Tukuyu

Tukuyo is set amongst the most beautiful green mountains and plantations of bananas and tea. I decided it had been long enough since I climbed a mountain and so set off to climb another one - Mount Rungwe. At half the height of Kili it took only one day of fast hiking to get to the top, but I think I was possibly more tired than when I'd climbed Kili. Or may be I'd just forgotten how tired I was at Kili's summit. The guy I climbed with walked really fast and I foolishly thought that was ok when we first started, but it meant that there were many occasions near the top where I really thought I'd either have to give up and go back down, or lye down and have a nap before going on. My advice to anyone climbing mountains is don't start walking at a very fast pace! It was such a steep climb which sometimes meant scrambling up on all fours. The bottom of the mountain was covered in rainforest. This changed into bamboo forest, then bushes and shrubs and finally just rocks and grasses at the top. Sadly there was no view from the top. The very misty photo is from the summit. Still, on the way down there were some better views (once we were below the clouds). We also saw some black and white colabus monkeys jumping through the trees above us. I never knew they had such long hair but they do and it flaps behind them as they leap, looking quite funny.


There were the hugest banana plants ever! They're wild and the fruits are only good for monkeys to eat. The leaves were good to hide behind though.

I spent a day hiking up to the rim of a dormant volcano - Ngozi Crater. Apparently there was only one path up through the forest to the top, which meant that no one else was anywhere we could see - quite an amazing thought seeing how far we could see at the time. The view was so beautiful. Inside the crater was a huge lake. I really wanted to climb down and explore but I was told it was too dangerous and to be honest it did look like if you slipped and fell on the way down that you would fall to the bottom and die.

After a few days of climbing and hiking and washing my clothes (I hate hand washing) and eating and sleeping I continued South. My plan to spend a few days relaxing on the Tanzanian shores of Lake Malawi.