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| 11 October 2003 - Shopping for a Kili climb | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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We did not have to get up too early this morning as it was Kili shopping time, so we didn't. Only left at about 9 after fighting off one of the commission-based touts who tried to sell us a package climb (he later caught us twice in Moshi but we ignored him - the only way to deal with them unfortunately) and headed for Marangu, the little village at the foothills of Kili where a number of operators, mostly hotels, are based. I am not going to describe what a Kili climb entails and the various routes in depth, I assume that if anyone is planning to do it then they have already done all their homework and know pretty well what to expect. The traditional Marangu route is still the most popular because it is cheaper, with the "easiest" path and accommodation is in huts on bunk beds. The Machame route is a combination of other routes and has become much more popular in recent times: it is less used, more scenic and some operators no longer charge a whole lot more for this route compared to the Marangu route. For the Machame and all other routes (except Marangu route) your operator will provide tents, mattresses, food and cooking equipment and even tables and chairs. Various walking options exist with all the available routes, i.e. you may add (or even shorten) any number of days from the general itinerary. For example, the Marangu route is normally done in 5 days but you can do it in 4 days or add an additional acclimitization day; the Machame route is normally done in 6 days but you can toughen it up somewhat by removing a day and trekking up the rough Western Breach via Arrow Glacier or add a rest day. The Shira, Umbwe, Lemosho and Mweka routes are all becoming more popular, as is the only route from the Kenyan side, the Rongai route (which joins up with the Marangu route). No matter who you end up arranging the climb with, you will end up at some or other hotel the night before and the night after the climb. The accommodation together with dinner and breakfast (and maybe even lunch) in usually included in the price, as is the transport to and from your starting and ending point. As always, make sure of what is and is not included as everything is priced is US dollars so a misunderstanding can cost you a few bucks: for example, the Marangu Hotel charge $160 for transport to and from your starting and ending point if you choose their "hard-way" option. Some operators even give a discount on additional accommodation you may require if you book your climb through them. We had read that the Marangu Hotel is one of the oldest and reliable operators and that they also offer "hard-way" climbs. These are climbs where you provide all your equipment (but you can hire some stuff from the hotel) and your food and they provide the guide and porters, you then pay their wages and your park fees. As we had a 2-man hiking tent, backpacks, all the cooking equipment and plenty of irradiated food with us anyway we thought that we could at least find out what the costs would work out to. A saving of a couple hundred US, once converted in Rands, is not insignificant. How wrong could we be! I do not know why anybody would want to do it because it works out nearly as expensive as a climb where they arrange for everything. The guide gets $13/day, the assistant guide/cook gets $10/day, and the porters get $9/day each. As you should take 4 porters, a 6 day Machame trek works out to $354. In addition you have to pay $160 to get to the starting point and back again and a $50/person booking fee. So for 2 people this works out to $614, add the park fees of $401/person and the total is $1416, i.e. $708/person, and this excludes any accommodation before or after the hike ($60/person dinner, bed and breakfast), equipment hire and your own food. The fully equipped climbs cost $600/person for the Machame route and $360/person for the Marangu route excluding park fees, accommodation is extra $50/person dinner, bed and breakfast. Camping at the hotel is possible at $3/person/night. We then went to the Capricorn Hotel, but their staff were a bit slow and inspired us very little with their abilities to arrange our climb. They quoted us $960/person for the 6 day Machame route and $720/person for the 5 day Marangu route, all inclusive. Camping at the hotel is possible at $5/person/night. We also went to the Coffee Tree camp site where they can arrange budget climbs. The camp site is on the large grounds of a house and is quite nice, with a few luxuries like a kitchen, nice bathrooms and a sauna, and for a change you can park your vehicle on the grass and sleep in the rooftop tent. Unfortunately it is also pretty expensive at $12/person/night. Only the caretaker was home and he showed us around, and afterwards took us to the boss's wife's shop to get the information. We had a nice general chat with her, and she phoned her husband at their other business to get the prices, but it is not really a professional setup and rather something they do as a sideline. Price for a 6 day Machame climb was $260 per person and the park fees had to be paid directly by ourselves. This excluded accommodation and meals before and after the climb but included food, equipment, porters/guides and transport. It was ok but we did not want to take a chance. The final stop in Marangu was the National Park to go to the office and see what the park fees are. Foreigners pay $30/day