Jul 2006

After Kilimanjaro, i was well ready for a week of chillin on Zanzibar. The boat trip across from Zanzibar was slow, but the views of the east african coast and islands were truly spectacular. There were so many small islands that looked like paradise desert islands. Before heading across the Paje on the east coast, i toured stone town with its amazing architecture.

I arrived at Paje in time to see the moon rise across the indian ocean. Paje is like a slice of heaven. My hotel Paje by night is like a beach with little bungalows all surrounding the bar, restaurant and health spa. It was so much fun sitting in the bar and chatting to all the people especially the waiters. I've never met people who are so laid back - it reminded me of the people on the Malibu adverts - they're seriously easy going!

Chilling on the beach was lush whilst i recovered from Kilimanjaro, as it was so pretty and swimming in the gorgeous turquoise ocean was lush, but zanzibar has a lot to do, so i went snorkelling, scuba diving, into Jozani forest to see the Colubus monkeys and over to Prison Island to see the giant tortoises.

Leaving Zanzibar was not something i did not want to do, but sadly my time was up and so was my money, so i headed back to Nairobi to fly home......sadly zanzibar concludes this years summer adventure, so i guess i'll just have to plan the next.

One of my lifes ambitions is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa and one of the worlds largest volcanoes. I mean its some achievement to climb it, so i did.

I was so lucky to have such a nice group and such a fantastic set of guides and porters, because i know i would never have made it to the top of the mountain without them.

The first 4 days were pretty easy. I was really lucky that i didn't suffer from altitude sickness at all, the food was really good and apart from it being a bit cold at night i was fine. We had pretty good walking weather and it was surprisingly warm considering we were walking above the clouds from 1700m - 4600m.

The penultimate day of our trek, was the day that we attempted the summit and boy was it tough. We started at midnight and walked in a zig zag up a 3km scree slope of a 1 in 3 gradient for 6 hours. - Its a lot harder than it sounds and i'm so glad i did it in the dark otherwise i would not have thought it possible. To make matters worth, once you pass 5200m, there is less than half the density of oxygen than there is at sea level, so its tough. Its basically like walking up a height of 3 empire state buildings with only one lung. The altitude finally got to me when i reached Jamaica rocks at 5400m, where i started vomitting, but luckily that was it.

I made it to the top at 8.15am on 11 July. The view of the glaciers up there was amazing, you just had to look beyond all the people keeling over and vomitting around you.

Descending the peak, Kibo was almost as tough as getting up it as it involve scree skiing down 3km, which is really tough on the calf muscles.- i was exhausted, but there was no rest for the wicked. after an early lunch, we had another 4 hours walking down hill to get to our last camp on kilimanjaro, which totalled 15 hours of walking that day.

Having decided that Nairobi looked rather boring i decided to splash out $260 to go on safari. We headed off on the 7 hour van journey to Masai Mara at 7.30am - which is way to early for a trip which is supposed to be a holiday. Getting out of Nairobi was a nightmare and i have decided that Nairobi really is not as nice as it seems in the centre. There really are hundreds of slums on the outskirts and the main road out of town barely qualifies as a track.

Well the 7 hour journey was definitely worth it. The views of the rift valley from the top of the hills surrounding it were breath taking. We were driving down on a cloudy overcast morning but it was still pretty incredible.

There was a lot of wildlife on the way to the national park, but inside it was incredible. There were whole herds of elephants, giraffe, zebra, gazelle, Lions, Lionesses etc...

We even saw a crocodile when we went down to a river to look at the Hippopotami. I'm kicking myself that i didn't take binoculars with me because the cheetahs were really hard to spot in the long grass.

Our camp was just outside the national park which was a bit scary, but it was really cool because it was actually run by a masai village, so the masai men guarded the camp and sat round a campfire and had a chat with us during the evenings. They invited us in to their village one day, gave us a tour and made us dance with them which was really embarassing. I drank some of the Masai beer they offered me aswell and boy was it strong! It was more like whiskey than beer.

On day 3 of the safari, we decided that jeeps were for tourists and hit the mara on mountain bikes instead. Not wanting to risk being eaten alive we thought it would be safer to explore the area just outside the national park. It was incredible, without the jeep the animals all seemed intrigued by us interesting creatures travelling on 2 wheels. The best part was when we rode right past a sleeping lion. We had no idea it was there until our guide at the rear of the group pointed out that we were about 5 metres away from the lion. The picture is truly awesome, but i was cacking myself, cause it turns out it wasn't really sleeping. Needless to say we got away fast.