During planning
we had been looking forward to visiting Uganda with its big green forests and
position on Lake Victoria. However as Uganda came closer our thoughts and plans
changed and we opted to spend only a week or so there. We decided this for a
few reasons: 1) Uganda had increased its National Park prices quite
dramatically to the point that it would have cost $150 per day just for our
car. We had seen lots of parks in Rwanda and didn’t feel the need to spend an
extortionate amount of money on this in Uganda; 2) The recent Ebola outbreak in
Uganda’s west, the exact area we had wanted to start off in, and; 3) The time
factor. Starting to run out for time we were keener to spend extra time in
Kenya than in Uganda.
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| More hills as we drove into Uganda |
Our
arrival in Uganda immediately made us feel better about our decision with it
taking nearly 2 hours to get through that side of the border. There were police
“checks” on top of the usual immigration process which took forever because they
only had one woman on the desk “because it was Sunday”. Tell that to the many
people waiting in the queue! Then we had an issue with getting our car in, with
customs requesting an additional $25 on top of the Carnet. This would have been
ok had they accepted US dollars like at immigration but instead they wanted us
to ILLEGALLY exchange US dollars for Ugandan Shillings with a dodgy money
changer at the border. We resisted for about 15 minutes but being impatient as
we are we gave in and just changed the money to get out of there. Definitely an
“Africa” moment.
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Common site in Rwanda and Uganda: Refugee camp for those escaping the problems
of DRC. To me, these are the people the rest of the world has forgotten about |
Our first
night in Uganda was in Kabale, only an hour or so over the border. Literally an
overnight pit stop we headed off early the next day for Kampala but were soon
met with some extremely bad roads and roadwork’s making our 400km plus drive
feel as though it may never end and take more than a day. We arrived in Mbarara
at lunchtime feeling angry and frustrated, however the stop was probably a good
one for us and the road after improved dramatically for the rest of the way.
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First beer we tried in Uganda. This one was actually not my
favourite; I preferred Nile Special |
Our
arrival into Kampala was greeted by absolute chaos! Peak hour traffic,
roundabouts unable to function and then we got “kicked off” the road by some
MPs motorcade. We had to drive poor Ruth off the side of the road, at least a 50cm
drop, so that some dude could demonstrate his importance to the rest of the
world. Bloody Ugandan (African) politicians!
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| Roundabout chaos |
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| Peak hour traffic |
In Kampala
we stayed at Red Chilli Hideaway, a backpackers in the middle of
Kampala with a great location and great facilities. We had a few night in
Kampala however really didn’t do a lot while we were there. We made one lame
attempt to see some tombs but got so annoyed by the traffic in the city centre
we turned Ruth around and headed back to our hideout. Kampala for us was really
a chance to get a few administrative things done (e.g. scoping out the job
front in Oz, emails, blogging, etc) making it productive, albeit not
particularly touristy.
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| @Red Chilli Hideaway |
Our next
stop was Jinja on Lake Victoria, famous as the source of the White Nile and as Africa’s
“Adventure capital”, the later I would dispute after living in Livingstone,
Zambia.
Jinja was
a nice, quiet sort of town. We stayed around 8km outside the main town at Eden Rock Resorts but in hindsight wish we had stayed across the road at Explorers River Camp; it would have been slightly cheaper and no noisier than Eden which
was accommodating around 15 of the loudest Irish girls I’ve ever crossed!
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| Eden Rock Resorts from the road |
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| View of the Nile River from the bar at Explorers River Camp |
There is a
lot to do in Jinja because of the river. Rafting is a big draw card however due
to damming of the river around 12 months ago, about half of the rapids no
longer exist. I ummed a lot on rafting but decided in the end not to do it;
Mike didn’t care either way claiming that it wasn’t going to be good compared
to the Zambezi anyway. And so we opted for a sunset river cruise where we met
some interesting people including a group of 3 who were writing for a business
magazine and had a lot of information on recent oil discoveries in Uganda. The
food was also lovely on the cruise and provided in larger quantities than we
had expected (and a bit of a dinner spoiler).
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| Mike into the beer before the cruise has even left! |
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| The Nile River |
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| Some of the tasty food we had on the boat |
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| The Jinja Bungee Jump: Looked kind of close to the rocks to me |
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| Impact of damming the river |
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| River cruise at sunset |
We did a
visit to the “source” of the White Nile. Not the most exciting attraction we’ve
been to, but I guess I can now say that I’ve been there.
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| Source of the Nile..... |
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| ....is around about here! |
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| And just to prove I was there! |
We also
had a go at the funniest course of mini golf I’ve ever played on. We encountered
a young goat who thought it would be fun to run across the course while we were
playing and we kept having serious issues with getting our balls to reach the
holes as the surface was so uneven they kept rolling in all the wrong
directions (I swear it was the course and not our elite mini-golf skills!).
Despite the obstacles though, I did beat Mike, yay!!!
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| Studying my shot |
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| Mike in action |
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