This was by faaaar the best night sleep I had gotten on the mountain and also the upcoming day was a nice 6h downwards hike. Only my knees were complaining...

We even saw some beautiful black and white colobus monkeys with young ones on the way down!

This was the Day of Papa Joe, an old guide, who made his first trip up the mountain in 1970 and had made way more than 1000 trips up Kilimanjaro, but he said at some point he lost count. He is an incredibly interesting humanbeing, he grew up in a small village until, when he was 15, it was attacked by the Maasai and he had to leave; 2 years later he started his first climb of the mountain. Today he has 8 kids, all relatively successful and he is still in love with the mountain, stopping at many plants to explain what they are and what they can be used for. At some point, to demonstrate how robust a liana is he hung onto one laughing and smiling, showing his big gap between the front teeth (keep in mind he is 60+). He really doesn't need much in life to be happy and his energy far exceeded all of ours, as you could see him dancing to Jack's Jazz music, singing along to James Brown with his walking poles in the air, telling us in broken english that when we get down of this mountain we will look into the sun and have a nice whiskey listening to this music and loving life!

Fun fact:
One of the many people he brought up the mountain was US President Jimmy Carter!

Anyways, as we reached the bottom of the mountain, it was picture time at the gate and time for a few well deserved beers before our bus took us back to the Hotel.

At the Hotel, after a loooong shower, we met up with the guy who had spent a few moments too much at the top covered in cuts on arms and hands and a big wound on his forehead. Because I am afraid of mixing anything up I will leave the details out of the story
(I swear I am not making this up, but the atmosphere on top of a mountain is hard to describe and even harder to comprehend if you have never been that high up, but it is a really weird thing)
but he must have gone absolutely crazy after (because he was the last one to make it) he was surrounded by only porters dragging and pushing him up the mountain since he couldn't really stand on his own anymore. His mind suddenly flipped and he thought we all got abducted and the porters were trying to do the same to him so he started running and fell a few times, also on his head while trying to jump over rocks. He tried stoning our main guide cutting his forearm open and as they (thank god!) caught him they needed a few men to hold him down and pin him so he wouldn't hurt himself or the guides any more, he even tried faking his own death he said in order for them to let him go. He got pinned on a big wheelbarrow and covered in blankets so he wouldn't freeze to death and wheeled down to base camp (4600m) where he could see we were all fine and 3 of our group had to come and talk to him to assure him of his position (I was asleep during all of this) so he calmed down and fell asleep on the way down to the hospital.