise, apparently. Unfortunately on this day, the GOATMIL began to have digestive issues =(. 

Day 3:

EOD stats: Pulse 95, O2 93%

Headache begins. Sadly GOATMIL left us in the morning - she couldn't keep food down =((((.  This day was absolutely brutal for me. We hiked to Lava Tower in the morning, which was at 4600 m elevation, and then ate lunch there. By the time we reached the top, my lips were pretty blue and my head was absolutely blasting. I had to remain sitting the whole time we were up there, and had to rest every couple minutes as we were heading back down.  I'm terrible at going downhill, it turns out. We had to get through a rocky portion as the last segment to get to camp and I felt like giving up. After this, the headache was neverending. I started to take the altitude seriously and began to chug water and religiously take dimox. Every night I would get up to pee like 3-4 times. GOATMIL did leave us a gift that I'm pretty sure got me to the top of the mountain - cups in which to pee in the tent. 

Look at all these pictures Eric took of me suffering on the way down from Lava tower. That was a CRAZY headache.

Day 4: 

EOD stats: Pulse 96 bpm, O2 89%

Pretty easy day. We went up the "Baranco Wall" (Barranco apparently means wall). They kept trying to assure us that it wouldn't be too hard. (It seemed almost trivial at the pace we were going). There was a huge traffic jam and we basically crawled to the top. I was skipping around at the top and kind of twisted my ankle. It ended up being fine though. The rest of the day wasn't too bad.

Day 5: Karanga Camp to Barafu Camp

EOD stats: Pulse 103 bpm, O2 77%

This day was extra easy because we were hiking only in the morning. It was a pretty chill hike, after which we went to sleep at 3? Ate dinner at 5, then went back to sleep until 11 or so? Then it was Time To Die.

Day 6: 12/29 - Summit Day!

EOD stats: Not measured

Oh. fuckin.. boi.......... We woke up and it was Time To Die. Stuffed down some random food and then started moving up the mountain. TBH our camp was so far down on the barafu slope that even getting to the upper reach of the mountain was a bit of a slog. From then on the game was to Just Keep Moving. We split off from lumom and ludad at some point. From then on, I started counting my steps. I'd count to a couple thousand and then ask to rest.  Every time I counted up it was to a lower number. At about 5600 m or so? (About 150 m below Stella Point) I was truly on the strugglebus. I think I basically took 30 steps at a time, and then would just stop without saying anything for a brief rest. The guides were telling me not to fall asleep and shaking me and whatnot. I was aware of everything going on around me, but just didn't have the energy to speak. My breathing rate was elevated but not that crazy and my heart rate was kind of fine. I just... was feeling super meh. My legs hurt from walking for 6 hours with minimal sitting. If the whole thing had been conducted at sea level, I would have been exhausted then too. It also didn't help that my water froze and my snacks were no where to be found. At some points they began to pull my arm to get me to continue moving forward. 

We hit Stella Peak. I didn't have the energy to even take a picture. I just tried to get as much water and food and rest in as possible. 

The hike between stella peak and uhuru peak should have been trivial but it was absolutely brutal. But somehow I found myself at the top. I wanted to take a pic of myself at the peak with my mimikyu buddies but it was so hard to find them in my pack. I was operating at like 10 fps. Someone was helping me dig through (I think it was Fadhil). (In the like 50 seconds that I had my gloves off, I think the top layer of my hands froze off and when I returned to the States, it began slowly peeling off) I took a bunch of very painful pictures at the top, and then began the trek back down.

The going was really slow. Eric and Andy went off ahead with Rama and Fadhil. Mpemba shepherded me and Alex. My stomach began to hurt a lot and I could only walk doubled over. We bummed some Diclofenac off of a passerby, which I took. Not clear if it was really helpful. Mpemba carried me for like 50-100 m, but it was kind of crazy and I was like "no let me down". It was all ice up there, so I just sat down on it and slid down for like 100 m. Honestly it felt a little bit dangerous because I was very impaired and on the right hand side there was quite a steep slope that would have led me who knows where. They didn't let me do that again. We passed Lumom and Ludad on our way from Uhuru to Stella. They were really close behind (which I suspected the whole time), although apparently it took them 45 more minutes to hit the top.

Eventually though, we made it past the ice and began to peel off layers. The scree was very soft and in places going down felt like skiing. I had to rest more often than the guides were comfortable with, but it wasn't too unreasonable. Maybe 1/2 of the way back to camp, we bumped back into Eric and Andy. The dust had apparently caused Eric to have an asthma attack. We returned to camp together. I collapsed for like 1-2 hours, then we ate and then continued our trek down. With each step the air got thicker. It was hard, but nothing like summiting. 

Day 7: 12/30 - Millennium Camp to Mweka Gate

EOD stats: Not measured but probably 97-99% lol.

The first segment of the day was totally fine. It was very rocky, but we just went for it and got it done in less than 2 hours. The second segment got somewhat frustrating because I was just super tired of walking downhill and wondering when I was going to wipe out or hurt myself or whatever, but I think that's just hiking. At the bottom of the hill it got flat enough to run and I basically jogged the last km or so. It was nice to be able to walk on flat ground again. 

Tangire National Park 

Tangire was awesome! We saw a HUGE herd of elephants, it was amazing. Giraffes too. They were incredibly majestic. There's something super crazy about seeing these large animals in their natural habitat, away from all of the noise and hubbub of e.g. a zoo. The elephants were basically just moving slowly, pulling grass out of the ground with their trunks, and then sticking that into their mouths. Apparently elephants have 6 sets of teeth, each of which last 10 years, and this is what determines an elephant's life span.

Ngorongoro conservation 

We visited the conservation without heading into the crater. I think we saw a leopard and a pair of cheetahs. Leopards are without a doubt, cuter. I'm not sure what apparently makes them more difficult to hunt than the cheetah. A cheetah jumped up onto our jeep! It was awesome, a real highlight of the trip XD. 

Serengeti

The Serengeti seemed DRY. It was a huge plains, seriously endless. Honestly we wandered around for a lot of the Serengeti day kind of not seeing very much. Apparently it's a much bigger area, so the animals are more spread out. NGL, I'm still a little confused about that because the animals are free to move from place to place.

Ngorongoro crater

Looking at the crater from above was AMAZING. We saw A LOT of zebras on this day and a bunch of wildebeasts. Also our final one of the big 5- the rhino!!! Apparently there are only 45 rhinos in the whole park, and we saw two of them. They seriously looked like they belonged in the dinosaur era. 

It got pretty late coming back. 

Maasai people

There were natives called the "maasai" people all around. We paid some money to get into one of their villages. The living conditions were awful, with a 5 person family living in a mud hut the size of my bathroom and built half as tall. Food was literlaly cooked INSIDE, and Alex and I had to hold our breaths to stop from choking. The people kept trying to get us to buy the maasai wares - the handmade jewelry and whatnot. The whole thing was kind of shocking and uncomfortable in many ways. I don't really understand what is going on with those people and whether they are really happy. (The claim is that they are 

Cost:

• Base cost = $1292

• Tip = $50

• Total = $2684

Grand total

Airfare (round trip): $5334.6

Hike: $5894

Safari: $2684

Grand Total: $ 13912.6 ( for both me + Alex!)
(there were probably other miscellaneous expenses not totaling over $1K)

I thought of a couple after writing out all the numbers and I'm too lazy to fix it:

• Tanzanian Visa ($50 each)

• Maasai village visit ($10-17 each)