Acanela customer Lena Demuth sits down with us and shares her top travel memories, what she loves about Acanela expeditions, her experiences climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and more! Listen to hear her Acanela Expeditions review!

In this episode, we discuss:

• What Lena’s most memorable travel experience has been (0:45)

• Lenas experience traveling with Acanela (2:35)

• Lena’s advice for anyone traveling to Kilimanjaro (4:25)

• Lena’s next adventure (9:02)

Courtney: Hi, guys. This is Courtney with Acanela. I am back with Lena. We are just sitting down to talk about some of her travel experiences. She just actually went on a trip to Kilimanjaro, so we're super excited to have her. Lena, if you just want to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Lena: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Courtney. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. My name's Lena. I have a degree in biology. I'm a Korean born ... I guess I'm half Korean, half American. I love traveling. It's got to be one of my favorite things to do. But under the same token, I also like being at home. There's two sides of the coin and I appreciate both sides.

Lena’s Most Memorable Travel Experience

Courtney: I feel that. That's awesome. What would you say your most memorable travel experience has been? You said you like traveling.

Lena: I do like traveling. I would actually say the Kilimanjaro trip is the most memorable by far. I have family in Korea. We go to Korea and Korea is a gorgeous country if you haven't been. It's amazing. I love the people and I love the culture and the food is just so great. But the Kilimanjaro trip, I think, is the most memorable because I sort of decided on a whim. I think if you were to suggest, "Hey, you want to hike Kilimanjaro one day?" I would have probably said no because it's never been on my ... For some people, it's their goal. It's something they've wanted to do forever. 

Courtney: Yeah.

Lena: And the trip presented itself. I decided to take it. I nanny here where I live and the lady I nanny for has hiked Kilimanjaro and she raves about it. She says if she could relive any week of her life over and over and over again it would be that Kilimanjaro trip.

Courtney: Oh, wow. That's awesome.

Lena: Yeah. And she took a different route than we did. We did the Marangu route, which was cool. It was very cool. But I think what makes it so memorable was going somewhere that I didn't feel a tie to because going to Korea, I've got family there. I'm half Korean. I feel like I belong there. And going to Kilimanjaro where I didn't necessarily fit in but still felt a part of it ... That's hard to explain but ...

Courtney: Yeah, no. I definitely understand that.

Lena: Yeah. That's probably my most memorable trip to date.

Lena’s Favorite Part Of Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro

Courtney: What would you say your favorite thing about Kilimanjaro would have been?

Lena: I am a big old nerd. I'm a huge nerd. I got my degree in biology; I mentioned that. I'm a big plant nerd. I own 30 plants at home. The first trek where we're going through the jungle was the most exciting part for me. And whether the rest of the group cared about my plant facts I was naming as we went through didn't matter to me because I was like, "Hey, look at this! This is part of the mint family. You want to know how I know?" And then I'd keep going. I don't know if anyone listened but it's fine because I had fun.

Courtney: Yeah. That's good. That's cool.

Lena: That was really cool. I really enjoy the flora of places. I even bought a book online to read up before I got there to have a little more background information because obviously North America doesn't have the same flora as Africa does.

Courtney: Yeah.

Lena: So, I was pretty pumped about that.

Courtney: That's so awesome. And Africa has beautiful plants and things to see. The nature is just beautiful in Africa. I love it.

Lena: Oh, yeah. And every inch that can grow something is growing something . And I think that's just a great ... I love it. 

Courtney: Yeah. The soil is so fertile. Yeah. I love that you also love that and notice things like that. That's so cool.

Lena: Yeah. And I'm sure at some point people are like, "Oh, Lena. Stop talking." But I was like, "It's fine. Look at this mushroom. I love this mushroom. I'm going to tell you why I love this mushroom. And you can forget it, which is okay because I love the mushroom."

Lena’s Advice to Those Wanting to Climb Mount Kilimanjaro

Courtney: That's good. I'm so glad it was a good experience that way for you. What would you say your advice would be for someone that's going to climb Kilimanjaro?

Lena: Bring more than one water bottle. I had only brought one refillable one because I had assumed that I would just buy another prefilled water bottle in time and then I learned that it's illegal, I guess, to refill the purchasable water bottle.

And so, the second day was really hard for me because we were out of the jungle so there was a lot of straight sunlight. And I had the one 32 ounce water bottle and that was it.

And I was done with it before lunch. That part was really hard. Summit day was also really hard. We started at 1:30. I don't think we even stopped hiking until 10:30. We had a break in between where we made it back down to the kebo hut. But yeah, summit day is absolutely exhausting. There's nothing to prep you for summit day. You just got to do it. Yeah. Summit day. And I remember getting to the summit, too. I was talking to another hiker that was with us and a lot of us got to the top at the same time. And everybody was crying but I wasn't crying and I was like, "There's something wrong with me! I'm not crying."

Courtney: "I'm not crying." 

Lena: "Why? I'm at 19,000 ft. Everybody should be ... Everyone else is crying. I'm not crying." And then what really got me was having to say goodbye to our guides and porters because you spend so much time and they do so much for you on the way up that saying goodbye to them was so hard. If I could take every single one of them home with me, I would have. That was really ... That was probably the hardest part. Summit day was really hard physically, but saying goodbye to all the porters and our guides the last day was really emotionally exhausting.

