I stayed awake most of the night in the freezing conditions to take pictures of the Milky Way and play with long exposures. Since that was successful I decided to wake up early and get a time lapse of the sunrise! That was probably not my best decision since I needed rest, but I didn't want to miss any photo opportunities while I can. As I unzipped the tent all I saw on the ground was white frost! The whole camp ground had frosted over and as the sun slowly began to rise the frost melted away. Here is a picture while setting up for my time lapse. In the morning our lead guide would start taking our oxygen levels to see how we were adjusting. The higher up we go the lower our oxygen levels could get. My new Australian friend and I did not have take any Diamox (prescription for high altitude sickness). I ran out of time to go to the doctor and get a prescription and figured I would just wing this portion of it. The guides would check our vitals to make sure we weren't in any grave danger. At this point all of our oxygen levels were in the lower to mid 90 percent, while our heart rates has slightly increased. Nothing alarming...yet.
After the sun rose we all packed our day packs and were on our way for our first acclimatization hike of the trip. The purpose of these hikes is to let our bodies get use to the elevation day by day. Today's hike was to a location called Cathedral point. The first few hours of the hike was a fairly flat with very low vegetation with a feeling of how vast this park was. We were surrounded by mountains in the distance, and the sun started to melt away the frost and we started to sweat.
As we were approaching the junction to Cathedral point some clouds decided to roll in over us and cover the sun and we began to start get cold quickly! The weather on Mount Kilimanjaro can change rapidly so it is important to pack a variety of different weather clothing items in your day pack. When we arrived at the junction, we dropped off our day packs as there would be some scrambling over rocks and we didn't need the extra weight! The views on the way up were stunning (even with the cloud coverage) and I'm glad we were able to do this route and recommend this to anyone thinking of doing this hike.
All throughout Mount Kilimanjaro there are pile of stacked rocks and stones. It's a way to mark and identify where the paths are, but I decided to leave my own stone to the pile. It's like a nature's version of jenga of rocks. Mine is the smallest on top ;)
Now we made our way down to the next camp. On the way to the camp we saw another field of stacked rocks and I was very intrigued. I didn't get a chance to stack my own rocks on each one though! As we approached the camp (Shira II Camp) we were told this is a point where a lot of other groups converge and stay the night. By far this was the most packed camp we stayed at during this trip. One of the hiking groups had over 70 people! What a logistics nightmare. It was pretty noisy at night so this was the first time I had to pop my ear plugs in. As we settled in after our day hike I started to finally feel a headache settle in. I wasn't sure if it was it was the lack of rest I had the prior night or if it was the altitude starting to get to me. I took a nap after the hike and still had a throbbing headache when I woke up. At least I still had my appetite. I took some Ibuprofen, put my headphones in and decided to knock out early to try to let my body recover, but before that had to take some pictures!
