So what did you do over the Christmas holidays? Shopping? Putting lights up? The usual holiday stuff? Anybody happen to scale to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa?

    Oh yeah, we left that one off the list.

    Believe it or not, that’s exactly how local residents Benny Torres and Alan Espino spent their December, and what a December it was.

    Throw Bill & Ted’s Great Adventure right out the window. Benny & Alan had their own great adventure and last week they sat down with the Gazette to talk about their colorful story and share some spectacular pictures as well.

    “What an emotional moment for both of us,” said Torres. “Here we were, virtually on top of the world looking down. A moment in your life you will never forget.”

    Anyone who sees Torres today, at 26, probably would never recognize him. Eight years ago he was a heavy, overweight pizza delivery kid working at Roman’s Pizzeria. He and Alan, younger brother of Miami Springs City Councilman Dan Espino, had bonded as friends while attending Monsignor Pace High School. Torres attended Springview Elementary and Miami Springs Middle School while Espino did his pre-high school years at Blessed Trinity in Virginia Gardens. Later on, looking at an old photo, they discovered that had been students at New Beavers Kiddie College (now Kids Kollege) 20 years back.

    “Even though we went off to different colleges we always remained friends,” said Torres, who went on to earn an advertising degree at the University of Florida while Espino went to FIU and is currently a veterinary anesthetist.

    After going through a major lifestyle change (losing 100 pounds), Torres moved away to work in Chicago where he has been for the last four years. But he kept in touch with Espino and once in a while the two would vacation together. Leading us to our mountain-climbing adventure story.

    “I think I was on the phone with him last August when I said, ‘So what do you feel like doing this time?’ ” said Torres. “I knew I was going to get four months off from my job and would have time to do something.”

    “I just kind of threw it out there,” said Espino. “I said, ‘Why don’t we go to Africa and scale Kilimanjaro.’

    “I told him, ‘Sure, why not,’ ” said Torres. “I wasn’t sure how serious he was about it but Alan called me a few weeks later with a lot of the travel information and it took off from there.”

    With Espino, via lots of Internet searches, hammering out the travel arrangements, the “great adventure” began on Dec. 4 when the two flew to Nairobi, Kenya, a 20-hour trip.

    After spending one day touring the Nairobi area, it was time to board a bus and cross the border into Tanzania for the eight-hour trip with the small town of Moshi as the destination. In the meantime, they needed to find a guest house.

    As Espino put it, “Someone who really knew what they were doing when it came to finding us the right places to stay and right people to see when it came to putting together a package to scale the mountain.”

    “That’s when the shock of where we were really hit us,” said Torres. “I mean, it was everything you saw in ‘National Geographic.’ When you get out of the city, it’s clay huts, naked babies, women walking and carrying all of their items on their head. I pretty much knew I wasn’t in Chicago or Miami Springs anymore.”

    When they got off the bus in Moshi, with Kilimanjaro visible off in the distance, Torres and Espino were “swarmed” by the opportunists looking to cash in.

    “It was so obvious we were tourists,” said Espino. “They actually came at us so intensely that it freaked us out a little. Finally there was one guy named Chanel, who spoke perfect English, who pulled us aside and said, ‘Don’t talk to anyone else, come with me,’ and I said, ‘Here’s our guy.’ ”

    Finally, it was Dec. 8 and, after hiring guides and porters with Chanel’s help, it was time to make the 90-minute drive to the base of the mountain and embark on the six-day “climb of their life.”

    “I trained for three months with a lot of incline running,” said Espino  (Benny is a marathon runner, so his training was built-in). “We felt we were in good enough shape to do it.”

    It took four days to reach 15,500 feet and an outpost referred to as Kibo Hut. Now it was time for the real work, the real test of valor for both.

    “Everyone makes it to Kibo Hut, which has free-standing buildings and a place to stay, but now came the last 4,000 feet to the summit and that’s where it really starts to become challenging,” said Torres. “The air gets really thin and your stamina really gets put to the test.”

    It was an early 4 a.m. rise on Monday, Dec. 12. With their two guides ready, Torres and Espino embarked on the six-hour trek to what would hopefully be a successful trip to the summit at 19,340 feet. It was here that the altitude and cold started to take its toll on Espino.

    “I knew he was getting in trouble when his face started to go expressionless and blank,” said Torres.

    “It got to the point where I needed four breaths to take one step,” said Espino. “I was starting to think I might not make it.”

    Then came Gilman’s Point. Just over 18,000 feet, Torres said it is the point where you can actually see the summit and the final push begins.

    “And it’s also the point where, according to what the guides told us and statistics verified, seven out of every 10 climbers are able to go no further and turn back,” said Torres. “I was good at that point, but Alan was not. I thought he was going to tell me to go ahead and that he would wait for me when I came back down.”

    But that’s not the way it happened.

    “When we got to Gilman’s Point the guides started jumping up and down yelling, so I thought we had made it to the summit. Then Benny pointed to where the summit was and my heart just dropped,” said Espino. “I’m not a spiritual person but when you’re up at that altitude, perhaps you feel closer to the Lord and I just somehow found a final burst of energy to try to keep going.”

    And onward they trudged. And an hour later, there it was. The sign at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro awaiting climbers announcing that they were at the highest point in the African continent.

    “The tears on my cheeks were starting to freeze,” said Espino. “Amazing once I got close to the summit how I found that extra burst of energy.”

    Ten minutes. That was it. That’s about all the time you can spend at the summit, so Torres and Espino snapped away the photos with both themselves and their two guides.

    “Our faces were red but not from sunburn,” said Torres. “That was from the wind and the ice crystals hitting our face. You can’t stay up there for more than 10 minutes before you have to start heading back down.”

    And two days later, they were back at the foot of the mountain, and a day after that headed home.

    “When Alan first called me to tell me what he and Benny were doing I said, ‘You’re doing what?’ ” said Dan Espino. “At first I thought he was crazy and not sure if he would really go through with it, but now that he has, I can’t be more proud of him. It’s an amazing feat for both him and Benny.”

    “I feel like a boxer ready to tackle anything now,” said Torres when when asked how accomplishing something like this has changed his life. “I feel like I’m filled with rocket fuel and ready to take on anything life throws at me.”

    “I learned that mind over body can go a long ways,” said Alan Espino. “You can push yourself a lot farther than you ever think you can. An incredibly surreal experience.”

    When asked what’s next for the two as they walked away, Torres turned around and uttered some very appropriate words. “The sky’s the limit.” Those are two guys who would know.