Well, fortunately Neil has now managed to get a signal and keep us all updated. Because of the initial techno hiccup there are a few repetitions/overlaps from the blog written yesterday. So here goes……..
On the whole the flights over were as expected. The night flight to Nairobi wasn’t bad at all and we all managed to get a little bit of sleep. We had an hour transfer in Nairobi then a short hour flight to Kilimanjaro. I was lucky enough to get a window seat on the right side of the plane, as we had spectacular views of Mount Kilimanjaro on the way. It was mostly shielded in cloud but the summit was showing and it looked quite snowy!
The transfer to the hotel was quite uneventful although the scenery was far greener than I expected. I had hoped the rainy season that is due towards the end of March hadn’t started early! It was about an hour and a half on a small coach which was OK and on tarmac, except for the last 20 minutes which was on a very rutted mud road.
The hotel is really very nice indeed, being far more luxurious than what we were expecting. We will all be very happy to come back here when we finish the trek …….. the bath and shower are very nice indeed and I think will be extremely welcome.
After a quick organising of our kit and some re-packing we went down to the pool. I had a quick swim and although it was very cold, it was very welcome. It was a little bit cloudy and as the early afternoon carried on it started to get a little bit darker. We ordered lunch round the pool and then it started to rain. It wasn’t just a little rainfall – it was really quite tropical and this has got us quite worried as we are not particularly looking forward to walking in the rain and sorting out wet kit etc. It looks like some more re-packing will be in order – and the use of some more plastic bags and liners!
We are now all having a rest in the afternoon before our pre-trek briefing at 6 p.m.with the tour guide.
After all the apprehension of the last few days we are all very glad to be here and very close to starting the trek
Some fun things that have happened so far are, that Richard P has prepared some tour T Shirts for us all, whilst Stuart has had some trouble getting through a door and Craig and I are having competitions over the extra items of kit and gadgets we have brought with!!!
Below is a view from a balcony of the hotel
showing how green and lush it all is