for entry, $50/night accommodation for Marangu route and $40/night camping fee for all other routes, $20 mountain rescue fee, and $1 for some paperwork. These fees are paid over to the park regardless of the tour operator you use and we used this to evaluate the operators: the park fees for a 5 day Marangu climb are $371 and for a 6 day Machame climb $401, so you can work out for yourself how much profit the operator is making and whether they are cutting corners at either your or the guides/porters' detriment. Based at the park offices are Alpine Tours. Their rates were not bad at $760 for the 6 day Machame route but were not able to give us any info about dates. Next up were a few of the operators in Moshi, and we wanted to try out the Keys Hotel first because we needed a better place to camp and they offered camping. Friends of ours did their climb through Keys a few years ago and they have a good reputation as one of the most reliable operators around. Unfortunately they now seem to rely on their reputation to get them clients because we were certainly not impressed with their keenness to arrange our climb with them or with their pricing. Getting information was like pulling teeth, almost as if we are supposed to just pay whatever they charge and get ready. Their camp site, at $5/person, is an uneven area of uncleared ground past the cottages behind the hotel, and giving us access to a toilet and shower was going to be an issue. Funny thing is that they were also unwilling to give us a full discount on the climb if we did not stay at the hotel the night before and the night after and did not eat any of the meals there. We decided to go and look at one or two other operators, and as we were leaving the lady at reception said that we must be careful of other operators because they are not as experienced as them, that their guides always carry oxygen in their first aid kit while others don't, and that we would be back later. Yeah right. Their quote was $935 for the 6 day Machame and $780 for the 5 day Marangu routes, all inclusive. Next on the list was Zara International but when we found their office it was closed (it was a Saturday). Pity because, and I must digress here a little, Zara are the operators that Destinations Africa in South Africa use for their clients. Destinations Africa, together with Cape Union Mart stores, hold a Kilimanjaro slide show and talk every couple of months in the evenings at selected stores countrywide. After the talk, all the Kili equipment is available at a discount for that evening only so if you happen to need something there is a good opportunity to save a few bucks. Isla and I attended one of these talks a few months before leaving and were quite happy to use Destinations Africa for the climb. We however decided not to book from South Africa in case something happened and we were unable to do the climb. Forfeiting the deposit would not have been a happy experience. So Isla went to their offices in Pretoria to get some details and they told her who their operators were, and that it would not be a problem to go directly to them once we got to Moshi. With Zara closed we went to Shah Tours, one of the oldest operators in Moshi, but they were also closed for lunch. This was a good time to take a break from foot slogging so had some local food at the open air eatery opposite the clock tower. It was nice to relax and watch the people walk by, the touts hanging out the matatus (minibus taxis), and the white tourists watching us parking off. Still without a better place to camp, after lunch we went looking for the Green Cottage which allegedly offered camping. Well, the usual: a levelled patch of lawn in front of the main house, next to the road, with no actual facilities for camping, and definitely no good if you have to park on the very uneven driveway and sleep in your rooftop tent. During all the driving around Moshi we also tried to find the Springlands Hotel, which is the hotel used by Zara for their clients, thinking that if we cannot get to the office maybe we can get the pricing details from someone at the hotel. The people at the Green Cottage gave us vague directions so we drove around all over the industrial end of town, with no luck. There was only one camping option left in Moshi, that we were aware of, but we decided to leave that for later and finish off the operators first. We went to the Kindoroko Hotel and were pleasantly surprised by the very helpful owner. A wide-awake businessman who knows what needs to be done to get clients and make them happy. He took us on a tour of the hotel and the facilities, discussed pricing and all the details for the Kili climbs, and even showed us his framed operator's license ($2000 a year to be a registered Kili climb operator). His advertised rate for a 6 day Machame climb is $700/person all inclusive, but this is discounted to $600/person for walk-in clients ONLY, and $620/person for the 5 day Marangu route with a further discount for walk-in clients. When asked how come he is cheaper than the competition, he said that he has only been in the Kili business for just over a year and he is still busy establishing himself. He talked the talk and we nearly booked there and then, but decided that we needed to rather review all the options we had accumulated. We asked the owner of the Kindoroko Hotel for the whereabouts of the Springlands Hotel and he pointed us in the direction of their operations office a couple of streets down from his hotel. Isla and I decided to walk down but did not find the office and went back to the Landy: