THAT was tough!  We basically covered twice as much ground as yesterday, and it was a helluva lot colder!

The smile may begin to gradually fade in all these photos… 

I haven’t slept in a tent in twenty years.

Seriously – the last time I slept in a tent was probably at Camp Kawabi in 1990.

My buddy Dave got engaged last week, and there was immediate talk of his bachelor party.  The early consensus-guess is that we’ll go camping.

Dave is the ultimate outdoorsman who shaves every morning with a 12-inch hunting knife. He cooks his fiancee dinner every night with a pot over a burning firepit, and at Halloween, he gives the kids Smores.So we’ll likely go camping for his bachelor party and I’m sure we’ll have to canoe to wherever it’ll be held!

This doesn’t bode well for me, however, since one look at me would indicate that I’m too much of an obsessive-compulsive yuppie to voluntarily sleep outside. That’s what homeless people do!

But for Dave, I’ll do whatever needs to be done.

And I’m getting my practice in right now!

Last night was an interesting night. My Dad, Subash, and I slept in pretty close confines in a tent that is roughly the size of a King-sized bed.

I swear, I never pictured myself sleeping in a tent in the African wilderness and playing around with flashlights.

It was incredibly cold last night!

If you think that Africa is 110-degrees at all times and the continent is one giant desert, think again!

It’s so brutally cold at night, and we’ve barely even begun.

I was wearing an Under Armour top, a thermal Patagonia long-john top, and a Patagonia fleece all inside a five-season down sleeping bag.

It was COLD!

We went to bed last night at 8PM and we were asleep within minutes. My Dad and I got up at 3:45AM and chatted for a bit, and then I went back to sleep (took an hour) but he wasn’t able to. In the end, we each got more than eight hours sleep which was more than we could ask for given our recent flirtation with insomnia back in Arusha.

We awoke this morning and I went without a shower for the first time since….well, since camp in 1990 probably!

I’m not tired of bread….yet.

We get soup at every meal – breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and lots of tea!

Today’s trek was a lot more difficult.

We started the day at 8,600 feet and travelled 5.8 KM to Second Caves at 11,424 feet.

This is when most people start to get altitude sickness. So far, all three of us feel a-okay!

We had lunch in the open air, which was a bit chilly for mid-day, and then after lunch we trekked another 6.0 KM to Kikelewa Camp at 12,070 feet.

Each trek – morning and afternoon, was just shy of four hours.  The afternoon trek was actually easier since some of it was downhill and the terrain wasn’t nearly as rocky.  I would have thought that we’d be so tired after the morning trek that the afternoon would be brutal, but I was wrong once again!

It was a long day.

But even tougher than the near 12 KM we hiked was the change in altitude. We gained 3,400 feet, thus we lost a lot of oxygen in the air!

I can’t imagine what it’ll be like to sleep at 16,000 feet later this week.

The scenery here has been nothing short of majestic.

When we woke up this morning, we could see the Mawenzi peak in the distance, which scared the hell out of us. I swear it looks like Everest.  It’s only 16,762 feet (compared to Kilimanjaro which is over 19,000), but it looks daunting in comparison!

Tomorrow is an “acclimitization” day since trek up and then back down again.

I don’t question.

I’ll do whatever they tell me, so long as it gets us up this mountain!