Tanzania V – The Beaches of Zanzibar

Nungwi Beach in Zanzibar was a gorgeous and welcome sight

So we landed from our surprise Jet at the Zanzibar airport around 7pm.  Zanzibar is a small island off the coast of Dar Es Salaam.  The island is known for its beaches (and probably other stuff that I just haven't researched) and is 99% Muslim.  We got a cab to a hostel in Stonetown where Jen (Global Health Corps living in Lilongwe) and Amanda (Grassroot Soccer Intern living in Zambia) had already booked a room.  Unfortunately they’d only booked a room for the two of them.  They managed to convince the guard to let the 3 of us in to just “store” our luggage, where the plan was for us to shower and rest before going out and then sneaking back into the hostel later where we’d all just cram in that one room, but of course that didn’t work out.  We went out to a plaza on the water where lots of street vendors were serving food and drinks.  Honestly I didn’t think very highly of it outside the chocolate mango pizza which was divine.  After that we all went to a bar on the beach and stayed out much later than I would’ve thought possible after the grueling travel Hasmin, Mel, and I had just finished.  We got back to the hotel some time after 2am and snuck in, but just as I was falling asleep I heard the guard yelling at us that we had to leave or he was going to call the police.  I guess operation hostel stowaway was not a success.  Luckily they had another room open that they let us take for the night (grudgingly).  In the morning we walked around the city, first avoiding the fish-smelling streets at the docks and then heading over to a couple art markets.

Stone Town art market in the courtyard of an old fort

View from the plaza in Stone Town

Narrow Backstreets of Stone Town

At around 1pm the cab came to pick us up to bring us to our “villa” in Nungwi at the northern tip of Zanzibar.  In typical fashion the driver rode recklessly along a two way, one lane road that frequently left us racing into near head-on collisions.  We arrived after about an hour pulling off the paved road into a typical African dirt road, absurdly bumpy and riddled with giant holes and ditches.  Then we pulled off into a dirt drive way almost overrun by tall grass and weeds.  Past all the unkempt vegetation we arrived at our villa, a surprisingly cozy two story house of which one of the upstairs apartments was ours for a couple nights.  We met the staff, only one of which spoke English, and then headed out to the beach which was 15 minutes away, walking by nicer resorts along more dirt roads.  After avoiding beachside vendors we finally reached the promised land as we looked out onto a bright horizon over white sands and four different shades of blue and green calm ocean waters.  We all wasted no time getting into the water.

Nungwi Beach resorts (not where we stayed)

At high tide the water crashed into the upper part of the rocks on the left

The rest of the time in Zanzibar was filled with a ton of beach time (too much judging from the sunburn), fine breakfasts of eggs, bread, and fruit prepared by the Villa 24 hour staff, and nice dinners at other hotels or local spots.  On New Years we went to a party the famed Kendwa Rocks resort, just a short cab ride away from our lodgings.  There was dancing, a weird card pre-purchase bar system, lots of music and smoke, and fireworks at midnight.  We all made it home safely that night and the next morning it was back to Stone Town to catch a ferry to the mainland.  It was all a journey back to Lilongwe now, and what I didn’t know at the time was that that journey would take 3 days.  It was a wonderful learning experience and an adventure filled trip, but after everything getting back to my bed in and under my mosquito net in Lilongwe was one of the most rewarding moments I’ve had here.

