The final day!

We had a lie in! We were woken at 6:30am and had our final breakfast before packing our daypacks and heading off on our final descent to the Mweka Gate. We had 6 hours ahead of us and we set a decent pace as we headed towards the rainforest once more.

2 hours in, one of the group slipped and injured their ankle. The porters rallied and ran to get a stretcher, which are dotted about on the mountain. This is a metal cage, not dissimilar to the large B&Q flatbed trolleys, and it has one wheel in the middle underneath. 4 porters, one on each corner, transport the casualty down the mountain at breakneck speed, and it was probably more terrifying to have been on that ride than it was to face the Baranco Wall!

We continued on our descent, passing through Mweka Camp (the one we opted not to aim for yesterday) and descended through the cloud layers into the rainforest. It was extremely muddy and some places we had to ‘off road’ as conditions were so bad. This was not helping the toe situation! The scenery was absolutely stunning though and we were privileged to be joined by some Blue Monkeys along the way!

The Mweka Gate finally came in to view, and the support team were waiting to sing us over the finish line. There were boot cleaners waiting for us and it was probably the best $5 I spent EVER after seeing the state they were in! Once the admin had been completed, we headed off in our minibus to our final celebration.

What a celebration they put on for us too! We arrived at the tour office and were greeted with Kilimanjaro beers and an amazing spread of food. The team had been incredible and even though they’d worked their socks off all week, they still managed to sing, dance and throw us a marvellous final celebration. The cook (stomach engineer) had even found time to produce birthday cakes for 2 of our group!

After being presented with our official certificates of the climb, we were taken back to our hotel where we all said our goodbyes and headed to our rooms for a long awaited shower!

Kilimanjaro, you’ve been incredible and no words can really do you justice.