We landed in Tanzania at Kilimanjaro Airport and although we felt prepared for the chaos of acquiring the Visa at the airport, getting Tanzanian shillings and dealing with the onslought of taxi drivers, you never know what curveballs you will encounter. We had meticulously researched these items using ChatGPT and of course the answers we got back along with the “Do you want me to prepare a step-by-step guide so you will know exactly what to do” made it sound like a slam dunk. While the AI information was decent, it wasn’t completely accurate or complete. It turns out there is a window for getting your VISA on-the spot that is for “Senior Citizens, children and special needs”. And since I recently became a senior citizen, we were able to go to the shorter line. I just gave ChatGPT a chance to redeem itself and told it we were both over 65 to see if the process was faster. And ChatGPT said no – that your age doesn’t give you any special consideration.
I successfully bargained the 90 minute taxi ride from the airport to Moshi down from 50,000 Tanzanian shillings to 35,000, even though they showed us an official government sign saying that the minimum taxi fare was 50,000. Nice try! The bargained price was about $14. Tanzania’s highest shilling denomination is 10,000 which is about $4 – that is astounding. The country is doing better than most Eastern African countries (except Kenya) because of safari tourism. Most adults have cell phones but not smart phones. The ones with higher paying jobs have smart phones. There definitely isn’t enough commerce to keep everyone working. Many people have small farms and goats and sell those. We see a lot of people outside selling wares or waiting to provide rides for money.
Once we finished the long slog from the States to Tanzania, I was feeling drained and a bit sick. Turns out I just needed to sleep a lot. We rented an AirBnB – basic but good for what we needed before leaving to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. While I was sleeping, Mike was busy researching and selecting a guiding company for Mt. Kilimanjaro. He found Climb Kili – which was reasonably priced and just the right cushiness for us (other guiding companies seemed to be too over the top for my tastes).
Off we went for an 8 day climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Lemosho route! We joined 4 other people from the States – Laurence (born and raised in France but as an adult, living and working in New York City), Jim from Kentucky and an uncle and nephew – Steve and Jim – from Florida and Atlanta. And we had a crew of 25 very hard-working people – 22 porters (including our cook) and 3 guides.
Mike picked this route because it had a long acclimatization schedule, so that by the time we pushed for the summit at 19,342 feet, we shouldn’t be oxygen deprived (but I was – more on that later).