Day 10 & 11. Arusha to Cork. 16th & 17th Oct

To say we woke up depressed wouldn't be entirely accurate, in fact we weren't even hungover. The reason was simple really. We were still drunk. So the morning was a great laugh, the late morning however was tougher. We dealt with the looming depression and hangover with an expertise only gleamed from years of experience. We skipped food and had beer instead!!! That is a slight exaggeration really, as it was lunch time before we touched a drop. In the meantime we splashed around in the pool and watched Joseph, our guide who had called around for a reference, polish off half a bottle of whiskey in an hour. Bit of a breakdown in communication, as we had offered him the bottle to take home but I think he thought he had to drink it in our company. Oopsie!!! To be fair he only had a small stagger leaving us... We went for a walk after he left us, mainly to ensure he hadn't caused any major accidents close enough to our hotel to implicate us, bought a few souvenirs and experimented with how beer differs in taste depending on how many stars the hotel you bought it from has. The results of this ground breaking research, while undoubtedly accurate, have been shelved due to possible bias involving free peanuts and sun loungers.
We returned to our hotel, and proceeded to get packed up and out of our room before the taxi arrived. Funnily enough this was single handedly the quickest bit of packing we managed the whole trip, and we were back eating chicken and chips by the pool in 10 min. Not much happened from here on really, I suppose not much happened before this either but its too late to skip all that now. So to wrap up quickly here is a mercifully short run through of us getting home.

• We said our goodbyes to our fellow climbers, promising to keep in touch and to drop by if ever we were in Canada. By god are they in for a shock some day!


• We lounged about the pool, sipping beers with a comfort that flirted with expertise.


• As we had checked out of our rooms, our showers before we left for the airport consisted of a quick jump in the pool. This led to a near resumption of hostilities between Ireland & England. Although, and my history is sketchy, never caused by a Kiwi before. Ash's jump in the pool managed to soak 2 newly arrived elderly english couples. The whole situation was bordering on hostile before I stepped in, in my usual role as peacekeeper, with "I think its important that we don't lose sight of the fact that there is a chance that this was a complete accident". This of course eased all tension, however they did move their seats back when they saw myself and Conor Limbering up for our 'showers'.


• The taxi arrived and dropped us to the airport, which was lucky because that is exactly where we needed to go.


• We only spent an hour going through the x-ray line as they decided Ash had a knife in his bag. So they kept rooting around in his bag and re scanning looking for the knife until they decided that the knife might actually be his wind up torch and let him off. Ash later attempted to hijack the plane with the torch, just to illustrate a point, but he hadn't wound it enough...


• Met an Irish American guy on plane who told us that all the Africans love Barak Obama, but it's obvious why!!!!!


• Arrived back to Cork after a quick hot chocolate in Amsterdam, to be greeted by television cameras, welcome home banners, hundreds of screaming people and the Taoiseach!!! Some of that is true, and by some of that I mean just one part of it. Possibly the Hot Chocolate.

And that was that. Done & Dusted. Over. Whats next???......