Day 2

At 6:45 we got a knock on our tent, it was our waiter Hamed "Good Morning, hot tea to drink". So we opened the tent, he handed us two mugs and poured us some hot tea. Then about 15 minutes later Hamed came back again and said "hot water for wash". This meant there were two red bowls outside our tent for us to clean up. After we washed up, he calls us into the mess tent for breakfast. There we were served porridge, toast, eggs and sausage/hot dog/pepperette type things. It may seem like a good breakfast, but it was very, VERY hard to stomach. I managed to get a few bites of porridge, and I'm not talking Maple Brown Sugar Quaker Oats, mmm, that would have been great. This porridge was a very odd colour and texture, along with a very weird taste. The toast smelt like smoke. I think they just held it over a burner to toast it, just the smell made me want to gag. It would have been fine if we had stuff to put on it, but we didn't have anything...just plain toast. I could only have a few bites of the eggs and the meat. The guys were able to eat fine, I don't think Christine ate much of anything; she couldn't even look at the porridge. So after that ordeal, we are really hoping for a different breakfast tomorrow, we finally started our hike around 9.

Today was not any easier, and I've already had moments where I thought that this was just way too hard, too soon! But I realized its best not to dwell on the days ahead and take it one day at a time. So on and on we walked. Our guides taught us the phrase 'baba kubwa' which meant super duper. So they would ask us 'Everyone baba kubwa?' and we would reply 'baba kubwa'. I asked if there was another option, because honestly am I ever going to feel super duper? They didn't respond, so I resorted to giving a thumbs up if I was ok, and if I was struggling a simple grunt would do. Very rarely could I shout out 'baba kubwa'. Our hike to Shira camp took about 4 hours. Christine and I have been feeling pretty weak today, due to our lack of appetite, and Dan and Rob have been feeling great so far.

Our guides thought it would be a good idea to take us on an additional hike this afternoon to Johnsell's Point at 3962m to help us acclimatize. I wasn't too keen on the idea, once you make it to camp you kinda want to stay there and relax. We hung around for a bit in the mess tent, wondering when we would be going or what the plan was. 

The mess tent

Finally around 5:30 Shabaz came and said we should get going before it gets dark. They said the hike would take about 3 hours, so we knew it would be dark before coming back. Rob asked if we should take our head lamps and they said we wouldn't need them, and so we didn't. This hike was hard, and boy did I struggle! I had a lot of trouble breathing, and I had to stop a few times to try to catch my breath. All along I was looking at the top of the hill thinking almost there, almost there. Then I realized we were headed towards a different peak, which seemed much further away, and a lot more steep. So that was really discouraging but eventually we did make it to the top, and the view was beautiful. I didn't think I could make it, so it felt good to get there. We looked around a bit, then started down...and it got dark real fast. This made for a very frustrating hike. It was steep and slippery, so because I couldn't see anything I fell- again, and again, and again. I was getting so angry at the thought of breaking my ankle on Day 2. They saw I was struggling so gave me one of the only headlamps available, which helped a bit. But boy was I fuming; I did NOT enjoy that part whatsoever, and the lights from the camp seemed so far away. We did eventually make it back close to 9 and had supper. We were served zucchini soup, which was good. Then there was a huge plate of rice with some vegetable sauce to go over it. I skipped the rice and sauce, just couldn't do it. After supper we were in bed by 9:45, had a pretty chilly night but dressed warm enough to sleep well.