Snowboarding at the Equator

Can you go snowboarding just a few degrees south of the equator? If you get enough altitude.

Martin Griff, a journalist who writes for several papers in New Jersey, relays a story told to him by a friend who traveled to Africa. Here’s an excerpt:

There are tourists everywhere at Kilimanjaro. Most of them are just looking and photographing the animals in the surrounding game parks but a few are there to climb and one of those potential climbers had a snowboard hanging on his backpack. Who could resist asking him what he had in mind?

He was in his mid-twenties and Swedish. He spoke little English and I speak no Swedish so our conversation was minimal but that snowboard did give us something in common. We were able to work out that he was trekking the Serengeti after finishing his education. He had found the snowboard in a junk shop in Dar es Salaam, knew he was on his way to Kilimanjaro, and figured why not.

You can read the full story on “Skiing & Snowboarding by Martin Griff” at NJ.com