Summiting Mt Kiliminjaro, no passports at customs and more beautiful beaches.

The scams begin….

It took just one day in Tanzania for us to fall victim. Only a few dollars were lost in the brazen pre-dawn scam, but we quickly learnt that we’d left behind the relative innocence of Malawi and Mozambique, where people are yet to discover that Muzongo’s (white people) can be taken advantage of. As it turns out a security payment to ensure someone keeps an eye on your bags on a coach is not required.

Our next scam was potentially a series of scams, but we will never know…  Ali took our fancy above every other hustler selling ferry tickets to Zanzibar.   He was somewhat put off by our ability to check his hotel recommendations on the website ‘trip advisor’ on our phone while talking to him.  The scammers will have to develop new ways to get around the ability for travellers to instantly check hotel reviews and prices. As well as taking one of his hotel deals we ended up spending the afternoon with Ali who we took a liking to and seemed to be the man around town in Dar es Salam.

We thought we’d found a friend in Ali: the ferry was great; the hotel was clean; he took us to some awesome wooden carvings markets; and his mate Jack in Zanzibar really helped us out at customs at Zanzibar island…. 

We’d soon learn that Zanzibar Island (just 3 hours off the coast of Tanzania) is a semi-autonomous state, including passport control! This information would have been useful before we boarded the ferry with our passports securely at the Indian consulate for a week for some very slow visa processing.  

Disembarking we both had panic written all over our faces when we noticed the armed customs offices. It was only through some fast-talking by Duncan and later Jack that a ‘handshake fee’ for our offence was approved and access to Zanzibar granted.

A week later we returned to Dar es Salam and met up with Ali to help organise our transport to Arusha.  Still buddy, buddy until the next day when a furious Pip called him from a crowded bus that hadn’t moved from the depot for over two hours to inquire why the 40,000 luxury coach tickets said 20,000 and the bus was a long way from first class.  Ali simply replied that ‘I’m business man’, which is same, same but different to what he’d been telling us while we hung out - “I am a businessman and I know what you guys want.  I’ve been to Australia and Europe.  I don’t rip people off. Not good business”. 

And we are suckers.

On the phone!

Are we still in Africa?

Zanzibar has a reputation as a party island with postcard perfect beaches, so we were a bit taken back when we arrived in the capital Stone Town after finally making it through customs.   We weren’t sure if we’d gone back in time or arrived in the Middle East (or both).  Either way we quickly covered up Pip’s limbs and grabbed our cameras to wander around thin alleyways, trying to take in a culture so different to anything we’ve ever experienced before. 

Women in full burqa, or at least headscarf looked so elegant and mysterious in the ancient alleyways, lined with men selling coffee and women selling Zanibar’s famous spiced foods.  It was only some of the younger men in their western clothing that ruined the movie scene, but we were still mesmerised and totally fascinated by what we saw.

Two days turned into four. A tour of the old slave markets, lead to a half-day history lesson about Zanzibar, the slave trade and local Muslim culture.

Slave markets

Party Pip & Duncan in training

With nearly two months of early nights, Party Pip & Duncan were itching to be let out and. With a big beach party in the north of Zanzibar in a few days we decided to go into training. Managing to find a bar in extremely Islamic Stone Town was no easy feat, but three hours north up the coast was another story. 

Nyungi beach was unlike the chilled out beach spots of our trip so far, with mega-hotels lining the entire coast, all jammed with Italians on summer break.  Watching supposed ‘masai warriors’ cruising the beach to sell their wares and chatting fluently in Italian, took away the romance that the place once would have had, but was amusing to watch.  We haven’t been to the Serengeti yet, but there seem to be a lot of chiefs and tribal elders under 30….

A few blocks back from the beach in the local town is where we called home for a few nights, at James Place who had worked at the Dee Whey RSL in Sydney. Now firmly in backpacker savings mode we had a bottle of vodka, some water and a few limes and got carried away talking about Sydney with our host.  James was off to a beach party with a cover charge, so in our budgeting ways we decided to save our money for the big party the next night.  Somehow this plan ended up costing us more as we got bored and wandered down to a beachfront tourist bar, before later following our ears not once but twice to local bars, the first where we weren’t very welcome, but the second we ended up mates with pretty well everyone in there (mostly due to them being so impressed with our white man rhythm).  Sadly all our training would not be put to the test, with the party vibe gone the next day…

An unnecessary tragedy

We were met by a sombre and bizarre scenes when we went to the beach to swim off our hangovers.  Thousands of people, many in full burqas were walking slowly north along the pure white sand.  Duncan recalled hearing something on our local pub-crawl, about a boat crash and we soon learned the shocking news that a night ferry had sunk, with as many as 1000 people aboard. 

While eating breakfast in the town we saw two men being stretchered past, saturated and clearly very weak.  A little dazed and confused we joined the slow procession of people along the sand at low tide, which enabled the people to pass in front of all the mega-hotels, where guests looked out stunned at the scene.  Observing the personal tragedy of so many people was not for us, so we left the surreal scene of local fishing boats bringing in a few survivors, but mostly bodies from the ocean.  The official figure released by the government was 195 souls lost, but everyone we speak to says the figure is bound to be much higher.

