The Climb Day Four: Diamox Makes My Face Hot and My Fingers Tingle

It’s so weird. I thought I was having a stroke when my fingers tips went completely numb and my face felt like it was on fire.

“That is a common side effect of the attitude meds,” said Guide Erik when I confessed this to him midway through our hike this morning. He was so unimpressed with this piece of information I decided it was just part of the experience and almost looked forward to it happening again but this time expertly keeping it to myself.

The night before we camped in the high moorelands in preparation for what was a substantial trek into the alpine desert. After three days of listening to us talk about playing a favorite card game, Eucher, from our misspent youth in the wilds of Michigan, Guide Prosper, in an attempt to avoid the task himself, presented us with two wiling volunteers from the porter pool to round out the table of four required to play. Patrick, a sharp kid we were informed spoke enough English to be in training to be a head guide, and his buddy Alexi, who spoke none.

Carrie didn’t remember enough about how to play to use her teacher skills in this situation so it fell to me. I chose my words about bowers and trump (NO NOT THAT TRUMP) carefully to slowly make the objective clear, and they, in return, explained that here in Africa, a club is called a…