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Currency: Ugandan Shillings, 3200 to the pound
Cost of diesel: 60p a litre
21st November.
Getting into Uganda was a breeze. The border is very efficient and only took about an hour to get through. We headed straight to Jinja, where we were to do the rafting. We stayed the night at a rather seedy campsite that was the main base in town for the rafting. It didn’t look that impressive and the weirdo bloke Tristan who worked there didn’t exactly inspire confidence. However, when we actually got the river and met the guides and everything it was pretty obvious that it was a very professional set up and the guides were excellent. The rafting starts up at the HEP dam that it at the source on the Nile. There were 6 of us in a boat with 1 guide and another person in a kayak who paddled alongside and fished you out when you fell in. We’d met an overland truck in Kenya and through chatting to them had discovered that they are going down to Cape Town via the same route as us. We met a cool Aussie couple called Paul and Ed and joked with them that we’d probably keep bumping into them all the way to SA. This is exactly what happened and their truck turned up to do the rafting on the same day as us, so we shared a raft with Ed and Paul and 2 others from their truck.
Itanga Falls, or as it is locally know: The Bad Place
The river is huge at the source, easily the size of the Thames and the volume of water going down in pretty impressive. We had a briefing about all the instructions etc and then we set off. You start with some easy grade 1 rapids, just to see what it is all about and then you progress onto the larger ones. Well, Christ, the rapids are huge. You can see from the photos how big some of them are. Basically you paddle towards them as hard as you can and then when the guide says “hold on, get down” you cling to the side of the boat and hope it doesn’t flip over. If it does you either hang onto the upturned boat, or float with your feet downstream until a kayaker picks you up and you get back in your boat. On some of the rapids you dropped over waterfalls 2m high and other went through chutes of water. The rapids have great names like the rib-cracker, the dead Dutchman (named after a chap who wanted to be the first to paddle from the source to the mouth, he made it 5km before drowning in the rapid!) and the best one of all: Itanga Falls, or as it is more commonly know, the bad place! The rafting lasts for about 6 hours and we did a whole range of rapids, including a load of grade 5s, which are the biggest rapids you can do in a raft, they are the biggest rapids you can raft in the world. It really is an amazing experience and something you have to do if you go to east Africa. After the rafting we moved the car to another campsite at a place called Bujagali Falls. This is where the Kayakers are based and it is a cool campsite, with a good bar and these showers that are open on one side so you can look directly out onto the river and the waterfalls. We did the rafting yesterday and today just chilled out. I did some work on the car, we went into town, found the source of the Nile (nothing too adventurous, there’s a big sign showing you the way!). Tomorrow we’re leaving early to head up to Murchinson’s Falls National Park.
The source of the Nile
The road after an epic rainstorm.
23rd November.
We’re in the National Park. Nearly didn’t make it though. The last 40kms of main road are still being built, and as is always the case in Africa they don’t actually shut the road when they are building it, you just drive next to it. In the dry season this is fine, as it is baked hard clay. In the rainy season (and by Christ it is the rainy season, we had 7 inches of rain yesterday!) the road becomes a river. It’s lots of fun to drive on but a bit worrying because you don’t know how deep some of the water is. Still we made it to the park gate, paid up and went in. The road from that point was a good, graded gravel road that crossed loads of little rivers. Unfortunately, most of these roves were in spate and instead of flowing through the culverts and tunnels under the roads, were actually flowing over it. One stretched we crossed was about 50ms long and 3ft deep. Again lots of fun, until we realised that on one side of the road was a sheer drop into a 5 ft ditch and we couldn’t see where it started! We have to drive out of the park tomorrow and it hasn’t stopped raining since we got here, so that should be fun. We went for a boat ride up the Nile this afternoon and saw hundreds of hippos and crocs. We also saw Murchinson’s Falls. Being a geography geek I loved it, even so they are impressive to look at. The river above the falls is about 75ms wide. The gorge it flows through at the falls is 6m. The pressure of the water going through has to be seen to be believed. The falls are about 45m long and throw up a massive amount of spray. It’s weird to think that we’ve been following this river for about 3 months now. We swam in it, driven along it, over it, rafted on it, drunk it, sailed up it and been in power boats along it. Our luck with boats on the Nile continued here though. You may remember that the felucca we got in Cairo ran out of fuel causing us to nearly crash into one of the bridges. Well, on the way back from the falls, on a stretch of the river that is literally crawling with crocs and hippos, the boat engine overheated and packed up. Thus we spent a lovely 15 mins lazily drifting down the Nile, towards a bank of crocs, whilst the crew threw buckets of water over the engine and tried to refill the leaking cooling system! Give me a sail boat any day. Anyway, we got going again and are now cooking risotto (in the rain) and contemplating driving back down the river that they call a road to Kampala tomorrow.
