25: Kampala to Jinja (Uganda)

Pictures Here

Week 25 Update:

Kampala, Entebbe, Jinja… Yip, that was it.

Day 169:

It was amazing how light the ground tent was inside. We were not close to a light as such, but the campground globes could definitely be seen through the thin nylon rip-stop this tent was made from and I kept waking up wondering if the sun was up. Our trusty roof top tent was made from heavy canvas and when you closed the windows and doors, it did not let much light through.

It was still a quiet and relaxing night’s sleep and we both woke up refreshed and ready for the day! To be honest, we had decided previously to do very little that day and we got right to it! By mid day we had done nothing worth mentioning and after lunch we carried on doing pretty much the same. Catt was over the moon that her Mac was fixed, so spent most the day speaking to it, stroking it and I swear she was making it other strange promises as well.

Evening arrived with only minor precipitation which we were well prepared for and after a scrumptious dinner we went to bed again. It was deemed a very successful day of achieving exactly what we set out to achieve.

Day 170:

Another peaceful night later we woke up to bird song, the bleating of the two local goats outside our tent and a grunting noise we could not place. Once outside the tent I saw a three legged cat we had named “Tripod” but refused to believe he could make that sound. When I walked to the back of the car to make the coffee I spotted the culprit! It was the single biggest pig I had ever seen and it was having a mud bath where the ladies were doing to laundry. When I stopped laughing I called him Christmas…

Shopping was on the day’s agenda as our stores were running very low. It was with a little shock that I noticed that we still had a meat supply from Arusha we bought more than a month before but very little in terms of fresh produce. Kampala seemed a good place to fill both the fridge and freezer again though. Our first stop was a supermarket called Game that we recognized from South Africa. It was absolutely and utterly astonishingly amazing to walk through a warehouse sized store and seeing how much they had on offer. It was the first time we had experienced anything like that in five months and we were dumbstruck! They even had a hardware section and camping section! The best part for me was that they had our new found favourite wine on special, so we bought 10 litres of the good stuff!

The next stop was the Shoprite next door which was equally well stocked and big. There we mainly got some groceries, but also bought enough meat to last us for more than a month. We found great quality chicken for the first time since Zambia and Beef Fillet was about $6 per kilogram. To the great delight of the security guard, we repackaged some things in the car park to make them fit into the fridge and freezer.

Our last mission was vegetables and as it had become our custom, we found the local market. This market was huge and had everything from motor spares to building supplies, whole carcasses of beef, goat and sheep and more vegetables than you could imagine. There was a football sized area dedicated to bananas! The produce looked fantastic and we managed a fortnight’s worth for a little less than $5.

Back at camp, while looking at the day’s successes and washing the fruit and vegetables, we calculated that we could easily eat for a month from what we had in the car at a cost of about $8 per day. More points for Uganda!

The late afternoon saw the arrival of a fantastic looking 4 x 4 truck and Robert and Clary (http://www.doubledutchworldsafari.com/) We had communicated via email about plans and places before and I had been wondering if we would actually bump into each other. They used to own a restaurant in Australia and had retired to do a 5 year round the world trip. They had raced from Tanzania to Kenya to sort out visas and admin and were backtracking to Uganda and Rwanda. We could obviously share valuable recent information with them about the places we had experienced, as they could with us about Kenya. The friendly chat turned into a bit of a party and the consumption of way too much of our freshly acquired wine! We eventually lit the fire at 22:00, ate at 23:00 and crashed into our bed (Fortunately this was still on the ground) just before 23:30

Day 171:

The Americans arrived at 4:00. That’s 4Am! Their loud voiced carried across the camp site and they decided, in their wisdom to have their early morning discussion about the day’s program while standing right next to our tent! I was not impressed! I was also hung over and not in the mood for confrontation to tried to ignore the surroundings for the 45 minutes it took them to decide what time to have breakfast! Catt was also just a little annoyed.

Hangover day was Sunday and after falling back asleep with the departure of the Americans, we eventually woke up to the soothing and welcoming sounds of a church choir not too far away. It was after 8:00 and we were still feeling a little rough around the edges. Robert and Clary looked right as rain and after another short chat they hit the road towards Murchison Falls NP. We wisely decided to stay put for the day… again.

Day 172:

By this time we had learnt that the Pig’s name was Pig and Tripod’s name was Panda. This was a sure indication that it was time to move on. It took a while to pack up the tents and get stuff organised again, but we still drove through the gate by mid morning.

Our destination for the day was not far away at all. We headed towards Entebbe which was not only the Uganda’s International airport, but also the site of the world’s very first aircraft hi-jacking. It was June 1976 when some Palestine and German terrorists hi-jacked an aircraft and forced it to land there. Idi Amin offered to broker a deal, the Israelis duped the hi-jackers into releasing the hostages and shot them all dead. Those were the days!

Entebbe was also the site of the Uganda wildlife Education centre and this was of far more interest to me than dead terrorists. We arrived at the gates before mid day and was shown the modest, but pleasant camp site next door. The cost was $5 a person, so we signed up for the night. In the afternoon we decided to invest another $10 each to visit the animals, only our payment was refused. The theory was that because we were camping there, we had already paid enough money to enter. This made no sense to me as entrance was twice as much as camping, but I could see that I was not going to win an argument and walked through the gate smiling.

“Wildlife Education Centre” was clearly nothing more than a fancy word for Zoo. The animals on the other hand were mostly rescued from poachers and traders and not bread or bought to live their lives in Captivity. We walked past the first enclosure to see a Giant Forest Hog which we had never seen before and some Waterbuck and Kob before heading past the Lion enclosure to see two Servals. The forest walk took us past some Rhino and on to a huge aviary containing a lone Shoebill Stork, which was my main reason for visiting the centre. We missed Shoebill Island in Bengweulu in Zambia, we missed the Storks in Queen Elisabeth and Murchison Falls and this, by all accounts was the last place we could spot one. I could agree that it was cheating to visit a zoo to see a rare bird, but then again, I don’t think I had ever met anyone who had seen one apart from Mark Harvey from Kapishya. Besides, it was worth it! This dude was fantastically peculiar with a broad bill as large as a shoe box, never mind a shoe! He had to move his head slowly as the apparent weight of his bill seemed to pull him off balance when he moved to quickly. His spooky eyes scanned the little marsh for juicy things to eat and he expertly picked up snails with the tips of his beak. This astonished me greatly as I could not work out how he could actually see the tip of his bill.

We left Mr. Shoebill after a long while and headed to the Chimpanzee enclosure. This seemed to be the centre’s prized possession. They boasted a few photographs of a proud Jane Goodall with their animals which were all confiscated from poachers and illegal owners in the past. Every Chimp had a photo display with its own history and story as well. We watched the energetic and entertaining primates for a long time and they seemed content with their 5 star lodgings complete with artificial vines to swing from. The day close to the Equator was sunny and extremely hot, so we spent some of our entrance money that wasn’t charged on cold beer in the modest restaurant on the shores of Lake Victoria.

A quick walk past Mr. Shoebill saw us leaving the zoo and heading back to Maggie who were parked on a nice lawn for a change. We were, predictably the only people in the camp site for the night and loved every second of it. The weather had cooled a bit after sunset which made for a pleasant evening and the distinct absence of bugs meant that we sat outside, with our light on for quite a while before scaling the ladder to our fondly missed roof top tent.

Day 173:

Entebbe did not have anything to keep us there another day, so we decided to move on again. We considered visiting the Ssese Islands, but reportedly there is nothing to do there apart from lying on the beach and relaxing. We had had our fair share of doing nothing and it was hardly Likoma Island in Malawi!

I had some photographs to mail to South Africa so went in search of the Entebbe Post Office first. This was found in an old house removed from the main street, manned by two ladies and no less than 8 computers offering Internet. They had no envelopes to sell, nor could they tell me of another shop that did. So after enquiring about postage rates, one of the ladies and I started an interesting process of manufacturing cardboard envelopes for my precious cargo. The process took about 40 minutes and the cost of postage of two CD’s was just over $2. The cost of the manufacturing process was about $0.20 for the packing tape I had used.

With responsibilities dealt with we pointed Maggie back towards Kampala and snuck in behind a truck or two to avoid being stopped in the road blocks. I had adapted this approach in Tanzania and it seemed to work well as a time saving exercise. Kampala’s traffic was out in force, but still no where near as mad as Dar Es Salaam. The millions of lawless “bodabodas” (Motorcycle taxis) were omnipresent but by that time I had learnt the art of ignoring them and simply driving the way I wanted to with great disregard for any other road user. It worked very well and I managed to cross the city in a fair time without being shouted at once.

I had to laugh at the concept though. I mean, let’s face it, any city that I had been to in the world had absolutely insane and mad taxi drivers who ignore as many rules as they can and are generally a danger to themselves, their passengers and other traffic on the road. Africa is no different and often at the very extreme end of mad drivers. East Africa looked at that concept and thought that they could do better though! They instated the Bodaboda, giving a motorcycle licence to mad drivers and decided, in their infinite wisdom not to enforce helmets for motorcycles. Fantastic! At least I was less scared of getting hit by a Bodaboda than a 12 seater minibus taxi.

So after surviving the carnival of the streets of Kampala with sense of humour in tack (More than what I could say for most other capitols in southern and east Africa) we headed further east towards the top end of Lake Victoria and the town of Jinja. We passed through the Mabira Forest Reserve with its larger than life trees and dense undergrowth and got spat out the other side with the view of a dam wall and a hydro electrical plant in the Nile. Before the plant came, this was where Speke discovered Ripon Falls and claimed that to be the source of the Nile. The locals would obviously argue that their ancestors knew this long before the Mzungu came. I find it slightly amusing that it was later found that the actual source of the mighty Nile was a tiny spring in Burundi’s Kasumo. To date, there are actually no less than three claims to the source of the Nile: Kasumo being the “southern most” source, Rwanda’s Nyungwe Forest claims the “longest” and Uganda’s blown up Ripon Falls claims the “major” source of the Nile with Murchison Falls being the most exciting thing to happen to the Nile in the totally of its length.. Having not seen anything apart from Murchison Falls, I couldn’t really comment on the correctness of any of these.

Outside of town and down stream of the plant our mission started to find suitable accommodations. Our first attempt failed miserably because the camp site had no access for Maggie and could not deal with the apparent new and bizarre world of the Roof Top Tent. I found this strange as they managed to build a Bungee jumping tower over the river, but failed to build a road into their camp site. We did enquire about their white water rafting… just out of interest sake.

Our second place for investigation was Nile Explorers camp site a little way down stream. As I drove in I saw a white 80 series Land Cruiser with Cape Town number plates and kitted out almost identically to ours. They had a fantastic spot with the rear of the car in the shade and the nose, with solar panel in the sun. I was sold! We were told that the camping would cost us $10 for the night and that we could even drive on the lawn if we wanted. They offered free internet on their computers and had the original rafting business in Jinja. I was impressed! Their rafting price was the same as Adrift, but included two nights of accommodation, three meals and a few free drinks in the bar. I ran out of excuses and signed up for the next day. It would have been rude not to as this stretch of the mighty Nile allegedly offered some of the best white water rafting in the world! Reportedly this was also the last season that the Nile would offer this excitement as the Ugandans had decided to build another power plant down stream with the unfortunate effect of turning world class rapids into a nice, calm, big lake…

We spent the afternoon stressing about dying and chatting to Brandon and Tam, the couple from Cape Town. They were at the end of their trip, heading back south after leaving home the same time we did. Once again we could swap valuable information about the countries we had respectively visited. If only guidebooks could be that up to date! An early dinner and some wine marked the end to our day and we nervously snuck up to bed, avoiding the bar and the rafting video being showed on the big screen.

