Jan 19/20 - hanging out

The 19th was a true hangout day; we literally did nothing.  Thank goodness for the internet.  Whoops, we did do the gear check with Hosea, our main guide.

On the 20th we did more.  Hosea took us for a walk into Arusha and we visited a Vodacom shop where a couple of us purchased sim cards.  The prices are amazing.  The equivalent of about $14 USD buys you 10 gb of data for a month.  I pay Verizon about 10x that for our service.  Go figure. 

We also visited a small cooperative Masai local art store.  Sandy bought some lounge pants for $15 USD and a small bowl.  One of our fellow climbers when to the outdoor market later in the day and picked up something similar for about half that.  It's always more expensive when there's a roof.  It would have been more had there been A/C !

Riders are trickling in.  Anup, from Thornhill ON came in early yesterday and he was on the walk with us.  Tia (sp?) had arrived the day before us and was spending time with Gerry's wife (owner), who is here for a time and Tom, his son.  Tia went to school in PQ with Tom's older brother Chris. 

Talking with Tom, who is coming on the trek, he said that it's about a 3 hour drive from here to the park gate.  We're at 4,500 feet elevation now; the entrance is more like 8,000.  Tomorrow, Sunday, we drive to the gate, arriving around noon and trek for 3 hours.  We probably don't gain much elevation from there but I'll keep notes.

Tom, his mom and Tia did a drive around the mountain and it took 14 hours.  It's a big mountain, rising from the plain.  Of course if that was an Interstate, it would have been a shorter ride.  This is Africa.

Alain and Vita came in mid afternoon and we saw them at Dinner.

We had an African buffet last night ... wonderful.  Boma move over.  Boma is the African buffet restaurant in Disney.  It's like American Chinese food vs China.  Well, not quite that bad but you get the idea.

However, I'm not doing so wonderfully.  Sandy has shaken the cold but it has taken firm hold of me.  I have a really, really sore throat, fever overnight kept at bay with Ibprofen, so I'm not getting much sleep.  Perhaps once we actually start to do something this will be forgotten, exercise pushing it into the background.

They gym rat was on the elliptical this morning and says that she feels better now.  She met Bob Kassel on the stairs, so that group of 5 arrived safely.  One more was due at 11:30 last night (flight), so more likely 1am to the hotel ... not much time to acclimatize !

I"d love to go on a bike ride.  I'm sure that I would feel better with some real exercise other than fingers on keyboard !

Upward !