Tanzania, December 2006

We drove west from Arusha, narrowly avoiding countless collisions with people, carts, cars, and trucks on the way out of town. We turned onto a smooth, fast road with a perfect surface punctuated every so often with drainage crossings with steep slopes on both sides, threatening to pitch the unsuspecting speeding driver into a ditch. After passing the outskirts of the town of Mto wa Mbu we turned onto a gravel road and quickly left the civilization we’re used to. Pretty soon we saw some giraffes – then some zebras and wildebeest, and gazelles, and ostriches...all kinds of animals. Thomas occasionally veered off the rough road we were on and drove straight across the plain to take us closer to game we saw in the distance. There were also dozens of Maasai herds of cattle, sheep, and goats. The goats especially, usually with kids herding them, seemed to spread across the road and then scatter as we approached, the kids seeming happy to gather up the goats in our wake. It seemed like we saw a lot of animals, but that was only because we hadn't yet seen anything - after our later experiences those first viewings were nothing to get excited about.

We reached our campsite for Saturday night (and enjoyed some PB&J), and Thomas went off to the local village of Engaresero and came back with a guide, Boro (sp?), for our climb of the mountain that night. With Boro we climbed up a creek bed to a series of waterfalls, soaking one pair of shoes each, knowing we had another dry pair for that night. Subsequent events would make a mockery of our (mostly successful) attempts to keep the rest of our clothes dry.

We drove down the hill to the muddy shores of Lake Natron, famous for its huge population of flamingos, which feed on algae that grows in the extremely alkaline water. Almost nothing else grows there, and I'm not surprised. The sun beat down on the black sand/mud. The air was hot and still. Heat shimmered off the surface of the lake, flamingos lazily walked forward with their bills in the shallow water, scooping up algae, and nothing else moved. We returned to the campsite for some more PB&J and to lie down in our warm tent to try to get a few hours of sleep before our climb.

The second hardest hike of my life* started out as a pleasant walk under a sky covered in stars and the full moon, with my brother and I following our guide across a gradual slope as we approached the looming mountain. Or more accurately, active volcano. Which was covered in clouds and fog, but we maintained the determined optimism about the chances of rain during our climb which we had enthusiastically cultivated out of ignorance and necessity. Ignorance because we didn't, and couldn't know if it would actually rain after seeing thick clouds drift on and off the mountain all day, and necessity because (Scott had temporarily lost his rain jacket and) we were determined to get to the top that night unless it became impossible, with the possibilities of extreme weather or injury being the only things standing in our way.

Our guide was a 50 year old man from the Iraqw tribe who lived most of the time in the village of Engaresero, with mostly Maasai tribes people. He told us stories of his life, and the kind of lives his and other tribes used to live and live now. In 1975 his tribe and the Maasai were involved in a short lived war after what sounded like continued, significant Maasai cattle rustling, and Boro told of fleeing through the forest for days after the group of men he was with was ambushed. They lost 19 people, but Boro left open the possibility that some or even all of them were killed by friendly (spear) fire in the chaos of the fight. Soon after that incident the government stepped in with a strong, more modern force to put a stop to the fighting, and the tribes have been reasonably friendly ever since. At first glance, Boro looked a little out of shape, but he quickly left no doubt that on a steep trail at high altitude he could leave us in the dust (but thankfully, didn't), no matter how young and fit we were.

As we continued up the trail we reached clouds and mist that gradually blocked out the light of the moon, so we turned on our headlamps. It was only a matter of time before the rain started - and it did, light at first. At that point we had been hiking on a relatively smooth trail that was getting steeper, in temperatures warm enough to sweat a little in short sleeves. But the rain kept falling more steadily, and the trail got steeper; soon it took only a small lean forward to put our hands on the trail ahead of us, which happened quite a bit.

Before long the only thing I could hear was the sound of hard rain on my hood and all I could see was the puddle of light from my headlamp on the trail immediately in front of me, sometimes including the back of Scott's feet. Rain and sweat dripped off my nose, and I could feel my socks and (waterproof) boots start to get wet from the top as my soaked pants dripped into them. The temperature started to drop. And then we got to the steep part.

We struggled on, wetter and colder, sometimes pulling out more layers of clothes. The altitude wasn't helping our efforts to climb at this point; it was clearly harder to breathe and recover than at sea level. My sunglasses and sunscreen, so optimistically packed, silently mocked me as I pulled an (already damp) shirt out of my pack to try to stave off the next stages of hypothermia. The smell of sulfur became very strong. At about 5:30 AM we neared the top and stopped to rest and await the sunrise, still in a steady rain. Scott and Boro slept a little. I shivered.

Finally Boro told us to get up and we went on towards the top, even though it wasn't yet light. But rather than taking us to a colder, windier place at the top, we ducked into a small hole that smelled even more sulfurous - but miraculously, it was warm! We braved the noxious fumes coming out of the hole to warm ourselves with the heat of the active volcano. We weren't comfortable by any stretch, but the wait for dawn was at least tolerable.

At last the rain slowed down, the clouds started to clear, and the sun came up, all about the same time. We emerged from the warm hole and walked around the surreal landscape of the summit crater that we could finally see: mud flows, huge cracks with steam coming out, and two tall peaks of ash from the last eruption. There were even some gazelles across the crater, which I didn't expect to see there. The last of the fog burned off and we could see for miles, across the valleys around the mountain, to our campsite, to Lake Natron, probably into Kenya. We brought out a large bag of "Zoo Biscuits" that we'd both been looking forward to for hours (in the US we'd call them animal crackers - but in the US we’d have to go to the zoo to see those animals, while they wander freely in Tanzania). Never have cheap, plain cookies tasted so good.

All that was left was to hike back down the way we had come, now in daylight with no rain. The climb down was not much easier than the way up, since the trail was just as steep and loose – and now we could see what we were getting ourselves into. As we descended and got closer to the valley floor below us where our Land Cruiser waited it appeared, through some trick of perspective or desire, to get farther away. When we reached the bottom after eleven or twelve total hours of hiking, everything on us was still wet, and we were extremely tired. But happy - we had made it to the summit. Of an active volcano!

Through the whole climb, we never doubted that we would make it to the top, although from about an hour in it was clear that we would end up soaked and shivering. For Scott, this hike was a break from the routine and places he had gotten familiar with during his first month in Tanzania. For me, the climb was the perfect mental and physical tune-up for my trip up Kilimanjaro the next week. And both of us gained a story we'll be telling for many years from an unforgettable experience.