Day 174:

We woke up way too early for Africa and managed a shower and multiple mugs of the good African coffee before the rafting truck started and we were herded into the back of it. I did notice that everyone else on the truck seemed to be either staff, or in relationships with staff, making us the only two in experienced tourists. The truck drove us to a backpackers lodge in Jinja and there we met a fe other nervous looking folks and managed a friendly chat to some of the staff.

Breakfast was served and it was HUGE and DELICIOUS and I got my money’s worth right there! Doug, our guide, introduced himself and after a short, scary and humorous briefing we were issued with life vests and crash helmets and piled back onto the truck to be taken to the river’s edge. On the way there we met and chatted to Anton, a Kayak instructor from Sweden and his girlfriend Rachel who were attempting a grade 6 rapid in a tandem kayak. This didn’t mean too much to me at the time, but I was impressed none the less. Anton noticed the GoPro camera I mounted on my helmet and told me a story of how he had lost his when his kayak broke into small pieces after tumbling down a waterfall two weeks before. I got a little edgy then, but the excitement definitely started to mound up.

Getting onto the water, our boat consisted of a team of five clients and Doug, our guide. Apart from Doug, I was the only male and was given the task of time setting, using my paddle in the front of the boat. We tested our skill as a team, practiced some commands, went swimming and got back into the boat and even flipped the raft on purpose before Doug deemed us ready and able to head down the river. He was fantastically entertaining, professional and fun all in the same time. He explained rapid number one to us and as we dropped into the leading rapid (Technical talk) my eyes got big and if I could have, I would have screamed like a little girl! We managed to power through it without incident and when we came out the other side we were told that that was a grade 2….

Doug explained that flipping the raft in a rapid for the first time was much like having sex for the first time. It was said to be over way too soon without you really knowing what happened, but you still found it to be kind of fun…We hit our first grade three shortly after and that was incredible! Riding the waves and plummeting down what he called “green tongues” was exciting and very scary in deed. As we were about to leave the white water we flipped…. Doug was right. None of us expected it; none of us knew exactly what was happening and all of us got back onto the boat with big smiles on our faces.

Our next grade 3 was easily done and that brought us to a thing they call “Silverback”, our first grade 5 rapid. This time Doug didn’t play around. He explained the dangers of the place and told us to get a little serious. We dropped in to his screaming commands of “HARD FORWARD” “GET DOWN” AND “HOLD ON” and like a well oiled military machine we managed the run without flipping again.

Our second grade 5 for the day was a place called Bujagali Falls. We patiently waited at the top of the falls, listening intently to Doug’s instructions and explanations of riding down a 19 foot high waterfall in a 18 foot long raft. It all sounded quite treacherous, but under his expert guidance and bombastic sergeant major voice we made it through without issue. He had us paddle back into the insanely strong current and we rode a rapid called “Chop Suey” and “50/50”. (Hey, I didn’t name them) In the former we hit a huge wave sideways and went limbs and paddles flying out of the raft and into the foaming white water. We all miraculously managed to hold on to the raft and by this time it took us less than 20 seconds to flip it back and get back in. One of the girls had taken a hit above her eye and was bleeding profusely. We all suddenly realized how serious our chosen adventure really was.

In a calm bit in the river called an “Eddie”, (More technical talk) our fearless leader patched her up and sent her to the clinic for stitches. So then we were four. As the day progressed we made new friends and saw the likes of Anton and Rachel running the rapids in their tandem kayak. We came to understand the severity of the grades of rapids and the insanity of attempting a grade 6. We passed a place called “the dead Dutchman” which marked a spot where someone (Guessing he was Dutch) drowned after making a fatal error. To pass this, we had to survive “The bad place” and “Jaws”.

Our lunch on the river consisted of a whole pineapple and a packet of biscuits each on a long calm stretch of water. We saw the place of the new dam and power plant which was destined to ruin all the fun places we had been in the morning and even though we loved Uganda very much we had to admit a shocking reality. In Uganda, as in most of the rest of the East Africa we had been, the motto seemed to be to kill everything that moves, cut down everything that doesn’t move and destroy as much of the natural world for financial gain as possible. The tiny bit of the continent that was left, we call National Parks where the finances of the Mzungu tourists got taken advantage of in currencies not printed by the countries they were in. But hey, in Africa, that is called “Progress”. In this specific case Uganda apparently had to promise the Egyptians that they would allow the same volume of water to reach the Mediterranean to avoid Egypt sending a war plane to bomb the crap out of the structure.

The afternoon session gave us a few more grades 3’s and grade 4’s and saw us flip once or twice more. It was after our fourth flip for the day that a tourist in another raft told us how Doug, with a huge smile on his face, forced the flips while we were all hanging on in terror. He obviously did this in safe places and to be honest, it did ad to the fun of the ride, but I never expected that from him. Towards the end of the day Rachel started talking non stop and asking questions, receiving contradictory answers from Anton and Doug and we figured out that the grade 6 in question was fast approaching.

We were told that we had to get out of our rafts and walk a small section, avoiding this rapid. We did as we were told… From the banks we saw the white foaming aggression of the rapids and all of us became silent, secretly praying for the soul of poor, tiny little Rachel in the front of the tandem Kayak. I could see no possibility of surviving that run and kept thinking of the story of Anton’s smashed up kayak and lost GoPro camera. That didn’t stop me from strapping our GoPro to the front of their boat, facing Rachel earlier though.

The safety boat was in place and the signal given and this was obviously an event of enough importance that the locals came out in force to watch. Our group of naïve and inexperienced rafters watched in awe as Anton expertly guided them through the huge waves and massive sprays. They flipped after one section, but rolled back up in an instant and with Rachel screaming as loud as I had been wanting to the whole day, they passed us. Anton, laughing so much and almost dropping his paddle brought them to a stop at the take out point and waited for the rest of us to run the last half, a modest grade 5.

Our boat was the last down and we managed the really dangerous place without issue after which Doug shouted “HARD FORWARD SUCKERS” and I knew what was coming. I could see the huge wave as we approached and I could see Doug turn the boat sideways. Out the corner of my eye I even saw him stand up and jump in the air as we flipped. The cheeky sod tried to land on his feet on the upturned raft to please the mass of spectators who had gathered to see us die! By this time we were experts though and we all hung onto the rope, helped right the raft and climbed on down stream of the take out point. He had us paddle hard forward upstream and we all crawled from the raft onto dry land, exhausted, but ecstatic!

We reached the top of the hill and found the waiting truck with ice cold drinking water on it. Before long the rafts were loaded, the tourists boarded and we set of back towards the camp site. Anton told us that we had travelled about 30km on the river that day, which was almost hard to believe. Back at the camp site we were treated to a buffet dinner of salads, potatoes and skewers of beef fillet. I ate to bursting point and finished my two free beers without them touching the sides of my thought. Despite her objections, we loaded Rachel’s finest moments onto the laptop and played it for everyone to see. It was fantastically terrifying from that point of view and she immediately received “super hero” status from the rest of us “first timers”.

The evening grinded to a halt with tired muscles and minds and smiling faces, courtesy of an absolutely fantastically spectacular day on the mighty Nile River!

Day 175:

OUCH! It was hard to lift my head and I was not looking forward to trying to get up. There was no hang over this time, but the muscles I had been neglecting for the preceding five and a half months were taking their cruel revenge! Catt was feeling fairly much the same.

After a slow start to a perfectly warm and sunny day in Africa I managed to get the coffee made and the chairs put out. We sat for a while, reminiscing about the fun of the day before and complaining about the stiffness of our muscles. Brandon and Tam next door giggled at us knowingly as they had experienced the same thing a day before we got there. It was fairly obvious that we were not going to move on that day!

Catt had met a Speech Therapist from Wellington, New Zealand, who was volunteering in the nearby village and was keen to investigate the local clinic. I had to try and find an electrical fault causing the indicator fuse to blow every day and rest as much as possible. With Catt on her mission I started my own venture and surprisingly managed to find a loose wire and re-attach it to solve the indicator issue. Brandon and I chatted about cars and boy stuff until they left around mid morning and after showering and a long overdue shave the second part of plan commenced.

Catt came back around lunch time and with our usual grub of fine tomatoes, spectacularly large chunks of cheese and some wheaty biscuits. While chomping away she told me that her new friend was paying £75 per week to work in an African village for free for six months as a volunteer. This did not include her living costs or travel expenses. After sitting down again, having fallen of my chair at this news, I struggled to understand the concept. Conservatively a speech therapist would have spent £20 000 getting qualified and should charge around £80 a day if they charge only double the minimum UK hourly wage. This meant that she was not only paying £75 a week to the charity in the UK, but also donating £400 a week of her skill and knowledge and probably another £20 a week on living expenses. So adding it all up, her actual contribution to charity was in the region of £12 500 in her 6 months. I could not help but wander what car the owner of this charity drove and what the size of his house was. He was definitely not living in a mud hut in an African village volunteering his time to “The Cause” and paying o9ver £2 000 a month for the pleasure.

Our afternoon was spent on philosophizing about the greediness of man kind and deciding whether we wanted to spend a day or two on an island at a place called “The Hairy Lemon” We watched the sun set over the mighty grade 5 we had ridden the day before while drinking a Nile Special beer before using the Cobb to cook the best roast chicken known to man.

If I had to do it all again:

On an adventure like ours we found it really important to stop every once in a while. The Red Chilli in Kampala was a great place to do just that, but honestly, knowing what I know now, I would have preferred to spend that resting time at Nile Explorers in Jinja. This is such a nice place with such a fantastic atmosphere of excitement and friendliness with a market for fruit and vegetables right outside the gate. The only trouble with that would be that I would be sorely tempted to “run the Nile’s rapids” again costing me another $125 per person for the day.

The week was deemed a great success and we feel strangely refreshed and tired at the same time and looking forward to the next week’s adventure!

24: Queen Elisabeth NP to Kampala (Uganda)

Pictures Here

Week 24 Update:

Queen Elisabeth NP, Lake Nkuruba, Murchison Falls NP, Kampala

Day 162:

We did not bother getting up early. The manager of the cam site told us that they had to start their “hot water preparations” the previous day as they were expecting guests and it took about a day to get the tank nice and hot. On another inspection of how they do things, the reasoning dawned on me.

The staff accommodation was on the top of the hill. The camp site and facilities were at the bottom of the hill and about 250m away. The hot water boiler was… by the staff accommodation, 250m away from the taps to the showers. No wonder they struggled, but at least the pressure was fantastic! We waited until the heat of the morning sun baked on the ground, at the 250m pipe from the water tank before braving the showers. They were nice and warm then. We also decided to laze the morning away at Hippo Hills… as you do when immersed into Africa.

