Tanzania - Day 2 of Kili Hike

Mti Mkubwa/Big Tree camp (9,137 ft) to Shira II (12,779 ft) Distance: ~9 miles

Today was a long day, but one that kept us interested because of the changing landscape.  We started out in the rainforest, then emerged onto the Shira plateau which sort of looked like the landscape of Arizona.

Since we had 9 miles of quality time together, it was also a great day to really get to know our guides.  Iddy was the head guide.  Issa and Nass were the two assistant guides we spent the most time with.  Abdulla was another assistant guide, but didn't talk much and seemed to be handling the porters most of the time.  (Although, when he was needed - Barranco Wall, summit night, he was there for us!)  Patrick is a porter/guide.  He has the responsibility of a porter (although I think he was carrying food because as the days went on, his load was lighter), but had gone through guide school so spent a good amount of time with us too.

Issa is a soccer fan so talked a lot of soccer with Matt.  Nas is a rap fan so we nicknamed him Long Legs Nass (shortened to LL Cool Nass) because he is really tall and Karla took two steps to his one.  Patrick was really friendly and was very interested to know what we thought of Tanzania.  We learned a lot about Tanzanian history from all of our guides - they were all very excited to share their backgrounds with us and were also very curious about our experiences in the US.

We stopped at Shira 1 for lunch.  Karla would have loved to stay there since today was a hard day of hiking for her.  She hadn't slept well since arriving in Africa and another 3 hours of hiking after lunch did not sound like fun.  However, that obviously wasn't an options since our tents were at Shira 2, so we all powered on.  It was also important to point out that our guides said it was only an hour and a half to 2 hours from shira 1 to shira 2.

About an hour from camp, it started to rain so we all got to try out our rain gear.  Luckily, it all worked and we kept dry.  :)  We arrived and camp and were thankful the porters got everything set up in time to throw our bags in the tents so they were kept dry too.

We were all exhausted from a long day, so it was dinner and then bedtime.  Although, one thing happened at dinner that lightened our exhausted spirits.  There was a tent beside our mess tent from another group/company.  We were chatting during dinner and suddenly heard odd sounds coming from that other tent.  The people in it were watching an, um, adult movie (if you get our drift).  Really?  How does that factor into your packing?  Hiking books?  Check.  Sleeping bag?  Check.  Rain gear?  Check.  Loading adult movies onto your ipad???  Seriously??  We got a really good laugh out of that one!