Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in here with Team 8 on Kilimanjaro, Team name: Hot Tang and the Blue Band. Not sure if you got that there, seems like it might’ve cut out. Our team name is Hot Tang and the Blue Band. Our team name comes from the sugary Tang drink here that we had this evening, it’s part of our hot drinks. And Blue Band is the margarine spread that we have here, the name brand of that. So Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band, here we are.
We’re doing great here (at just 10,000 feet) here at our first camp. We had a beautiful hike in today, about six hours in total up to Machame Camp here; we started at Machame Gate (at about 5,800 feet) this morning.
And we had a couple hour drive from the hotel this morning and got to the gate, got checked in with the National Park Service here and met some of our Tanzanian crew, that was heading up with us today, some of the guides and also some of the porters.
And it was a beautiful day on the way to the mountain. We actually got one of the best views I’ve ever seen of the mountain. It was very clear today, hardly a cloud in the sky this morning as we were approaching the mountain in the vehicles. And it was nice to be able to see the objective before we got here.
Nice and warm as we were hiking up today, and then the clouds started to build and we had just a very quick rain shower, but not enough for us to even need to put on rain jackets or umbrellas or anything. So we stayed dry and stayed a little cooler with the cloud cover and made it up here to camp in good time.
Everybody’s feeling good. We just finished up a delicious pepper steak dinner for the meat eaters and had a vegetable plate along with potatoes for the vegetarians here.
Tomorrow we’re going to hike up to the Shira Plateau that will be our next camp (and that’s at about 12,300 feet) so we’ll be getting up into the higher altitudes tomorrow.
Again, everybody’s doing great, says “hello” and “hi” back to everyone following along at home, family and loved ones. Talk to you soon, talk to you tomorrow.