Our plan was to enter the Queen Elisabeth National park that day and stay overnight. The permits were valid for 24 hours. So the plan was to enter after lunch and give ourselves the morning of the next day in the park. Just as we started getting our lunch ready, we were invaded! An overland truck from Nairobi arrived with its 24 hungry, tired and dirty clients. The truck tried its best to park us in and the noisies, after pitching their tents, tried to evict us from our peaceful hiding place inside the cooking Banda. It was time for us to leave anyway, so no harsh words were needed.

As we left the village, driving up to the marker indicating the start of the National Park I had to laugh. The animals, it seemed, could also read the signs as there was a big herd of Elephant and another herd of Buffalo walking on the unfenced park boundary towards the lake. We arrived at the gate just before 14:00, paid our fees ($30 pp and $50 for our car) and started a slow drive towards the information centre and camp sites. It was a hot and humid day, but still we saw plenty of game and masses of birds.

According to our guide books, no trip to Queen Elisabeth NP could be complete without a Launch Trip on the channel leading into Lake Edward. We found the jetty without much problem and enquired about prices and procedure. The UWA (Uganda Wildlife Authority) boasted two big floating vessels taking up to 100 people at a time and at our time of arrival were packed with school children. The Mweya Lodge on the other hand had an 11- seater flat bottom boat costing a minuscule $3 per person more than the UWA barges. The latter was fully booked for the 15:00 trip, but we were offered a 17:00 trip, provided that we could find at least 2 more paid seats, or pay for the minimum 4 seats ourselves. At the information centre we paid for our camping for the night and while standing around I overheard an American asking about the launch trip.

They were a party of 3 film makers, shooting some 3D stuff for Discovery Channel and really wanted a private boat to do their thing. I interrupted the man in charge and suggested that we share a lodge boat with them, which they happily agreed on. So after paying our $18 per person at the lodge reception, Catt and I went off on a game drive. We drove along the channel and saw very little to be honest. We did spot a White-Browed Coucal for the very first time and a Black-Headed Gonolek which was also a first. On our way back to the Jetty, with not so much time spare, we were obviously barricaded by the obligatory grumpy Elephant who would not let us pass. He gave up the game within a minute or so and moved off with his mommy, so no great train smash there. The other interesting ungulate we saw was the "Defassa" Waterbuck, the ones without the ring on their backsides we first spotted in Kafue National Park in Zambia.

We met up with the film makers at the boat of our choice just before 17:00 and just in time to see the huge rain clouds move in to haunt us once more. It was hardly surprising; being on the Equator and next to a rain forest, but a bit of golden light would have been welcomed by us all. The guide we had, Yusuf, was phenomenal! He powered the boat across the channel and allowed it to slowly drift past the masses of Pied Kingfisher nests in the banks, pointing out the huge variety of birds and telling small facts about each one. We came upon a big herd of Buffalo, wallowing and wading in the water and the pods of Hippo were never ending. The film makers were having a ball of a time and so were the two photographers, Catt and Dawie.

There seemed to be another herd of Buffalo around every corner and every herd was doing something else which was interesting. The Hippos seemed oblivious to our craft and came up for air within centimetres of us many times. I kept an eye on the guide to see if any kind of nervousness came over his face, but it seemed like the appearance of hippo in that proximity was something that happened daily.

While watching a Fish Eagle eating its prize catch we spotted the smallest of Hippo calves in between a mass of female Buffalo. Yusuf floated us closer and we could not believe our eyes. He pointed out the female who gave birth to the calf, and she was still tired and unable to move from her labour. The calf was so new to the world that it had zero balance and fell over its own feet, sniffing Buffalo after Buffalo, evidently trying to find its mother. We watched this spectacle, laughing at the obscenely confused Buffalo for more than half an hour before the poor youngster found its rightful teat and disappeared under water for a good feed. It was truly amazing to be able to experience such a bizarre twist in nature.

By this time the rain was coming down pretty hard and we had to close the one side of the boat with the strategically handy canvas sheets. It was also close to the end of our trip and after Yusuf explained the significance of a 50 year old fishing village and how the Queen (Elisabeth obviously) had had a big influence in the community in 1954, he turned the boat around in the mouth of Lake Edward and sped us back to the Jetty, arriving at 19:00 sharp, as the brochure dictated. As we stepped off the boat I had to mention to all that shared it with us, that it was by far the most interesting and rewarding boat trip in any national park I had ever been to and it was by far the cheapest. Uganda seemed to rise in my estimation on a daily basis still.

We reached the huge open camp site just before dark and pitched camp and made our modest coal fire with great efficiency. The friendly camp site manager came around asking if we wanted to make a camp fire, pointing at tree trunk and logs the size of our car. I thanked her, but declined and she proceeded in apologising for the congested camp we found ourselves in. There were two overland trucks with probably 25 clients each and us in a camp site that could easily be inhabited by 1 500 tents. I appreciated her concern though. The night was windy and chilly and more rain threatened us from all sides, but never reached us. We went to bed fairly early, planning an equally early start to the next day.

Day 163:

Sunrise, according to the trusty GPS was 6:54. We got up at 6:45, packed up camp, visited the clean and neat ablutions and hit the road by 7:10. We drove the shortest route back to the gate we had entered slowly and again saw very little game. We crossed the public through road and entered the north western part of the park which boasted some volcano lakes. The morning turned from cloudy to perfect and the light was a photographers dream! I took some photos of Maggie on the plains and in the Elephant grass, some general landscapes and started praying for some wildlife to place in the perfect images. We found some Kobs. They could best be described as a cross between an Impala, Reedbuck and Puku and although not endemic to the Queen Elisabeth NP, still provided us with a first sighting of the species… in perfect morning photographic light none the less.

Our drive took us up some hills and along some ridges until the sight before us completely took our breaths away and rendered us speechless for the best part of twenty minutes. We had found our first crater lake and it was more beautiful than words could ever explain! Lake Kitagata was the name on the map. At a guess I would say that it was 800 feet below us in a perfectly round volcanic crater with crystal clear water. There was not as much as a breath of wind which meant that the lake was also as smooth and as reflective as a freshly polished mirror. It reflected the crater rim around it; the Buffalo who were drinking from its side and the half cloudy sky above in such a way that it was hard to distinguish between the real part and the reflection. The track skirted the rim for half the circumference and offered a few peculiar stopping points where we strategically parked Maggie (in gear), walked around in awe and said very little. I tried to imagine what the land would have been like when the volcanic activity was at its height. I could imagine the Jurassic Park like creatures strolling around and dominating the skies with the plumes of smoke from the constant eruptions surrounding them. This truly was a mystical and breathtaking land!

After stopping for some more buffalo, Kob, Zebra and elephant we reached the Equator gate with its quaint little internet coffee and coffee shop. We did not pause longer than what it took to check our permit and open the gate before crossing the big public tar road linking Katanguru and Kikorongo to enter the wetland part of the park in the north east. Here we followed another public road to a small village called Hamukungu. There was no gate or access control in this part of the park and when I spotted a whole heap of Vultures around a carcass I did wonder if driving off road would be frowned upon in those parts. We stopped in the road and identified the usual suspects: White Backed, Cape and Lappet Face vultures fighting over the scraps of the remaining Kob bits. We could not see what had killed it or when but when a man on his bicycle passed us, frowning at us, we decided to move on without investigating closer. In the village we were pointed at and accompanied by the familiar sounds of “Mzungu, Mzungu” by the local kids while stretching their hands out in a begging gesture. We were obviously not the first Mzungu to go there.

We followed the GPS to the closest meter and drove along a congestion of cattle tracks which I described as off road and Catt tried to convince me was the road. The cattle tracks disappeared and according to the GPS we were about a kilometre away from the actual road. Heading in the general direction we criss-crossed the actual equator unceremoniously several times, only noticing it every once in a while and after avoiding the marshes and swamps we eventually spilled out onto something resembling a road through the bush. I really liked it there and wanted to stay as long as possible. The bush was lush green and littered with life. There was little to no undergrowth and the big succulents (“Naboom” in Afrikaans) were standing at salute to the great open plains. Kob were running around and having fun and we saw huge herds of thousands of Buffalo and even a few Elephant heading towards the closest lake. Maggie was in 4 x 4 to deal with the odd mud hole or two as well, for the first time since…. I could not actually remember the last time we needed 4 x 4.

By mid day we had worked our way through the flood plains and herd of animals to the small fishing village of Kasenyi without as much as seeing another vehicle or person along our way. The best part for me was that the particular part of the park we found ourselves in seemed to have unrestricted public access, which meant that it was free. We did our tour of the village to the great delight of children and elders pointing and shouting greetings at us before heading back towards the main road and on to our next destination. The park was great and interesting and fun, but did not offer enough to warrant the expense of a second day for us. I was very keen to stay another day to drive the “free part” again, but Catt was equally keen to leave… so we left.

We stopped briefly for a lunch of cheese, tomatoes and home made bread at the Equator gate before stopping at the actual signposted Equator for the obligatory photograph of our first official crossing of this invisible line. We did remark that it would not be the last time we would cross 0 degrees, but the first time was always worth documenting.

We headed further north through the town of Kasese until we left the tar roads in favour of small, yet well maintained dirt tracks through the mountains. We skirted the border of the Kibale Forrest Primate Reserve, famous for its Chimpanzees. The road we were on became smaller and smaller until only a footpath remained. It was wide enough for Maggie to negotiate and looked like vehicles may have used it in the past, so we decided to persevere until we had to turn around. It had started to rain again and the track became as slippery as black ice. I stopped to engage 4x4 once more, but even with that and our Mud Terrain tyres I still ended up sliding sideways in the track on more occasions that I was comfortable with.

The run off water from the storm seemingly decided to use the same route that we had to use as we were driving in a river most of the way. Every time we had to leave the grass all together and cross a slanted part of muddy incline, Maggie refused to go where the wheels were pointing and although predictable, it was not as much fun as you may think. After an hour of this adventure we found a village and a relatively main track that took us right to our destination of the Nkuruba Community Camp Site on the shored of the Nkuruba Crater Lake. We arrived around 16:00 and though that we had found utopia… again…

It was still raining, so we were welcomed to the tin roofed restaurant and bar. The community who owned and ran the camp site explained the facilities and offered us a hot shower which we gladly accepted. The shower in question was a bucket hanging from a tree with a screen around it. The hot water was boiled on a fire and presented to us in a 20l container, complete with a 20l container of cold water so that we could choose our temperature of comfort. It was very “Dr Livingstone” and we loved every second of it.

The evening brought some more rain, but this time we were prepared. The tent was pitched, the awning out and the Cobb lit for cooking. Our famous home made burgers were on the menu which received great respect and a fair amount of comments from the other guests who walked past as we started cooking. It was obvious that this place was popular with other travellers. It attracted for a wide range of people who all used the place in harmony with the rest. It was fantastic to fall asleep in the dead quiet and very dark night.

Day 164:

It was Sunday morning and we decided to use the day as it was intended. The rain had persisted through the night and into the morning, so there was no rush to get out of bed. Once we did and had coffee we both lost interest in doing anything for the rest of the day.

