Looking Down on the Clouds from Kili

View from Atop Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanazania

Here's what the top of Kilimanjaro looks like. (The mountains nickname is "Kili.)It is 3 and a half miles up, halfway through the Earth's atmosphere!! You wouldn't believe how large and bright the stars appear from up here. Dazzling!! Mount Kilimanjaro is in the country of Tanzania, which borders Kenya to the south.

Glaciers sit on Kili's two peaks, as you can see in the photo above. Though the glaciers are shrinking, they are still huge, huge, huge. The one in the picture is about 60 feet high, or as tall as a five-story building. In the 1800's, when explorers from England went back and told people there was snow in Africa, everyone laughed. No one could believe snow would be found on the equator, which sits very close to the sun and is always warm. Year round, it is like summer here in Kenya and Tanzania. But because Kili is so tall, the air gets thin and the weather gets cold up top.

When we climbed Kili, we started out walking through tropical forests while wearing shorts. Within five days, when we reached the top, we were wearing several layers of clothes, including two pairs of gloves and two hats. It gets down to 15 degrees fahrenheit at the top! Plenty cold to keep the glaciers frozen and visible from many, many miles away.