Tanzania Part IV - Kilimanjaro Part II

A view of the mountain

Day 3 – A Lunar Landscape and Lava Tower: Day 3 began with another breathtaking view of the summit in the early morning.  The ground was frozen solid and you could actually feel ice crunching under your feet.  Today would take us to an elevation of 4,630 meters before we’d descend back down again to camp at 3,950 meters.  It was a bright day in the early morning, but as it did on most days, by 10am we were shrouded in mist.  As we came nearer to the Lava Tower the temperature dropped dramatically and the surfaced resembled an alien planet, completely devoid of signs of life.  I could not see more than a couple meters in front of me and the elevation was felt by all of us as we went “pole pole.”  I was wearing more than 3 layers with the intense cold and at one point I stepped off the path for a bathroom break.  However, when I finished I had gotten turned around and everything around me looked the same, just different shades of gray boulders and rocks, atop a gray surface of pebbles and dirt.  The path was indistinguishable from the rest of ground and the mist was too dense to see through.  Luckily, I heard another group and followed the sound of their voices to re-find the path where I caught up with my group.  After lunch we continued rising until we reached Lava Tower.  When we asked our guide, Juma, about the history of Lava Tower he acted like he didn’t understand, shrugged and continued on.  Following this we took a pretty steep descent back down to where our camp would be.  Soon we were beneath the fog and could see again as the weather warmed with the drop in altitude and we started seeing some plants and trees again.  We also stopped at a stream to refill our water.  Waking up in the middle of the Christmas Eve night, I didn’t see Santa Claus, but I did see an incredible view in the clear night of the city of Moshi, lit up far below as well as the eerie outline of the mountain above.

The fog and cold were intense on day 3, hence me completely bundled up.

Mel, Me, and Hasmin at Lava Tower

Day 4 – A Christmas Hike: It was Christmas morning and fittingly it was freezing.  I kept all my warm clothes with me on today’s hike and our Christmas present for the day was a long, completely uphill trek of 13 km.  We started off crossing a running stream balancing on rocks to cross.  The stream looked shallow but when Mel went to dip her foot in she sank in up to her knee in mud.  Following this we scaled “The Great Barranco Wall,” which was the closest we came to rock climbing on the trek as we climbed vertically up using any crevice or available surface as foot and hand-holds with the stream further and further below.  Watching porters climb this was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.  After this was once again a steady march toward our final camp before the summit.  Looking out we continued to see fast moving clouds swirling around, moving like waves up and down the mountainside as we observed great plains around us, miles above the earth below.  We again stopped to get water in a stream and then continued on to our site for lunch.  After lunch we began an extremely slow walk that at times felt like I was just standing still.  The pace was literally putting one foot maybe 6 inches forward, stopping, then the other foot.  This continued for 6 hours until we reached our camp, exhausted from what was a strenuous 12 hour day of hiking and acclimating to the altitude.

The Real Kilimanjaro Water - filled straight from the mountain's tap

Day 4 along an expansive frozen plain

Day 5 – A Night Climb and Looking Down On the World:   We all gathered in the dining tent for tea and biscuits before heading out at 11pm.  Hasmin and I supplied the light from our headlamps as Juma led the way up a steep, winding trail along rock and loose gravel.  My legs were still sore from the long day of hiking we’d only just finished and the extra weight of all my clothing did not help.  As we made deep zig zags up the mountain we’d take brief moments to look up where stars filled the sky like I’d never seen before, the sky was so black but the stars were so bright.  Looking down out past the mountain we saw the lights of Moshi like some deep underwater city and for some reason I thought of Zeus on Mt Olympus watching the world below.  With the cold and altitude, my breathing became deep, loud, and labored to the point that Mel actually asked me if I wanted to use her inhaler.  I declined.  As much as my legs burned and my lungs ached by far and away the biggest challenge was mental fatigue – sleep deprivation.  I’d been averaging at most 3 hours of sleep a night on Kili and I’d hardly gotten a half hour nap before beginning this night climb.  The slow pace of our hiking kept putting me to sleep and I kept slipping and falling on the loose gravel.  Luckily on the trail you’re not right on any steep ledges, but you’re not far off either and I tried intensely to keep my focus, even undoing my balaclava and scarf at one point to try and use the cold air against my face to keep me awake.  I honestly don’t remember the last 3 hours of the climb to the peak mainly because I’m pretty sure I was sleep walking.