As the rain came and went we read our books and hid under the awning with copious amounts of coffee and tea as well as the obligatory chocolate biscuits in the mid afternoon. If we had made the effort of cooking a roast, it would have been a bog standard Sunday. Even with the absence of a roast, we still managed a long siesta; hiding some more from the rain and an afternoon swim in the lake sufficed as the day’s activity.

Late in the afternoon we were joined my Mark. Mark was a Ugandan, living in Kampala and working for MTN, the cell phone company. He was there, simply because he got tired of European tourists telling him how beautiful his own country was. He told us how he grew up in a country submerged in war after war through the Idi Amin era and how Ugandans, like most Africans, did not travel much. He was, as he explained it, at the forefront of the movement to change that. We talked politics and philosophy for a few hours and I instantly liked Mark a lot!

Dinner was, as usual an absolute feast and before we knew it, it was the end of yet another day in Africa and with heavy eyelids we headed back up the ladder to the tent, falling asleep instantly. It had been a fantastically uneventful day!

Day 165:

The day started in a similar way to Sunday. We got up late, used the rain water caught overnight in our washing up bowl to wash the previous evening’s dishes and moved at a very slow rate. We did, somewhat half heartedly, wander over to reception to enquire about hiking in the area and that was when we met Debs and Doug’s. Debs was a volunteer doctor from the UK who had been in Uganda for about six months and Doug’s was a plumber from Lancaster who had come out to visit her. They were about to go on a guided walk to a place aptly names “The top of the world”, so we decided to join them.

The walk, although mostly uphill wasn’t very taxing and the four of us chatted about life and the universe as we went. The local guide said very little, but I did catch him listening to our conversations with the keenness of a scholar. I had the idea that he was absorbing knowledge on plumbing and photography as well as medicine as we went. We reached our summit, and “the top of the world” sign within an hour. The sign was planted in brightly coloured flowers which could be seen from a few hundred meters away and the sight itself offered fantastic views over the neighbouring forests and farmland. Our guide told us the names of the three crater lakes we could see (which I can not remember) and answered questions about the general agriculture and habits of the locals. It was interesting to learn that the huge banana plantations we had driven through for days belonged to individual farmers. Only one farmer’s plantation would seamlessly grow into another’s and only they knew where the boundaries were.

The walk back took about half an hour and after chatting some more to the other Wazungu Catt and I bid them “safe travels” and marched towards the village in search of fresh produce. As usual, this was not hard to find. The first shop we went into provided us with avocados the size of small footballs, a papaya, a pineapple and a mountain of trumpet sized bananas for $2. It struck me that I would really miss the quality, quantity and ridiculously low prices of fruit and vegetables after our journey!

The walk back to the camp site was accompanied by hordes of children greeting us in the way everyone learnt to greet in a foreign language. It was fun trying to converse with them and to see the smiles widen when we stopped for a chat. Not that the conversations were long, as we did not even know what the local language was called, and the children’s English was limited to “Hallo” and “How are you”. We did beat the rain though and arrived back at the lodge hot and sweaty and ready for a bathe in the lake.

Picture this: I really needed a shave. I covered my face in shaving cream and waded into the shallows to attend to my facial hair. Every time I picked the razor up to my face, a crab or fish or something nibbled at my toes in the murky waters and made me jump. Being a crater lake, it wasn’t like this body of water gradually got deeper, so once I stepped off the rock I was standing on, I had to treat water to keep afloat. It was windy and cold out of the water, so the only comfortable way for me to shave was by doing so while treading water. It did make Catt laugh out load and it provided me with more than my fair share of exercise for the day. Later Catt admitted that she was highly impressed by the skilful way I handled the razor while treading water. It was, to be honest, a perfectly acceptable smooth shave, but also the first time shaving got me out of breath and tired.

With bathing dealt with we walked back up the hill to Maggie and after some well deserved afternoon coffee we decided to take on the “Forest walk” unguided. We were both a little lazy, do didn’t bother with shoes and appropriate dress as we knew the circular route only took about an hour to complete. Within the first fifteen minutes we were however ankle deep in stinging nettles and neither one of us could remember what Dock Leaf looked like. So with itches and scratches we soldiered on until we found ourselves in a marsh. I had to laugh when Catt almost lost her flip-flop in the bog and as I did I lost my balance and seeped ankle deep into the mud myself. We did manage the pleasant walk in less than an hour, but emerged muddy up to our knees with mud covered sandals for our efforts. Fortunately the washing up bowl had filled up again from the sky, so we had water to wash our feet in.

The camp site had a festive atmosphere in the late afternoon. Some French/Ugandans had arrived and was playing badminton on the lawn. Fresh Brits had arrived as well and were strolling down to the lake and a couple from Germany had just come back from their guided walk to the top of the world. Everyone was smiling and happy. It was with a little sadness that I remembered that we had come to the end of our three nights there and that we had to move on the next day.

The bill came to a total of $25 which included three night’s camping for two, a guided walk and one beer from the bar. I handed over the equivalent in Uganda shilling with a huge smile on my face before tending to dinner, wine and well deserved sleep.

Day 166:

As advised by the guide we set the alarm early. The rain had stayed away during the night, but it was still a fairly dark and cloudy start to the day which meant that we really struggled to get out of bed. We managed to pack up and get going by 7:15 none the less.

Our mission for the day was to get as close as we could to the Murchison Falls National Park. According to our maps and GPS we had about 300km of dirt road to cover with an eta for 11 hours after starting. I did not much look forward to that at all as we had not had such a long driving day in months.

Within the first hour of meandering through the perpetual African village and past numerous tea plantations I noticed that our eta had decreased significantly and by the time we stopped for a fresh mug of the good coffee it was evident that the GPS had it all wrong. I could only conclude that the person who logged the tracks first had to drive in very wet conditions. This was not disappointing at all though!

Our secondary mission for the day was to track down the elusive “Orange data card” Orange, the cell phone network had a recent presence in Uganda and offered broadband internet for very little money. The catch was that you had to buy a specific data sim card, not compatible with voice cards, to load your data bundles on. Their marketing was great and we knew exactly what we wanted, but their money saving idea was obviously not to keep stock of the cheap items. Since we had entered Uganda we had stopped in every big town at every Orange shop and without fail they could not provide us with this card. After the second shop for the day, I put my foot down and announced that we would not stop at another Orange shop until we reached the capitol of Kampala.

We stopped for lunch on an escarpment between the villages of Masindi and Kabango after being stopped by a man in military uniform and the ever present AK47 slung over his shoulder. His only remark was “Your speed was high”. I told him that I was driving at 40km/h, well within the speed limit and I was being over taken by taxi after taxi. This satisfied him and made him wish us a “safe journey” which I also felt we needed, judging from the driving ability of the minibus taxis in question. The approached us from front or rear at lightning speed, blindly confident that we would move over and give them enough space to pass on the small roads. Most of the time we could, and did, but sometimes the tracks were just to steep on the sides, in which case I stopped, arguing that if we got hit while standing still, we could not be at fault. This was met with flashing lights and big white smiles, but no aggression. I had to conclude that the locals either had a super human ability to judge the whereabouts of the most outer parts of their vehicles by the millimetre, or they were incredibly lucky not to hit everything they tried to pass. I am still not sure which one it was. But we never got hit despite me turning my head away and closing my eyes on numerous occasions.

I digress: The view down to Lake Albert was wide and open and hazy and I had the feeling that we were driving on a flood plane. We overtook about seven big trucks with constructions offices on their backs so I assumed that the narrow, potholed road to the port on the lake was scheduled to be tarred. This had no bearing on us though. In the village of Biso we turned north again, following the shores of the invisible lake until we found the Nile safari Club which we had identified as our stop over place. This very fancy, very exclusive and very expensive lodge also had a $10 per person camp site called “Shoebill Camp”. It was my very first sight of the Nile River. The Victoria Nile to be exact, on the edge of Lake Albert.

The site seemed neglected and a little dirty, but did save a late entry into the National park. It was also HOT! While pouring a cold beer down my thought in the lodge’s bar Catt and I tried to recall when the last time was that we had experienced temperatures that high and concluded that it had to be in week 1… In the Richtersveld National Park. The lodge wanted to charge us an additional $10 per person to use the swimming pool, so we settled for a welcoming, yet limiting cold shower without towelling down and sitting in the shade of the cooking Banda in the camp site… which was free.

We discussed the expense of the camping that night while sweating away and I have to honestly say that I was appalled by the state of the camp site. I thought that people would, and we certainly did, choose a camp site attached to a lodge and expect better facilities than the community sites. This place, although not expensive in global terms, was till more than four times the price of the community camp site we had just come from. The shower was the all too familiar “runny nose” instead of water pressure and the single toilet had no door. There was a tap in the grounds with ample water, so there was no real excuse for the shower. The cooking Banda’s roof had almost been destroyed by a troop of baboons and there was litter lying all over the place. I was not too impressed, but it was our only option outside the park.

As if someone from the lodge could overhear our conversation, the staff suddenly started to appear around 18:00. The maintenance man fixed the leaking toilet and allegedly the shower. He also picked up the thatching that had been thrown about by the baboons and piled it onto the already existing heap. We got introduced to the night security guard, with bow and arrow as weapons of choice and we even received two paraffin lanterns for light. It was a nice touch, but no one bothered to pick up the litter or improve the camp site.

We scaled the ladder to the tent fairly late and just in time to batten down the hatches before the rain storm hit. It was formidable and I really felt sorry for the poor security guard. We did, to be fair, leave a chair and table out for him and he did move his fire to the Banda after we left. When his cell phone rang for a minute before he picked it up after midnight, I stopped feeling sorry for him…

Day 167:

Murchison Falls National Park is both the oldest and the biggest national park in Uganda and this was the day we would enter it. The usual 24 hour rule prevailed so we didn’t really want to enter before mid morning. This meant, as it had become our custom, a lazy and relaxing morning. The security guard bid us farewell after 7:00 and warned that the troop of Baboons were still around. I could not spot them.

I did see with somewhat of a shock that our water supply was running out and judging from the colour of the water from the taps, they were pumping directly form the Nile. There was only one thing for it… we had to break out, for the very first time, our four stage reverse osmosis water purifier. It took the modest machine about 20 minutes to produce five litres of purified water. As we were having a lazy morning, I lined up another 10 litres and made some more coffee.

We left… or should I rather say “tired to leave” the camp site just before 10:00. The rain from the previous night had an interesting effect on the access track. It obviously turned it muddy, but it also turned it so slippery that Maggie slid to a halt on the first incline and refused to move an inch. I had to roll back onto the grass and engage 4x4. Once that was done, with the awesome help from the Bridgestone Muds, the track proved no great challenge. The rest of the 4 or 5 kilometres to the gate were fairly similar. We passed a small overland truck (Empty apart from driver) in the last village, skidded up a hill and arrived at the entrance gate to do our paperwork and pay our dues.

The truck driver arrived within a minute and had some argument about gaining free transit through the park. This was solved easily enough while we had a chat. His name was Mark Stephenson, an Australian who just acquired a piece of land in between the gate and the Shoebill Camp we had just left. He kindly offered us free camping for as long as we wanted to stay. It was a great pity we did not meet him the day before.

