Hello everyone, this is Ben calling in with Team Hot Tang and the Blue Band. We’re doing great; we’re here at Camp Shira up on the Shira Plateau (at just over 12,000 feet, around 12,300 feet). And everyone’s doing great today, feeling really well up here.
We got in nice and early today, about 2 o’clock this afternoon, so we had lots of time to get moved into our tents here at Shira and just relax and enjoy each other’s company and drink lots of water and hot drinks throughout the day to keep ourselves hydrated.
Our hike was pretty beautiful today. We had clear skies when we woke up this morning and later in the afternoon the clouds started to come in a little bit and made it a little bit cooler, which is kind of nice and brought just some small rain showers in the afternoon. But that was once we were at camp here and under cover in the tents, so not a big deal; it cleared off this evening, as it usually does.
Just before dinner here we got some great views of Shira and Mount Meru down below here. Mount Meru is about/just over 15,000 feet and it’s situated just at the base of where the town of Arusha is. And another beautiful volcano that’s off in the distance. It’s been quite a nice evening here.
Again, everybody’s doing excellent here with the altitude so far. And I’m really stressing drinking a lot of water and taking care of our bodies as we bring them to around 15,000 feet tomorrow. So we’ll be breaking some records, I think, some altitude records for a lot of people here tomorrow, if not everyone.
And then actually we’ll head back down to our Camp 3 at Camp Barranco, which is slightly higher than here (at about 12,800 feet). So we’ll go up to 15 then down to 12,800. Tomorrow’s our longest hiking day; it’ll be upwards of eight hours or so to get to camp tomorrow, another beautiful hike tomorrow.
And we’ll let you know how that goes tomorrow. But everybody says “hello” to everyone following along. Talk to you soon.
