The weekend was free and the options were many. 2 of our team members, including Megan!!!, left to climb the great Mt. Kenya. I chose to stay behind and enjoy my weekend instead of tortoring myself for 3 days. Across the valley is a volcano called Longonot. We talked to a few people that reccomended us to climb it, "it only takes 45 minutes to an hour." Jason and I decided thats what we would do for the free weekend. We began asking several people to join us on our hike. We left the next morning at about 9:30 with a team of 8 people to climb. The drive was about 45 minutes to the base of the volcano. We paid our fees and began the hike. The beginning was very enjoyable and pretty easy. Little did I know. We spotted our first wild animals. About 10 giraffes roamed in the distance. We went off the path to get closer to them. At about 100 ft away we decided to leave them alone when the big giraffe started walking towards us. We continued our hike and it slowly got steeper. As the hike got harder the group started seperating. I stayed behind with Ricc and because the thin air was not being nice to my lungs. The higher we got the harder it was to breath. After almost 2 hours of climbing I finally made it to the edge of the crater. The view was amazing!! I could see for miles. Inside the crater was heavly forrested land. Mathu, a guy from the brace shop beat us up the mountain. By the time we had made it to the top, he had already hiked around the edge of the crater (5km). The hike down was much much easier. On the wayh down I saw zebra, gazelle, and antelope!!! When we made it back to the house we had a 'dinner party' with all of the climbers.