Inside the park I had one small mission and that was a launch trip to the Falls, where the Victoria Nile passes through a 6m wide gorge and it had been described as the most exciting thing to happen to the Nile in it’s 6 700km journey. I had seen photographs of it and it looked spectacular. The two options were a private company called “Wild Frontiers” for $20 per person, or a Uganda wildlife Authority barge for $15 each. Because of our fantastic experience with the smaller vessel of the lodge in Queen Elisabeth National Park, we immediately decided to fork out the extra few $’s and judging by the state of the UWA barge, it was a good decision.

It was before mid day and we had about three hours to kill before departure, so we drove back up the hill to the Red Chilli Camp. This pleasant place boasted a camp site, some safari tents, some bandas and a really cheap bar and restaurant. We chilled out in the restaurant with hamburgers and soft drinks watching the local warthog family beg scraps from a school group’s table. This was done complete with kneeling, shaking heads and drawling and provided much entertainment. Catt met an American lady who was busy with a research project in the area. She was highly excited to spot a fellow Mac user as her Mac crashed back in Kigali a week or two before and she was in desperate need of a start-up disk… not an easy thing to find in East Africa. Although the lady couldn’t help immediately, she did produce a business card of a specialist shop in Kampala.

Our time to board the boat arrived fairly soon, so we left the Chilli and headed to the “harbour”. There were a total of 9 tourists on a boat that could cater for 40, so space was ample. The staff was really friendly and the without much delay we set of up stream along the banks of the river. Game viewing was no where near as good as in Queen Elisabeth NP, but the Nile had its fair share of Hippo and Buffalo to keep our interest. We spotted a Red Throated Bee-Eater for the first time, which was always exciting and the size of the Crocodiles were really impressive. We struck up a conversation with a couple from California who were on a two week break and compared notes on primate trekking and the places that we had seen. For the fourth time, as far as I could remember, we heard about a less than perfect Gorilla Trekking experience in Uganda and we were, once again, really pleased that we chose Rwanda for that activity.

We arrived at the base, or rather, close to the base of the falls in the late afternoon. The rain had threatened to spoil our fun all the way there, but the heavy clouds stayed away and the sun even came out briefly to light up the falls for our photos. The guide books did not lie and the photographs were not unrealistic! On our trip we had seen Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, three impressive falls in Zambia, including the 200m high Kalambo Falls, a few falls in Malawi and Tanzania and even one or two in Rwanda. These were by far the most impressive in my book. They were not the biggest, or the highest, but the sheer volume of water passing through such a small space in rock created a feeling of real power and offered much astonishment to all on the boat.

The visit to the falls were over far to soon and as we headed back down stream at higher speed, arriving back at the harbour three hours after setting off. It was three hours and $40 for the two of us well spent! We had decided to stay in the UWA camp site at the top of the falls that night and had about an hour to drive to get there. The roads were muddy and wet from the rain around, so going was a little slow, but still steady. I though t we would make the viewpoints with time to spare seconds before I spotted something I had been looking for for years!

It was late afternoon in golden sunlight and right next to the road were no less than nine massive, muddy, wallowing male Buffalos. I hit the brakes, skidded to a halt and before I could speak, the camera was in my hands and I was snapping away. Catt saw the action immediately and mounted the HD video camera on the window pod and grabbed the other camera to take some more photographs as well. It was such a spectacular sight! These guys were fairly calm, but fairly active and covered in the terracotta coloured mud from the tips of their horns to the ends of their tails and everything in between. We spent about half an hour before the light faded and took hundreds of images.

Slipping and sliding down the final hills we arrived at the picnic spot above the falls before dark. We jumped out the car with cameras and tripods and jogged the muddy path down to the viewpoints, trying to get there before dark as well as trying to escape the tsetse flies that arrived with us. From the top the falls were even more spectacular than from the bottom. You could get close enough to feel the spray on your face and stand on rocks meters away from the powerful force. We spent as much time there as light allowed before running back up the hill to Maggie to find the camp site.

It was not much of a surprise that we were the only people in the camp site that night. I had a feeling that most campers would prefer the comforts of the Red Chilli. Not that we minded off course, it had been a while since we were alone in the world. We pitched camp in an instant, hung our new camping light from a tree and tended to dinner under a star and moon lit sky. It had been an absolutely fantastic day in Africa and we went to bed with all the tent flaps open to allow the cool breeze to blow over us!

Day 168:

It was just after 4am when the storm hit and what a storm it was! The strong wind shook the car from side to side and we managed to close the tent and tie down the flaps with seconds to spare. Neither one of us slept much after that, but I did get a new found respect for our tent and Eezi Awn who made it. It was a miracle that we managed to stay dry with that much water falling from the sky and flying sideways at the tent!

We got up after sunrise and were greeted by the camp site manager who came to collect the modest $6 per person for the camping. The storm had moved on, but it was still drizzling when we made coffee and put the tent down, still amazed that we were dry inside. The devastation from the storm was visible all around us with big branches broken of bigger trees and grass flattened by flooding waters. I did not look forwards to the drive out!

This time I was taking no chances. I engaged four wheel drive and allowed the massive 4.2l engine to warm up a little before leaving the camp site. The tracks lead us up a steep hill and immediately I appreciated all my preparations. Once again I was astonished by the grip of the mud terrain tyres we had only abused on sand and rocks up to then. We were still slipping and sliding and wheel spinning as we went, but we went, to my astonishment!

We passed the Buffalo wallow before long and joined the main road shortly after. This main road, recently graded, was still not surfaced, so although it was wide and smooth, it was slick as hell and so convex that if you momentarily strayed off the exact middle, you started sliding down the side towards the three foot deep ditch on the side. I drove slowly for while, without incident until we reached a much older, harder and better maintained road in the Budongo Forest area. This area offered Chimpanzee Trekking at half the price of Kibale Primate Reserve, but we had already decided not to spend more money on that after the Gorillas.

We left the park within our allocated and paid for 24 hours and started heading towards the capitol, Kampala. I was pleasantly surprised to find a fairly new, very smooth and pot whole free tar road all the way to the city! The remains of the old gravel road was still visible and provided a fantastic second road from he guys with overloaded bicycles carrying bananas and charcoal, keeping them out of the car’s way.

We reached the city at least three hours before expected and headed straight to the Mac shop to tend to Catt’s computer. I had been dreading driving in Kampala and had back flashes of the sheer madness of driving in Dar Es Salaam. Although these fears were not unfounded in the least, Kampala seemed to be slightly better. It seemed to have a few less vehicles and the drivers were, at that time, not quite as aggressive as I was, so I had right of way most of the time.

We found the Mac shop thanks to the American’s great directions and the friendly Robert helped us immediately. It was no small problem in the end and required a re installation of the operating system. Fortunately Robert could help, so we left the machine in his capable care and went hunting for the ever elusive Orange Data Card. In the first Orange shop we were expertly helped! Not only did the lady know exactly how to answer all our questions, she also offered additional information which we did not even know we needed. Back at the Mac shop Robert had not only re installed the operating system for us, but he also did all the updates necessary. Kampala was very much unlike Africa!

We drove to the Red Chilli Hideaway, reaching it just after 15:00 and just in time for some more rain. Commenting on the rain, the barman smiled and said: “But you chose the rainy season man…” I had been convinced that it was not that time of year yet, but looking at the way Maggie was caked in mud from wheels to roof, it all suddenly made sense! We waited for the rain to at least get a little lighter before we found a place to hide Maggie in the very extensive grounds. We had decided to stay for a few days, making it our base, so we pitched our ground tent for the first time since Nyika Plateau in Malawi some months before.

It was strangely attractive to have internet access for the first time in Uganda, so we spent the evening catching up on emails and blogs and general computer stuff. It was also the first time we had shared a camp site with more than a hand full of people in some weeks and that felt almost civilized for a change.

If I had to do it again:

I would have liked to spend another night at Hippo Hills, exploring the north eastern part of the park in nice light and conditions. I never really saw Uganda as a prime wildlife destination, but Queen Elisabeth was surely impressive! I also realize that it would not be fair if I always get my own way.

The rest of the week was fantastic and we both absolutely adore Uganda!

23: Kigali to Queen elisabeth NP (Rwanda/Uganda)

Pictures Here:

Week 23 Update:

Lake Saki, Gisenyi, Parc National Des Volcans, Lake Bunyonyi, Queen Elisabeth National Park.

Day 155:

We had decided to get up early and that was exactly what we did. It was a pristine morning next to the lake complete with fisherman in dug out canoes wearing bright orange shirts. The only reason for this I could think of was that it was some kind of uniform, identifying a certain group, or village. The staff of the lodge was also up early and seemed to be preparing for something big. It was Friday, so I guessed they were preparing for a weekend conference of some sorts.

After braving the terrible facilities we set of towards our first memorial for the day. No visit to Rwanda could ever be complete without paying your respects to those poor souls who perished in the 1994 Genocide, but nothing, and I mean nothing could ever prepare you for the day that lay ahead of us.

I have been putting off writing this chapter about our travels until the emotion of what we experienced subsided a little. There is no way to explain the sights or the experiences without expressing emotion, but I have decided to try my very best to portray an accurate, objective account of the horror that was our day. The single most important fact about what Rwanda went through in the spring of 1994 was that the whole world without exception turned their backs on a human crisis reviled only by the most gruesome of tragedies the same world vowed to never allow again. If you read the short histories of the preceding years, weeks and days and the trigger that set it all off, you can clearly (In hindsight I have to admit) see all the warning signs. You reed about “Juan-Pierre” who was an informant who warned the UN about what was about to happen and how despite the UN commander’s pleading requests, the UN decided to do nothing to stop the events. You hear about the French government who provided $12m of arms to the perpetrators who still used clubs and machetes and their bear hands to slaughter their friends, neighbours and countrymen. It was all, honestly, a little too much for me to absorb and in the same time I feel as if every major city in the world should have a memorial similar to the ones we found to remind the world about how they turned their backs on a pleading nation on a daily basis. Shame on every person who knew about the events and who did nothing to stop them from happening.

Our first memorial was the Nyamata Church, some 30km south of Kigali. We had driven past a few memorial sights in the preceding few days but deemed ourselves too tired to deal with the perceived shock and emotional strength we would need. The church in Nyamata was one of the numerous places around the country where Tutsi people were hiding and one of the numerous places in the country where the death squads stormed in and killed every man, woman and child using whatever they could to perform their gruesome task. When walking into the church you are faced with bundles and bundles of clothing. At first glance it simply looks like someone had strewn old rags across the benches and the floor. Then you realize, with a shock that the clothes on display was actually worn by the people who were murdered there. With that shocking revelation you start to notice how much clothing you are actually looking at before you see the stains of blood on the clothes, the floors, the windows and the walls. This is even before you notice the bullet holes in the walls and roof which all renders you speechless shocked into an emotional numbness you can con comprehend or explain. This is even before you notice the amount of dresses, and children’s shoes around and before you notice the display of a single spear and club, explaining the weapons used on the day. The whole place was protected by a new, modern and massive tin roof to preserve the horror for the world to see. We were shown to no less than five mass graves, all with staircase access so intimate that you had to touch the coffins to keep your balance. One of these displayed raw skulls and bigger bones, femurs I thought, of some of the victims. I made a quick calculation, counting the columns and rows and came to the startling conclusion that I was staring at the remains of over 500 people… in one of five graves. Photography was not allowed, but I so wished I could take photographs and publish them, for the cruel world to see. We left there feeling empty.

