Mt Meru (Day1: The Beginning)

I realized in my last blog post that I might have given the impression that I planned to climb Mt. Kili.

This is not true.

I'm a day hiker, at best. I have a few overnights under my belt. But from the climbing friends I know (and by climbing friends, I mean Jon Kraukauer), to attack a mountain like Kilimanjaro you actually have to train -- on real mountains -- for a long time.

I opted instead to hike Kili's little sister -

a smaller mountain called Mt Meru. It takes half the time; it's a much lower altitude; and it promises fantastic views of Kilimanjaro. Sure it is billed as "technically more challenging" than Kili, which made me a little nervous. But in my mind, at three days and four nights, it was totally manageable.

When I arrived at Arusha National Park, I was met by the rest of the group that would be sharing a ranger with me up the mountain, and any doubt that I had about my physical ability quickly disappeared. They were mainly middle-aged, extra-pounds-around-the-bellies Frenchmen, one who was actively smoking a cigarette, and another who had let on that he packed cheese and port in his bag. I looked at them and thought...I got this.

Boy was I wrong.

I'm not sure when I found out that my French compatriots were actually from towns that bordered the Swiss Alps and considered hikes like these their regular weekend jaunts. I'm also not sure when it came out that like many serious climbers they were only doing Meru as a warm-up to Kilimanjaro.

But what I do know is that 4 hours into our 8 hour hiking day, I was sweaty, starving and straggling behind. And this was only Day 1.