Horombo to Marangi

We were woken at 6 am and had a quick breakfast of porridge, baked
beans, eggs and tea before packing as our tents were dismantled around
our ears. A large pile of donated clothing was listed, secretly
numbered and as the porters chose numbers, given away. Moba,
responsible for water, ended up breakdancing in a Chelsea Football
Club towel given by Sam. The porters and guides sang and danced for
the last time and we started the seventeen mile walk back to the park
gate at Marangi.
It was a beautiful morning with clear skies and clouds in the valleys
below us to the south and as we descended the earth came alive. From
the barren landscape at Kibo, the Horombo campsite had clusters of
Senecio Kilimanjari looking as incongruous as plants in a garden
centre. We walked and slowly more and more flowers reappeared; white
heather, clumps of elegantly long, pale green grasses; longer grasses,
with seed heads golden in the sun; tiny violets, impatiens, scabious,
bright yellow bushes. We crossed bridges over small streams as the
country to our right stretched out into endless blue valleys. The path
continued rockily through fields of more flowers, passed grassy
dormant volcanos and hills wooded with Erica Arborea and Phillippa.
Suddenly in our descent birds started singing and the air became
scented. I was stung by a bee while taking a photograph. In the arid,
majestic landscape of Kibo, the occasional dead butterfly seemed like
a message from another world. The contrast couldn't have been
greater. We continued from open moorland into rainforest. Trees
dripped with lichen, the forest pulsed with life and the sunlight
became patchy as the trees grew higher. We all felt it was the most
beautiful walk we'd ever been on. It then became the most magical as
we watched a colony of Colobus monkeys playing in the trees over our
heads, their long white tails almost indistinguishable from the beards
of lichen. Thunder before a lunch of sardine stew in trilaterally
constructed park buildings at Mandara. In wet weather gear we
continued walking through the forest in the rain. Wild mangoes
decaying beside the path, a black land crab, a tame colony of blue
monkeys with babies who threw fruit at us.
Then the familiar blue Ferrari disguised as a bus. Two hours later,
the hotel. I unpacked, repacked, organised until I couldn't bear it
any longer and showered.

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