Day 6: Down to Mweke Gate. Since there was no longer a rush to get to the camps at a certain time, day 6 was much more relaxed. Taryn and Lorena slept on a bit, so we set off before them to Mweke camp. My altitude sickness went away very quickly, I felt completely different to the day before.

The walk was about 5 hours in total, and all the different types of landscape we’d seen over the last 5 days appeared at once since it was so steeply downhill. A few minutes after we set off the clouds came in and it became bitterly cold and windy. I can only compare it to the top of Ben Nevis on a dreich day. Once they cleared we had already entered the alpine shrubbery moorlands, and after another few hours we were back into the jungle.

Mweke was a massive camp – most of the routes take this route downhill, so it has to cater for a lot of people. The toilets again were horrific, so I went into the dense jungle behind them, where I found a beautiful red hot poker. Must be all that fertilizer around ;)

A Red Hot Poker