From rain forest to Pygmy forest to plateau 9/26/18

Andy woke up before five to the sound of thousands of songbirds chirping. We both had a solid night sleep. It’s amazing how well you can sleep when you take away technology and noise pollution and light pollution. We started packing after six for our breakfast at seven. Breakfast consisted of porridge with really delicious honey from African honeybees, killer bees. We also had toast, grapes, eggs, and hotdogs which they call sausage. The egg yokes were white due to the poor feed they give the chickens in the factories.  We ate a lot and preparation for the day. Both of us had coffee, Andy decided to go all in and put an unfortunate amount of instant coffee in his cup, which he paid for 20 minutes into the hike. 

We started hiking before eight. It was kind of chilly in the damp rainforest since it rained in the morning. Ben led us, we would say off to the races, but it was a tortoise race. Ben was taking us at the slow and steady pace. So slow that Andy and I glared at each other as we don’t ever hike slowly. It was pretty painful at first, I was cold and wanting to walk faster to warm up. My bargains with Ben got nowhere so I gave up and appreciated The stroll. It’s quite amazing when you walk at a slow pace you can actually carry on a whole conversation. The morning hike through the rainforest was quite beautiful. The sun was glistening off the dew and the Columbus Monkeys were growling off in the distance but quite loud. We hiked with Ben and Michael, Ben in the front keeping the pace, Michael in the back making sure he didn’t lose anyone. 

As soon as we walked out of the rainforest there was a sharp contrast to the short pygmy forest at 10k. We went from lush greens and tall trees to shrubs no higher than my waist. Needless to say, this area didn’t make for a good bathroom stop with porters walking all around us. We hiked pretty steeply up for 5 1/2 hours so the slow pace was eventually appreciated. We were the first ones on the trail, then porters started passing us as a rush to the next camp to set up for their clients. The final leg is the plateau. At almost 11k, the mountain opens up where we can see for miles once the fog breaks. There is a lot of lava rock and shrubs along the deep ravine of the river. It was a flat walk to Shira 1 Camp the vegetation zone is called Moorland. 

We arrived in the afternoon, so we ate our lunch boxes after we signed in at the ranger station, like we do at each camp. After lunch we took a quick nap in our tent, it was challenging at times when the sun came out and our tent became a sauna. At three we were given hot water to rinse, followed by the team introduction. We were greeted by the team singing a song for us and they danced along. Then each team member introduced themselves, as well as Andy and I did. We thought that the introduction was over, but then invited us to dance. Well, we need some music I said. The team sang again and then Andy and I put on a performance. I’m not quite sure what dancing Andy was doing (as usual), apparently the Zulu warrior dance. I was just trying to prove white girls can dance. It was a lot of fun, and I think everybody was impressed. We said goodbye with high fives and fist bumps