CHAPTER 1: KILIMANJARO

Three things occurred to me simultaneously when I was jarred awake by the urgent call of my bladder. One: Despite having on three pairs of wooly socks, two pairs of pants, four layers of shirts, fleeces etc, my gloves and a beanie... inside my sleeping bag!... I was still fucking cold.
Two: My toothache was back, worse than ever. Time for more painkillers!
Three: This was the third damn time tonight that I had to pee!

And gettting out of my tent to take a pee was not now, nor ever, a pleasant prospect. Still, the altitude pills did keep the nauseau slighly at bay, and constant bladder emergencies were the price we paid. As I stumbled out of my tent, I noticed that tentmate Rob was also not in his bag, and I spotted him in the moonlight not five feet away just unzipping himself to do his business. He was facing the peak...

I went up to stand next to him (at a proper manly yet comradely distance of course) and started to relieve myself. My eyes sought out the beast, and there she was... resplendent, white peak eerily shining in the light of the full moon, majestic, taunting us... Mount Kilimanjaro.

You would think after five days of climbing, slowly circling the bastard from campsite to campsite while we accustom ourselves to the altitude, and now having come up from 2000m to 4600m and with just over 1300m to go, we would have more confidence about the whole ascent thing. Thing is, we had only got to this campsite at noon this afternoon, and at midnight (which, looking at my watch, is in three hours) we start said ascent. In the interim, one of my fillings has popped, just about everyone seem to have a splitting headache and the temperature is rapidly diving to below zero...

Rob nudges me. "Check it out". I look to my right, and... not for the first time... we see a mountain guide coming down with some wayward tourist. This one looks like a 20-something female, good looking girl except for the fact that she is stumbling down every second step, and her eyes are completely vacant. In any other situation we would have assumed she was just drunk or stoned, but we knew - from scary stories we had all heard and which was regaled around dinner each night - that she had the high altitude version of the bends, and they had to get her down as soon as possible. The fact that it had been 21 hours since she had started from this spot to get up there and was only now coming back... in the middle of the night... with help!... weighed on us as we got back in our tents to try and get the last few hours sleep.

Trying to reclaim the little warmth that I had in my toes before venturing out there, and fully knowing that I might not sleep again until we set out to tame the monster, I do what I always do in these situations (being a Virgo, I am a serial list maker) and mentally listed the reasons why the hell I had joined this crazy expedition to conquer Kili, the highest peak in Africa and the crown jewel of the Tanzanian plains:

1. My mate Greg was celebrating his 40th birthday this way, and I, along with 8 of his other mates, had joined the party. Could the bastard not just have organized a house party like everyone else...
2. I got my employer... TTG Publishing, to pay for the trip. That is, providing I supply them with updated info on the location, a full match report on what the route was like etc etc.
3. I had always thought it was a good idea to try it (this one seemed stupid at right then).

You see, I, the venerable Gideon Hugo, considered myself to be one of Travel the Globe Guidebooks´s best travel writers. I had traveled Africa far and wide for them since I landed the very sweet gig of writing for them full time four years prior, and even landed some jobs to Mauritius, Madagascar etc. The paid reasonably well for doing the two things which I loved most in the world: Travel and writing!

I drifted in and out of sleep for another couple of hours, then Rob woke me up so we could make final preparations. Like an elite fighting force (only that we consisted of a bunch of slightly out-of-shape grouchy working class types) we assembled our hi-tech gear: Water bladders that won´t freeze up, headlamps to get up the mountain, chocolate bars for energy, cameras (tucked away in layer 2, so as not to freeze on the way up). Then, our guide Ben, properly satisfied that his ragtag group of soldiers were up to the challenge, started us up the scree slope. Greg had a thermometer on his watch, and blandly announced that it was now officially minus 3 degrees Celcius... and then we were off!

The full moon cast a magnificent light on the lunar landscape that was the volcanic scree at this altitude. We couldn´t care much, after some inititial banter we all lapsed into silence and just put one foot in front of the other. I had to keep blowing into my waterbladder to make sure it didn´t freeze up, and the chocolate was all but useless to me when we did stop for a break. I did manage to chew a small piece though...

About halfway up, I was really feeling a struggle. I fell back in the bunch, and decided to sit down for a second, my breath really ragged. Man, they said it was hard, but no-one prepared you for the tremendous fatigue, the headache, the fucking toothache! I was dimly aware that I might be holding up the group... then a hand tugged at my shoulder.

