Kilimanjaro re-post: Day 2 on the Mountain

Day 2 on the Mountain- September 3, 2010

Woke up early this morning to find Dad already up and rummaging around. We got up and dressed, packed our bags,  then went to eat breakfast. We got started around 6:30. We took a slow pace, which I was grateful for because today was really steep and difficult. 

Dad with the heather fields

The moorland is rugged and barren, nothing like the beauty of the rain forest. I didn't love today nearly as much as yesterday, although it wasn't terrible. It was 4 hours straight up essentially. Dad loved it, he chattered away happily. When I'm uncomfortable or tired, I clam up and keep to myself. Dad talks more. "Oh, how beautiful all this is! This rugged beauty! I am loving today! It's so like a metaphor for life! Hard, but you make it through!" And on and on. I couldn't help but laugh out loud a few times, he was so cheerful and I was so... not. Some parts had some beautiful vistas but most of the time I was focused on getting up, not so much turning around and looking at where we'd come from.

Hiking above the clouds over huge boulders.

I started counting my steps in sets of 8. "One, two, three, four..." and so on. Helped me get my mind off of the incline. When I felt like I wanted to stop, I'd force myself to finish the set. Usually at that point, I decided to do one more... and one more... and then I was at the top of a huge hill. It seemed, however, than every time we got to the top of one cliff, we could see 8 more looming above us. We scaled this rock face and wound our way around this cliff when it started to rain. Cold, wet, and tired I wasn't in the best mood when we finally got to camp, though I don't think many noticed. I'm usually pretty good at keeping that in check, I just get really quiet.

Reading back at camp, trying to get warm.

I had a little bit of a headache due to the drastic change in altitude ( we went up to 13,000 feet today... Timp is about 11,750) so I read my book while I warmed up then took a nap. Felt immensely better. General made us this amazing carrot and ginger soup. It was so good. It's colder at this camp for sure and there are these huge crows everywhere you go with white bellies that caw every three seconds. Kind of want to strangle some of them, what an annoying bird. We are hiking close to a group of 33 Scottish kids that are hiking for charity. They're all about my age. I like talking to them and mimicking their accents. One girl told me a bunch of them were already down with altitude sickness which was humbling. So far I've been feeling okay. She said she had a really sore throat. I asked her if she had any lozenges and she said no. I found some in my bag and asked another girl to give them to her because I couldn't find her. Hope she gets them. We've got to help each other up this mountain, I'm sure of it. 

I've been sleeping well. Dad hasn't been as much. When it was time for dinner, neither of us were very hungry but Sifuel says that the altitude can affect your appetite and they we need to force ourselves to eat, which we did. General made us another kind of soup with dinner that was a pumpkin something or other and it was amazing. I think anything would taste amazing after today's hike but seriously, General makes the best soup I've ever had. Tonights was some sort of pumpkin base and it tasted like Thanksgiving.