18th January

Three days of silence because I have'nt been able to access email, this is being transmitted by text with many thanks to Caroline Hall .

On Saturday, we drove for five hours in a blue coach through fertile farmland with corrugated roofs and people everywhere.  Men sitting under trees talking, vividly dressed woman shopping in markets or transporting massive branches of bananas on their heads, small children waving.  At one stop a child showed us a damaged chameleon he had in a bag.  Ally picked it up for a proper assessement, it sensed an ally and climbed up her arm into her hair.

We arrived for a quick lunchat the beginning of the Rongai route and signing in I nearly got away with becoming the oldest person to clib Kili at 105, but the park warden was older.

After lunch of bananas, avocados , cheese, peanut butter and bread, we took the path first through fir plantations, then rain forest, then heathland, lichen dripping from trees and stream tumbling over boulders; the route ended at our first camp and songs greeted us from our porters. We shared this camp with a large group of powerfully built South Africans.There wasn't much space,  we shared tents, tried to keep the mud out and keep warm.  The temparture plummets after sunset.

Yesterday we walked for about seven hours up through more heathland, wild thyme, sage, heather and flowers everywhere with views of Tanzania spread out like an intricate carpet below us.

Arriving completely soaked from a hailstorm the porters welcomed us again with more songs and dancing at the second camp.  It was on a windy hill side and bitterly cold.  Today we walked up steep, rocky ridges, passed trees burned by honey collectors, until reaching camp at lunchtime; the plants on the way becoming smaller as we got higher and the landscape increasingly lunar.  This camp's in a green lake below Malwenzi mountain.  We'll be here for two nights.  We've been walking very, very slowly to acclimatise and are now above 4,000 metres.  The air's thin and clear and as the sun sets last night we looked across a sea of clouds below.  The stars are breathtaking. 

A few personal messages from me:
Peter - Texts work!
Roan says which holiday are you on Erica?
Everyone wants you to know its bloody hard work.
Sam needs a less romantic version.
Here i s a joint effort - cold, cold, cold, headaches, smelly loos.  Lucy has snow blindness.  Diamox is giving everyone pins and needles.  The hail was horrible and drenching.  The porters are amazing, so's the food.  we're so slow we have the  mountain to oursleves.  No meal passes without pee and poo discussions and Lucy's 'She Wee'- we are getting to know each other that well!  This environment isn't in any respect for the faint hearted.  We're counting the camping nights left.............