Good news received yesterday, and some Kilimanjaro planning

Now into Sunday, day two of our weekend quarantine here in Turkey. The weekend quarantine is supposed to last through the New Year's Eve weekend which will actually be a four day lockdown lasting from 9am Thursday December 31st until 5am Monday January 4th.

Too bad, because it's been a beautiful weekend. But, we are doing our part to follow the rules. Fortunately, we can get out and about for the next five days. We feel bad for the locals who have to work for five days and then quarantine for two.

Good news received yesterday. We had applied for our Tanzania tourist visas last weekend, and I've been checking their website every day since. I had read where there doesn't seem to be much of a standard. Some people are approved in two days, and others seem to take two weeks. Every day I checked, it said "In Progress".

Yesterday, I logged in, and the website said "Visa Approved".

So, our Tanzania trip is coming together.

We have booked an Airbnb for two weeks staying at the home of a young man who works for the tour operator that we are dealing with. It's in the city of Arusha (population 500,000) which is the gateway for most people doing Serengeti safaris or Kilimanjaro or Meru trekking. The plan is to do some day hikes during that two week period, and then do the Mt. Meru hike around January 25th. It's a four day trek to the upper rim of a volcano at 4,562 meters (14,966').

For Meru, besides the guides and porters, you also have to hike with an armed park ranger because there is a lot of wildlife. And you are likely to see a lot of wildlife at the beginning of the Meru climb, while you likely will not see much wildlife on Kilimanjaro.

Some people call the Mt. Meru hike a warm up for Kilimanjaro, and while I've read that it's a worthwhile hike in it's own right, we are certainly going to use it as a warm up. We'll then rest for a couple or three days before attempting Kilimanjaro.

Climbing Mt. Meru with Kilimanjaro in the distance.

I say "attempting" because we are not going into this unaware of the challenges or the dangers. We have done a lot of research and we know that out of the 30,000 or so people who attempt to climb Kilimanjaro every year, about 35% do not make it to the top. But there are 7 different routes to the top, and we are doing a 7 day journey up the most successful route... Machame. The Machame route has an 85% success rate when done in 7 days.

We also know that people die climbing Kilimanjaro. Every year, between 7-10 people don't make it off the mountain alive. This is actually a very low number, which is why we are comfortable with the risk. 

So first we will do Mt. Meru, and if all goes well with that then we will do Kilimanjaro a short time later.

We have been hiking as high as 15,000' while doing some strenuous day hikes in Peru and we didn't show any altitude related problems to speak of. Hopefully we will be able to say the same about these two hikes in Tanzania!

That will bring us to about February 7th or so. We would still have six weeks or so to see some of the southern parts of the country. 

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Big price drop on the popular Hill's Science Dog and Cat Food.

And in Canada...

Work Gloves.