Top left, river crossing to get into Murchinson's NP. The rest show the falls themselves
Waterhogs in our campsite at Murchinson's National Park. Below are hippos and crocs in the Nile in the park
26th November
Having spent the last few days in Kampala doing internet stuff etc we’ve headed back out into rural Uganda. We’re currently staying at a beautiful crater lake called Nkurba. The campsite we’re staying in a community campsite which means that all proceeds go back into the local community. We’ve tried to stay in a lot of these places. This one also doubled up as the local primary school and we were woken up to the sound of 30 5yr olds being let out for break and running around the garden!
Lake Nukurba
28th November
We’ve been in a place called Queen Elizabeth’s National Park for the last 2 days. It is a large park on the shore of Lake Edward in the south-west of the country. The park is beautiful, it is very natural and wooded (good for the animals but makes it bloody hard to see them!). We’re camping on the Mweya peninsular with stunning views over the lake. We spent last night on the ground tent because we’re using the car for game drives. However, we discovered last night that the hippos use the peninsular as a short cut to get into the Kazinga channel which links Lake Edward with Lake George. This means that they wander within metres of the tent. Having got no sleep last night we’ve decide to sleep in the roof-tent tonight! We’ve done a couple of game drives and have seen all the animals you’d expect. However, we did manage to see some very rare tree climbing lions. To be fair it had nothing to do with us finding them. We’d spent the previous 2 hours following a Belgian film crew suspecting that they’d find all the good stuff and they did! They weren’t overly pleased with us because we always kept about 200m’s behind them. However, when they found something to film, they’d stop, get their huge cameras out and start filming, only have our truck creep up behind them and spoil the tranquil scene. I found this very amusing, they didn’t! There was 1 other notable event that occurred. Firstly was when we got attacked by an enormous black mamba, the most poisonous snake in Africa. Well, it didn’t really try to attack us but it did sneak up on me when I was having my lunch and got to within 2ft of me before I noticed it. It was as thick as my arm and about 2m’s long. Rather scary. When we told the ranger about it he said that when he sees a snake he screams and runs away. That filled us with confidence as you can imagine.
The Mountians of the Moon seen from Queen Elizabeth's NP. Very upset elephant in the same!
After we left them we made our way back to the campsite. On the way we encountered this huge herd of elephants, there must have been over 30 of them. As we weren’t in a hurry we stopped, turned the engine off and the herd slowly became used to use. This meant that they wandered all around us and we spent an amazing 30 minutes with them. They had 6 babies in the group and so when the babies got too close to us the mature elephants got a bit worried. This led to one of them charging at us (see the photo below). I quickly started the engine and the sound of this scared it off. Thank god, the car isn’t that quick going forward; it’s even slower going backwards! Having said that Africa is the only place I’ve been where they think my car is fast. I asked one campsite owner how long it would take to get the next town. He asked if I had a fast or slow car, I replied that it was a slow one and told him that it was a land rover expecting a chuckle and a comment about the likelihood of it breaking down along he way. However, he followed with “oh no no no, you have a very fast car. It will not take you long at all!” I was well chuffed!
