An Even Bigger Sigh of Relief

Holy Crap!  I can't believe it's been a month since I posted that last picture!  It seems like only yesterday that I was planning for (and stressing about) our trek up Kilimanjaro.  (The WiFi was so intermittent in Tanzania, it became impossible to for me to post any updates while I was there.)

I may have been smiling in the photo from my last post, but I was more nervous than I will ever truly admit.  This was definitely our biggest, most involved excursion to-date, and I had my doubts.  But, in the end, everything turned out just fine.  I'm not going to say it was easy, but it definitely wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.  I was grateful for our significant backpacking, hiking, and climbing experience, which meant we were never forced to step out too far out of our outdoor-adventure comfort zone.  Instead, we just had to deal with the effects of the extreme altitude, the food, and the discomfort of being on a seven-day trek.  Therefore, it was very do-able.

While preparing for Kilimanjaro, I had a difficult time finding many informative blogs on what it's actually like to climb the mountain, so I want to provide a resource for those climbing it in the future.  Almost every account I read before our trek talked about how miserable and difficult reaching the peak can be.  I want to provide a counterpoint to those accounts.  So, over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting journal entries that I recorded while hiking the mountain.  I hope it will provide a very real, but also encouraging account of what it's truly like to Kilimanjaro.

Stay tuned for more...