Wearing pink, being a business management and entrepreneurship major, and being a sister of Phi Mu sorority aren’t qualities normally synonymous with climbing the world’s highest freestanding mountain. University of South Carolina Honors College senior Amanda Casto was ready to challenge the status quo. Casto, a University Ambassador, always knew she wanted to travel and this girl was ready to do it!
Amanda was traveling with the Darla Moore School of Business at USC on a study abroad trip to Tanzania and took her opportunities while abroad to another level. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever get another chance to do this again, be in Tanzania ever again in my life, so I had to try,” she said about Mt. Kilimanjaro. Amanda and another travel companion, her now beau Brett, decided to extend their trip another week in order to make the trek. It took all kinds of extra physical training before they left.
She packed all kinds of travel esse
ntials: North Face exercise tops, climbing pants that didn’t seem flattering, (“My roommate always made fun of them!” Amanda said.) but were necessary and even ribbons for every day. As a sort of homage to her mom, Amanda wore some color ribbon every day of the hike. “The guys leading our hike always made fun of my colorful tops and clothes,” Amanda said, “Lilly Pulitzer doesn’t make climbing gear yet!” She kept her clothes and attitude bright and cheery as much as she could, loving her bright pink North Face raincoat. “I brought my iPod with me….but there was never anywhere we could charge it, so I used it sparingly” she recalled. On day 3 of the hike–the most mentally trying day because they were scaling vertically—Amanda pulled out her iPod. “I’m a HUGE ‘Friends’ fan, so I took a break and watched an episode on my iPod as fast as I could and then whipped it away” so she didn’t lose any more battery life.
Amanda is full of advice for other girls who want to do similar projects. She’s part of a study abroad network at USC and is available for anyone who’s thinking about embarking on a similar trip. She writes a blog all about her travel tips that she’s working on as part of her senior Honors College thesis so that other students can see just how her trip was. She journaled, an integral part of the traveling she said, and will be posting a lot of her experiences from her own journal on the site. She even talks a lot about if she could go back and do it again, that she’d try to make it a charity climb for a philanthropy, and Amanda said it was big with some of the climbers from the UK!
While she can offer great advice on what shoes to train in, what to bring with you, what sunglasses to wear, and what to expect, Amanda has some more sisterly advice, “Find a girl to go with you,” she remarks. She connected with another girl, the only other girl on the trip, from London and they were able to share a tent, and chat like only girls can. They bonded a lot and Amanda only had good things to share about her “girls-only” experience. “A lot of the trek is dominated by guys, so it was nice to have a girl on my side,”
Amanda said. She was recalling a lot of the words they used too, and believe it or not, the old adage from The Lion King was used often. She said, “’Pole, Pole’ means ‘slowly, slowly’ and we used that a lot, but they also used ‘Haukna Matata’ too!”.
Amanda managed to climb the entire mountain with the group, and in just hearing her speak of it, holds so much pride with the entire trip. She was an easy choice for campus celebrity for her diverse involvement on campus and great story from the summer!