We climbed Kilimanjaro, highest peak in Africa: 5800m! It was tough, and awesome! We (a group of 9) all came together in Arusha on the 4th of June; all ready but a bit nervous for the big challenge. Yvette, Irma and Lotte came over from The Netherlands; fellow VSO doctor Jolanda joined with her niece Maaike; and Ellen joined from South Africa with her trainer-coach Menko. We used Machame route: 6 days in tents. Marije had taken her pulsoximeter with her and we all became her daily victims for her research. On Monday we drove to the Machame Gate and started walking through rain forest. Thick clouds of fog made the weirdly bearded trees look like wizards. We arrived at the first camp just at sunset. According to the pulsoximeter, we were all still pretty normal. Second day was moorland, with the snow capped Kili visible in front of us. On day three the deserted rocky and windy moon landscape started. Doc started worrying whether her pulsoximeter was not working correctly or we were really not much alive anymore. Nights were cold. Despite being tired, the hard rocky floor made sleeping even more difficult. Respect for the whole crew that guided us up this mountain. They carried all our bags, tents, chairs, and food. Every morning after we left, they packed all the tents, cleaned up the area, ran to the next camp while passing us underway, put the tents again, and made sure warm water was boiled when we arrived for tea and to wash ourselves. And did we yet mention the delicious and plenty food? Wow! We set off for the top on the 5th day, on 5am in the morning. Some of us started suffering really badly from altitude sickness, nausea and headaches. They blamed lack of oxygen; Tim blamed Diamox, which we all took preventively except him and he didn’t suffer from anything. Doc measured blood saturations of 71-75 and resting heart rate of 120. Nevertheless, we were sitting on the top of the African world, happy we made it, and even happier to go back. We went down in one and a half day to be on time for another Kilimanjaro (beer) and to watch the first miserable match of the Dutch. Two remarks: The last part to the top is quite a garbage belt. What a shame that so many people leave their empty water bottles, tissues, candy packing, etc, behind. Having difficulties on the last part is never an excuse not to behave! Second, the snow cap starts a few hundred meters below the peak. However, only twenty years ago, the snow cap was more than one kilometre below the peak. There, we could still see the worn paths of former glaciers, now all melted away. Expectations have it that in ten years, the whole snow cap will be gone.