Is it a white ocean?

Sunrise at Second cave – Mount Kilimanjaro

On the third day (TATU Day in Swahili) of climbing Mount Kilimajaro, I opened the tent door and encountered the most amazing sunrise I had ever seen. The fluffy clouds looked like a floating white ocean. We felt blessed to have the opportunity to witness such astonishing natural scenery made by God

 

Mawenzi peak

Going from Second cave to 3rd cave was a short hike but a steep climb up. The vegetation started to disappear before we reached the next camp (Kikelewa). The path was rocky at first followed by softer ground and then large boulders. The views of Mawenzi and Kibo were magnificent. This day was designed to help us with the acclimatization so we took it easy and we started to understand why we had to hike very slow or as our guides would say: Pole-Pole (slow-slow). We had to save every bit of our energy and oxygen.

Our guides Andrew and Livingstone

It was another spectacular day walking on clouds.

We explored a cave with the help of our headlamps lighting the way. We enjoyed the beautiful views and captured every moment with our cameras. We even saw a Kilimanjaro two-horned chameleon.

 

We arrived to the 3^rd cave or Kikelewa Camp (3600 m), at noon. As usual, Ramadan, our waiter was ready to welcome us with  fresh orange juice. It was nice to see the Canada banner flag hanging on the dinning tent. It was pretty cool and gave us a sense of national pride.

Eating “Ugali” at Kikelewa camp

For lunch we ate “Ugali”, the most common African dish. It is a dough-like consistency made of corn flour served with cooked vegetables and beef stew.

We spent the afternoon with an acclimatization hike.  A group of hikers arrived to camp and one of them ran into our site. He had seen our Canadian banner from afar and wanted to come say hi to the fellow Canadians. He was a Toronto Medical student who was doing a volunteer job at Kenya Hospital.

For dinner we had: cucumber soup, bake potatoes, chicken BBQ and mushrooms. The desert was fried banana. The food was delicious!