Today was a hard push from the Mti Mkubwa Camp to Shira One. Distance-wise it wasn’t all that great; Mti Mkubwa & Shira One look fairly close on a map. However there was significant elevation gain in order to get from the Rainforest to the Shira Plateau, where Camp Shira One is located. Once again we were fooled by our guide into thinking this was going to be a short day. After a 6 hour climb, we made it to camp Shira One. Incidentally, we were faster than most of the other climbers, as we were one of the first to check into the camp. The view of the peak from Shira One is breathtaking. After pitching camp we had tea & popcorn again…it seems this is going to be a staple part of our diet for the next few days. After the snack our assistant guide Richard(it turns out Richard is a fully-fledged guide, and that our guide is actually the chief guide for our climbing company. Looks like we got the VIP treatment with personnel) took us for an acclimatization walk for 1.5 hrs. This was a very light hike, with only our day packs on. The idea is to spend as much time during the day at a higher altitude than at where you sleep, in order to force your body to produce more red blood cells. This helps oxigenate your blood & reduces altitude sickness. That said, this walk gained a mere 50-100 meters of altitude, so it was more of a fun walk. The views on the trail were again spectacular. Returning to camp, I showed Rushi some Qigong/Taiji meditation, then we had dinner & settled in for the night.
Continue to Day 4 – Shira One to Camp Shira Two
IMPORTANT! Click on any of the pictures below to go to the full photo/video album for Day 3. 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.
Continue to Day 4 – Shira One to Camp Shira Two
Planetary Muffin Expeditions 
Don’t let the pictures fool you, Shira One, and the entire Shira Plateau is on Mount Kilimanjaro. Kilimanjaro is so massive that there are areas of the mountain that are totally flat, with nothing but flatland in sight. Everything visible in the pictures from the Shira One camp is part of the mountain, the peak in the middle is just a small part of it.
Also the dust at Shira One was absurd. The dust was everywhere, and it got onto our clothing, skin, & into our tent & bags. We’ve never had so much of a problem keeping things clean. It was so bad at one point that I wasn’t able to sleep as the dust sticking to my clothes would cause me to inhale it every time I took a breath. Bandana air filters were essential.