Toto’s line from their hit song Africa - “…sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti” - is evocatively apt. Or aptly evocative. Whichever, Kilimanjaro is majestic.
However, at 5,895m, it dwarfs Olympus.
The lower slopes up to 2000m are extremely fertile, producing maize, coffee, bananas, avocado, and mango. Farmers use goats to keep the creeping rainforest at bay.
It’s been a long time since I tasted a mango so sweet, fruit that hasn’t been picked green and sat in cold storage for weeks to meet the adulterating constraints of the global supply chain.
Where rainforest remains, you can see black and white colobus monkeys with bushy tails jumping between trees and vines.
Higher up, the mountain transitions to semi-arid scrub with beautiful yellow, electric blue, purple and orange wild flowers. Pretty alpine chats and sunbirds bounce along the ground finding seeds and other edibles.
Above 3500m the landscape turns to stark alpine desert where the long process of seral progression is at work, mosses and lichens slowly turning inert stone into soil.
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Unlike Toto, I certainly did not “bless the rains down in Africa”. Nor the hail, sleet and snow.
You’re taking a chance at this time of year when the wet season that feeds the great Nile river begins to set in. For my party, mornings began clear and crisp before the mists and clouds rolled in around noon and revealed what form the day’s precipitation would take.
For 5 days we slogged through it up the Rongai route. Steadily gaining altitude. Camping in the wet. The 2 day descent down the opposite side of the mountain had plenty of sting in the tail, as the upper paths turned to cascades and below that a treacherously slippery black mud.
Hiking Kilimanjaro was a more testing adventure than usual for me but one I found thoroughly satisfying and character building.
Thanks to the irrepressibly joyous, enthusiastic and generous guides from Ashante Tours, with whom we shared music, language, and stories, it was one of the more culturally enriching trips I’ve ever experienced.
Mambo, jambezi! (Swahili for “Whats up, gangster!”)
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