Hakuna Matata

They ACTUALLY say that here, which we are extremely pleased about! We pulled into Springlands Hotel last night and it is beautiful. It's an oasis in a desert. With it's palm trees, pool and fountains, and the European style street lamps lining the paths, you would never know that just outside the gate lies a long, red, rugged dirt road, lined with tiny mud brick huts. Women with gigantic bundles on their heads effortlessly go about their day, while their dust covered children kick around an old, deflated inner lining of what was once a ball. The contrast is almost unsettling.

As Andrea and I started unpacking, she suddenly let out a blood curdling scream. Running out of the bathroom and totally expecting to see either a spider the size of a coconut or a severed appendage under her pillow, I found her staring down at her bag with a panic stricken look on her face. An entire section of her bag that contained her Malaria pills, altitude sickness pills (um, KIN-da important) and the worst of all, her deodorant..., had ripped off her bag and was now missing in action. Terrific start to the trip! After a dose of calm, (I had to slap her a few times to bring her back) we reported it to the front desk, who called the airport and so on... then went to have a Kilimanjaro pre-celebratory beer (yes, we are getting ahead of ourselves) with some nice gentlemen who are also climbing it tomorrow and just happen to be from Toronto... just down the street from us, in fact. A few bumps, but nothing we and by "we", I mean "Andrea", couldn't overcome. Everything is irie now. The airport, believe it or not, tracked down her pouch in Amsterdam and it should be here by tomorrow! We are also amazed.

Today we woke up and walked straight out the gates of the hotel to see Moshi in daylight. What we saw at the end of the red dirt road was a massive pale blue mountain with heavy white clouds swirling around the summit. We are going to be ON TOP of that in 3 days. I still cannot wrap my head around it. We stood there for an entire 10 seconds until a nice Masai Mara looking fella came over and politely demanded we give him $5. We slowly backed our way into the gate and decided to continue our awe from the upper terrace.

We forwent the shuttle into town and decided to rent bicycles instead. We walked to the bicycle rack that had about 12 bikes lined up and asked for four since we were riding in with the boys we'd met the night before. The bike guy unenthusiastically kicked a few tires and informed me, with a straight face even,that there were only three bikes. I looked at him, glanced at the 12 bikes and told him we needed four. "There are only three". I looked around to see if there was another group waiting for the other bikes. No one was around. In fact, a tumble weed, and three geckos when rolling by. "We need four". He sighed deeply, rolled his eye and said, "I will have to pump the tires then", obviously waiting for me to say "No, no, don't worry about it then!". What I said was, "We'll wait."

I guess it served me right for being stubborn as "horrendous" is a vast understatement to described the conditions of these road. It's dangerous to even WALK on them! Not the best idea for people who are expected to climb a mountain tomorrow. Somehow we made it into town. I have no idea how we made it back since as soon as we were spotted, a mere 15 men took on the duty of being our personal chaperons. Within 5 minutes, we'd accumulated such an entourage that cars were forced to make wide turns around us. We really should have been holding a detour sign. An hour of being pulled in every direction to see this man's shop or to buy this man's painting had us burning rubber to get back to the hotel. A few stops to buy fresh sugarcane on the road, compete with a giant herd of bulls for the road, and to take millions of pictures of the children who ran up to us screaming they wanted candy, which we gave them, and I still feel terrible about contributing to the oral hygenic demise of this poor village (we should have been handing out toothbrushes), and we were back safe and sound.

An hour debriefing with our Kili guide "Big"... or maybe it's "Giant" (whatever) "Baboon", which he insists we call him. Still not entirely sure I'm comfortable with that yet.. and we have the evening to pack and get hydrated. As I made my way to our room, I passed a Kili group staggering in through the gate from their climb. 16 out of 31 made it! Wonderful. Look at those odds.

Either way, this is it! We're on our way! Wish us luck and tune in in 6 days.

Hakuna Matata!