• Kenya 🇰🇪 & Kilimanjaro 🇹🇿

    Day 3 - Baranco camp

    October 8 in Tanzania ⋅ ☁️ 4 °C

    Trek Data: 10km, 4:45 hours (6h on the board) +750 & -650hm
    Starting Elevation: 3850hm
    Lava Tower Elevation: 4600hm
    Finishing Elevation: 3900hm

    After surprisingly warm night (warm water bottle is life saver, thanks Bine ❤️) I woke up with the first sunlights. Shortly after Peter came with hot tea and unzipped my tent so I could watch Kilimanjaro from my bed. Sky was super clear in the morning and everything was frozen. 🥶

    The guys served the breakfast outside and we enjoyed the incredible views. Around 8:30 we departed for our acclimatization hike to Lava Tower in 4.600hm before going down to Baranco camp. Most of the people had lunch in Lava Tower and then walked down. George suggested that we take only small break up there and then continue to Baranco for lunch. Like this the whole crew can take the shortcut and have a relax.

    The walk up to Lava Tower was nice, not very steep and we were slowly gaining on elevation. We overpassed many groups and I saw even some people walking without backpack and poor guides were carrying two backpacks 🙈. Later on the weather changed quite quickly so I was wearing warmer jacket, hat, gloves. Unfortunately up in the lava tower we could not see absolutely anything and it was crazy cold. It even started to snow. I was super happy about our decision not to have lunch there and continue walking. On the way down we were almost alone. We could speed up, enjoy the views and stop for short snacks.

    Around 13:15 we reached Baranco camp. The camp is very beautiful surrounded by unique vegetation, river, small waterfall and mountains. Luck was on our side as 20 minutes after our arrival heavy rain started. We had a lunch and then I was relaxing for couple of hours, reading book, drinking tea and eating popcorn and watermelon 😁 the guys take very good care of me 😊. The campsite is so huge that I could not find any of my friends to chat but I managed to talk to few people on phone and meet some new tourists.

    For dinner soup and pizza was served and it got super cold. 🙈 I was already freezing while eating 🤣 let’s hope I can sleep tonight well.

    George and I decided to wake up early tomorrow and try to reach the Kilimanjaro base case (meaning skipping one campsite to sleep and going to the top one day earlier), so let’s see how it goes tomorrow as we will make final decisions at lunch.    Read more