Every day that passes is one less day of life. To be present is a gift.
I examined and communicated with a variety of different organisations and tour operators and made a spreadsheet which included costs, facilities that would be employed including lavatories, cooked food, tents including mass tents, number of porters, years of experience that the guide has. It’s worthwhile noting that going supercheap may not be the most comfortable way of doing an arduous hike of this nature and going super luxurious may not necessarily provide any more comfort then a good middle-of-the-road company. In the region of US$1800 each
I reviewed the trip advisor comments which were very helpful and relied on personal recommendation. Eventually I opted for Evarest adventures http://www.evarest-adventures.com/
My life was made easier as my cousin who lives in Moshi met with Justin the proprietor check out the validity of the company.
We agree the price and then arranged for a bank transfer to a US holding account. All transactions were conducted in US dollars.
The 2nd part of initial research was to figure out how best to ensure a summit ascent. It was my hope that stay at the crater camp and walk around the crater and enjoy walking on the glaciers and so to this end I chose the limo show route. This is a longer route and can last up to 9 days with an overnight stay at the summit.
The crew was quite large stop there were 2 guides a chef and 9 porters.
The only additional cost was that of ensuring that proper tips were given the end stop this was in the region of $20 per day for the guides, $15 for the chefs per day and the porters anywhere between $7 and $10 depending on the amount of work they were doing. Those that had extra tasks such as looking after our food, toilets, guiding us to the peak were paid a higher amount.
The remainder of the expense was spent on equipment which I shall go through in detail
Chet & Nila go to African Homelands 