The morning after arriving in Tanzania, our guide picked us up to take us to the mountain. He met us in the lobby of the hotel and said "come on outside and meet the crew."
I was thinking there would be 3-4 other people that were "the crew." I was completely surprised to find that "the crew" were not a few men, but a bus full of men that were all there to help us climb the mountain. A lead guide, an assistant guide, a cook, an assistant cook, a waiter, and about 12 other porters who were going to carry everything.
Getting to know these men, and learning more about their lives and culture, may have been the highlight of the trip for me. They worked so hard and set us up to have a successful ascent to the top. The porters each carried their own stuff plus 45 pounds, which they carried on their heads. 45 pounds! When we asked how they were so good at carrying heavy weight on their head, we were told that they had been fetching water since they were young children, and that is how they carried the water back home.
I felt like such a wimp carrying just my day pack.
The trailhead was about 5 hours away, so we had a long bus ride ahead of us.
We had a few stops on our way and got our first taste of being in Tanzania.
This guy tried really hard to convince my dad to buy a bracelet from him. For some reason, the people selling stuff always went straight to my dad. I'm not complaining, it was nice to be left alone. You can't get out of a car without having several people begging you to buy their goods from them.
When we arrived at the trailhead, the porters packed everything up in bags to carry on their heads, the cook made us lunch, and we got ready to hike.
They set out our lunch on a bench, with a tablecloth and a whole bunch of condiments. We appreciated having them; however, after a few days we weren't so sure about eating things like mayo, which was never refrigerated.
Our lunch was grilled sandwiches with a slice of tomato and a slice of green pepper on them, and tomato soup. Luckily we only had a couple of other strange lunches.
At the trailhead, ready to start hiking!
And that is how it all began.
6 comments:
Sounds amazing.
You keep teasing with with these little posts!
Patience Whitney, we took over 1,000 pictures and had a ton of cool experiences, so it might take us a while to put it all out there!
Wow! What an amazing adventure...culturally, physically, emotionally, spiritually...so so amazing! So happy for you to have had that experience with your family. Can't wait to see more photos and hear more stories. Hope you are well!
I'm so glad you are posting all this! You don't want to forget it and it's so interesting for the rest of us to read. What an amazing experience.
What a fun thing for the two/three of you to get to do together. I've read all the posts so far and it looks like it was an amazing experience. So rad!
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