Mt. Kenya - Day 5

The plan was to get up by 6:30 and leave camp about an hour later. It didn’t really happen that way but we were on the trail a little after 8am.

The hike to the park gate was uneventful. My legs were tired and my feet were sore. We were not in a huge hurry, but we also knew we had a long drive ahead of us to get back to Nairobi at a decent time.

We took the time to observe the animal tracks on the trail. I’m not good at identifying them. But there were some that appeared to be lion tracks. Some hyena tracks. They were fresh enough to have been either during the night or earlier that morning. There are definitely lions in the area and there were recent sightings. But there isn’t much of a history of them attacking hikers in this area so we didn’t worry about it much.

We arrived at the gate with a sense of accomplishment (and fatigue). It is customary to not only tip the guide and porters, but to do so in a somewhat formalized manner. This happened after the Kili hike where they even had a little ceremony, sang, and gave us certificates. This time the porters lined up and we all had to express our gratitude for their support over the past five days. We had to announce the amount that we were giving them (which was a bit weird) and present the cash to the guide.

swollen and sun burnt hands

After twenty years in East Africa, I’m familiar with the frequent desire for/custom of ceremony. Though I grew up differently, I have learned to accommodate some of these things I’m uncomfortable with.

tips for the porters

We were delayed a bit getting on the road. It wasn’t clear what was going on but Lance said something about a tree blocking the road. Eventually, the four of us, two guides and all of our packs squeezed into a small Toyota and off we went. After about twenty minutes of bouncing down the road towards the town of Chogoria, we found what appeared to be the tree that had been blocking the road. It was cut and moved aside by this point, but the culprit appeared to have been an elephant. They are notorious for knocking down trees and this stretch of the road had tons of fresh elephant dung. Mystery solved.

After another fifteen minutes or so, we came upon the van that we used in our drive from Nairobi to Chogoria. In the interest of time, it had made its way up the hill to collect us. It also allowed the little Toyota to turn around and retrieve the porters. Unlikely that they all would have fit in the little thing but stranger things have happened.

We stopped in Chogoria on the way out and decided to have some lunch. It was fast and cheap and allowed us to avoid traveling on empty stomachs.

I made the mistake of sitting in the front seat. I have a hard time watching the road when a driver has vastly different driving instincts from my own. This guy seemed to be in no hurry and was frequently busy on his phone. Kenyans tend to be pretty aggressive drivers but this guy was everything but. It’s like he was being paid by the hour and was trying to drag this out as long as he could.

craziness in the backseat

An even worse offense was his choice in music. Most of the trip we were subjected to 80s-90s cheesy ballads including Lionel Ritchie, Luther Vandross, Celine Deon, etc. My apologies to anyone who is a fan, but I think it’s the worst era in history of music – like several hours of fingernails scraping a chalkboard. Africa, or at least East Africa, seems to have adopted these songs since you hear them everywhere. When we go to the coast, our hotel always plays this crap. I had previously thought it was because Africans think Westerners like it. I don’t know. It seemed like it was this guy’s playlist. Anyway, it’s an alternative to waterboarding.

We arrived home a little after 5pm. We dragged our dirty selves up to our apartment and began to sort through tons of dusty hiking equipment. It was indeed a successful trip, in spite of the fact that we didn’t all make it to the summit. It’s now a race to see what lasts longer – the soreness in my legs and feet or the crappy songs going through my head.  Hopefully neither last too long.