Hiking Mt Kilimanjaro Day 2 - Out of the Forest into the Milky Way

The first night in the forest was chilly in the morning, I would say a good 50F at night and in the morning. Our porters set us up with some big tents made for 2 people. We also elected for the "private" bathroom tent which was a small vertical tent that had a child sized plastic toilet training style apparatus (shout out to the porter who had to empty that for us, we love you, truly!). Getting up in the middle of the night and using this for the first time was a challenge, but something we would all learn quickly. Throughout the next day though...we were hiking towards one of the goals I wanted to see, THE MILKY WAY!

A few hours into Day 2 of the hike we started to get higher in altitude which meant the vegetation tended to get shorter and shorter. On our ascent we only had 1.5 days in the forest before we entered into the "Heather and Moorland". We had water boiled at night and cooled throughout the night. We didn't have to worry about filtering water on the hike (although if you want to play it safe you could, but we had no issues) so every morning we would fill our Camelbaks and Nalgene with water. Day 2 since we were higher up we started to consume more water throughout the hikes especially when we got outside of the forest canopy.

Occasionally we would see other groups of hikers in ahead of us or behind us. It was rare to have a whole campsite to yourself. In the picture above you see a small trail to left with some ant looking specimens ahead of us. At this point the protection of the forest canopy was gone and it was the African sun beating down on us through the rest of the day. We had multiple breaks where we could have some packed snacks and water with some amazing vista views. When the vegetation starts to get shorter the rocks started to get bigger. This wasn't a real technical climb, but you definitely need some agility and flexibility to get up these rocks. These were only the beginning...

After 8 hours of hiking we were finally to our camp and we finally see the goal ahead of us! The sleeping giant started to reveal itself slowly. It was amazing to see what we were walking towards finally. We arrived at our next camp (Shira I11,839ft) and were ready to relax for the rest of the day and into the night. If you plan to do this hike, note that there will be lots of hours in between each hike to rest and relax, so bring something along to entertain yourself. We brought cards/books to try to keep us entertained, but I used my camera to keep myself entertained!

This happened to be my friends anniversary day as well so I took some pics of them and all of us killing the rest of the time before the next day.

Finally the clouds cleared and we got a great shot of the sleeping giant!

As night fell upon us, this was the first time in my life I was able to ever see the Milky Way with my own eyes! This was my opportunity to FINALLY get those gorgeous night shots I see in magazines. I hope you enjoy the pics because I was freezing for these shots. Every night from here on out was below freezing temperatures...bundle up.