After a somewhat restless nights sleep, we are up around 6 AM. We go watch the sunrise, but there are clouds below us in the valley, so we do not have any views of Kilimanjaro, but we do get very good views of Mt Meru's crater walls and of the peak. We have a light breakfast and then get ready to begin hiking. This includes purifying water and packing up all our stuff. We start off shortly before 8:30 AM.
Stage 2 of the hike up Mt Meru climbs steeply up through the forest to the second hut. It is another beautiful walk, through the many trees. The trees come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They would have huge trunks and grow out in all sorts of directions. In many cases, they would grow horizontally and then, only after a few meters, grow vertically one again. The trees were covered with moss and other lichen.
We would emerge every once in a while from the forest, coming to a point where we would have a view of the crater and the crater rim. It was good to see where we were going and where we hoped to be at sunrise tomorrow.
We arrive at the second hut - Saddle Hut - after less than 3 hours of walking. We were hot and sticky and it was good to change our clothes and to take a break. We had lunch and then debated whether we should hike up to the peak of Little Meru this afternoon. After a while, we decided that we would - it would be good practice and we could see how our knees do on the descent (in particular Lars, with his recent rafting injury which was acting up a bit). We take a one hour nap.
At 2 PM we start to get ready to climb up to Little Meru. The walk up is pretty straight forward and we make it up in about 30 minutes. The clouds start to roll in just before we make the peak (and Jacqui disappeared from sight for a while) and while up at the peak the sun would every once in a while shine through the clouds. To reach the top is a great success for Jacqui - it is the highest she has been and it was good to reach a summit after the troubles we had on Mt Toubkal and Mt Cameroon. Third time lucky!!!
At the peak we take a rest for about 30 minutes and pose for the obligatory picture. The walk down takes us another 30 minutes and once back at the hut we take it easy prior to having dinner around 5 PM. After dinner, we get our stuff ready for our hike up to the peak tomorrow. We need to get our cold weather gear ready, purify some water and get extra batteries ready for our torches. We will get up at 1 AM and leave no later than 2 AM to try to reach the peak by sunrise. It will be 0 to -5°C at the peak with possibly strong winds.
We retire to our bunks around 6:30 PM but we have some trouble falling asleep. It gets quite cold very shortly after the sun sets.