Loading the truck.

From the tour itinerary:

Day 1: MACHAME GATE to MACHAME CAMP
9,400’ ~2865m ? 6.8 mi ? 5-7 hrs
After a restful night and an enjoyable breakfast at the hotel, you will be met by your Climb Kili guide and other mountain crew where we will transfer you from the hotel to the Machame Gate. We now leave the park gate and walk through the rain forest on a winding trail up a ridge. Lower down, the trail can be muddy and slippery. Gaiters and trekking poles are a good idea here. At Machame Camp your tent will be set up and personal belongings will be ready for you as well as dinner.

So! It’s finally here. Wake up, breakfast, struggle and mostly fail to remember names from the night before. Then we pile into a big Landcruiser looking thing and head off. After a couple hours we’re there, at Machame gate, where the adventure begins. Well, where a lot of standing and waiting begins. And we all signed in at a little window, which was kinda fun, though required everyone to rummage around their packs to find their passport numbers, which are seemingly impossible to memorize. Then we eat a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Somehow, 17 grown men split a single jar of peanut butter. They weren’t large sandwiches.

No pushing.

After lunch, we meet all the other guides.And then we start to walk! At this point, we’re in a pretty jungly area. The trail is really wide, and everybody is pretty excited, but we’re going slow. The refrain we’re always told and tell each other is pole pole– “slow, slow.” We’re not to tire ourselves out. We go slowly. It’s for the best. I agree.

So we walk and walk and then we come to a clearing and we get our first glimpse of the mountain we’re supposedly climbing. It looks impossibly far away, and my budget camera can barely even register it, but it’s there. And we’re excited and we take a ton of pictures. A few minutes walking later we’re at our camp for the night, where we’re greeted by our porters. There’s approximately 3 porters/dude, but one dude in particular will always be carrying your stuff ahead of you every day.

First view of the mountain. You can just barely see it.

Mine’s name was Veus. He was great- not just cause he carried my stuff for me, which is obviously great, but he always found me when I showed up at the camp at the end of the day’s hike and enthusiastically showed me to the tent where he’d put my stuff. He was about 5’6″ and 120 pounds, maybe 20? And every day he would carry my stuff for me, leaving me with just a small backpack filled with water and rain gear.

We ate dinner in our mess tent, which is a big orange and white dome thing that you’ll see a lot of in these photos. Then we went to bed, where I discovered my sleeping bag wasn’t quite up to the task. Whoops.