I have a dismal night's sleep that's only partly alleviated by the egg and sausage that appears at breakfast, and the rest of the day sees me coughing and snivelling. The other three bear the presence of the contagious Englishman with admirable fortitude. Lake Manyara NP is close to the camp and is famous for its hippos, tree-climbing lions, and (at certain times of the year but not now) quantities of flamingos. However we strike out on much that's new and the six hours we spend there seem to last for twelve and the visit begins to drag - yes, just [View Full Entry]

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The day's delay means that I will be joined by M and his girlfriend K who has just flown in from Germany. There is one other customer, a New Yorker called P who lives barely a block from where I was in my Chelsea days, and when I ask about the Kiwi woman I'm told she has decided not to come. The suspicious part of my nature is fairly sure this was all a ruse on the part of the safari operator to eliminate the possibility of having to send me out on safari on my own. No matter, as the [View Full Entry]

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Half the minibus to the Tanzanian border is filled by a family of Indian extraction. The husband, not a subtle man, gets his youngest child's attention then points at me and exclaims "Mzungu!" as though I'd just landed from one of the many places on the planet where being pointed at from a metre away and having your ethnicity shouted at you is considered as courteous and welcoming. I tut, roll my eyes, and shake my head - things have reached a pretty pass if even non-Africans are calling me mzungu. The road runs close to the shore of Lake Tanganyika [View Full Entry]

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The minibus I catch to Bujumbura originates in Kigali, and I'm the only new boarder so I have the least comfortable seat available - and that's without taking into account the sizable lady next to me nor her luggage which is taking up all my legroom. However - and it's possible I dreamed this - the minibus also has aircon so I may be cramped but at least I'm cool. The border with Burundi is reached in barely half an hour and immigration is a model of efficiency. I'm stamped out of Rwanda, stamped in to Burundi, and even have time [View Full Entry]

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Though Butare is only about 2 hours from Kigali, all the morning minibus departures seem to be at 6AM. Since the WLP was written, the town has been officially renamed to Huye (part of a nationwide renaming program for reasons I was unable to determine) - I buy my ticket from the counter labelled Butare but board a minibus signed Huye. I doze and listen to music as the tarmac road takes us through more green hills. Butare is a small, clean town that is home to the national university. Within Rwanda, it had long had a reputation for tolerance, and [View Full Entry]

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I warm further to Rwandan minibuses when we leave Gisenyi on time and only half full but the comfort levels drop at Ruhengeri when the remaining seats are filled by other Kigali-bound passengers and their luggage. There are many wooden cylinders in various roadside trees, and it's only later that I figure out that they are beehives. We pass numerous signs along the way - I can't read any Kinyarwanda but the word "Jenoside" in red letters presumably means the obvious, and I come to the conclusion that these are memorial sites from the madness of 1994. There are many. Like [View Full Entry]

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It's just a short taxi ride to the border with Rwanda and, after a delay due to Ugandan immigration being on a tea break, I'm soon in my sixth country of this trip. The first time in my life I heard of Rwanda was due to the horrific genocide that took place in 1994, but everything I've heard in the last few months has been indicative of a country with an eye to the future. Travellers have told of tarmac roads, scheduled buses with only one person per seat, and a ban on plastic bags. There have also been tales of [View Full Entry]

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As instructed by the Horizon bus company man the previous day, I arrive at the bus stop at 7AM in order to catch the service linking Kampala to Kisoro that passes through Kabale. This is also where the shared taxis depart from and one of the drivers tells me, in tones so solemn I assume he's BS-ing, that the bus passed through 2 hours before. I wait for 15 minutes but there's still no bus, and the shared taxi guy then tells me he's about to leave if I want to go with him. I look inside his car and discover [View Full Entry]

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Mgahinga Gorilla National Park is only 14km from Kisoro but the prices I'm quoted for transport there and back suggest it's more like four times that distance. I'm told that the road is "very bad". I find this hard to believe - though the Mgahinga mountain gorillas are currently in DRC, this is still one of only four places in the world where you can (sometimes) see these creatures. And one rule of Africa so far seems to be that governments will spend lavishly on tourist infrastructure even while ignoring the needs of local people. I grudgingly hand over the money, [View Full Entry]

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It's a short journey back to Kabale from Lake Bunyonyi. As I wait for my taxi, I idly glance over a map showing the districts of Uganda and am surprised to find that more than a quarter of them begin with K. I stay a couple of nights in Kabale. The Golan Heights hotel appeals because of its incongruous name but I choose a funky hostel that has wifi. Once again, travellers are in the minority, though there are plenty of volunteers. Kabale is swarming with bicycle boda bodas in numbers I've never seen before. I meet a Scottish couple who [View Full Entry]

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