150 days to go

When we first seriously decided to do this holidays, it was still more than 15 months to go. That seemed like a ridiculously long time to wait for holidays. There we are only 150 days away today! Many things have happened during this time. Paul has already described most of them.

First of all we are not a team of four anymore. Paul's friend has subtly left our team without us actually realising when and why and my friend's uncertain situation with his job (he's self employed) didn't allow him to plan for such a big expenditure.

It's worth noting that our original one-week trip to climb Kili has somewhat expanded into three-week holiday adventure including safari and visiting Zanzibar. Paul and I are not able to get to an agreement about whose great idea it was to do the safari - it just seems to come along the thought "while we are in Africa...". And then seeing the pictures of beaches and blue sky and coctails with little umbrellas in the glasses I remember suggesting - Shall we do Zanzibar too :) From then it was just a question of checking the costs (most of the agencies organise trips to Zanzibar anyway as a part of the Kili package) and then somewhat we never thought about NOT doing it again. "While we are in Africa..."
I think it's quite obvious that with our plans to do the safari and visit Zanzibar not only our holiday leave days expanded. The same happened to the budget which has suddenly increased from £2K to around £3.5K sans flights.

Nevertheless, once the pictures of the summit sunrise on Kili, the sunset over the beaches in Zanzibar and the wild animals in Serengeti get into your mind, it's not possible to just forget them, move on and forget about the forthcoming "joys". You simply want to go and do it, even though you know that for the next year you won't be able to buy anything apart from food and the "allowed" stuff (like fleeces, socks & walking boots, you will probably need to sacrifice other holidays for the year and most of the people in your vicinity will think you've gone mad as you call this holidays but wait a minute - you spend hours torturing your body walking up a hill, then you risk being eaten by a lion and if you make it ok to Zanzibar, did you hear about the gangs in Stone Town?

I will never forget my mum's reaction and let's say that she's used to get shockers from me - years ago it was going to Australia on my own, then after a short break staying at home it was going to the UK. But never was her reaction like the one when I said I was going to Africa - "You're going to die" she said with a really concerned voice and she keeps informing me about any disasters happening in Africa ever since. It's necessary to say that this was her first raw reaction - she thought we would be going within a few weeks time, totally on our own - so after I've explained that we have months' of preparations ahead, that we go with experienced guides and no, we don't need any climbing equipment as such, she calmed down a bit.

So this is it. After hours spent deciding which route, which company, when to climb, when to do safari, how we fly there, we booked in January with ATR, we paid deposit and flights and I would like to say that now we can relax - but only now the real fun starts...