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Published: August 27th 2010
Go ahead...
Just try not to laugh at this picture.I took a bus from Nairobi to Jinja, Uganda, a town world renown for white water rafting. When I got off the bus I was greeted by about a half dozen guys on motorcycles asking me "Town? Town?" I told them I had my big pack with me that was stowed under the bus as I scanned around for a cab, finding nothing. They just nodded and persisted saying "Town? Town?" I shrugged assuming they came across this situation quite often, and handed one my pack to see exactly what his plan was for getting me anywhere. He just threw it on top of his handlebars and told me to get on. I obliged and told him to take me to Explorers' Backpackers, the hostel owned and operated by the rafting company, and we sped away on the first of my many helmetless motorcycle rides on questionable at best roads.
Wondering how many more times I was going to have to go on such a voyage with all my stuff, I got off at Explorers' and headed in. Not being the type to plan ahead and book anything in advance, I asked the laid back, afro rocking dude at the
counter if he had any dorms available. "Uhh....Nope." So I asked if he had any anything available and he said, "Hold up" and started dialing away on the phone. When he hung up he told me they had a dorm for a night at their river camp, and their truck would be coming by in an hour to give me a ride there. Pretty sweet deal, why would you ever plan ahead?
Explorers' River Camp is about 8km outside of town. The restaurant and bar is perched on the cliff's edge overlooking the rapids on the Nile that I would be barreling down two days later. There's a huge patch of grass for camping since the camp is a popular spot for overland trucks. There were two big pink ones there from Sweden during my stay. The dorms weren't much to write home about besides the fact the camp managed to have flushing toilets and the occasional blast of hot water way out there in the middle of nowhere.
The next day I spent in Jinja trying to find a used book store since I had given my last book away in Nairobi. The river camp had a
book swap, but didn't let you just buy books. Note to self: don't give your last book away. I came up blank on that front, so the rest of the day was pretty dull upon returning to camp. The only thing I really accomplished was getting registered for rafting the following day.
They only had the dorm available for the one night, so they brought in a tent and set it up for me for the next two nights. I was fine with that. I had spent the better part of the last month in a tent in Nairobi anyways. The only problem was Uganda's much more tropical climate. When it rains, it pours. And for a long time. At around three in the morning I woke up to droplets of water hitting my face. The fly of the tent was stuck to the inside part, and water was starting to transfer from one to the other, and down on me. Within minutes I was getting sprayed from all angles and it felt like I may as well have been outside at that point. I might have just ignored it and got wet, if it wasn't for my drybag
being stolen in Mombasa. My camera gear was in my bag next to me getting rained on just as hard. I had to move. The dorms were full, so that option was out. So I shrugged and headed to the only other undercover option I had at that point - the bar.
After checking to see if they were foolish enough to leave the fridges unlocked (they weren't), I set up shop on one of the concrete benches that fortunately had a bunch of pillows on it. I nearly crapped myself as one of the dogs hopped up on the bench next to me just as I shut my eyes. I was finding the lightning too distracting to sleep, so I pulled my camera out to try and get some pictures of it since it's so uncommon in Vancouver. But nature, being the fickle bitch that it is, decided it wasn't done tormenting me for the night, and it stopped as soon as I got my camera set up. I laid there doing nothing for the next three hours before finally falling asleep, just in time for the morning arrivals to come wake me back up. Not my night.
In the morning, everyone that was going rafting piled into the truck and we headed to Explorers' Backpackers for breakfast and instructions on how not to die whilst rafting. I was by myself in the line for breakfast, so the guy in front of me, Andrew, turned around and asked me if I was just traveling alone and where I had been, the usual stuff. Then he asked me where I was from and I told him Vancouver. Him too. He asked if I was from North Van. Him too. He asked if I was a Canucks fan. Him too. In fact, he was in the same boat as me, regularly checking the internet for the Canucks off season transactions. And he was doing virtually the same trip as me, just in the opposite direction. It seems everywhere I go around here I'm meeting more people from Vancouver than any other city.
During the safety speech they told us to get into groups of seven, based on how hard of rapids you wanted to do. Andrew and I had already decided we belonged in the "go big or go home" camp, and started asking around if anybody else
wanted to tackle the big ones. We didn't find anybody until we made it down to the shore when they were telling us to get in the boats. There were five Swedish guys from one of the pink buses that needed two more people. Perfect. We grabbed some paddles and took to the water.
Once we were in the boat Anton, our guide, took us through some safety drills and showed us how to flip the boat back over when we crash. The basic rule of thumb for when you get tossed is to point your feet downstream and wait for a safety kayaker to save you if the rapids are too big to swim in. For that you have to wrap your feet around the front of his kayak and hold on and keep your head above water. It turned out to be a lot harder in class III rapids than it looked in still water.
The rafting trip goes all day over a 30km stretch of the Nile. There's twelve major rapids you hit, with some stretches of paddling in between. Due to a dam that they recently built there, the rapids have changed a bit
in recent times. Since the water level raised, some of the ones that used to be the most intense, were reduced to a small ripple. On the other hand, on Silverback, the first class V rapid on the river used to get roughly half of the current, it had the opposite effect. The river used to split just before it, but with the dam being in that spot, the whole river now flows down it in an epic drop of chaos.