In the park we also went on another boat ride up the Kazinga channel and went chimp trekking in the Kyambura Gorge. This is a 16km long 500m wide channel that was formed when the rift valley formed. It is home to huge numbers of red-tailed and colobus monkeys. They also have a family of 17 chimps living in the gorge and it was these that we went to look for. The trek was one of the best things we’ve done in Africa so far. You walk through the gorge along the tracks that the animals have made, there are no man made ones there. Everywhere you can see evidence of elephants, hippos and buffaloes. You can also see about 2m into the bush and it is at this point you realise why the ranger is carrying a machine gun. We heard that the day before a group had encountered some elephants in the gorge. They were charged, but the elephants stopped short from actually getting them. The ranger said if it had not stopped he was prepared to shoot it because he felt that it was going to get them! Anyway, we trekked through the jungle for about 90 mines, crossing this hippo infested river using a fallen tree across it and finally found the chimps. We stayed with the group for about 30 mins and it was an amazing experience. Seeing as we can’t afford to see the gorillas as it costs around 1000US, seeing the chimps for 30US seemed a bargain and it was well worth it.
Kyumbura gorge where we tracked chimps. The river we had to cross using a fallen tree!
29th November.
This is to be our last day in Uganda. We’re staying on another lake called Bunyoni. This is another beautiful place. The lake was formed by a landslide blocking one end of a hug valley. Over many years the valley slowly filled with water. This means that the lake it dotted with lots of little island. The side of the valleys are covered with terraced fields and banana plantation and these stretch right down the edge of the water, making for a very beautiful and tranquil setting. It is described as looking like a scene from Lord of the Rings and this would be a very apt description. Therefore I have decided to rename this place Matt Whitton’s ancestral home. The shire is waiting for you Matty, go visit home. We’re going into Rwanda tomorrow and this has been an excellent place to finish Uganda with.
Uganda seems to be one of the most prosperous places we’ve visited in Africa so far. The people are definitely the friendliest in East Africa and up there with the rest of the continent. Unlike most of the other countries we’ve visited there aren’t large groups of people (mainly young men) sitting around. Everyone seems to be doing something. There is little litter, the houses are in good (relatively) condition and you get a real sense of optimism from the people you meet. In the national parks in Kenya the rangers are perfectly polite, however, it is obvious they just want you to pay and then go away. The rangers in Uganda seem to have a real love of what they do. They all get really animated when talking about the animals and want you to share it. Even our ranger Robinson, when trekking the chimps (something he’s been going for 4 years) got really excited when we finally found them and spent ages explaining which ones were which, what and why they were acting the way they were etc etc. It was really nice to see him taking such joy from what he was doing. None of the other rangers we met in Tanzania or Kenya had half as much enthusiasm. Uganda does not have an exemplary history. They were involved with the Rwanda genocide in 1994 and have helped perpetuate civil war in the neighbour, Congo, for many years. Both of which events have caused the deaths of millions of people. However, in the last 5 years the government (at least it seems like it has) has worked hard to improve the situation for its people. This is borne out by the fact that Uganda has reduced it % of the population infected with aids from 30% in 1992 to 5% 2005. this is the largest reduction in the number of infected on the continent and is largely due to the government taking an active interest in what they could do and allowing western agencies free reign to advise and implement strategies. The result has been as resounding success. Compare this to Zambia where the governments since independence have done little except loot the country and the people. The result is that the current estimate reckons up to 50% of the population are infected with HIV/AIDS and the average life expectancy has fallen to 38! Maybe it is no wonder that Ugandans feel that they have the chance to make a success of their country. There is the small (!) problem of the LRA in the north. However, the people we spoke to felt that this was near its end. The LRA are tired and the UN sanctions etc are starting to bite. Although I read the other day that LRA have walked out of the latest peace talks. This is one of the few clouds on the horizon I see for this country. We leave Uganda both feeling that this is one of the most positive places we’ve been, compare this to how we felt we left Ethiopia.
