After leaving Nyeihanga, we set off for Kampala (Uganda’s capital) for a week of relaxing before attempting to climb Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. As soon as we arrived we were able to enjoy some of the luxuries we had been without while in the village, hot showers (well just running water in general), toilets, and Westernized food (I had a burger… amazing!). We kind of just bummed around the hostel the day we got there and the next day. Late on the day after we arrived our buddy from home, Blake Shubert, and his girlfriend, Bianca, arrived. Blake works for the organization we had been volunteering with in Nyeihanga, and was coming to Uganda to check out how all the organization’s operations were working, especially in Nyeihanga. The plan was to brief him on what we had done with our time down in the village, provide him with any ideas or plans for the future of the village, and then just hang out for the rest of the time we had with them.
We got lucky the day after Blake and Bianca arrived. There was an Africa Cup of Nation’s qualifying soccer match between the Uganda and Guinea Bissau national soccer teams downtown about 10 miles from where we were staying. All of Kampala was going crazy for the game. People were dressed in soccer jerseys all over town. We got lunch downtown and the crowds of people we saw in the streets was nuts. When we got to the stadium there were huge lines of people trying to get in and they were so tightly packed that we didn’t really want to get in the lines. We walked around for a little while trying to find a shorter/safer line when we found this gate that was letting cars in. Whenever the police (in full riot gear toting large automatic rifles) would open the gate to let a car in about 50 people would run through the gate and then the riot cops would go crazy, start screaming, and push the people who didn’t make it back with their huge clear shield thingys. We watched this happen 2 or 3 times until one of the cops just points to Blake and tells him to follow him through the gate. Jackpot. We ended up bribing him to “pay for the tickets” which we never received but at least we were inside!! The crowd inside the stadium was electric. Uganda ended up winning 2-0 and whenever they scored the crowd would erupt and people all over the stadium would blow whistles and go to town with their vuvuzelas. As annoying as they were during the World Cup, being there in person took it to a whole other level. My ears were literally ringing by the end of the match. Another cool thing was after the game was over no one left the stadium. We were planning on waiting around to let things clear out before we left (to avoid any tramplings), but the stadium was completely full even a half hour after the game. By the time we made it to our car we were all pretty tired and ready for dinner and drinks back at the hostel. Unfortunately we were about to experience the worst traffic any of us have ever seen. At literally every intersection the entire way home 3 lanes of traffic (where only one should be) would try and turn in each direction of the intersection at one time. Things would completely grid lock and cars would inch forward as much as they could. After 25 minutes of this, half of the people would get out of their cars and try to direct everyone to get unjammed. About 5 cars would make it out and then the cycle would start over. It took us over 4 hours to get the 10 miles back to the hostel.
The next day we said our goodbyes to Blake and Bianca as they left to continue our efforts in Nyeihanga and then Erin and I took a few hour bus ride to Jinja to whitewater raft the Nile. This trip was one of the coolest/most fun things we’ve done on our entire trip. The river was full of Category 4 and 5 rapids that were tossing us all over the place. Erin and I shared our raft with 2 British guys and our guide. At the beginning our guide told us the day could go one of three ways. We could go easy and make sure the raft didn’t flip over by just going over the edge of the rapids, we could go medium by going near the center of the rapids but there’d be a chance we might flip, or we could go hard and the guide would try to hit the center of the rapid and pretty much try to flip us every time. Obviously the 2 other guys and I chose the hard way. Erin was a little apprehensive but went along with it. By the end of the day the boat had gone over 3 times and I had popped out one more time. By the end of the day we were all exhausted. We pulled the rafts out of the water and a huge BBQ was waiting for us on the banks of the river. It was so good.
The next day we had booked a mini safari through our hostel up to Murchison Falls National Park. The park was about 4 or so hours away by minibus. Our group was made up of Erin and I, another couple who was on holiday from some volunteer work in the DRC, and a really weird Italian guy named Bernardino. Now, we met Bernardino the day before while whitewater rafting, but he was in a different raft so we didn’t interact too much with him (besides being treated to some pretty epic Italian boy-shorts swim trunks… Bernardino wasn’t a small guy). He was a nice enough guy, he just didn’t like the sun and was really afraid of mosquitoes so he was always in jeans and a sweatshirt, lathering the rest of his exposed skin with sun block, and spraying bug spray everywhere. As soon as we got to the park, the group went chimpanzee trekking. We hiked for about an hour with a guide until we spotted a group of chimps in the trees. There were about 5 or 6 female chimps and most of them had baby chimps with them. It was pretty cool just watching them eat and the babies swing from the branches. We had about an hour with them and just before we left the chimps started calling for the male chimps who were a few kilometers away. We waited for a few extra minutes hoping the males would show up, but we didn’t get lucky and hiked back to the bus. We drove to the campsite and just hung out for the rest of the afternoon. One thing that we experienced here that we really hadn’t yet was true equatorial African heat. Where we had been staying in Nyeihanga was at a higher elevation so it never really got too hot and Kampala would maybe get into the low 90s, but in the park it was well over 100. Too hot to even lay down in the tents. The next morning we work up early and went for a game drive around the park. We saw a ton of baboons, giraffes, bushbucks, and elephants. We didn’t see any lions or cheetahs or anything, but we weren’t really expecting to, and there’s always Tanzania! After a quick lunch back at the campsite we jumped on a boat and cruised down the Nile to the falls. The boat ride was about 3 hours long and along the way we would pull the boat over to check out the animals drinking. We saw hundreds of hippos, a few crocodiles, and a bunch of elephants and buffalo. When we got to the falls our group jumped off and hiked to the top. This was when having Bernardino in the group got a little crazy. About a half hour after we started the hike, Bernardino had to stop. The other couple went ahead and we waited with him. He looked terrible. He was just dripping with sweat and he got sick a few times. I told him to take his sweatshirt off because it looked like he was about to get heat stroke. He claimed that he was just sick from spraying bug spray in his tent and then breathing it in 3 hours before, and that he didn’t want to take his shirt off because he didn’t want to get burned. We stayed with his as he basically crawled to the top. He made it and didn’t die so that’s good I guess. The view from the top of the falls was awesome, totally worth it.
On the drive back to Kampala the next day we stopped at a rhino rehabilitation park. All of the rhinos in Uganda were wiped out in the 80s due to poaching, but this park is trying to bring them back. We walked for about a half hour and got to within about 20 yards of 2 huge rhinos. It was pretty cool to be so close to these massive animals.
The next morning we hopped on a bus and headed to Tanzania. It was an overnight bus from Kampala, Uganda to Arusha, Tanzania. The bus was supposed to take 16 hours, but there was some overturned truck in the middle of the night which held us up. The trip ended up taking a full 24 hours. We also had to cross two international borders during the trip. Everyone had to get off the bus at these and go through border control. It was crazy how unregulated these border crossings were. People were just walking back and forth through an open gate. Not exactly like the US-Mexico border. When we got to Arusha, we got our stuff ready for our Kilimanjaro climb which started the next day.
Next up… Climbing Kilimanjaro: He Said, She Said!!!!!
Runaway Bride... and Groom 