Post Holiday Blues

We are now back at work and winding down to Christmas, which will be here with the blink of an eye. After the festivities and new year celebrations, our children will return to University/their own homes and it will be all be quiet here again!

Mid January I go into hospital for a relatively minor heart op/procedure and then hopefully my Kili training can begin in earnest at the end of January. We have a high spec electronic cross trainer at home and this will be the starting point (although not on the programs we've been used to using!). At weekends we'll do a bit of hill walking, working up level & duration over time - we are starting nice and early so we can build up slowly. We'll add some overnight camping without facilities on occasions - neither of us are used to being without creature comforts and I dread the prospect of the 'long drops!

Anyhow, it's been fun setting up this blog and I hope it will help keep me going. I hope readers find it interesting. Til next time......

Kenya Safari November 2008

Thought I would write a few lines about our recent trip to Kenya as we got to see Kili face to face for the first time there. I have posted some pics on the right hand side in a slideshow. This trip was not our first African adventure. We were in South Africa in May/June 2008, my husband having been there several times before recently working on some sports projects there. I back packed round West Africa some years ago but neither of us really knew what to expect from Kenya. I have to say that Mombasa reminded me of Freetown, Sierra Leone, especially the port with the ferry ride across the water - just like the Lunghi ferry! As did all the smiling faces and the warm welcomes (although I went to Sierra Leone before the civil war, I hope the people there have not lost their happy disposition).

We had a great time. We went on safari for 5 days in the Tsavo East and West parks, where Ahmed our driver did his best to get us to see as much wildlife as possible. We saw:

• Lionesses - no males unfortunately but the females were just a couple of feet from us
• Hippos
• A herd of Water Buffalo - 1000's of them! amazing!
• Giraffes
• Elephants
• Crocodiles
• Zebra
• Heartbeast
• Impala
• Gazelle
• Baboons

and a whole lot more. We didn't see Leopard, Cheetah or Rhino, but we have to have something to see when we return - and we want to do big cats in the Masai Mara.The roads were something of an eyeopener - I will never complain about our roads here in the UK again! I can only wonder at what the Mombasa - Nairobi road was like before it was upgraded!

We chilled out on the coast south of Mombasa at the Pinewood Village Resort at Ukunda before and after our safari. Pinewood is just the most ideal place to relax and unwind, where you do as much or as little as you want in the most beautiful and peaceful surroundings well away from all the other tourist beach resorts. The rare Colobus monkeys living in the tree alongside our balcony were a delight to watch each day.

What Climbing Kilimanjaro Involves

Okay, a few basics. The summit of Kilimanjaro is at Uhuru Peak, which is at an altitude of 19341 feet (5895 metres). To give this some perspective for British readers of this blog, Snowdon in Wales is 3560 feet (1085 metres) and Ben Nevis in Scotland is 4409 feet (1344 metres), so Kili is pretty big! We are fortunate enough to live on the Welsh borders, so we'll be using the Welsh mountains, including Snowdon, to practice on but the Welsh mountains are mere bumps compared to Kili!

The route to the summit of Kili that appeals to me the most is the Lemosho Route, which is a low traffic route that approaches Kili from the West.



This route starts at the gate at Londorossi at 9498 feet (2895 metres) and covers a total distance of 42 miles (70 km) from that point to the Mweka gate after the decent. It is one of the most difficult routes but has a more spectacular and diverse scenery than the others. We will probably finally decide our route in the summer of 2009 after we've been training for some time. I want to do a challenging route but I also want to be realistic and not ruin our chances of succeeding to the summit. We are fit middle aged but many fit people much younger than us have failed, even on the easier routes. There is also the altitude to contend with and we will not hesitate to take a little longer to allow a gentler acclimatisation, to make sure we succeed. To illustrate the magnitude of our task, in 2007, approximately 1,000 people were evacuated from Kili and approximately 10 deaths are reported every year. The main cause of death is altitude sickness. Our Tanzanian adventure is likely to cost us £15,000+ in total and we are not going to put that sort of investment at risk, let alone our lives.

This link takes you to a video on a website that describes what the climb/trek involves

http://vodpod.com/watch/622215-bootsnalls-kilimanjaro-climb
This one on Tusker Trails website is more professional but takes a while to download
http://www.tusker.com/whyTusker_AmazingVideo.cfm

The Beginning of Our Kilimanjaro Journey

I have marvelled at Kilimanjaro for years. It's not a particularly big or spectacular mountain, but for me it's the way it stands majestically alone, with an absence of surrounding peaks to diminish its presence. It is also almost an alien in its environment, where one wouldn't expect a snow capped crater in sub Saharan equatorial Africa, nor associate one with the kind of wildlife that it shares its place with. I also have a bit of a love affair with the African continent, which makes it doubly appealing. I decided that I would take the view from the top to mark my half century in 2010 and my husband agreed to make the journey with me. As the view is as important as the climb itself, we shall be going in January/February 2010. I wont quite be 50 then, but its the time of year that offers the best chance of a cloudless view and if we time it right we'll summit under a full moon. The journey will be sponsored and we shall be selecting appropriate charities before commencing fundraising activities (the full cost of the journey will be paid for by us, so everything we raise will go direct to good causes).

We have just returned from a 3 week trip to Kenya. This trip offered us the opportunity to view Kili, quite spectaclularly from the air during the flight from Nairobi to Mombassa and also from the ground whilst we were on safari in Tsavo West. Our last nights on safari were spent at the Kilaguni Lodge in the lee of the mountain, so we have the image of Kili in our minds to keep us going through training and fundraising over the next year.

We have a year before our climb but we both work and have busy lives, so it will fly by. We have to decide on our route, although it will be one of the less climbed, we have to see how training goes. We plan to spend 4 weeks in Tanzania altogether, so we have to decide where else we want to go besides Kili. We have to decide who we are going to raise money for. We also have to get fit!!!!!