His Mother's Son: Memoirs of an Accidental Man by Anthony Paul

Author:Anthony, Paul [Anthony, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

East Africa.

Africa

This travelogue began at 10:00 a.m. on August 14, 1991, at Los Angeles International Airport. It took twenty-seven hours of air travel to arrive jet-lagged but jazzed in Nairobi, Kenya. There, another day was needed to sort through gear, buy supplies, and plan with my local contact Mark Savage of East Africa Mountain Guides. One more day elapsed in travel by share-taxi south to Arusha, Tanzania.

Arusha National Park

The following morning found me on my way to Arusha National Park to climb Mount Meru. This was supposed to be a warm-up to get acclimated for Kilimanjaro, but it proved to be one of the most exotic ascents of my life—a worthwhile destination in its own right.

First, there’s the geology. The park consists of Mount Meru, a 14,944-foot-high volcanic cone with the top five thousand feet of its east side blown out. This eruption loosed a massive mudflow that formed the basin where the Momella Lakes are situated. Farther on is the forested Ngurdoto Crater, an extinct subsidiary volcano.

Then there’s the flora and fauna. It can only be Africa when there are cape buffalo, warthogs, and giraffes right off the road. Higher up the track in the cloud forest, groups of baboons foraged on the ground while colobus monkeys clambered through the trees.

Our party consisted of me, two other visitors named Bill and Brian, and our local guide David. We unloaded the Land Rover and hiked the final mile of the deteriorating roadway to Miriakamba Hut. From there, at eighty-two hundred feet, we could see the entire park as well as the looming mass of Kilimanjaro a mere thirty miles distant.

The next day we made our way through forests of rosewood and giant heather to Saddle Hut at 11,700 feet, where we rested and prepared for an early start on the climb.

Day five in Africa began in predawn darkness. From the trail we watched the birth of a new day when the equatorial sun emerged from the glaciated southern flank of Kilimanjaro. Just as before this landscape existed or people were its witness, it flooded the ancient savannah with light. From the zone of moorland and lobelia, we ascended into a gallery of eroded rock sculptures, pumice fields, rare alpine flowers, and drifting clouds. All the way the views were stupendous—the impossible bulk and beauty of Kilimanjaro, the ragged black plug of Mawenzi, the precipitous eastern escarpment of Meru, the cinder cone in the crater below with its frozen river of lava that plunged into lush forest, the shining Momella Lakes, and the cloud-filled bowl of Ngurdoto Crater.

After a momentary break on the summit to contemplate this fantastic scene, we backtracked along the narrow rim between the mountain’s steep slopes and the crater walls that fell five thousand vertical feet to the floor of this volcanic pit. We descended seven thousand feet from our high point to Miriakamba Hut during the afternoon, yet didn’t notice the exertions of the day until both the sun’s transit and ours were all but over.

Refreshed

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