Hi all
We have been in Africa for nearly a month now and already have done so much... we started in Uganda and were immediately overwhelmed by how friendly and welcoming the people were and it has been the same throughout East Africa. People will stop to say hello and ask how you are and children run out of there houses to catch a glimpse of the Muzungos (white people!). In rural parts of Uganda the children are very freindly but one time when i went to give them a present they ran away screaming... I found out later that some parents tell their children "be good or the Muzungos will eat you!!" to make them behave! Makes us sound like some kind of mythical creature! Anna keep giving me stick for picking up men on buses, as everyone we meet gave me their phone number!!
While there we went white water rafting at the source of the Nile, which was awesome but as is often the case stupidly dangerous, apparantly it's one of the best places in the world, with about four grade 5 rapids... our raft got flipped once and others got thrown out on a few occasions,
not sure how i managed to hang on, at times the raft was almost at 90 degrees... the best one was where we got stuck at the top of what is effectively a waterfall and spun round backwards... crazy stuff! thankfully we avoided the delightfully named "dead dutchman" rapid!
We camped by Bujagali falls, which was beautiful place which we had to ourselves... we also went up to Muchison falls national park for a mini safari, just a warm up for the Serengeti, and also went chimp tracking... which as the name suggests meant heading into the jungle tracking wild chimpanzees... which can take anything up to 5 hours, as it happens we found some in 20 mins and it was really cool watching them swinging, eating or just plain watching us back... saw a few wandering on the ground but they are cautious by nature and kept their distance...
Had a good time staying in some random towns in Uganda and meeting lots of cool locals, as in Central America it is perfectly normal to cram a matatu (local minibus transport) full of more people than you would think possible, also relying on Boda Bodas (motorbike/moped taxi)
which vary in quality... one time i got the short straw and got lumbered with a teenager on his fisher price moped having to carry me plus my 25kg backpack and tent uphill on a dirt road... unsurprisingly it broke down!
Next up Rwanda, where we headed straight for Volcan national park to go on a Gorilla trek... this was what i looked forward to most on the whole trip and it exceeded even my expectations, after a pleasant 1.5 hour trek thru the forest we came across a group of 14 mountain gorillas, including 2 huge silverbacks and several children. The first view was amazing as they strolled around the mountain side, but then we scrambled through the undergrowth to get up close and spent an hour amongst them within a few meters and at times within touching distance as the younger ones came to investigate! We were limited to an hour and it just flew by... our favourite was one of the little ones who was showing off and beating his chest and two bigger ones having play fights... i cant explain how amazing it was (even people who arent monkey obsessed agree!), these are wild gorillas, and their are only a few hundred left in the world and we were amonst them!
A bit more sobering was the Genocide museum/memorial in Kigali, which brought home the scale of the ethnic clensing just 14 years ago... where neighbours turned on each other, its a far cry from Kigali now, which is a vibrant cosmopolitan city...
Next stop Tanzania and the Serengeti!!
