Quest for Beer - Africa (Tanzania)

I noticed a few hangovers this morning - I had none, but my head did hurt after taking an hour to shave my beard off with a dull razor blade. It just so happened that our mountain guide Nickson also owned 5 Landrovers (his company, Masai Giraffe Safaris, were the ones taking us on safari. Here we are, loading up from the Keys Hotel Annex.

These fine vehicles were amazingly tough. We pretty much lived in tents and landrovers for the next 5 days.

They have some really cool trees in this country.

Just a quick note about gadgets. I did not realize I was so behind on all the ipod and mp3 technology. There were a few ipods amongst the group and Brian and Alexa even brought speakers on safari (a great addition to the campfire parties). Mark had a hand held solar powered battery charger for his ipod, and there was even a solar powered battery charger integrated into a backpack. Sean and Donovan had tiny little mp3 recorders which they used to record interviews of people at various times on the mountain (check here for postings of these interviews). Jonathan had a GPS with which he kept us informed of location and altitude (not to mention attitude). The Masai camp security guard thought that glow sticks were pretty neat (we’ll get to that story in a bit). I just stuck with my leatherman, duct tape, rope, and bungee cords.

Chuck

The next day we had a leisurely hike back to Mweka - got there around noon and had a very good hot lunch. Said goodbye to all the porters and got in the landrovers and headed back to the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Day 6: This was it, the time to test yourself. There was fear in everyone's eyes that night as we gathered in the mess tents for cookies and tea before setting off into the cold and windy darkness ... [Continue reading this entry]

Day 5: Karanga Camp (13,800') to Barafu Camp (15,200') was a fairly easy hike. A gradual slope up for most of the way and then a steep climb up to camp. [Continue reading this entry]

Day 4: Barranco Camp to Karanga Camp. Had the best night sleep yet last night (slept for 4 straight hours before having to get up for my midnight pee - drinking 1 1/2 gallons of water per day ... [Continue reading this entry]

Day 2: Machame Camp (10,000') to Shira Camp (12,300'). The hike today started out nice and sunny. There was a noticable decline in the vegetation as we climbed today. It didn't really rain on us, but it ... [Continue reading this entry]

Met a few of the people in our group this morning. There are 28 of us! Drove about 45 minutes from Moshi up to Machame Gate (5,600'), checked in and started hiking around 11am. We hiked about ... [Continue reading this entry]

After leaving home on Christmas morning, I landed at Kilimanjaro airport at 8:45pm on Dec. 26th, 2005. By the time I got thru customs and got my entry visa it was about 9:30pm. Our trip leader picked me ... [Continue reading this entry]

Hello all, I'm back all in one piece. You may have heard about 3 americans being killed up on Kilimanjaro last week. That happened a few days after we were back down. They were close to where ... [Continue reading this entry]