Tanzania: Climbing the Elephant's Back

Day 2 on the trail was much tougher than the first day.  Lots of uphill...with some downhill...and more uphill...and more downhill...but mostly uphill.  In total, the difference in altitude between our starting elevation and our ending elevation was 3,000 feet.  We were on the way to Shira I Camp...and we wanted to do it before the rain came.  Emmanuel told us the rain would arrive at noon.  Stay tuned to find out how accurate he was.

They found out that we were a bit slow in the mornings.  I think they adjusted our start times after that first morning after because we were a bit slow.  But I also learned to get stuff organized the afternoon before when we arrived at camp so there was less to do in the morning.  We started off with a breakfast of porridge, fruit, pancakes, and eggs.  I had never had porridge before, and I can now say, you need to add sugar.  But adding sugar was totally acceptable because of SWAT.  SWAT was a great excuse for eating lots of sugar.  SWAT was one of those things we talked about in the pre-trek meeting.

S - Sugar & Salt
W - Water
A - Always Clean (stretching it a little with that one)
T - Temperature

Follow good SWAT and your chances of making it up the mountain would be better.

Part of Team Kinyonga
(Chameleon in Swahili...because we were supposed to be hiking slowly)

Our hike on day 2 started in the forest, but transitioned into the moorlands after the first hour or so.  We started out with a more gradual uphill, but as we transitioned into the moorlands, the ups got a lot more up.  We did some steep climbs that made me really grateful for all the stairs I did.  There were some absolutely beautiful views as we traveled.  We took a break for about 10 minutes a few hours in.  I sat down to eat the snack they had given us that morning: apple juice, a chocolate bar, graham crackers, and a muffin.  I didn't get all of it shoved in my face before we took off again, but I did get a bunch of it.  We wanted to rest a little longer, but Emmauel pulled out his "we need to keep moving because rain is coming."

Emmanuel!

Next we were set to tackle what Emmanuel called "the elephant's back".  It was a massive hill that looked kind of like the back of the elephant...first we just had to climb the tail.  After reaching the top of the back we had a more gentle downhill with the camp only a mile or two further.  Then it started to sprinkle.  Not enough that we needed our raincoats, but enough to want to put the rain covers on our daypacks.  A little while later it turned into a true light rain and our rain coats went on for the first (but sadly not last) time.  My watch read 11:50 when I put on my raincoat.  Damn, Emmanuel was almost dead on.  His response "this is my office.  I know what happens here."

We traipsed through the rain, with it getting a little harder as we neared the camp.  But finally we made to Shira I, our second camp on the trail.  Just as on the first night all our stuff was already set up and we were led to our tents where we could get into some warmer, drier clothing.  That afternoon they told us to take a nap.  I tried, but didn't really do too well.  The rain was sounding hard and I needed to go to the bathroom.  I couldn't hold off any longer and went to make a run for the private toilet we had.  Turns out the rain sounded a lot worse on our tents than it really was.  But it was still coming down for sure.  It rained for about 3 hours before letting up.  Due to the rain, we didn't end up going on our planned acclimatization hike.  That night we could actually see snow and sleet in the air.  And it was definitely chillier.  No one saw any of the buffalo that sometimes wander through camp.  Emmanuel said when they come, they usually come around midnight and leave by 4 am.  After his magic rain prediction skills, we were taking him at his word.