Up a Hill - and Down

I just spent several days at meetings in the town of Morogoro. We got a free day off, because they changed the schedule of the monitoring and reporting seminar, so we decided to climb one of the beautiful Morogoro mountains. We knew that people often get robbed when they climb, so we decided to play it safe and take a large number of people and pay for 2 experienced guides. It was absolutely gorgeous; a mix of natural acacia forest and cultivated land; land that was so steep you wonder how you could possibly hold a hoe over your head and not fall off. There were plantations of everything from cabbage and carrot to bananas and even peaches. There was a beautiful waterfall that we stopped at to rinse the sweat off our faces. We climbed for about 6 hours, in one of the harder hikes of my life. It was very hot and humid and quite steep in some places. Possible more amazingly, at the top, after winding our way up steep switchbacks of a narrow but well-travelled path, we arrived at a cellphone tower, where a few of the tower guards were hanging out. I guess the climb was probably no big deal for them because there were sodas and water they had hauled up the mountain and maybe were selling, and there was a loud generator going so maybe they hauled the gas for it up the hill as well.

I have to say that the hike down was much harder, and today I'm feeling pretty wrecked.