Feb 01, 2012
Africa, OMG!
My Honor’s Thesis student cancelled our recurring Wednesday 7:30 am Skype, so I’m using this time to explain why I’m traveling to Africa to Hike Kilimanjaro 134 days from now.
I’ll first mention that John and I had our 18th anniversary in January. Early on in our relationship we made a promise to each other to travel to a new country each year. 2012 will be our 14th consecutive year of keeping that promise. Our last two trips were very active. We hiked the Inka Trail in Peru in 2010, and we ran an Ultra Trail Race and a Half Marathon in Portugal in 2011.
We try to do more challenging trips on our 5-year age markers. John is turning 45 this June. We’ve been wanting to hike Kilimanjaro since our friends Tim & Chris did it several years ago. After many conversations with Chris, who set us up with our guide Kapanya and with Lisa and Rich, some like-minded trekkers from Denver, we convinced our friends Larry & Cindy to sign on, and the 6 of us are locked and loaded to make the trip to Africa.
Now we’re doing all the requisite planning: booking flights and lodging, updating passports & visas, getting immunizations, stocking up on gear, and of course, training like mad. This hike will be essentially double the Inka trail in every way: 60 miles instead of 30, 8 days instead of 4, 19,340 peak instead of 13,900. We’ve started a weightlifting class MWF at a great local fitness venue, The Bar. And of course, we’ll be putting in plenty of time on trails. I’ll give more reports on our training as we go along. Africa, here we come.
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