Mt. Meru

I have always wanted to have a summer birthday. Now that I live in the southern hemisphere, my dream came true. My students finished their last examination on the 25th of February, meaning my birthday was the first day of summer break! So Rachel and I headed out for our trekking adventure on Mt. Meru. Thus I spent 11 hours on a bus on my birthday, but we did see some elephant and zebra from the bus as we passed through Mikumi National Park. Besides what better way to spend a birthday than by anticipating an amazing trek through giraffe and elephant inhabited wilderness up the second tallest mountain in Tanzania!

We spent the night in Morogoro with Bill, a PCV from my training group, before heading out in another bus the next morning to do the second leg of our journey to Arusha. During the 7 hour bus ride I found out that a bunch of my PC friends were in Moshi that weekend for the Kilimanjaro marathon. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see them, especially since we live so far apart, so Rachel and I jumped off the bus in Moshi instead of going all the way to Arusha as planned.


We met up with Nick and Theresa (from my training group) for dinner as well as about ten other PCVs. Throughout the course of the meal we were pretty much convinced to sign up for the Kilimanjaro half marathon. Luckily I had brought my running shoes. It may have been a fool hardy thing to do considering that I had hardly exercised in the previous three months, and that I wanted to climb a 15,000 ft mountain the next day, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to run my first half marathon along the base of Kilimanjaro. My time wasn’t anything to brag about, and I had to let Theresa pull away from me after the first 4 kilometers, but I ran the whole 21 kilometers. Next year I want to run the full marathon—I think a little training might be in order!

From the moment we stepped off the bus in Moshi with our hiking backpacks Rachel and I attracted a posse of trekking guides who wanted to book our Meru trip. We ended up going with a fellow named Philip Dotto who gave us a really good price. He arranged everything for us including buying all our food and hiring a cook. He even invited us to lunch at his brother’s house the day before we started our trek.

At the Arusha National Park gate we also had to hire a ranger with a gun to accompany us and protect us in the event of wild animals charging at us. Michael, our Ranger, was pretty fun. He spoke a number of different languages and told us lots of fascinating stories about shooting at charging buffalo and chasing poachers. Apparently he was even in the Imax film about Kilimanjaro called “Among the Clouds.” I’ll have to watch it some day and look for him.


Going along with Rachel’s Watson Fellowship research topic which is “Mountain hut systems and the concept of wilderness,” we hiked all day and then spent the night at the Miriakamba huts. I was surprised by how nice the facilities are. We had running water and electricity. Our guide offered us popcorn and tea upon our arrival to the camp, and then proceeded to serve us a four course meal. It was amazing. We spent the second day of our trek hiking up to a second camp of huts. We had lunch there, then did a side hike up to the peak of Little Meru, and fortunately made it back down to the huts before it started pouring in the afternoon. At this point I was getting a little frustrated because we had yet to see Kilimanjaro despite many lookout opportunities because it was so cloudy.

We had dinner and then went to sleep for a few hours before getting up at 1 am to start our final push to the peak. The night was perfectly clear. We hiked up and up over 1000 meters amidst a blanket of stars and witnessed the sun rise over Kilimanjaro as we approached Meru’s peak. It was absolutely breathtaking.

Rachel and I and our guides lingered at the peak after the other groups had come and left. Then we proceeded to walk all the way down the 10,000 feet to the base of the mountain the same day. We ended up walking for 12 hours that third day, but it was amazing. On the way up the mountain we saw the evidence of elephants, namely huge piles of dung along the trail, but it wasn’t until the hike down that we actually glimpsed an elephant among the trees in the distance. We had seen the sun rise over Kilimanjaro and a wild elephant in the same day. The only thing that could make this day more perfect would be to see a giraffe close up. I knew the most likely place to see giraffe would be on the plain scattered with acacia trees at the base of the mountain.


Being the only hikers anywhere in view, we walked down the foothills approaching the base of the mountain at dusk. It was like we had entered a magical animal kingdom. Monkeys swung in the trees as we walked through a strip of jungle and crossed a stream. As we came out of the trees the picturesque plain with a stream running through it was spread out below and we could see a heard of buffalo as well as four giraffe ambling across the path ahead. Cautiously, we passed within 20 feet of them. To top it all off we passed a group of warthogs as we crossed the stream and exited the park. It was a magical ending to a spectacular day.

After Meru, I left Rachel to climb Kilimanjaro and headed back down to Southern Tanzania for Peace Corps training. It was great to see so many friends from my training group again. They are an amazing bunch of people!