The next memorial, perhaps the most graphic in the country, was the church at Ntarama. This small Catholic church, complete with kindergarten school also had a modern tin roof over the complex to preserve it. Apart from that, neither the church, nor the other buildings had been touched since the corpses were removed 16 years before. We were met by Elisabeth, the caretaker who unemotionally, and in French, which I did not understand, explained the events that took place there. She picked up the skull of a small child with a spear still sticking into it, gesturing the force that was used in the rage which was a killing spree and the utter and unexplainable hatred that was felt against the people who were innocently hiding there. As with the first memorial, the clothes of the victims were placed on the benches and hanged from the rafters to remind visitors of the sheer number of people who were involved. Elisabeth explained to us that 5 000 people were killed there in one day. 5000!!!! In one day!!!!! Next she took us to the kitchen and showed and explained to us where the female cook had been sleeping, with her baby in her arms and how the death squad had killed her by setting her, the baby and the mattress on fire. You could still see the melted clothing and shoes on the floor and the burnt clothing around. I wanted to leave, close my eyes and forget the images and ideas floating around in my imagination at once. I wanted to “denounce” the memories I gathered that morning and hide them away as distant nightmares which had no basis for reality. At the same time I felt it important to absorb the information and the images as a reminder of the atrocities the cruel world should never forget.

The last room in the complex we were taken to was a nursery school. It was small and neat with built in benches and a place for a teacher to stand. It had one door and a hole in the wall on the opposite side. It was explained that the gang broke through the wall after not being able to gain access through the door and as Elisabeth pointed at a dark patch on the wall I shook my head in disbelief. The Interahamwe (The death squads) picked up babies and toddlers, one by one and threw them against the brick wall repeatedly until they were dead… while the rest of the room had to watch. They reportedly raped the woman and left them barely alive, only to repeat themselves and then kill them with machetes and clubs and spears.

How do you do that? What kind of person does it take to hate human life so much that he could live with the knowledge that he did that? I could not at the time and would probably never be able to comprehend it. I had to leave.

We drove in absolute silence, engrossed in our own horrible thoughts, on the edge of breaking down in tears, to the Genocide Museum and Memorial in Kigali.

The impressive building, funded by foreign donations had a much more formal and little less shocking outlook on things. It concentrated more on the educational side than the stark gruesomeness and I felt it was exceptionally well planned and presented. Entrance was free, but an Audio guide cost about $10. The guide explained the significance and symbolism of the gardens which I also though was really well done. It took you past a few rows of mass graves containing the remains of some 2 000 victims per grave, explaining that newly discovered remains was still brought there from the country side. Some of the graved had not been sealed yet.

The inside of the museum first concentrated on the history of Rwanda, explaining how people used to live in ethnic harmony until the westerners came and “classified” the tribes. The Tutsi were classified as cattle herders and anyone with more than 10 cattle automatically became part of that tribe. The Hutu, the majority, was everyone with less than 10 cattle. The westerners instantly created division and the hatred, or animosity started immediately. The Tutsi (Minority) were given positions of power and decades later, when the powers that were discovered their “mistake”, the Tutsi were removed from power and the same positions were given to Hutu. The Hutu press and people in highest power described the Tutsi as “cockroaches” openly and printed a cartoon of Hutu troops marching over coffins, stretching to the horizon. Still the world was surprised when the proverbial volcano blew its top and the lava engulfed the nation, killing more than 1 000 000 people in around 100 days?

The second part of the exhibition was about the Genocide itself and how it could have, and should have been prevented. I forget the finer detail, but it was seriously obvious what the solutions at the time were and all the right people were in fact in place to stop the events. In fact, the one comment I do remember wad that the amount of troops that were deployed to evacuate the expiates would have been more than enough to stop the Genocide in its tracks. Instead, the only outside military influence came too late when the French sent some troops and the only thing they managed to accomplish was to provide an easy escape route for the perpetrators to flee to the neighbouring Burundi and DRC Congo…

The third part of the exhibition explained about other Genocides the world had seen. The Herero people who were killed by the Germans in Namibia before the First World War was something I never knew about. Ethnic cleansing in Cambodia which I never knew about. The Holocaust which everyone knows about and Bosnia which received wide spread media coverage and UN intervention. What shocked me most was the fact that the Rwanda Genocide happened when I was 19 years old. I had just left my military service then and I was watching TV news and reading newspaper headlines on a daily basis. Sixteen years later I was standing in Kigali, trying to imagine a city covered in corpses where reportedly dogs were feeding of the rotten flesh of their owners and could not recall a single bit of information I read or heard at the age of 19. South Africa had its own paranoia about new political eras to concentrate on, but surely someone should have notices something?

Refusing another night in the city, we headed towards the northern part of Kivu Lake and the town of Gisenyi. I felt utterly exhausted and drained from the day’s activities and experiences and felt shocked and horrified in a way that I had never experienced before. As I saw the skyline of Kigali disappear in my rear view mirror we turned north towards a hill and started gaining altitude. It was boiling hot and Maggie needed 2nd gear most of the time to drag us up the hill. The revs were high and the engine working as hard as it could for more than 20 minutes when I suddenly saw the temperature gauge rising slightly. I got a great fright, turned the aircon off and let up on the accelerator, keeping the revs below 3 000rpm. Within half a minute the temperature was back to normal and I turned the aircon back on, keeping an eye on the temperature while trying to take in the awesomeness of the landscape around us.

The car was absolutely fine after that and I had to recognise the limitations of the old girl in hot conditions. I stopped next to the road once or twice to take a photograph of the hills and agriculture on insanely steep slopes. I could not help but notice the people more. Their faces, their attitudes, their features. I tried to understand how a nation could move on from the events 16 years before and tried to comprehend how the people I saw then who were clearly old enough to have taken part in either killing, or hiding, could walk around normally and live in apparent harmony. Rwanda, although an incredibly beautiful country did not welcome cameras and those who carried them. Tourism was not something sought after by the people who seemed almost indifferent to our existence. In fact, apart from 12 American tourists we had not seen another Musungu since Grant and Susan had left us three days previous. Even after the police had clearly caught me driving 50km/h in a 40km/h zone on a steep downhill they did not bother to stop me once they saw my face. They seemed uninterested in us. Every time we had stopped next to the road for a rest or something to eat we were mobbed by local youngsters. They were not begging they were just curious. They would stand around ogling us for a while and then just as suddenly as they had appeared, they would loose interest and disappear.

We arrived in Gisenyi shortly before dark and started the task of finding suitable accommodation. The Palm Beach Hotel, as described in our guidebooks was our first choice, only we could not find it. In its place was a new, fancy hotel with a car park stuffed with the newest Land Cruisers displaying UN and world Food insignia. We knew we would not be able to afford it, but enquired none the less. $214 per person per night was their asking price. I left wondering how many families could be fed with the money the driver of that $150 000 Land Cruiser was spending on accommodation. It’s a crazy world!

Our second choice had the potential of being noisier than Masai camp in Arusha, and our third choice was completely out of our budget. They did tell us that the Palm Beach had been demolished five years earlier. (Thanks Lonely Planet for keeping up to date) and recommended the Presbyterian Church’s place down the road. In hindsight, we should have started there.

The fenced compound offered secure parking for Maggie; a double room for $7 a night complete with hot showers and flush toilet and a restaurant on site. It was perfect. Once we settled in it was time for dinner and the buffet was simple. $0.15 for a plate of vegetables, or $0.20 if you included meat. I included so much meat that I was charged for two portions. It was wholesome, tasty, vast quantities of food and I loved the fact that we did not need to wash dishes. Shortly after dinner we went back to the room for some serious relaxing and fell sound asleep under a blue mosquito net. Even though it was Friday night, it was quiet in the town bordering the DRC.

Day 156:

It was our day off! We had been on the move, staying in a different place every night and driving every day for thirteen days. Gisenyi, apart from having the nickname of “The Costa Del Rwanda” where the elite and wealthy had mansions overlooking the lake and the hotels cost $214 per person, didn’t have anything else going for it. Well, apart from the 3470m high Nyiragongo Volcano which blew its top as late as 2002, which I also heard nothing of in South African Media at the time and the fact that the border into the DRC is right on the edge of town that is.

We had the ultimate in Lazy days. I finished reading my book, worked on my computer for a while and Catt tried to find a solution to a Mac start up problem. Before we knew it, it was dinner time again and for the usual fee of less than $1 we stuffed ourselves to the point of bursting. We went to bed early again.

Day 157:

It was my birthday. I refused to get up early as we did not have far too go and insisted on having at least two cups of coffee before moving. It was raining outside. Hardly surprising as were in a rain forest, but still the first rain we had encountered in more than a month. The smell was fantastic! We drove around the beach front for a while, admiring the mansions of the rich and made a u-turn right by the border gate. I wasn’t against the idea of entering the DRC, but the only two reason to do so would have been to trek to the top of the volcano, which we did not have the gear for, or to find some Mountain Gorillas, which we had permits for in Rwanda. Leaving town our journey took us back along the road towards the town of Ruhengeri, often described as the stage post for Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda.

We stopped to buy some tomatoes in a village. Immediately on exiting the car we had a mob of some 30 people around us. Not threateningly, not aggressive, just inquisitive. We strolled across the street to inspect the fruit and paid the asking price of $0.03 (I kid you not) for 10 tomatoes. We also bought two big, ripe avocados for the same price. I had a little giggle at the fact that Catt, in a moment of taste desperation and craving had paid $5 for a single avocado in South Africa less than a year before. We were accompanied by our posse to the doors of Maggie and interested eyes scanned the inside as we climbed in and closed the doors. Smiles and waves greeted us as we drove away. Was this the same place we had learnt about two days earlier?

We bypassed Ruhengeri and headed to the Volcano Nation Park Office; about 14km up the hill and enquired about our procedure for the next day. The friendly and highly professional man at reception explained that we had to report there at 7am the following day and explained what we could expect. The rain had stopped.

We chose the Kinigi guest house for our accommodation for the night for two reasons. The first was that it was within a kilometre of the wildlife office and the second was that their proceeds go to a foundation helping woman in Rwanda. The cost was high for us at $50 a night per double room, but it was after all my birthday!

The rain had started again. We sat in the room reading and chatting and having lunch until late in the afternoon before deciding to abuse the hot showers. Problem was, the water was cold. It wasn’t cold like room temperature, it was cold like melted glacier cold and there was not a snowball’s chance in hell I was going to subject by body to that in the late afternoon, not even thinking about the next morning. I went to reception to complain. We had explicitly asked if the water was hot and the answer had been “yes” and we were paying more for this room than what we had paid for any accommodation in the country, so cold water was unacceptable!

The neat and friendly lady in reception at the time looked at my funny and said: “Parlez-vous Francais?” and took the wind right out of my sails. I tried to explain that the water was cold and we had noisy, leaking tap in the room, but with our apparent language barrier, this was impossible. I returned to our room content at having to wait until another person manned the reception.

