Well, after a fairly quite call including even a few hours of much needed sleep, 4 of us traveled to Uganda to raft the Nile. Our group included a radiologist from Indiana, an anesthesiologist from Indiana/Kentucky, and a 4th year medical student/future surgery resident from South Carolina. We hired a driver to drive us from the hospital to the bus station an hour away then caught the bus to Jinja, Uganda. We were given the 'upgrade' bus with large seats. We stopped several times to pick people up and drop people off in various places. It was a great ride for viewing the Kenyan and Ugandan countryside. There were lots of farm animals wandering around, lots of tea plantations and even a few rice fields. We stopped for lunch in Kisumu and ate mendazis (Kenya's version of fried vegetable rolls). Although the seats on the 'upgrade bus' are nice and comfortable, there is no bathroom on the bus. Which will be important for the bus ride home...keep reading. The idea of Kenyan and Ugandan bathrooms at the places where we stopped is a stall with a door in a cement bathroom with a ceramic hole in the ground- no seats, no toilet bowl, no toliet paper, no soap. It was interesting to say the least.
We passed Lake Victoria, headed west to Uganda. When we got to the Ugandan border, we had to get off, show our passports, buy a visa, and exchange a few Kenyan shillings for Ugandan shillings. One of the guys somehow made the border official angry by shaking his head when he thought they were not helping us with our visas (they just plopped our passports down on the desk and appeared to be ignoring them while helping other people). So he was threated with refusal to enter the country and we all had to hear a long lecture from the official. It was all a cultural misunderstanding and thankfully we made it through okay and got our visas.
We arrived in Jinja and someone from the rafting company picked us up. Although, had we wanted, there were plenty of motobikes swarming around us offering to transport us (and our bags) to our destination of choice. No helmits, lots of traffic accidents, and probably number one cause of tourists' death, so we declined. We had dinner at a restaurant that served Indian food in 'downtown' Jinja. Thankfully, there were no protests or angry mobs in the aftermath of the presidential election last weekend. But what we didn't know was that the election for mayor of Jinja apparently incited some protests and police were using tear gas in the streets. We didn't see anything and only a few beggers asked for money.
We slept in dormatories the first night. There was a group of American college students there for the weekend; they were studing at Ugandan Christian University and came over to raft. They were extremely noisy until midnight and it was challenging to sleep. Thankfully we were the only ones around the second night, so the noise was not a problem. But I somehow managed to get travelers diarrhea - or as I like to call it, the Nile's revenge- Uganda's version of Montezuma's revenge. No one else had problems even though we ate the same foods and all swam in the Nile. I was up multiple times overnight and was really concerned about the long bus ride home. But thankfully one of the guys had his immodium and cipro with him- I left mine in Kenya- and it actually did the trick for the bus ride. Although I was nauseus and ate very little all day, at least I didn't have to deal with the bathroom situation that I mentioned previously.
Rafting the Nile was lots of fun! We had our group of 4 plus two German girls and one CA college grad about to enter the Peace Corp. And a guide. This weekend was supposedly the last weekend that the rafting company could go down their typical route because a dam is currently being built across the Nile River in the middle of their route. We actually passed by the dam while rafting; it will take 4 more years to complete but starting this week they will start piling rocks in the river. So in the future, the rafting company will have to put the rafts in downstream and miss several good class 4 and 5 rapids. We had lots of large rapids, some calm areas of just paddling and enjoying the surroundings, and even got stuck on some huge rocks once (which apparently was a first for our guide). I fell out on one of the rapids and was carried downstream. It was a little frightening but also exhilarating. Another person who fell out at the same time grapped my life jacket because he thought I was the boat! We were 'rescued' by the kayakers who kayaked along side of our raft the entire trip. I grapped onto the back of their kayak and had my own personal kickboard to get back to the boat.
There was one section where we had to get out of the water and walk around to another entry point in order to bypass a class 6 rapid that we were not allowed to raft on. We stopped for lunch and then once we finished rafting we had a nice barbeque with kebobs and fruit. We saw lots of cool birds along the Nile including a white eagle that closely resembled a bald eagle and a tiny bird with metalic green feathers. We also saw a small Nile monitor sunbathing on the rocks.
http://www.the-lizard-lounge.com/content/gallery/lizard-pictures/nile-monitor-1.asp
There were lots of people along the shore of the Nile bathing and washing clothes; it was definitely a stark contrast between us paying to raft the river and the Ugandans washing clothes in the river. There were some very nice houses along the river banks as well as many small groups of huts. There were native Ugandans boating in wooden boats with small wooden roofs, I'm not sure if they try to go down the rapids or not.
Since there were no shoes allowed in the raft, we got to experience walking on land Ugandan/Kenyan style- barefoot (Kenyans sometimes also use flipflops but we couldn't bring them). The ground is red dirt, and very dusty when it hasn't rained. On our drive back from the take out point to our lodging, we got to see the Ugandan countryside. We had pizza for dinner, sat out on the porch by the Nile river watching the sun set, and enjoyed good fellowship and conversation. Overall, it was a very enjoyable trip, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone traveling to East Africa.
http://www.adrift.co.uk/whitenile.html
Sorry, the pictures are out of order again.
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| Monkeys at the rafting site. They enjoy eating food offered to them and have been known to steal things- including the contact case and contacts from one of the guys in our group. |
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| An uninvited guest in my room, the bathroom, all over the campsite. |
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| Akamba bus station |
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| Our bus, the 'upgrade' for free. We spent ~6-7 hours on it each way |
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| One of the taxies in the town where we stopped for lunch in Kisumu |
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| Our lunch stop |
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| The group from Tenwek: Steve, radiologist from Indiana, Magdy, anesthesiologist from Kentucky/Indiana, Tyler, MUSC medical student going into surgery, and me. |
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| Eating dinner at an Indian restaurant in town after a long day of traveling. |
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| Hanging out at the campsite by the Nile; a beautiful location for watching the sun set and having great conversation. |
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| Our dormatories at the rafting campsite |
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| Lady working in the tea fields outside the campsite |
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| The bungee jump site- although I was dared to do it, I didn't feel like it was worth what they were charging; so no bungee jumping for me on this trip. |
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| The Nile River at sunset |
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| Trees around the campsite |
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| The Nile River |
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| Fishermen on the Nile |
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| A Kenyan school house |
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| The rafters- our group of 4 plus 2 Germans and a CA college grad. Yes, I'm wearing scrubs because I'm taking doxycycline and I burn badly even without doxycycline |
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| Rafting down the Nile. Only fell out once and had a personal escort back to the boat on the back of a kayak. |
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| This section of the Nile has lots of class 4 and 5 rapids. |
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| We did an unheard of thing and got stuck on two very large rocks; it took a while and quite a bit of effort to get us unstuck. So we missed one of the waterfalls that we were supposed to raft over. |
