Uganda

So as I said previously I took a few days off away from our strenuous hospital schedule to visit the neighbouring country of Uganda. Lara and I spent most of Thursday on a bus from Kigali to Kampala (respective capitals). The trip to the border was fairly uneventful, couldn’t say the same for immigration control - quite the ordeal. This involved getting off the bus, ‘checking out’ on the Rwandan side, walking the 200m or so through no-man’s-land passed the heavily armed national guards and ‘checking in’ on the Uganda side. This wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t arrived back at the bus only to have some Ugandan man vigorously delving into my bag. I told him in fairly stern French to get his hands out of my bag. No response. Then realising that I was now in a Commonwealth State translated the message into English, only to have him rummage through his pockets for 30 seconds and pull out his police badge. Why the border federal agents decide to search people’s bags in plain clothes is beyond me. Ordeal over - six hours to Kampala.



Seeing the slow change in scenery during the eight-hour bus trip was a sight in itself. As soon as we passed through the border we rapidly descended to the planes of Uganda. It certainly gave us an appreciation of the geography of Rwanda - a mountainous plateau surrounded by the flats of Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and to a lesser extent DRC. The other distinct geographical difference is the density - Uganda is sparse by comparison and the land is a lot less cultivated. Their farming is also a quite different - more like Australia with a bigger focus on livestock and the meat industry (almost non-existent in Rwanda)

Kampala itself is a very busy town, really stressful with traffic jams everywhere. Lara and I found a man on the side of the road to change our US dollars into Ugandan shillings. It’s the way to do it in Africa - roadside dealers will inevitably give you a much better exchange rate than any bank - as long as you have post 2005 US currency in either 50 or 100 dollar bills. The only thing you have to worry about is the quality of the currency they give to you - we are told a quick look for the hologram badge and that it hadn't been printed by an inkjet printer and you are all good. As we were, now some 900 000 thousand Ugandan shillings 'richer'.


That night we stayed in dorms before setting out for a three day trip to Murchison Falls National Park - a large game park in the north of Uganda. We saw giraffe, elephants, water beast, water buffalo, waterfalls, hippopotami, crocodiles, eagles, hornbills, kingfishers + many other birds, warthogs, baboons, Americans, rhinoceros and monkeys. Basically everything in The Lion King except lions - still completely worth it - especially the families of elephants - absolutely awesome to see up close in the wild.


Lara and I stayed in a tent for the two nights we were there - fully equipped with velcro+zip anti-mosquito doors and kerosene lanterns. It was unfortunate there was no honeymoon suite because with the amount of people who asked us ‘is your wife coming to dinner’ or ‘what does your husband do as a job’ we might as well have gone along with it for the free upgrade. They must get married much younger here, surely I don’t look older than twenty?

On the first night we were told not to leave any food in our tent. Neither of us remembered this particular detail before setting off on the safari on the second day. Consequently we were greeted by a warthog who had nested himself on our front porch. Not being able to penetrate our sturdy Velcro+zip-shut tent and find the bananas we had left inside, this particular warthog had found the nearest ‘edible’ item, Lara’s running shoe, and had started munching on it. Fortunately warthogs have a short attention span and he gave up on the shoe quickly and trotted away when we arrived.

My last day in Uganda we decided to go a little more adventurous than the tame old safari bus - white-water rafting on the Nile was the go - yes Mum I checked my insurance beforehand and it covers such extreme outings. We left Kampala for Jinja - a small riverside town about 2 hours away. Our guide was a Canadian extreme sports junky - who also asked whether we were married? together? brother and sister? - I think we disappointed him. White-water rafting is crazy fun - we spent an entire day on the water doing level 3, 4 and 5 rapids, we flipped the boat once and got completely soaked on every fall. It was a scorcher of a day - we reapplied sunblock at least four times - even the Ugandan in our boat had started itching. Every chance we got, Lara and I were out of the boat and into the water to swim and cool off. This came as a bit of a surprise to the two Italians, two Belgians, one South African and one Ugandan who took a least a minute to prepare themselves to jump in.



That's where my Ugandan experience ended. Lara spent a few more days in Uganda, then Tanzania and finally back to Australia while I took the bus back to Kigali. Traveling eight hours on a bus by yourself is not fun I discovered - lucky I had a good book to read - thanks Mum.