last item of business was to check out the camp site at the Golden Shower Restaurant (what an unfortunate name for a restaurant, or for any establishment actually). The side streets are narrow and it is difficult to impossible to make a u-turn in a Defender, so as I drove around the block a young man ran up to us and asked us if we were looking for the Zara office. I said yes and he said that he saw us walking around earlier and wondered if we were looking for Zara or not and that the operations office was also closed but he could take us to their Springlands Hotel. My initial reaction was that he was going to help us by extracting some money from us so I just asked him for directions but he insisted on taking us there, jumped on his motorbike, and told us to follow him. Imagine our surprise when we went past where we did a u-turn earlier in the afternoon thinking that the hotel could not be that far out of town centre. But we got to the hotel and he called for one of the directors. The young man's name was Concea and he was one of Zara's Kili guides! The manager was very surprised to see clients dropping in on them at the hotel but after a quick explanation it all made sense and she quoted us $810/person for the 6 day Machame route. Cheaper ($90) than booking the same package in South Africa but I guess we saved ourselves the agent's fee. The 5 day Marangu route would have worked out at about $670. Being one of the larger operators they can arrange your climb on any day which is great if you do not want to waste time waiting for the next available climb on the operator's timetable. Then Concea said he will take us to the Golden Shower and we followed him to the other side of town. The restaurant is quite big, with a few scattered tables and chairs for drinks, and a small fenced off area where you can camp. It is mostly bare soil but there are a few trees and 2 toilets and 2 showers so we decided to stay there for the night while we decided which Kili operator to choose. We felt we had collected enough quotes to be able to make a reasonable decision: most were reliable operators and the final decision would be based on cost. We discarded the more expensive quotes, and we did not want to take a chance with the cheap ones so we opted for the middle quote, the one from Zara. After a good fillet steak for me and a huge half chicken for Isla at the restaurant, which was pretty good value for R40 including drinks, we slept on the decision. Early the next morning I arranged myself into the bar to watch the final F1 Grand Prix of the season in Japan (there was no way I was going to miss that, africa trip or not!). It was a good final result, giving Barrichello a deserved win, Schumacher an enviable record, and Ferrari another manufacturer's championship, probably what matters the most anyway: I could see the waiting list for new Ferraris getting longer. After breakfast Isla and I went over the options again and decided to stick to our decision so I phoned Zara and booked the climb for the next day. As the package included a night at the Springlands Hotel we could clear out of the camp site, but decided to first do a bit of clothes washing and get my hair cut. Clean underwear and short hair will come in handy on the hike! Also went to change a few dollars and catch up on a bit of email. Trust Bureau de Change (S3.35607 E37.33969) gave a good rate, and Twiga Communications (S3.34686 E37.34521) had a fast and cheap connection (Tsh1000/h, i.e. a dollar an hour). Nothing to do with choosing an operator, but quite an important aspect is equipment for the climb. When we decided to do Kili we really had no idea of what is needed. Isla and I have been hiking for 17 years and have plenty of experience in standard hikes but nothing comparable to Kili. Our friends Mark and Jenny gave us an idea of what's important and what's not, and in any case we could not really afford to buy everything. Isla went to look at equipment and prices at a number of hiking equipment stores in Gauteng: Outdoor Warehouse, Cape Union Mart, Drifters and Hikers Paradise. By shopping around and doing so over a few months we were able to pick up a few items at sales and the rest at Cape Union Mart's evening talk. Stuff is expensive so every saving helps. I think we managed to get by with the minimum, and this is what we took with us:
The rest of the clothing is obvious: something to sleep in, a few t-shirts and/or shirts, shorts for the first few days (or for 4 days if your legs are hairy), a track suit, and some underwear. You really do not need to take clean clothes for every day, after a day or two such things are unimportant. Another pair of shoes is important though. Take a few things to munch on during the day and evening, and I strongly recommend a diary to record what really happened on your climb so that you can prevent yourself from even thinking of doing it again. A small first aid kit, toiletries (toothbrush and paste, small soap and a hand towel/face cloth - no chance to wash and way too cold anyway) and a few personal things will complete your kit list. Do take spare batteries for all your equipment, and don't be shy to take whatever camera equipment you want, after all it is one hell of an experience. We took a video camera, a digital camera and a heavy Nikon SLR. Every evening I took out all the batteries (and the spares) and placed them in the sleeping bag - we had no problems - but other hikers had problems with batteries going flat. This is it really. Anything else is a waste. |
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