The top ten reasons why climbing Mount Kilimanjaro rocks:
1. It's a BIG rock, biggest in Africa
2. 5895 metres at the summit, in fact. We ascended over 4000 m of those. And back down those same in about 24 hours. Getting up, they insist "pole" which means "slow down, you silly whitey"
3. over 60 km of hiking
4. think of how good it feels to get seven days of dirt off. in someone else's shower.
5. feels like a calgary weather pattern, with a thirty degree temperature change within a short period. rain then sleet then dense sun then pelting hail - all in the same day
6. watching the sun rise over massive glaciers, what's left of them. they predict their melting within the decade from global warming. but the point is - we started the final six hours of ascent at midnight in order to get there for the event. huddled and shuddered at Uhuru peak for about ten minutes, and then ran down. feeling short of breath, nauseous, and disoriented from the oxygen level - about half what I prefer.
7. it's not a toilet if it's just a hole in the floor of a shed
8. down-filled booties are the coolest invention ever. too bad they've now seen the floor in the shed, and will have to be purged of all evil before I put them back on my feet.
9. someone else does a week's worth of meal planning, gluten-free, and insists on tea-time in between. the food was better than that at the fancypants lodges on safari!
10. we never have to do it again, unless there's amnesia involved in oxygen-deprivation and we forget that it was the MOST physically strenous event our bodies have ever suffered....
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