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Published: September 15th 2008
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Doing an organized tour is not my favorite holiday experience (to put it mildly) and it took a lot of soul searching and some obstacles in the way to join one. The main reason why we decided to do it was me saying a while back that I don’t want to spend a lot more time on uncomfortable busses, the ability to see lots in little time and as main reason that it is not possible to get gorilla trek permits from outside Uganda. So we signed up for a 14 day Gorilla overland truck trip. If you have never seen or heard of an overland truck then think of a cross between a bus and a truck and you might get the picture. It is an organized tour where a bunch of tourists get driven around in a truck (which is converted, has nice seats camping gear…), see the highlights in a whirlwind tour and camp every night. That’s at least what the brochure said. To come to the conclusion at the beginning … it was rubbish. The people on the trip were great but nearly every day we were getting up before sunrise and then drove for hours on
end without stopping for anything. I have never traveled through two countries without experiencing anything in them. It felt like being in a cocoon and seeing the world driving by.
The tour started in Nairobi in a very nice hotel (at least I know now why it was so expensive 😉 and we went off to a national park to spot a few more animals. Was very worth going to the park as we finally saw some rhinos close up and not just as specs in the distance as in the Ngorogoro crater. After that we went in three days straight to Rwanda to do some Gorilla trekking. The Gorilla trek was Kellies wish and I was a bit skeptic beforehand if it’s worth the long travel and the ridiculous amount of USD 500 for 1 hour viewing time. In the end I was converted. It was an amazing experience and you can read about it in the next blog.
The only other noteworthy activity in the 14 days was wild water rafting on the Nile. Five grade 5 rapids (the highest you do in a raft) and lots of grade 3 and 4 rapids. I would consider
Cheeky monkey
He stole the packet of crisps out of a car and had great fun eating it. Shame he couldn’t grab a bottle of beer too. our boat the most successful as we managed to turn the boat over four times. The last time was quite scary as the rapid was huge and we ended up in the wrong spot. When the boat overturned I was pushed down into the water, whirled around a few times just to make sure I didn’t know where up and down is and when I cam up I had a split second before I got dragged under again. I was under water for longer than I liked but it was a great experience and I would do it again in a second.
Someone else uploaded a Nile rafting video to YouTube. Have a look at it to see what we did
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