I am back! After 5 flights and over 31 hours in the air, I am home. I am so grateful for: my amazingly supportive family and friends at home, my new friends and "family" in Michigan and Tanazania, for clean water, dependable electricity, plumbing, health care and for God's abiding love and care. He has sent loving people to help me continously through this trip and even right up until the last flight home. It will take me a while to sort through everything I have learned. In the meantime, I am looking forward to family time, story telling, picture posting, etc. I will continue to post for a while, but don't know if I will have internet next week. Stay tuned. :)
I tried posting this yesterday, but the Internet connection went down as I hit save. So, I'll try again. Got to this website and look under, I think it's called, "latest news and summits" in the lower left corner. There are tons of pictures of our climb. You can also check them out on Facebook under trek2kili
The most amazing week and a half of my life. First of all, I climbed Mt Kilimanjaro! I did not summit, nor did I regret that decision. I did get 4/5up, to Kibo, which is well above the clouds. Like many people, I got altitude sickness, so I was nauseas and ate little as a result. The porters who carry our duffles and the guides who walk with us and support and encourage us are so amazing. When we reached Kibo, they danced and sang as we approached camp. Many high fives and fist bumps all around. The photos of Kilimanjaro can not do it justice. I was not expecting the rugged arid places to be so beautiful. I suspect that my pictures, too, will not capture the experience
My Internet connection keeps cutting out, so my apologies for misspellings and lack of more d
We stayed at a lodge run by the Maasi people. Our cabin was round with a. Thatched roof and windows facing out onto a flood plain where elephants, lions and leopards roamed! When we wanted to leave our cabin to go to dinner, we had to stand on our porch and call our Maasai warrior to escort us because we were in the wild, and amount the animals. This morning we saw elephant and leopard tracks outside the cabins! Later we danced with the Maasai people. Tomorrow we start up Mt Kilimanjaro so I won,t be able to blog for 7 days. |
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September 2013
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