The plan for today was always going to be one of immense relaxation, so as to sure to be at our peak of physical readiness for the start of the climb tomorrow. This is why I picked a hotel without both power and air conditioning, forcing us into the sun loungers next to the pool for the day. I insisted on a small pool to actively discourage any temporary insanity involving the 'doing of lengths'. Alas the continuing lack of luggage meant we would have to brave the wild streets of Arusha to find some swimming shorts, which seriously cut into our pool time. As soon as we touched foot on the main street we were bombarded by a whole range of people offering to sell us anything or help us find whatever. There was even an Irish Examiner available. If only these lads were at the airport last night....
After a brief attempt to find shorts we headed off to the food market, where we found chickens killed only to order, and free flies with every strip of beef bought. The beef was a great buy as it is left cooking all day in the sun so you only have to spend half the time cooking it when you bring it home. Trying to buy apples turned into a total fiasco, where 9 different people were trying to sell us the same apple. The only one who seemed to have no interest in the sale of fruit was in fact the guy who actually owned the bloody things!! With a little help from our new friends we also managed to purchase 2 pair of very stretchy basketball shorts, not pretty but very effective. Chomping happily on the apples we then went for lunch before meeting the tour company rep back at the hotel. We also met up with a group that had gone the same route we were going as well as with the same guides. Christ they were hard work.... One Aussie guy kept prattling on about the 'Brotherhood of the Mountain' while a Belgian woman just listed problem after problem despite he partner trying to bring an air of optimism to proceedings. Apparently the most important thing to remember on the mountain is to put sun screen on your thumb and forefinger so they don't get burnt when using poles!!! I suppose I'm being harsh, she did after all give us a bag of snack bars. Once we did our thanks very much for all the advice routine we jumped straight into the pool.
We had dinner up the road and returned to wait for our bags. In order to pass the time Ash told us about his favourite cinema. It had 4 seats in a row, with two, two seat rows on either side...and you could push a button and some one would come down and bring you a drink. He couldn't quite remember where it was though. If at this stage the image of the large screen in a passenger plane is floating around your head, then you will totally understand why myself and Conor spent the next half hour rolling around in tears of laughter!!!
After we picked ourselves up, our bags arrived so we then tried to pack em in the dark, although to be honest we did have light for the 10 sec intervals the generator actually worked. After the great pack we went to sleep, in between Conor's snores naturally...
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