A couple of hours later the rain had stopped and the view was dramatic, intense and like something out of a movie! The clouds were omnipresent and concentrated around the tips of no less than 7 volcanic peaks around us. The biggest one, Karisimbi, at 4 507 meters towered above the rest and Sabinyo (3 634m) was clearly visible, marking the confluence of borders between Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC like an ancient sentinel. The air was fresh and clean and my imagination ran wild with visions of great apes in the impenetrable forests behind and above our humble digs. I returned to reception in a better mood and was met by another friendly lady who gave me one look and before I could utter a word announced that she had prepared a different room for us with hot water. I was pleased.

The temperature had dropped significantly and the weather rock reminded me that we were: In the rain forests and on the side of a mountain. This meant that low temperatures and lots of precipitation was in fact the norm and should not have come as a surprise at all. The hot shower on the other hand, was really hot and really welcoming and after thawing out for a while we dressed in our warmest best and ventured to the restaurant in search of dinner. This, according to me was a bit of a drag as I really liked the balance of the food we prepared ourselves and all restaurants in Africa seemed to lack in the fresh vegetable department. I found this very strange as fresh vegetables were not only easy to come by in Rwanda, but also cost next to nothing. Catt on the other hand seemed to relish in the idea of not making our own food. It was not as if she was the one who did the cooking and I was the one doing the “man stuff”. We shared chores equally like the proper “millennium couple” that we were, but I understood that she wanted a break from the simple routine that had become our life and as we had no facilities to prepare our own meals, it was a convenient change for us both.

We met some more Wazungu sheltering next to the fireplace in the lounge next to the restaurant. The conversations were in fast and fluent French, so I only caught snippets of it. I understood that the only other woman was some kind of engineer from France who did her PHD on extracting gasses from the nearby Lake Kivu. The lake, at over 450m deep was not as deep as the 1000m + depths of Lake Tanganyika, which I never knew, and the gasses in question were dissolved in the water after passing through cracks in the earth’s core in the seismic and volcanic regions around Gisenyi where she lived. I did notice an oil rig loo9king structure off shore the previous day, but the purpose of it eluded me.

Her boyfriend was from a Brit who had lived in Switzerland and he was complaining about the price of tennis balls and his club membership mostly. The only other person in the conversation seemed raw French and I understood that he was doing some work in the DRC. He had made the pilgrimage to Rwanda to summit the nearby Bisoke Volcano at 3 711 meters and at a cost of $350 while complaining about the $500 cost of the Gorilla permits. I had two thoughts about that: The Gorilla permits in the DRC were cheaper and the Nyiragongo Volcano where they can be found was as high as Bisoke and cost a fraction of $350 to summit. As I didn’t speak French, I decided not to question.

Dinner for me was a tough piece of what was advertised as Fillet and a mountain of chips with no possibility of tomato sauce. At least it tasted nice with the accompanying mushroom gravy and filled the hole, but man I was craving decent vegetables and I missed our own menu. Catt had a vegetable soup which I failed to find any chunks of vegetables in, but she also reported it was tasty and just what she wanted. I wasn’t convinced. We did however not go to bed hungry and the mammoth bed was soft and comfortable and we knew we could have another hot shower in the early morning before our forest adventures.

Day 158:

The alarm woke us before 6am. We both had an incredible night’s sleep and contributed it to the fact that the room was as dark as a cave. We had not been without light pollution in bed for a while. The shower was steaming hot still and after dressing for our adventure we trotted to the restaurant for our breakfast which was included in our room rate. I was determined to get my money’s worth and was not disappointed! The Coffee was filtered and strong and the omelette (Only thing on the menu) was big and tasty and well prepared. We feasted on some fresh fruit and toast with our second cup of “jo”, handed the key in and drove off to the Parc National Des Volcans, arriving promptly at 7am, as instructed. The weather was fantastic! It was warm and although clouds were around, it did not look like rain was probable at all.

Alfonse, the man at reception remembered our names from the day before, which impressed me. We were also staring at the biggest herd of wazungu we had seen since Zanzibar and a quick calculation made me realize that the park turned over $28 000 for that day in Gorilla and trekking fees. Nice… We were offered more of the fantastic coffee which I gladly accepted and got ushered by a guide to a small group of individuals which made up our party. Mr Eugene, as introduced by himself was our guide and started briefing us on the compulsory 7m distance we had to keep away from the animals and told us that the trackers had already left to find them. He explained that “said trackers” would radio him with a location and he would then tell us how far we had to walk. The two middle aged (I say that carefully as it was the day after my 36th birthday) ladies from Texas seemed eager and excited and told us that it was the first of their two consecutive days of Gorilla trekking. Michael (Mick) the Australian looked as baffled at this as we were, but also said nothing. We had just started his solo trip through Rwanda and Tanzania and planned a Kilimanjaro accent which we gave him some valuable tips for.

With preliminary explanations, introductions and opinions dealt with, we hopped in our vehicles and drove towards our starting point. 40 minutes later we stopped in a village, got out of our vehicles and followed Mr Eugene up the steep hill. Pole-Pole did not seem to exist in Eugene’s vocabulary, but the pace was not too fast. The ladies from Texas got out of breath fast and slowed to group to a comfortable speed. We strolled through villages and fields of potato and maize and I could not believe that these locals managed to cultivate the slopes. It was however, evident that the soil was incredibly fertile, judging from the size of the plants and the fruits that hung on them. Water was obviously no problem as it seemed to rain on a daily basis, even though this was the dry season.

We reached the National Park Boundary before long and our group grew somewhat. The Texas pair had employed a couple of local porters to carry their handbag sized rucksacks. We also acquired two men in camouflage uniforms, packing a radio and an AK47 each. One was tall, obviously Tutsi and other short, perhaps Hutu. No one seemed to care any longer. Mr Eugene explained that they were military and there to protect us… from charging Buffalo and elephant he added and explained that they had the right to shoot them. He also told us about poaching problem which had seemingly been eradicated since the trackers looked after the Gorillas. I wanted to ask if the military was allowed to shoot them as well, like they did in Botswana some years before, but though it might be in bad taste.

So there we were, four Wazungu, two porters with machetes and two unformed soldiers with AK47’s being led by a guide who calls himself “Mr Eugene” into the forests of deep, dark Africa. Not that my South African upbringing and general paranoia about personal safety on the continent sent alarm bells ringing louder than the 16th Chapel’s clock tower…

The forest engulfed us and was absolutely surreal. We had to almost crawl through bamboo tunnels and when we walked upright the undergrowth was three times higher than the tall soldier. The path was narrow and understandably muddy and the sounds of the forest were loud, as if amplified through the ancient and massive trees around us. Apart from our narrow and muddy path, the place seemed unspoilt and untouched and I could not help but wonder how long it could be kept like that. I hoped that the $500 per person permits would ensure its indefinite survival.

Within an hour I heard voices ahead of us and shortly after we found the trackers. They had found the Ugenda group of Mountain Gorillas. You could visibly see the excitement erupt on all our faces. As instructed, we piled our bags by the trackers and armed with cameras, spare cameras, spare batteries, spare memory cards and our Mr. Eugene, we ventured further into the thick undergrowth. Within two minutes we saw our first Gorilla. He was smaller than I had envisaged, but by no means less impressive. The group seemed calm and relaxed and evidently unperturbed by our presence. The one tracker who accompanied us made reassuring noises which seemed to have the desired effect. We slowly followed a few individuals, snapping away with no less than 5 cameras as we went. They were foraging and eating and going about their normal daily routine and Eugene explained that they were about to make a nest and bed down for a while. I counted 15 individuals of which one massive Silverback was the obvious leader. He seemed the least interested in us and the most interested in napping. There were two females with tiny offspring who had a hard time keeping control of them and some adolescents climbing trees and being generally none submissive to the authority of the big man. The 7m rule suddenly went straight out the window and Mr Eugene explained that the theory was sound, but no one had managed to explain it to the curious Gorillas. We were less than two meters away from the group. It was not my first encounter with the species, (I had seen a few Gorillas in a zoo before) but I was still absolutely astonished by their similarities to our own. Their facial expressions could be read as human expressions could and their behaviour was scaringly close to ours.

Even before Mr Eugene said it, I could see the Silverback getting agitated and grumpy, so we let them be and was taken to a younger male, a Black Back, about thirty meters away. He was sitting up and eating and acting as lookout. He seemed in the prime of his life and much bigger than the others. He regarded us with some dismay and ignored us shortly after. We headed back to the main group.

As we stood, meters away, snapping away and being amazed all the time, the tracker said something and we were forced to part, urgently. We all looked back from where we came from to see another male approaching us. We displayed no fear or curiosity or even aggression towards us. He was simply on his way to the group and we were in his way. He literally pushed the group apart and strolled right through us, brushing my one leg with his powerful arm as we went by. He joined the group, everything became calm once more and we were allowed to resume our activities after an approving snort from the silverback.

Every group on the mountain was only allowed to be visited by a maximum of 8 people for one hour every day. Our hour passed incredibly fast and before we were anywhere near ready to leave, Mr Eugene announced bingo, and led us away from the group. We found the place we had left our bags and the verbal diarrhoea started immediately! It was not as if we were not allowed to speak when we were with the Gorillas, but everyone was rendered speechless by the sheer amazement of the experience of being in the company of the incredible species. We all suddenly understood how Dianne Fosse could live with them for so long in apparent solitude and how easy it would be to immerse yourself into their environment and even get accepted by the group as one of the clan. We could not however understand how poachers could come there, kill adult females and steal the babies to be sold on the black market. I formed the sudden opinion that not only the poachers, but also the buyers who created the market should really be hunted down and shot… I did not share that view with the group.

The walk back down the mountain was pretty easy going and we chatted all the way. Our armed escort abandoned us at the park border and we were greeted and ogled at all the way through the villages and fields until we reached the mob that was looking after our vehicles. I estimated fifty curious people gathered around the two parked cars and suddenly felt like a Mountain Gorilla myself. Apart from the fact that I had not shaved in about a week, our white skins and fair hair and funny faces and bags became the show of the day and genuinely interested eyes followed our every move until we started our engines and drove away.

Back at the office we received certificates and congratulations for joining a small select group of humans who had had the absolute privilege and honour to visit the Gorillas in the wild. There was no mention, or asking for tips or more payment or favours or anything else. The whole experience was refreshingly well presented and professionally conducted and was better than I hoped it would be. The rest of the Africa we had experienced that far could learn so much from those involved!

It was before mid day and I did not really feel like paying another $50 for one night’s accommodation, so suggested that we hit the road and cross the border into Uganda. The rain had started again. Just before the border I changed the last of our Rwanda Francs to Uganda Shillings, convinced that I was getting ripped off by a bad exchange rate. Back in the car I worked out that this was indeed the case, but it wasn’t much money, so I didn’t care too much.

We reached the tiny border post at Cyuve, close to Kisoro shortly after and started dealing with the formalities. Immigration took all of two minutes; the Carnet was filled in and stamped in another three minutes and within ten minutes of arriving we left Rwanda. The Uganda side took longer… The Immigration official was on his cell phone when we reached his counter, so that took five minutes. He also had to issue our $50 per person visas and write a receipt, to be fair. Customs took another five minutes and charged us USH 45 000 for road and carbon tax, or something and stamped the Carnet. We drove through an open boom gate, returning to the driving on the left (The actual right side to drive on according to us both) within half an hour of arriving at the border. We deemed that our easiest border crossing to date.

