Safety Equipment & Training: Safety is our number one priority on Kilimanjaro. Unlike many Kilimanjaro operators, we provide extensive safety gear on Kilimanjaro, including a hyperbaric chamber on every trek and a fully rigid litter. We supply plenty of emergency oxygen and have AED devices on each climb. We encourage you to compare our inclusions with other outfitters.
Mountain Guides and Core Crew: Our mountain guides and core crew are recognized as the most capable and professional crew on the mountain. All of our head guides are WFR trained and certified. Our guides and core crew have the best compensation package on Kilimanjaro.
Porters: We are committed to ethical porter treatment standards:
A Kilimanjaro climb would not be possible without porters. They are the backbone of all Kilimanjaro expeditions, and sadly have long been exploited by the tourism industry in Tanzania. However, a change has been occurring, and expectations of the porters are changing in cooperation with companies like ours that are committed to providing fair working conditions, honesty and transparency. The Kilimanjaro Porter’s Assistance Project (KPAP) has been the driving force of this change in attitude and practice for the past 10 years. Based in Moshi, they are a Tanzanian non-governmental organization committed to improving the working conditions of the porters. KPAP has recognized that we ensure proper treatment of porters with our systems and procedures. We are the only company on Kilimanjaro providing professional matching outfits for all our porters. It’s a tangible and easily recognizable difference which separates us from all other companies. Having our porters in uniforms allows our guests to see which porters are ours, not only being able to easily identify them, but to recognize that our porters have the best boots and other gear, and the biggest smiles. Our guests continually tell us that our porters were consistently the most professional, friendly, helpful, courteous, and strongest porters they saw.
We ensure that no bribes are ever paid by porters to get work. We’ve registered all our porters, and we choose them by means of a database which tracks all their work and their performance, and which chooses them in a way that fairly distributes the work.
Camping equipment: With years of experience outfitting on Kilimanjaro, listening to our guests’ feedback, and pursuing our own passion for innovating, we’ve found the right combination of utility and form with our mountain equipment. Our kit is a combination of oft-replaced high-end manufactured mountain gear and functional purpose-designed and built, locally made in Arusha. We take great pride in having kit with the best look and function on Kilimanjaro. Because top manufacturers’ round dining tents do not fit on Kili’s long and narrow tent sites, we designed and built our own customized mountain dining tents. We offer a closed-cell foam pad which covers the entire sleeping tent footprint, which is something our guests learn to appreciate in wet weather. We also offer optional comforts; a number of ‘luxury’ camping add-ons. See below for more detail.
Mountain Cuisine: Our menus have been developed by a team of professional cooks and mountain foodies who have long-term experience in food service in Tanzania. We continue to develop and improve our menu plans to create astonishingly great meals in such inhospitable environments, using only propane gas cookers. We produce and prepare most of our recipes in our Arusha-based kitchen, using only fresh and high quality ingredients, for delicious and energizing meals necessary for high-altitude mountain trekking. We have an exciting menu which includes inspired vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free menu plans. We can also cater to guests’ allergies or faith-based dietary restrictions. We take exception to the use of stock cubes, msg, and processed foods. Our cooks are trained to produce the most delicious meals using real ingredients without shortcuts or additives. For our soups we use real butter & virgin olive oil instead of margarine and other cheap oils. We source 30 different herbs and vegetables from organic gardens. Each climb travels with a set recipe book, laminated with photos of each dish of each meal. These measures help ensure standards stay high, and we are constantly monitoring for quality and consistency of produce, and logging and evaluating our guests’ feedback comments about the food. We are serious about exceeding our trekkers’ expectations about mountain cuisine! Highlights include:
Snacks upon arrival in camp.
Luggage Allowance:
LITE OPTION: This option is used for the Kilimanjaro Group Trek only. The differences are that the aluminium dining chairs are smaller with no arm rest. There is not a private toilet tent. Fresh hand-towels are not provided. Hot Water bottles are not included in your sleeping bags. The luxury sleeping tent, hot showers, mess tent heater, heated lounge tent, and solar charging kit are not available with this option.
Tipping guidelines: On all treks there will be one head guide, one cook and one waiter plus variable numbers of assistant guides and porters. See the chart below for approximate numbers. Amounts suggested are from the GROUP.
Our passion for Africa began with a dream of living on the continent – a dream realized. We explored parks, rivers, mountains and villages, learned about the flora and fauna, fell in love with everything, and came away wanting to share our passion for a remarkable continent. Africa Adventure Consultants was born of the desire to give more people the chance to experience Africa’s wonders. Let us guide you into the wilderness.
Africa is enormous. There are endless things to see and do, and it can’t all be done in one trip. That said, we realize that many people believe that a trip to Africa is ‘once in a lifetime’ (though many more end up realizing once is not enough!). What do you most want to see? What experiences have you been dreaming of? Visit our destination pages to narrow your choices down, browse our safari types to get a sense of the activities and styles available, or talk with a Journey Specialist to hone in on the areas that will deliver the journey of your imagination.
We know it can be hard to narrow down what to do on vacation, especially with the wealth of choices that are available on the African continent. That’s why we have created an array of sample itineraries to inspire your travel. Browse through them – you’ll find everything from family safaris to honeymoons to Kilimanjaro climbs – and find the places and activities that excite you. From there, you can contact a Journey Specialist to start the process of crafting a customized safari just for you!
You’re ready – it’s time to plan your safari! Contact one of our expert Journey Specialists and we will collaborate with you to craft your personalized trip.
