The stats:

• 11km from Mandara Camp to Horombo Camp and we are now in the Moorland.
• 5 hours from 8:15am until 3:45pm.
• We gained 1000m and are now at 3700m/12100 feet ASL. (Higher than Machu Picchu!)
• A longer day, but still relatively easy hiking.

Of course we had a great sleep. All that physical activity and mountain air makes for some very sleepy people. Our wake-up call came at 6:30am with Juma knocking on our door delivering us some hot tea. Wow. This is service we can get used to! It was quickly followed by two more buckets of hot water to wash up before heading down for breakfast.

Breakfast. We are still a bit full from last night’s supper. How are we going to do this?? It can’t be more than some cereal and toast, right? Wrong. A bucket of porridge, 3 eggs each, 4 sausages each, a stack of pancakes, toast and mangos. “Eat it all!” We did what we could, but still managed to leave behind enough breakfast to feed two more people.

Today is going to be a longer day so we are eager to get going. The first hour is still in the rain forest and the terrain is actually quite flat. A great way to start the day. Then, the rain forest gave way to the moorland. We are now out of the tree canopy and can see the sky. Unfortunately, it is still overcast so we can’t see the peak. We’re sure it’s there though. We are going in the right direction. Right?

I had given Ola a pro tip when dealing with me on the trail. I always find the last 5 km of anything to be the hardest. It doesn’t matter if the hike or ride is 20km, 40km or 80km – the last five are the ones that get me. I told Ola to lie to me about how much longer we have to hike. I didn’t bring anything to track the distance myself; I was in their hands. Blissful ignorance will keep my motivation and energy levels up. Fingers crossed this works!

The trail is now steep and full of boulders and rough terrain. Our joints will get a workout, that’s for sure. After a couple of hours, our guides have us take a small break at a rest stop with squatty potties and we force ourselves to have a snack because it will be a few more hours before we stop for our lunch. Back on the trail before we lose motivation and before our joints figure out what is happening and stop working!

We loved that there are built in rest stops along the way with bathrooms, tables and shelter. We reach the next one on the top of a ridge, fully immersed in a cloud. We stop here for our lunch but have to put all of our layers on because it was cold! Our chef packed us the perfect sized lunch – veggie sandwich, crepe, egg, cookies and a juice box.  Then Ola broke the news to us that this was, in fact, just a snack. There will be a full hot lunch waiting for us at camp. But…this is lunch…it is lunch time…we’re good. Nope. Lunch will be waiting for us. <sigh>

A wild dog joined us here; he kept his distance but was definitely curious and I’m sure he went and explored the area more closely once we left. Just in case we left any treats behind!

It started to sprinkle so we had to put on our rain suits – thank goodness we had them with us! Hiking up the trail in the cold and damp was not particularly fun, but we did get to see the terrain in a moody and mysterious atmosphere. It was beautiful in an eerie way. After what felt like forever, we see two figures walking towards us. It was two of our porters bringing us hot tea! OMG, does this get any better? Yes, it does. They then grabbed our daypacks from us and carried them the rest of the way. Ola said we had another hour to go before camp. No problem! We can do this!!

Ten minutes later, we rounded a corner and saw our huts. Squee!!! Ola used my mind game on me and it totally worked. We arrived at our camp at 3:45pm, happily tired. We asked our porters how long they’d already been at camp. Four hours. Four. Wow. I knew we weren’t breaking any speed records but I didn’t think we were walking four hours slower than the porters who had to break down camp and then carry everything here. Wow. Just incredible.

Our cabin here is much bigger than the previous one. It still sleeps four, but now we have two bunkbeds as well as a couple of bookshelves and a table and chairs. Much more room to spread out and hang your things. Especially with just the two of us in here! So we get out of our damp clothes and try to find some dry ones to change into. Unfortunately, we did not plan for how damp our things were going to stay. Brrrr. We were not able to find warm, dry clothes. Mental note: bring more fleece layers next time!

As promised, we are now to go to the mess hall for our proper and enormous spaghetti lunch. It is 4:00pm. Can we just call it an early supper? Please? Jason and I manage to eat about a third of the platter – yes it was that big – before declaring defeat.

Ola comes to talk to us about the evening’s logistics. You know, what time we want our buckets of hot water and supper. Supper??? We get that sorted when Juma asks when we would like to have our afternoon snack of popcorn and tea. We burst out laughing. Maybe we could have the popcorn and tea instead of supper? They looked at us in horror. They truly think we are going to starve and not have enough energy to make it to the summit. Any more food and they’re going to have to roll us up. I think our calorie replenishment was double our calorie burn.

Depending on how fast you hike, you potentially have a lot of down time once at camp. We did bring a deck of cards and I had my journal and laptop with me, because, yes, there is electricity! But, and this is a big but, for us, we were both so cold and wiped out that we couldn’t take advantage of this as much as we had planned to. We spent a lot of time hiding under all our layers trying to stay warm.

At supper we got served a large cauldron of soup, about 10 cups of rice, a huge portion of green beans and then a bottomless pot of chicken, veggies and sauce. Oh. And mangos. Of course, the instructions to ‘eat it all’ also came with it. OMG. It was absolutely delicious, but we just had a spaghetti ‘lunch’ 3 hours ago. Luckily, the food does not go to waste. The porters are allowed to finish up what we can’t. Juma thinks we are hilarious because we can’t eat it all. Does anybody really eat all of it? I’d love to meet that person.

It is now bedtime. We are washed up and tucked in by 9:00pm. All we need to do now is fall asleep. Well, get warm and then fall asleep.