Anyways we got to Blantyre and stayed one night in the backpackers there because we wanted to drop off most of our stuff before we attempted the next thing on our "to do list" so we spent that night kicking butt in pool and trying very hard to cook our food over a non-existent fire. The next morning we got on a bus that took us to Mulanje, a very small village at the base of the third highest mountain in Africa, Mount Mulanje.
Hiking this was our next adventure and it turned out to be nothing short of an adventure. We got dropped off in the little village and hitched to the base of the mountain with people that actually worked in the tourist office so they were on their way to where we were going, woot. We went into the information center, told them we would like to spend three nights and four days hiking this bad boy- we picked two peaks that looked like the highest ones, hired a guide and set off with our 30lb backpacks.
The first problem with this mountain: people here do not believe in switch backs so when I say that the path was straight up and super steep, it was. I am not the best hiker ever [sad to admit] so I was a little bothersome I am sure to everyone else when I was asking for breaks every 5 minutes and being the 8 year old asking "are we there yet?" but we took a pit stop and went swimming in a waterfall which was so lovely and refreshing. The best part of the swim was when our guide decided to join us... he stripped down to his tighty-whities climbed up onto a rock and then we hear "yooohoooo" in a little high pitched voice and look over to see him waving at us, then he jumped on in. I was laughing so hard I almost drowned on that one.
We got back on the trail after a little bit so that we would get to our first little hut [campground] before it got dark and after about 4 hours of calf burning "fun" we made it to this cute little cabin type thing where a grounds keeper got a fire going and we got to relax for a little bit. We put up our tent thinking we would sleep in it but it was so warm in the little hut we all knocked out in there after cooking our dinner of rice/ beans and minced soy in mini bowls over the fire- it took some skill but by the third bowl of rice we had a pretty good system down considering we had absolutely no cooking supplies, so we ate dinner by the fire and we were all so pooped we knocked out at like 7:30. That was probably a good thing though because our plan was to summit one of the peaks the next morning and we had to get an early start (5:00 am) so we woke up all in good spirits sort of excited about the monster ahead of us. We were excited, that is, until about 1/3 of the way up the mountain when we realized that we were literally rock climbing and scaling this mountain and if we fell, we would be in trouble. Then our guide proceeds to tell us that it is very dangerous from here and he knows 5 people personally that have died trying to reach the top of this mountain and there are many more that have also died. Then he tells us most people use ropes (which we don't have) and asks if we want to keep going. We did. And after some pretty adrenaline filled moments where you knew if you fell you were toast, we all made it to the top safe and sound and dreading the way back down. But it was beautiful up there. We were so high we were above the clouds and the sun was shining, it was worth it even though I was second guessing myself at the time. This peak is the second highest but the hardest by far, and all three of us had just finished reading the book Three Cups of Tea where the author has a failed attempt at K2 so we decided this was our K2 and we were clearly way more awesome then Mortenson because we made it to the top and he didn't.
Then we came back down and literally just slid on our butts the whole way and made it in one piece, although that is more than I can say for my leggings--> they got trashed and had like two huge holes on each butt check, they were retired shortly after this trip. But we made it back to our hut after a good 5 hours of hiking, our legs felt like jello and I was not in the best of moods, all I wanted to do was sleep and never hike again, although I prefer rock climbing to hiking. But we had planned to hike up to the next cabin later that afternoon (three more hours of hiking) and our guide dropped the bomb that it was going to rain, and if it rained we would not be able to hike the peak that we had planned for the next day, which was the highest one. So we decided to stay at our little cabin for the night and hike a different peak the next day. So we spent the afternoon napping, reading, playing more Bow and cooking dinner over the same fire as we had the night before. Again, even though we had all taken naps, we knocked out at about 8:00 pm.
The next morning was another 5:00am wake up where we packed up our bags and literally walked in a circle to get to a different summit that we passed on our way up the first day, it was our guides favorite peak and I enjoyed it except for the fact that we had to summit it with our back packs which made my legs burn sooooooo bad. Hooray for involuntary work outs! But it was pretty up there too and you could see the K2 that we had hiked the day before from the top of the mountain and I gotta say, as much as I complained, I was pretty glad that we made it all the way.
We finished that day at a waterfall/lookout point where we hung out for a while since we could see the entire valley below us and waterfalls are always nice. Then we hiked another few hours to our last little hut and spent the evening reading on the porch. Then we ran into a couple from Zambia that was staying there too and they had so much good food which they were nice enough to share with us because we were living off rice and tuna sandwiches [I think they felt bad for us] so we had what I would call a feast that night with meat and pasta and rice and tomatoes and toast, we even got custard for dessert. Then guess what? We knocked out at about 8:00 again.
The next morning I wanted to kill someone because my legs felt like jelly and I had blisters literally all over every toe and scattered over the soles of my feet- and even more because we started hiking at 5:00am which meant we had to get up and pack at 4. I also hate mornings. But once I got over my bad attitude I realized that today was a down hill only day because it was our last day and we needed to get back to a bus to take us to Blantyre where all our stuff was. So we spent like 6 hours that morning hiking back down and got to the base to find so many little villagers that had never seen a "muzungu" (white person) so we had to stop and play with some kids a few times which was fine with me. They are always so cute. Anyways it was Easter Saturday and when we were on our bus we saw so many different celebrations including tons of people re-enacting Jesus walking with the cross- not sure what thats called? But it was sweet!
So all in all, our hike trip was a success and even though I hate hiking while I am hiking, I am always really glad I did it after.
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