Today is the day before the start of our climb. We began the day with breakfast at the Mountain Inn and took a cab into the town of Moshi. Moshi is a small town with a nice vibe, though like any good place with many foreigners, it was replete with hawkers trying to sell stuff to us. These guys were more persistent than most we’ve seen. They actually tried to get to know us & walked alongside us for many blocks. When asked why they were talking to us they said they “wanted to improve their English”. It was a most interesting experience.
We ate lunch at a great Indian place(go figure, an Indian restaurant in the middle of Afrika) called Milan, and walked around the market district. Apparently there’s a Clock Tower that’s supposed to be a tourist destination. It was so uninteresting that we walked past it without noticing. What was amazing however, was the view of Kilimanjaro from the town. The peak was so high up that despite Moshi being at the foot of the mountain, the peak was hard to discern from the clouds due to atmospheric greying. The scale of the mountain was truly stunning. It seems unreal that we’ll be standing on that peak in just a few days.
After walking around for a bit we went to a coffee house called the Union Cafe. This seems to be the de facto hangout for all foreigners; I don’t think we saw a single native there. After Rushi finished his (good) coffee, we took a cab back to the Inn, where we began packing our backpacks for the climb. After finishing, eating dinner & showering, we got to bed; this would be the last night’s rest on beds for a week.
Continue to Day 2 – The Beginning of an Expedition
IMPORTANT! Click on any of the pictures below to go to the full photo/video album for Day 1. We highly recommend clicking on the “show info” button at the top right of the album page if you’d like to see our description of each picture. Also when videos play, be sure that the HD box on the bottom right is lit, or the video will look terrible!
(Note: If you are clicking through the pictures manually, be aware that there is a Flickr bug that causes a video to play if you’re looking at the picture preceding the video). We apologize for the inconvenience, but you can mute the audio if it gets annoying.
Planetary Muffin Expeditions 