I had a good nights sleep at the hotel. At breakfast, cereal, fruit juice, cooked breakfast and tea, we meet Travis from the UK, the final member of our group. After Breakfast we watch our things and all the equiptment being laid out ready to begin our trip. We are all given a packed lunch to take with us in our day packs. There is a strict weighing of all the bags as there are regulations regarding how much each porter is able to carry. each is labelled with our tags for our personal effects, and topped up with anything else they can carry up to the maximum weight. No more than 15kg on top of their own personal baggage. It means that the process takes a couple of hours to get right and there are a couple of disputes along the way. As far as I understand these are the Chagga people, one of over 100 Tanzanian tribes who have lived on and around Kilimanjaro for three or four centuries. Most of the guides and porters are Chagga, many of them from the village of Marangu. They are self employed, within a framework established by the Tanzanian National Parks and they have a reputation for independance and strength of purpose. Seamus introduces us to our Head Guide, Elias, assistant guides, Chef and 2 waiters and our porters, 35 people in total who are going to be looking after the 11 of us, our things and our food up the mountain. Finally we are ready to leave and we walk down to the gate where two large trucks are waiting to transport all of us. we get into the first one with padded seats and I sit towards the middle with Ed and take a nap or two during the 2hr trip to get to the Machame Gate. There is a weighbridge on the way and as we wait to be weighed we are bombarded with sellers outside our truck selling drinks, chocolates, sweets and biscuits but as were all ready and packed with prepared food already none of us buy anything. The truck turns up the hill and stops off at what looks like a butchers for some meat. It then brings us slowly to Machame gate at 1800m. Here we sign into the office book with our passport number and then we sit down for our lunch. There are some monkeys lurking nearby that try and steal some of our food, I've never seen wild monkeys before and its quite fun. Once we have finished our lunch we have probably our last real toilet stop for the next few days! We gather by the starting point for a group photo and at last we begin our climb. Its been an overcast day again with patchy cloud but no rain as yet. We begin to walk through the mud pathed rainforest and see lots of different trees and flowers and plants. We get a lot of time to chat to each other here and talk about why were here and what we do and who we are. we also chat to our guides a bit and I try out what I've learnt in swahili, water, how are you, good, and I learn how to say my name is Rachel- "Gina langu Rachel". The walk is quite pleasant apart from the last hour to camp. I make the obligatory "are we there yet" joke and John asks if its time for an ice cream yet. Reminds me of ice creams everyday on holiday with my Dad. The cloud and rain is around us and the ground is very muddy and slippery towards the end of the walk. Its quite a challenge to walk the last hour up to the Machame camp but I'm delighted to see it and I do a little jump for joy. We are taken to our tents just before night fall and we set up our mats and sleeping bags before finding the bathroom as dusk falls and then getting some dinner. Once I finally sit down and stop at dinner I actually feel rather unwell, after about 20 minutes and eating popcorn and bread I leave the tent to vomit, just a little and then I feel much better. John has followed me out and brings me some coffee which I rince away the sick with because I dont drink coffee. After that I feel fine and enjoy the dinner of Potato soup, chicken spinach and roast potatoes, and Banana for desert. We all drink lots of tea and hot chocolate at dinner as we've all been told to drink loads as its easy to get dehydrated on the mountain and that can make you sick. I drink loads. We all talk about what a shame that the weathers been so bad, its been damp and rainy lots today and it could well be like that our whole trip. Most of us at dinner are sat in our warm jackets because its so cold already. After dinner I go back to the tent with Eugenia and sort out my clothes for the next day. We are told to keep all our things in the tent so with both my bag and my day pack at the end of my bed I have to either curl up or put my feet over my bags to sleep. During the night I hear people talking swahili outside our tent but not for long.