On the Uganda side we found a dirt track instead of a road. We reached the town of Kisoro after a while. This was the base in Uganda for seeing the Gorillas but held no interest to us. We decided to continue to Lake Bunyonyi and the Bunyonyi Overland Resort, described in the guide books as a fantastic place to hang out. The road took us through mountain passes and road works and the persistent rain turned the gravel tracks into slippery muddy skidpans. That was supposed to be the dry season and I could not imagine what the roads would have been like in the actual rainy season. The sharp corners and bends offered magnificent view of the volcanoes we had left behind and the intensity of the agriculture on the steep slopes, covering every inch of mountain side as well as the peaks was just astonishing to see.

The 60km of muddy, slippery mountain passes took us over three hours to travel and I was, once again reminded that distance had absolutely no bearing on travel time in Africa. We were not so inexperienced that we got caught out by this though and still arrived at the lakeside resort a couple of hours before dark. I was immediately impressed by what I saw. The Bunyonyi Overland Resort covered an area of about three hectares and occupied a quiet and recessed bay in the lake. It catered for every level of accommodation. They had double rooms, safari tents and a camp site. The latter was occupied by an overland truck, but we were allowed to park Maggie on a perfectly level terrace about a hundred meters away, overlooking the bay in which the resort was. The price was $12 per night for the two of us and they bragged about hot showers and flush toilets. We were sold and sign up for two nights. The rain had stopped as well so we pitched camp with great efficiency and as I reached for the coal Catt announced her none debatable desire to eat in the restaurant…. Again.

To be fair, this restaurant was extremely well prices and the bar was also cheap. We shared a buffet dinner with the overlanders and drank a few G&T’s for less than $20 and went to bed happy in the decision to stay more than one night.

Day 159:

I had been a little apprehensive to sharing camp sites with overland trucks. This was due to stories I had heard and read about the “great unwashed” and the “noisies”. In our experience, these names were unfounded to say the least. The group of overlanders in this camp had a party in the bar, as groups of people would be expected to have, but there was never excessive noise or unruly behaviour. To be honest, through the night I did not really notice them at all and the early morning was fantastically quiet. In fact, it was so quiet that we only got up after 9am. We had decided to have a little holiday…

The fantastic-ness of Africa presented itself in the form of a neat and friendly young man enquiring if we had any washing that needed done. We counted it up and asked him to quote a price for our humungous pile. He informed us of the individual prices, did mental arithmetic faster than we could and as we arrived at less than $10. There was enough washing to keep a standard washing machine occupied for at least four loads, so we did not argue the price and watched in amazement as he disappeared with the mountain of cloth.

By the time we had finished our second cup of coffee he was back. The washing was wet still, but the white top Catt had given up on came back pristinely clean, as did the rest of the clothes, and bed sheets, and towels. We constructed extra washing lines from tow straps and hung everything out to dry after handing over the required payment and something extra as a tip.

After lunch we walked into the village in search of fresh produce. We acquired a kilogram of tomatoes and the same weight in carrots and bananas for… well… $0.25 total. The fruit was fantastically big and looked and felt phenomenally healthy! We were obviously still surrounded by very fertile soil and no shortage of water. We asked about potatoes, but our local, trusty grocer had none. We walked down to the waterfront and found some empty stalls, but not a single potato in sight. We asked some people who promised to have some the next day and we agreed to return. On the walk back to the resort a man ran after us and while out of breath explained that he had heard about our desire to find potatoes. He informed us that he could facilitate this, so we followed him into the village. We bought about a kilogram’s worth for about $0.07 which completed our shopping list for the day. On the five minute walk back to the resort gate we were approached by no less than four more people asking if we still needed potatoes. It was dumbstruck! The bush telegraph had worked hard it seemed and we did indeed have a whole village looking for potatoes for us.

We reached Maggie just in time for the first rain cloud to pour its contents over our patch of earth. We did manage to save the washing from getting an extra rinse from Mother Nature, but was all too aware that we were still close to rain forests, and more importantly, close to the Equator. We expected that it would rain every day for a while. The electricity was off for the day. We suspected the government’s involvement in this, but were assured that it would come on around 18:00. In anticipation to this we moved back to the restaurant and plugged in the laptop to get charged.

Minutes before I wanted to go back to our camp, make a fire and cook th3 juicy pork chops and fresh vegetables I had been looking so forward to… and drink the fine red Californian wine we acquired in Rwanda… the heavens opened! It didn’t just rain. The millions and millions of gallons of water came down in bucket loads and sheets so thick you could not see more than ten meters. We simply had to wait for the storm to pass us by before even contemplating braving the 100m walk back to Maggie.

After two hours the rain showed no signs of subsiding and with a smile Catt said: “Should we order some food then?” I had no argument, so once again we ate in the restaurant. Don’t get me wrong, the food was fantastic and as we ordered off the menu and did not eat from the buffet, our meal and healthy amount of G&T came to a total of $15. It was a bargain, but I was still craving our own cooking!

We spent a few hours chatting to some more overlanders as two more trucks had rolled up during the afternoon. We were both astonished to discover the diversity of people on the same tours we were approached by for a chat. At a guess I would say that the age range was 18 to 55 and the nationalities went from as far as New Zealand and Australia to Canada, England and even Norway. True to form, the Aussies were drunk, the Brits were flirting and the Norwegians were chatting up the young girls, but everyone, including the drivers and guides seemed to be having fun despite the raging storm outside.

The storm did stop eventually and around 23:00 we left a comfortable bon fire to investigate the state of our tent and bedding inside it. To my pleasant surprise, everything inside our tent was bone dry, despite the dripping wetness of the outside. We crawled into our comfortable home and fell sound asleep, happy with the world and the state it was in around the part of it we found ourselves in.

Day 160:

On a whim we had decided to stay at our comfortable lakeside resort for another day. Once again we shamelessly slept until after 9am and when we got up the electricity was still on. This meant that the showers were steaming hot, which we took advantage of straight away.

The Overland Trucks had left around 7am, but so quietly that I only heard the engines start and drive off. The place was dead quiet and we loved it. The staff that walked by greeted us as friends and stopped for a general chat every once in a while. We were offered a ride in a dugout canoe on the lake, which we declined and general laziness dictated that we do as little as possible… at a slow pace.

The morning was spent reading, writing and generally having a chilled out time. We managed to get all our washing dry and packed away before the clouds came. Catt baked some fantastic bread which made for a more fantastic lunch than I can possibly explain, but I’ll try. The bread had carrot, onion, cabbage and peas mixed into white flower and were still hot when we melted butter on it and draped healthy chunks of Rwandan cheese on top, which also melted. We ate twice as much as what was normal and loved every single bite!

After lunch we started weather proofing our camp for the afternoon rains. The Eezi-Awning was still up from the day before, but I constructed a side with our ground sheet and we prepared as much of dinner as we could, committing to cooking it ourselves! Obviously, as we were so well prepared, the rain never came. It threatened all the time, but never actually followed through. This meant that we had our fantastic dinner out in the open, drank some wine, played some cards and went to bed happy…

Day 161:

I woke up some time in the middle of the night to three sounds: The first was the lively bar, courtesy of the fresh load of overlanders. It was far away and not really disturbing. The second was of the local dog that found our trash bag and I suspected that was the sound that actually woke me. The third was the approaching storm. I confiscated the trash bag from the very friendly pooch and managed to get back into the tent before the heavens opened once again. Welcome to Uganda, I though… A friendly, much underrated and very wet place on the continent.

After sunrise I waited for the alarm to go off before getting up only to learn that no alarm was set. We managed to get up at a very respectable 8:30Am and as the electricity was, by some miracle, still on, we once again helped ourselves to a steaming hot shower before hitting the road once again.

Our first stop was the town of Kabale for some cash and supplies. Cash was easily obtainable from the Barkley’s ATM despite what the guidebooks lead us to believe. We saw a sign for a Royal Supermarket and went inside to investigate. Pot Luck! The friendly owner advised us on the best cheese at a reasonable price ($0.40 per KG) and stocked our newly discovered favourite Californian Red for less than South African prices. That was a first for the trip. He even offered us a fantastic exchange rate and we obtained a whack of US$ to replenish that store. We left smiling and went to fill the fuel tanks. Fuel in Uganda was cheaper than Tanzania and Rwanda… In fact, it was the cheapest fuel we had seen since Zimbabwe, so not even filling the tanks to the brim hurt the wallet as much as expected. I left town liking Uganda more than I ever expected I would.

The last things on the shopping list were vegetables. Experience had taught us that they are best purchased from markets and the first market we spotted next to the road offered fantastically healthy looking specimens. We got swamped by locals when we emerged from the car, but after I explained that we would walk through the whole market before making a single purchase, they all backed off and gave us some space. Eventually we bought a head of cauliflower, a whole cabbage, 5 onions, 6 green peppers, a bunch of spinach and 10 massive bananas for just under $4 and once again left happy.

Our destination for the day was a rumoured camp site called Hippo Hills, right next to the Queen Elisabeth National Park. The winding roads and tracks lead us through mountain passes and villages and banana plantations and the odd tea estate or two. Every village had an unbelievable tonnage of bananas on display and every mountain pass an unbelievable amount of mud! We passed through one fairly hefty rain storm without incident and eventually started driving down a short escarpment road towards the park. With every hour that passed, I seemed to grow more and more fond of Uganda and almost started feeling as if the country provided a break from the Africa we had been accustomed to. The kids still asked for money and the market traders still charged skin tax, but when you said a friendly “no thanks”, they simply backed off. It was marvellous!

We turned off the tar road towards the park gate just after 15:00 and were immediately told about a Leopard next to the road by a safari guide. The clouds were ominous and heavy and before we could find the cat, the rain had started again. We did manage to see a nice big herd of Elephants who were friendly and relaxed and a herd of Buffalo who were simply curious. The rain got heavier and heavier and at some point I could not see as much as the front of the bonnet. I had to stop for a few minutes and when it became lighter, continue our journey. We stopped briefly at the park’s entrance gate to enquire about prices before driving on and finding the unadvertised and seemingly unknown Hippo Hills Camp site. I was pleasantly surprised! It radiated community project, but had a nice big bar and lounge area, some permanent tents and a camp site with facilities. An apparent rarity in that part of the world. The rate was $5 per person, so we looked no further for our evenings resting place.

The camp site had a “cooking Banda” the size of a double garage complete with electric lights which provided a handy shelter from the inevitable rain. We spent most of the evening inside with a California Merlot, cooking up an award winning Risotto before retiring to the roof top comforts of our tent.

If I had to do it all again:

The only mistake I think we made was not finding a place to stay in Kigali for a second night after the disastrous One Love experience. If we did that, we could have obtained our Gorilla permits that afternoon, did the Genocide tour the next day and drove a circular route, including the Nyungwe National park and the lake road from Kibuye to Gisenyi. We did see a large part of Rwanda none the less, so it wasn’t all bad.

The rest of the week was pleasant and relaxing, offering no less than two “life changing” experiences.