The Sunrise was magnificent

A view from of rest of the world as snow and ice was now present on the mountain

All I remember is at some point becoming aware of the glow off in the distance that started spreading into one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever seen.  You could see the sky ranging from absolute black, to the deepest blue, to an incredible amber, and then a solid dark red glow across the biggest horizon I’ve ever seen that stretched out beyond a sea of clouds, like it was the horizon for the entire universe and we had seats from up top.  And then Juma was pointing at me.  “You, you sit down.”  I looked around, we weren’t at the top yet, though I could see people up there.  “Why?” I asked.  “You need to take this.”  Juma started taking out the altitude sickness pills.  I didn’t do very well convincing him I didn’t need them when I fell over while trying to take a seat.  “I don’t have altitude sickness” I told him “I’m just sleepy tired.”  Eventually he put the pills away but I soon realized I wasn’t all there.  I felt like I was having an out of body experience and all my senses had gone numb.  I stood up and we started trekking.  I looked up and I could see the top, but it looked far, impossibly far, like a never ending staircase winding up further into the sky.  My legs moved but I couldn’t feel my feet on the ground and everything felt like it was in a dream.  Soon my vision got blurry to the point where I couldn’t see anything and my balance completely evaporated as I fell 3 times in 3 steps eventually just taking a seat on the gravel path only 50 meters from Stella Point.  Juma was talking to me but I couldn’t really understand what he was saying, nor was I really listening.  I was just looking out at the sunrise in the distance falling in and out of sleep.  Eventually, Juma came over and helped me up and I staggered in the most uncoordinated way possible to Stella Point where I looked out across at the top of Kili at the glaciers, the hard ice everywhere and took another seat wanting nothing more than to just sleep.  It was 7am and I was 5,685 meters high.  There was a green sign saying “You are here!”  I was on the snow capped peaks of Kili.  Juma just looked at me and said “you have to go down now.”

The top is covered in snow/ice year round

The three of us posing next to the official sign for Stella Point

Uhuru Peak, 200 meters higher than Stella Point where I was, is the highest point of Kili and Africa and at the time I didn’t really realize that I hadn’t reached the absolute peak.  I don’t know if that would’ve mattered, but I never did see it.  I took one last look around the top, at all of the ice, the crater, the endless horizon and then Juma was motioning me to start moving down.  Hasmin and Mel stayed with the other guide to go to Uhuru peak and Juma and I literally started skating down the loose gravel.  I was of course completely unbalanced and kept falling but Juma seemed oblivious to my very significant lack of coordination in my present state and would just look back and tell me to hurry down, that we needed to get down as fast as possible.  Eventually my mind started to come back a bit and I got the hang of it and we were soon moving at great speeds sliding in our boots over pebbles like skiing down the mountain.  What had taken us 7 hours to climb took us under an hour to get down.  My head still felt completely out of it and the closest thing I can compare it to is a concussion, like everything is cloudy and you just can’t put thoughts together and speech and conversation feel like they take more energy than you’ve ever used and balance is exceedingly difficult to maintain.  After a couple hours to rest back at the camp from the night before we all set off hiking yet again where we moved through thick fog, down through rocky upper echelons of Kili back into the forests of green walking along carved out rocky paths that were slippery with the consistent rainfall and our hiking poles to help us keep balance and take some of the stress off our legs.  Reaching camp that night I collapsed exhausted and slept through the night for the first time since I’d been on the mountain.

Some more views from the top

Day 6 – Back to Reality: My head was still out of it when I woke up the next morning, but at least I was well rested.  After a photo with all the porters we set off downhill and the forest quickly gave way to the jungle.  Ferns and thick trees canopied the walkway and we were covered in shade.  We reached our finishing point in the early afternoon.  Signed in and out and then left.  We met with Juma for dinner at 5:30 and to tip the porters and receive our certificates.  The Kili adventure was over.  I didn’t reach the very peak, but I didn’t regret it so much.  I saw all I wanted to see and although sleep deprivation may have kept me from the top, I was pretty close (200 meters below).  The next and last leg of Tanzania beckoned, a nice rest on the beaches of Zanzibar.

It takes a lot of people to climb Kilimanjaro, this is the crew that made our trek possible

The last day took us back down through jungle