Courtney: Yeah. I definitely understand that. That's great advice, bringing another water bottle. I didn't know that it was illegal to refill purchased water bottles.

Lena: Yeah. I really ... I thought I had that in the bag. I was trying so hard. Apparently, I was the only one. I packed one bag and it was everything that I owned and brought with me went in my one hiking backpack, so I was trying to think of ways to reduce taking up space and I figured I'll bring the one refillable water bottle and then I'll just buy one there and then I'll just keep refilling it all the way up and all the way back down. That was a no go. I learned that the second day; that they won't refill it. And I was like, "Well, shoot."

Luckily, other guests or other hikers had brought more than one. One girl had brought four, so I borrowed one of her four for the rest of the trip, which was really, really nice. I would want to ... I want to say you should train. And I think you should train. We had kind of a short amount of time. I found out that I was going a month in advance, so I only had a month to train and I didn't train super, duper hard. But we also had another hiker who trained for two months beforehand and then was sick the whole time with high altitude sickness. So, there's really ...

Courtney: Yeah, some things you can't prepare for.

Lena: Yep. There's just some things you can't prepare for.

Courtney: Yeah. That's good to know, as well, just to keep that in mind. Yeah. That sounds like you had, overall, such a great experience. I want to say that Kilimanjaro is on my bucket list but it just seems like so far out of reach right now in my life. But I've been to the bottom of Kilimanjaro. I've never actually been able to venture up there so that's so awesome that you had that experience in your life and you ...

Lena: Yeah, I ...

Courtney: ... Can say that you've made it to the summit.

Lena: I'm really impressed with myself that I was able to make it to the top. I also ... I'm going to attribute this to the Diamox that I was taking because I had no sickness whatsoever other than a nose and throat thing that I had before I left for the trip. I didn't throw up. I didn't get nauseous. I didn't get any of the other fun high altitude sickness symptoms that you can get. But my prescription for Diamox was almost double everybody. I was taking like 500 mg of it and everybody else was taking 250, tops. Some where only taking 125. I don't know if that helped me by taking an absurd amount of Diamox or not. I'd like to think that helped because then I would have been taking it in vain.

Lena’s Next Adventure

Courtney: My next question would be what's up next? What's your next adventure? Do you have anything planned and ready to go?

Lena: Yeah. Well, not a wild adventure. My boyfriend's sister is getting married in DC.

Courtney: Okay.

Lena: Next month. So, I'm going to DC next month. And I believe I lived there when I was younger when my family was moving around because of the military but I don't remember it so that will be fun. I'll get to explore DC.

Courtney: Yeah.

Lena: And that's next month. And who knows what I have planned for April. I'm hoping to actually catch another trip with Acanela this year but we'll see. Who knows?

Courtney: Yeah. We would love to have you on another trip with us.

Lena: I'd love to go. It was a really ... The food was another thing, too. I know that's part of Acanela's vision for all these trips is that it's incorporating the local food. The food on the hike has got to be ... It was really just so surprisingly good. And it's weird, too because it's all ... It's nice because I think they soft-stepped us into the food. And I'm using the soups as an example because they started out with a pumpkin soup. I'm like, "Okay, it's like butternut squash soup. That's fine." And then the next soup was cucumber soup.

Courtney: Oh.

Lena: Which I can safely say I've never had a hot cucumber in my life.

Courtney: Yeah, that's interesting.

Lena: But it was really good! And then the next one was banana soup.  They really soft-stepped up is with the pumpkin and they moved on. But the food was so great. I really liked that, too. And it wasn't so unique that if you have a sensitive stomach you couldn't enjoy it, so that was really, really nice. I loved that. I'm a big food person, anyway.

Courtney: That's awesome. Yeah. That's really good to hear that the food was good, as well. I think Kilimanjaro, you're just thinking hiking the mountain and so I haven't really thought about what the food looks like as your hiking. Yeah. Do you have any other last minute things that you wanted to add in here?

Lena: It was such an experience. For somebody whose never dreamed or wished or hope to do this ... It was never my bucket list thing ... And still doing it, I would still do it again. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the group that I went with. Kylie was on the trip, too, and it was really nice to get to know her and talk to her and learn about the company and what you guys do. The saying goodbye to the guides still almost makes me cry. Thinking about how we had to say goodbye to them and the porters. It was a really great experience.

Courtney: Sounds like you guys had an amazing time.

Lena: Oh, yeah. And I'm sure you could ask anybody else that went that. They loved it. I think I loved it a little bit more because I didn't get sick. I think it might have been a little lower if I got nauseous or couldn't stomach anything the whole way up, but I got really lucky. I had a really great time. It was great. It was super great.

Courtney: That's so good. I'm so glad to hear about that. Well, yeah. It's been so great to chat with you and to hear about your experience. And I've definitely learned something about hiking Kilimanjaro today, so thank you for that. It's been great to just chat with you and hear those experiences from you. We're looking forward to hopefully having you on another adventure with us again soon.

Lena: Yes. I would love to do it.

Podcast made in partnership with Acanela Expeditions

Theme Song - I’ll Just Be Me by Gravity Castle