The rapids on the river are broken down into six classes. Class I rapids aren't really visible and are like a strong current. Class II have some ripple to them but are still generally harmless. Class III are a bit more intense and can have rocks in them. Class IV have high waves and are fairly long, usually having bigger rocks to get around. Class V basically means you're going to flip a lot of the time and can involve small waterfalls. Class VI are unraftable, and you have to walk around them.
Once you hit the class 3 and higher rapids paddling becomes a bit tricky. You have to time your stroke for when you're side
of the boat is low, otherwise you just swing at air. It's something you have to figure out because in some cases you need to be paddling hard to avoid rocks or falling off the wrong side of a rapid in rougher waters. In still water paddling seems like a no brainer, but there were a couple guys in our group that didn't seem to have a firm grasp on the physics of it. It got a little frustrating after a while watching them put in a half assed skim of the top of the water with their paddle only half submerged while a couple others and myself did all the work. The further down we got, the worse it became too. The two heaviest guys on the boat that produced the most drag would do two strokes max before stopping for the next seven, letting the rest of us carry them. I'm not sure if they realized the boat kept moving because of everybody else working their balls off or not.
The big rapids instantly made the frustration go away, and a few of them made you question the safety of the whole situation. Hearing your guide go
"Shit! Shit! HARD! HARD!" as you're coming over the crest of one of the bigger rapids doesn't inspire a strong sense of security. It makes you paddle though. Despite Anton's best efforts of taking us down the hardest lines possible, we still hadn't flipped by the halfway point where we coasted and ate some pineapples. So he told us he was going to ensure we flipped before the day's end. On the next class V rapid, there was a hole at the bottom. A hole is a spot where the rapid falls back on itself, and the boat will get stuck there for quite a while. The plan was to head straight for the hole, and high side the boat as we hit it by moving everyone to one side. Hopefully we would be able to surf there for a minute or so before we all got tossed.
We came up to it just as planned, aiming slightly sideways and everybody listening for the high side command. We got to the bottom only to get crushed by a wave that was easily five feet high. I was at the back, staring up about 70 degrees at the three guys
who would probably land on top of me if we flipped over at that point. It seemed certain that we would, my backside was already in the water it was getting so steep. So I bailed. By the time I finally surfaced and could look around, I was about 100m down the river already. A safety kayaker picked me up, dragging my back over a couple rocks on the way to the nearest raft. Andrew later said that by the time Anton let out the high side command, there were only about four people left on board, Anton falling out himself as he yelled it. Eventually the boat did end up upside down, still stuck there in the hole, with Anton hanging on to the rope getting pushed around by all the waves. He did his best to get the raft out of there, but after a minute or so of fighting the rapids he was too bagged and had to just let go and wait for it to come out on its own. Once he surfaced, he too grabbed on to a safety kayaker. It was a momentary lapse in judgment because he had to buy a case of
beer for the rest of the staff for not swimming back to the raft on his own.
There was some sort of conference going on in Kampala at the time we were rafting. Since the dam on the river is responsible for most all of the country's electricity, the water level was especially high that day to avoid any potentially embarrassing blackouts. As a result, there was just too much water gushing down one of the largest rapids that includes a small waterfall for us to safely do it as a group. So just before it we pulled off to the side and got out to walk around it. It was up to Anton to take the raft down the rapids on his own. A tall order since steering those things on your own isn't exactly easy. There are some large waves leading up to a waterfall about six feet tall on this particular rapid. As he approached the waterfall, one of the waves bucked him right out of the raft. He desparately managed to pull himself back in just as the raft fell over the edge of the waterfall. Lucky thing since the last person that didn't make
it back into the raft at that point broke his kneecap into six pieces according to Anton. Also, at the bottom of the fall, the water comes back on itself and you can get trapped underwater for several minutes at times.
The day ends with the option of doing a turbulent class V rapid called "The Bad Place". There's a 100m stretch of class VI rapids leading up to it that you have to get out and walk around for obvious reasons. Apparently kayakers with a death wish can and have made it through that section. Personally, I couldn't tell where the class VI part ended and where the class V part started. It all looked like the inside of a washing machine to me, and I had little doubt we'd all be swimming shortly after getting in the raft. We crashed into wave after wave, and somehow stayed afloat. I was still somewhat disoriented when Anton started yelling at us to paddle to the shore so we didn't end up flying down the river any further. When I got out of the boat I noticed that at some point during the section trying to grip to the boat
with my foot, I ripped open the front of one of my toes and it was bleeding pretty good. A frustrating injury when you're walking around dusty roads in flip flops every day.
We had a barbeque back at camp and reviewed the videos of the day's events. Even after watching it on film I don't get how we didn't flip more than we did.
I spent (wasted) one more day in Jinja doing nothing in particular before leaving for Kampala. At the hostel there I managed to get my iPod stolen. I plugged it in and was sitting, facing it, about 20 feet away. I was reading a book and just didn't look up for a few minutes, and when I did the thing was gone, charger and all. The worst thing about the situation is that it's not one of those things where you don't know how important it is to you until you lose it. It was a pretty devastating, sinking feeling to know I had to go the next several months on busses and trains alone with no music. That's a lot of time to think about how stupid you are for being so
careless with something you value so much.
On the bright side, I had to hurry into Rwanda because the thing I had been looking forward to the most in Africa was only days away: Tracking mountain gorillas in Parc National des Volcans.
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Kyle
non-member comment
You are not in the boat anymore.
I think you fell out of the boat.