No, I have not retired from writing this blog, although it has been absolutely ages since I shared any stories on here – I guess it has been because of returning to the same places and doing many of the same things for a while… but now there’s something new!
Earlier this week I climbed Ol Doinyo Lengai (which means Mountain of God in the Maasai language) together with my eldest nephew, Valdemar. And it is this experience that has provoked my immediate retirement from climbing mountains.🤣
Lengai is a 2,962m high active volcano in northern Tanzania – a four-hour drive from Arusha, if that helps place it – and it had been on my bucket list to climb since 2021 when I flew over it on my way from work at Singita, it was such a spectacular sight!
I did Kilimanjaro alone, and didn’t feel like doing this one on my own, so I persuaded my nephew to do it during our 11-week travels in Kenya & Tanzania.
Hadn’t thought much of the challenge in the weeks up to the climb, apart from organising all the practical stuff like transport and accommodation, so a couple of days before I started feeling quite unprepared – not really done any research or exercise but felt like I’d be stubborn enough to get through it… I can now share that I totally underestimated the effort this climb would take – I knew it would be steeper than Kilimanjaro, but didn’t realise exactly how steep! 😳😫
Anyway, let me start at the beginning…
We had a really beautiful drive from Arusha to the Lake Natron area and the Maasai Giraffe Eco Camp, where we were staying. It’s green and lush here because of the rains and it was a lovely contrast to the red gravel roads. We saw a few giraffes on the way in and in general it was just lovely being back in the Tanzanian bush – had been a while! As we came closer to camp, the red roads turned grey, coloured by the ashes from the volcano. The last serious eruption which affected the region was in 2007-2008 but it is also currently in a smaller eruption state since early 2023.
We settled in at camp and tried to rest as much as possible – but sleep didn’t come easy so when we left camp at 23:30 we had just slept around an hour and a half. We had been a little concerned about the weather, as it is rainy season but it was clear with the just-over-half moon shining bright in the starry night sky.
We started our climb at 00:25 – headlamps on and spirits high – but we were only about 50 minutes in when I realised I should have really done some serious training for this climb – it was tough almost immediately… well it was for me, Valdemar was cruising it!
We had just brought one rucksack so we could take turns carrying it but after my first stint with the bag just lasted 15 minutes before I needed a break, Valdemar took pity on me and took the bag back and he carried it the whole way up and down again – felt super guilty, but I have to admit that without him and his support and just general presence I would have never made it.
Anyway, back to our ascent – first off we had to go through quite a grassy area filled with all sorts of different plants – one had a lovely minty smell. After a while the greenery started thinning out and it became rockier but also steeper… it was a lot of manoeuvring on rocks with smaller and higher steps up and the walking stick that we had with us came in very handy!
We had quite a few breaks along the ascent and I felt that I was slowing progress a lot, but our Maasai guide, Peter, assured me that we were setting a good pace to make it to the top for sunrise around 6:30am.
Around 5am we reached a place where Peter said we had to rest for a a little longer – from that point we were around 45-50 mins from the top and h advised that we would not want to reach the top too early because the of the cold wind – temperature on the top was around 10 degrees Celsius.
Anyway, as we sat there we started feeling quite cold even though it was a relatively sheltered spot – our sweaty clothes felt cold in the wind and I guess that is also why I am writing this with a little sniffle and quite a few sneezes! At this point Valdemar asked me – have you regretted this? And I wasn’t sure what to answer… so just muttered I won’t regret anything when we have finished!
At 5:30am we set off on the last bit of the climb. It says online that the steepness of that last part is 45 degrees – but it felt a lot more than that! 🤪 At one point I was crawling on all fours and started thinking ‘how the hell are we getting down again?’ It was a laugh or cry moment and a slightly hysterical laugh came out!
Valdemar was as sprightly as at the beginning (youth!) and even overtook the guide to get to the top first – I was a very proud aunty! We later talked about the added adrenaline we both felt as we got closer to the crater rim.
Earlier on in the ascent, it has started raining a little bit and our guide could see that it was a raining a bit at the top, but as we reached there, the skies were clear again and the view was the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life!
We could see Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru, fantastic view of Lake Natron and the spectacular sunrise as we were looking all the way into Kenya. But the crater itself is what blew me away!
We even saw some eruptions of Magma whilst we were up there – was unbelievably special.
After about 15-20 minutes enjoying the view it was time to think about the descent and the happiness that I had felt quickly disappeared – the happy tears turned into despairing ones and I must admit that I for once in my life wished that I was super rich so I could just call for a helicopter!
I can tell you that the descent felt like a special form of torture to me. The first steep part I spent mainly in crab-like crawling – I am not embarrassed to admit that I was scared not just for me but for Valdemar as well… one slip could have turned into a serious fall… I shouted to him ‘if our mothers could see us now, they’d both be very cross with me for putting you in danger’ – he just laughed and said ‘I’m 21 years old’!
It took us five and a half hours to ascend but over seven hours to descend and that was all because of me. Valdemar could have been down a lot faster but about two hours into the descent my legs just started feeling like jelly. I had no confidence in them holding me up, especially on the parts with gravel and rocks where it was easy to slip and slide so I walked slower and slower and I felt all of my 47 years and more! During the last hour on the volcano I even had to take the guide’s hand to keep me supported so that we could go at a little more than snail’s pace!
Anyway, I don’t want to dwell too much on the absolute hell of a descent… we made it in the end and were both so relieved when we could take off our shoes in the car and inspect the damage. Even though we’d had a lot of big toe pain most of the way down, there was no blood, the nails all intact and just one blister for me, so not bad! We were utterly exhausted though from the physical exercise, the mental battle and the lack of sleep… and as we drove back to camp, we both looked to the top of Lengai and Valdemar said, ‘it’s hard to believe that we have just been up there’ and it really was quite unbelievable and an experience that I will remember forever and getting to do it with my nephew made it even more special! 🥹🥰
BETINA IN AFRICA 