Fake guests

The mood was very grim around the local town where we were staying, but while taking a shortcut to the road through the Hilton it appeared that for the resorts it was business as usual.  Still a bit dusty, a holiday from reality appealed to us and we quickly jumped in the sprawling Hilton pool to finally swim off our hangovers.  We enjoyed the facilities, but stopped short of putting drinks on ‘our room’, although we did chat to the swim-up-bar tender for a while.

Weary trekkers almost at summit

The toughest thing we’ve ever done

“We’ve both done some treks at altitude and are pretty fit” we’d tell people when they’d suggest that climbing Mt Kilimanjaro would be incredibly tough.  We neglected to mention that our training had consisted of two months on the beach drinking beer, or that when Duncan previously climbed the lower Mt Kenya he’d suffered quite bad altitude sickness.

Cut to being woken in our freezing sub-standard tent, in our 1980’s sleeping bags at 11pm for tea and biscuits before summiting Africa’s highest peak. 

'I don't have altitude sickness, I'm just tired' Band

Pip should have known something was up when old ‘hungry eyes’ wouldn’t touch any food, but she was eating cream biscuits like a 12 year old having a midnight snack at a slumber party. In fact hungry eyes needed encouragement to eat the past few meals that were served in our tent by our guide or one of eight porters (we never figured out what they were all carrying!).

After six days of walking 7-8 hours a day we were finally going to summit the highest stand alone mountain in the world and the highest mountain in Africa. All we needed to do was brace for the minus 10-degree temperature outside and see if Duncan’s insistence that ‘I feel totally normal, I’m just really tired and probably have a tummy bug’ was true.

Rasta hat out for ne of the few fine mornings of the trek - no
beanies in Tanzania it seems

Stepping out of the tent we were amazed to see the stars and rising moon out for the first time all trek.  At 4300m they were stunning, as was the line of head torches slowly ascending the mountain above base camp. “Poorly, poorly” (slowly, slowly or pole pole for those Swahili traditionalists) our guide John said for the zillionth time that week. 

Poorly, poorly was right, with Duncan’s denial of not having altitude sickness abandoned within the first hour for a very slow ascent. Just two hours in to the eight-hour climb Dunc was totally stuffed and taking just ten steps at a time, which quickly turned to just two or three before gasping for air.  It was obvious he was generally in trouble when he asked what the ‘procedure is for getting down if I can’t make it’, which is very out of character for the competitive Mr Band who could have been pro at most sports (he tells me).

With temperatures well below zero, Pip who feels the cold in Sydney, put everything she had into trying to keep warm without affecting the mindset of Duncan to keep going, by employing a technique of staying behind Duncan (so not to appear stronger and impact his Leo ego) and jogging on the spot in the frequent breaks.

The first rays over Africa

Eight hours later with dawn just starting to creep over the 360 degree horizon, our snail procession was close to the summit.  Convinced she was on the verge of hypothermia, Pip trotted off ahead for the first time, stopping to take photos and double back to put in some words of encouragement to Duncan who impressively had continued for the past six hours with pure mental strength and nothing in the tank.

Perhaps Duncan isn't the only one with altitude
sickness.....

Back at sea level we had made signs to say thank you to Duncan’s Granny for our wedding present, which had enabled us to climb Kili. John our guide suggested we move to another position to take another photo with the sign, which was almost the end of the road for Duncan.  Turning to face Pip with pure pain etched on his face he whispered ‘I just want to stop and go down’. If his voice box and tear ducts weren’t frozen, we are convinced there would have been some water works and loud sobs.

Some more encouragement and we made it to the summit.  We both stopped to marvel at the beauty of the glacier, surrounding moonscape and the rising sun over the valleys below.  Duncan, who later revealed he only pushed on because he couldn’t have his wife get one up on him in adventure travel, was thankfully at least able to partly share in the moment. 

12 tough hours after leaving our tent, we collapsed in our tent at base camp for a promised two-hour sleep, only to be woken an hour later and told we had to leave early because it was snowing.  So another four hours of walking (in the snow and then rain) we were at our final campsite, totally exhausted and looking forward to our first shower in a week the next day. 

Over seven days we’d walked through rainforest, the heath zone with amazing alpine flowers, the alpine zone with almost other worldly landscapes and finally the summit zone with not much aside rocks and glaciers and very little air.  We were dirty, tired, but stoked that we’d both been able to make it to 5895 meters above sea level and finally back at 1800m Duncan was glad to have the use of his lungs back.

Next stop safari….. just need to find our suits!

p.s. Thanks for the emails of news at home…. keep them coming.  We eat three meals a day together and occasionally need some new conversation material! Also Lucy thanks for the tip we have now fixed the blog so people can comment …. keep it clean!

More Photos

Stone Town, Zanzibar

Local butcher

Duncan can't resist a potato based treat...or 10

Lining up for some perfume

Zanzibar seafood extravaganza

'Excuse me is the internet working?'

Mt Kilimanjaro Trek

Day 2 with peak in the distance...spirits still high.

Day 5 - a bit more rock climbing than expected

Ultimate nerd attire

Just the three courses for breakfast in the tent

Rain coats got a good work out most days

Looking back at Mt Kili after summit - 5 days up, just 2 down!

Snow is all we needed in our 13th hour of walking on summit day

The trooper walks down from the summit at a snail pace

Not all groups ate in their tents...some ate off steel tables the
 poor porters carried up for them!

A rare treat of hot water to wash the face...then soak very soar feet

Unusual scenery in the 'heath zone'