Another sleepless night on a plane.  I did however get talking to an Ethiopian girl called Sofie, who works in a drug research department for the NHS in London.  She has travelled all over the globe but is intending to return to her family in Addis Ababa in the next couple of years.

I did a bit of reading, a bit of film watching and saw one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever seen.  The red sky was so powerful in contrast to the canyon style landscape below.

Having landed in Ethiopia I said my goodbyes to Sofie (although we swapped contact details first) and headed for the next departure lounge.  Addis Ababa was the quietest airport I have ever seen in my life.  The only people there were other ‘Kili Explorers’.  The others in the group are as follows:

                        Amanda      - Newcastle

                        David             - Essex

                        Brendan         - Dublin

                        El                  - West Wales

                        Mel               - West Wales

                        Mike             - West Wales

                        John             - Middlesbrough

                        Anne-Marie   - Manchester

                        Carole          - London

                        Sheena        - Weymouth

                        Peter            - Essex

                        Angie           - Essex

We spent the next three hours baking in the departures lounge and getting acquainted with each other.  We are soon to become like ‘Brothers in Arms’ as the trek starts in earnest.  The good thing is that they all seem to have the same type of personality as me – an interesting group indeed!

After three hours in the morgue-like environment of Addis Ababa we made our way wearily onto the plane bound for Kilimanjaro.  I’ve been taken in by the bright colours everyone wears in this part of Africa – great stuff.

Having had another unusual in flight meal I carried on reading and fighting my crippling tiredness.  Everyone else feels the same as I do and we all really need a shower!

Our flight landed in Nairobi with a spectacular background of Baobab and Acacia trees.  The next stop is Kilimanjaro and I can hardly wait to see the landscape there.  The heat is still phenomenal meaning that climbing might be harder than normal tomorrow.

Having left Nairobi we finally made our way towards Kilimanjaro.  As we approached Kilimanjaro Airport we saw the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro to our left above the height of the plane!  It was possibly the most spectacular sight I have ever seen before – I’ll certainly never forget it!

We landed and got into the 43° heat and made our way through immigration.  At long last I had made it to Tanzania.  We boarded a bus for Moshi (which was still 40 kilometres away) and spent the next 45 minutes taking in the scenery and the people.  There were a lot of people who were wearing the traditional Masai Mara attire.  After the mandatory few near death experiences on the road we crawled into the ‘Mountain Inn’.  David and I were to share a beautiful lodge type building.  We immediately washed and showered and got changed for our meeting with our tour guide, Caroline.

After about an hour of discussion with our guide we were ready for tea.  I had the most incredible meal consisting of soup, pork and ‘King Fish’.  The food was beautiful and so was the setting.

By 9:30 everyone had turned in for a swelteringly hot night’s sleep.  It was still 30° even at that time of night.

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