White Water Rafting the Nile

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I woke early at the Crow's Nest in Sipi Falls and managed to get a shared taxi back down to Mbale. I previously described the other modes of transport in Uganda thus far as cramped but this was ridiculous. There were already 8 adults and 4 children in the back of a station wagon, but I somehow squeezed in. All you can do is laugh really.

In Mbale, I got a minibus to Jinja easy enough and set up my tent at the Nile River Explorers Camp. It was fairly quiet in Jinja despite it being the weekend. May is still their low season. I did end up going out with a couple of volunteers in Jinja for the weekend and crawled into my tent just before the biggest thunderstorm I think I have ever witnessed. Maybe it was the fact that I was trying, but failing, to sleep in a tent, but either way I slept in instead of getting up at 8 for my rafting. My tent was completely soaked and I had planned to pack it up and move to their sister campsite at Bujugali Falls, which I did later that day.

This meant that my rafting was postponed until the following day. We were picked up at 8.30 and brought to the rafting site, which has changed to a place further down the river after a dam was built. Despite there being a dam built right beside Jinja, power cuts are bizarrely regular.

We were split into two groups with 6 in each boat. Luckily, we had really good weather all day. In total, we went down 8 rapids, I think and spent about 3 hours on the river. In between rapids you can jump out of the boat and swim in the river. The wildlife is also pretty interesing, with some African eagles circling about and we passed one small island where hundreds of bats were flying around.

Our boat managed to stay afloat through all the rapids except for the last one, where we were unceremoniously flipped over so fast that I wasn't even sure which direction until I saw the photos. I did fall out over the side going through one of the other rapids. It was a serious adrenaline rush and I was exhausted that night. I also spent an extra day chilling by the river at the Bujugali campsite before heading to Kampala.

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