Horombo Hut night 2 – 12,204 feet above sea level

I was scheduled to spend an extra night in Hormobo to help get acclimated to the altitude. The climb up from Mandara was about 5 hours but I was still feeling pretty good.

When I woke up in Horombo, I could hear the chatter of the porters and tourists as they started their day.

It was an interesting mix of Swahili, French, English and German… though there may have been others that I didn’t recognize.

Kilimanjaro attracts people from around the world. In my short travel, I shared a bunk room with a Medic in the Israeli Army named Avi and a pair of Austrian Librarians from Vienna named Chris and Martin who were trying their luck on the mountain.

Avi had been traveling in Tanzania with his girlfriend when he decided to stay a little longer and attempt to climb Kili. He was very fit and had just enough equipment to pull it off.

There were few on the trail who were in better shape than him. He kept an extremely fast pace, there was no Pulli Pulli for him.

My Austrian friends were taking it at a different speed. They were taking in the scenery and seeing the adventure as something that needed to be documented. I later found out that they were writing a book about the trip.

They would stay up late at night discussing the details of the book. I couldn’t understand them but when asked, they told me it was going to be an adventure story - like Indiana Jones.

I wished them luck. If you see a book about adventuring librarians from Austria, maybe Vienna Jones, remember – you read about it here first!