I looked up into two deeply brown eyes, that twinkled (twinkled!) at me. Jamie was all smiles, even though her cheeks had also gone past rosy refreshing coldness to semi-blue slightly frozen. "Come on Gideon... walk with me, we´ll do it together!"

My male ego took control, and I got up with great bravado. "Sure, no prob, let´s go!" and stalked off as if I had just sat down for a tea break. Jamie conceded the point to the male insecurity, and fell into step right behind me. She was humming a familiar tune, but I couldn´t quite remember what it was...

Jamie Gonzalez and her friend Heather had been climbing the mountain on the Machame route on the same schedule as our group, and consequently were camped quite close to us every night. Being the token single guy in our group, I took it upon myself to befriend these two thoroughly attractive American girls. They had great spunk, and in particularly Jamie and I got along like a house on fire. She was a lawyer for some big corporation back in the States, but she had taken a break to travel the world for a bit, and had some great stories to tell. She had been to Cape Town, my home city in South Africa, and I had already invited her back for a repeat visit.

Now, as we again drifted into companiable silence, it was as if we had created a rhythm between us that would get us both up the mountain. I could hear her every step and breath, and she mine. After a bit I let her in front of me, and we kept on alternating positions all the way up the slope. Every half-hour or so Greg´s voice would ring out: "4900!", "5100", "5300"... this reminder of our altitude was encouraging and discouraging simultaneously, but we were making progress.

And suddenly, we were there. The rim! At 5500m, we were suddenly at what was perceived to be the summit, and high fives and big smiles ensued between our group, Jamie and Heather, and anyone else who was present. Our guide reminded us that this was considered by most people to be success, but the highest point was actually Mount Uhuru at 5800m if we wanted to trek round half the rim to get there. Hell yeah we did!

A further hour later we did a fair amount of picture taking, hugging and appreciating the magnificent views of the sunrise, Africa laid out beneath us and the glacier peaks on top of Kili. Jamie and I shared a special moment as we turned back from Uhuru to watch the sun gently crest over the cloud cover that lay like a blanket over the Tanzanian highlands... but special moments do not last long when coupled with splitting headaches.

We proceeded to troop down with due haste, it was seven in the morning and we had done it! We had conquered Kili! The trip down to Barafu Hut that had taken us over six hours was now a one-and-a-half-hour joyride as I skied down on the loose scree stones, thanking the stars for having packed near indestructible Caterpillar shoes. I could hear yelps and shouts from the other guys, and Jamie was somewhere right behind me, giggling uncontrollably.

At Barafu, we rested for about 3 hours... nobody was in the mood to speak, we were all physically and mentally exhausted. It was important that we decrease altitude as soon as possible, so that same day we continued down to another campsite at 3000m. When we left just after lunch, Jamie and Heather had already gone. I hoped to meet them at the next campsite...

The gods of luck obliged. As we arrived down at the last campsite before we would finish the trek the next day, the two girls were also there. This campsite had beer (!) and we had one together. Everyone´s good humour was starting to restore, and we all started to swop war stories. At some point in the evening, Jamie pulled me away from the revelry, and put something cold and small in my hand. Before I could have a proper look at what it was, she took my face in her hands and stared intently into my eyes.

"Gideon, this climb has been an amazing and spiritual experience... I had come here with one objective in mind, but I got so much more than I had bargained for." She paused, her eyes searching mine... and finding what they were looking for. She suddenly, forcefully, kissed me. I was taken aback at first, but soon got into the swing of things (I had done this before). We lingered in that embrace for a while, then she pulled back as suddenly as she had started.

"I want you to take this stone as a gift... I have carried it around with me for luck for years, but I now need you to take it. It will keep you healthy, it will give you courage and guide you on your way forward. Please keep it close to you, till we meet again..."

And without another word, she turned around and went back to her tent. I started to follow, but there was a finality... a goodbye... in her words. I would respect that - for the moment - but the next morning I would make sure to get her e-mail address and number. As I walked back to my slowly dissipating group of mates, I looked down at what I was holding, a round object about the size of a bottle cap.... it was a beautiful purple amethyst stone.

The next morning, she was gone. When we reached the bottom of the mountain a few hours later (and I virtually ran down to try and catch them) there was no trace of her or her friend Heather.

We had a wild party that night before flying out back home the next day, and even though I loved the finaly bit of companionship with this great group of guys that Greg had assembled around him, the Amethyst that was now tucked away in my camera bag strenghtened my resolve to find this girl... whatever it would take!