Borderline Behavior and Other Kili Observations

One of our first tasks during our trip was to cross the border from Kenya into Tanzania. Since Clementine had just done the reverse trip, she advised us that the TZ visa was $100 per person so we knew to be prepared. In case you’re wondering, every other country in the world is $50 per person. This includes the UK which colonized both Kenya and Tanzania for a significant part of the 20th century. The apparent moral of this story is that if you dominate and oppress people, they later give your citizens a break on visa fees.

We brought with us 16,000 KSH which is the equivalent of $200 and tried to hand it over to the border patrol but were told, “we only take dollars, euros, or pounds.” Wait, so you don’t take your own currency? Or the currency of the country we’re coming from? Yes, that’s exactly what he meant. When informed that we only had Kenyan shillings, suddenly they took them, except they wanted 18,000 (or about $225). When we protested, the official said “well, there’s a black market over there (pointing to a bizarre market that appeared to exist within the border ‘no man’s land’), go change your money there.” M and I exchanged looks that this government official had just told us to do something illegal and just handed over the 18,000 KSH. It is certain that he went over to the market, traded the KSH for dollars and pocketed the difference but our bus was leaving and we had little choice!

Apparently Tanzania has really maximized ways to take money from tourists because we soon found out that they charge $110 per person each day to be in Kilimanjaro national park and $20 per person each day as a “rescue” fee. Luckily this was all included in the price of our tour but this means that the park service earned $1,820 during the 7 days we spent in the park. This explains why climbing Kilimanjaro is so expensive and also why the porters survive on tips and donated clothing; the tour companies pocket most of the rest themselves.



The average porter earns about $7/day. They carry their own pack on their backs plus another 20 kgs (44 lbs) of guest bags, food, tents, etc. They typically carry the weight on their heads. And basically run uphill (see photo above). We were very thankful to have had the help of the porters during our climb but it was a little disconcerting having 11 people waiting on you. Based on discussions with other folks, we definitely had more porters than necessary because it’s the slow season and people need work. Things got a little stressful at the end because you’re supposed to tip each porter, guide, and your cook by the day and we had not accounted for so many porters. We gave all that we could and found out later than what we gave was actually very much in line with appropriate compensation (Europeans don’t tip much which makes Americans seem generous).

M also gave his ski pants to the porter who joined us for the summit hike (Ben, our guide, always takes one other person to the summit in case of emergency). The porter was hiking in warm-up pants in 15 degrees and other porters were sleeping in cotton sleeping bags or clothes several sizes too big or too small. Obviously my stuff didn’t really fit them so I couldn’t give them anything but they really do rely on the generosity of the hikers to outfit themselves. Not only do they not have the money to buy these items but it’s hard to procure clothing for freezing weather in the average East African secondhand clothing market (we asked, Ben laughed).

Not that all the weather was freezing. It changed wildly from 70 degrees to the low teens and from brilliantly sunny to white-out conditions. One of the most bizarre things was watching clouds blow up or down the mountain to envelop you. Below are some photos I took of M at 5 second intervals.








I guess it makes sense since we passed through almost 4 miles of vertical but it was really startling to see the change in scenery. Here are some of our favorite photos (as always, click on them to enlarge them):











And to answer McMom's question in the comments, one last photo:


We took that photo leaving the summit. If you click in, you can see the signpost in the top right of the photo. The cliff that drops off is the crater. Notice the flat narrow approach along the crater to the actual summit. Also, check out the shadow of Kilimanjaro on the plain below in the top left. Hope that helps!