Pedalling through Tanzania – Where is the mountain?

Posted on 27 July 2009

We had done well. We were 60 kilometers from Moshi and on our fifth day back on the road.

We still had three days to rest before Kilimanjaro. There was a milestone about to be reached on our tour, 6000km. It was overcast and the clouds darkened the closer we came to Moshi. It started raining while Marc was fixing his second puncture for the day. We started to laugh. Nothing could bring us down. We were tired and cold, but somewhere in those dark clouds was our goal: Kilimanjaro.

Wet, but high spirited, we pulled out the present from Caroline. It was celebration time. We cracked opened the bottle of Jack Daniels, decanted some into Marc’s hip flask and sipped to every milestone for that day. We achieved 6000km. It was the first day on we had rain while on the road! Marc had hit his first double digit puncture and taken the lead on the puncture front. We even toasted to stiff legs. We were on top of the world, but Kilimanjaro kept hiding behind its blanket of clouds.

We reached Moshi smiling and met Emmanuel, our contact from Vodacom. He showed us around and we found good accommodation at the Safari Lodge. Unpacked, showered and relaxed we sat on the roof of the Safari Lodge drinking beers, waiting for the sun to burn away the clouds hiding Kilimanjaro. We kept asking the manager of the Safari Lodge, Tino, where the mountain was. Both Marc and I were impatient and had been peering into the grey clouds to catch a glimpse of Kilimanjaro since we left. It was the same as early that morning – just grey.

Caroline arrived from Arusha. She sat with us on the roof impatiently pointing out something which could possibly be Kili. At sunset the clouds started to disappear, and we all dropped our jaws as we noticed Mawenzi and Kibo peaks unfolding. The glaciers on Kibo started to glisten at twice the height we expected them to be. We all felt like we had bitten off more than we could chew. Kilimanjaro showed herself towering four kilometres higher than we were. As quickly as it appeared it was gone again into the clouds. We went to sleep challenged by the mountain.

It was Kili time. Everything was to be organised for the summit. We hired our kit, organised to bring our starting date forward a day, Caroline changed her route to join us and we sat down at lunch to relax, knowing all we had to do now is deposit the money into Zara Tours account online. We toasted to a hard day’s work and to relaxing till Sunday.

A simple online transfer can go horribly wrong if you bank in South Africa. We could not transfer dollars into Zara’s account – we needed a price in Rands which was impossible to get. We only had three days to get the cash in, so transferring from South Africa was out of the question and anyway it was weekend: no chance. Getting frustrated and despondent, we receieved a helping hand from a friend. Caroline deposited the money from her British account, saving our South African hides from a possible disappointment. All we had to do is carry her up the mountain and deposit the cash back into her account once we could. It’s strange how the rose amongst the thorns always finds a solution.

We booked into the Springlands Hotel and barely slept a wink because of the excitement. We were going up Kilimanjaro.






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