Our head guide, Calvin, met us at our hotel at 8:30am this morning. It was tough getting out of bed because we didn’t arrive at the hotel until after midnight last night. He has been a guide on Kilimanjaro for the last 12 years, and only 5 groups haven’t made the summit, so the pressure is on. He grew up in Moshi, but now lives with his wife and two daughters in the next major town called Arusha. Both his parents passed away very recently.
He walks us through the route that we’ll take then asks to check our gear, item by item. We had to pull everything out of our bags. We were thankful that we were forced to do this because there were a few items we needed to rent, including sleeping bags and hiking poles. With all the boxes checked, he gave us a mini pep talk before he left.
