Blogs from Jinja, Eastern Region, Uganda, Africa - page 8

Geo: 0.447036, 33.2115Customs & Immigration into Uganda was a breeze, we decided to stop over at a town called Jinga which was a short drive thus ensuring the day did not blow out into a last minute dash before night fall to find a camp.Unbeknown to us Jinga is the designated start of the Nile river, humm should have known that!! We camped at Eden Rocks Campsite perched on top of a cliff overlooking the first set of rapids as the Nile blasts out of lake Victoria. Awesome.. Also unbeknown to us the camp site was the resting place for volunteers to help with the SoftPower thing.. yep meant nothing to me either.. I bumped into an Australian Lady who had just arrived for a 6 week volunteer stretch to teach locals how to fire pottery ... read more

On the way back through Uganda we stopped again in Kampala and stayed at the same campsite as before. It was my turn for cook group again, and the dinner was a great success! I feel like I am growing up so much! In Kampala, the group went out to an Irish Pub that didn't even have Guinness on tap! It was a lot of fun. We danced and I drank Sapphire Tonics with ice which was very lucky treat. The next day, everyone went into town. I on the other hand watched my first rugby game on TV and sat by the pool which was about 6 feet wide and long. It was nice to have a break and rejuvenate. The next day, I woke up early to go white water rafting on the Nile. ... read more

Hi everyone! Did I mention Uganda is an amazing place? I'm currently in Tororo, in E. Uganda and a stone's throw away from the Kenyan border. There really is nothing redeeming about this little town with the exception of a volcanic plug known as Tororo Rock. However, I did work here last year, so it certainly does have a lot of sentimenal value but will only stay for 2 nights before moving on. A bit more about this later. Sooo... not to brag or anything but the last two nights were spent in a town called Jinja which is also home to the source of the River Nile and also features what is widely recognized as the second best place on Earth for white water raftering and it did not disappoint. Although it was advertised as ... read more

I’m trying to avoid sounding like a stuck record, banging on about contrasts, but have I experienced some over the past 24 hours!! Joburg to Entebbe, Uganda’s airport, is only a four-hour flight north, so I was glad of the check-in time at the start to process some of my experiences and prepare for the next stage of the adventure. And by huge, astonishing coincidence, I bumped into Carolyn, a friend from Hampstead Quaker Meeting, queuing for the flight! She was on her way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with two African colleagues and is working for Peace Direct, a charity which supports local peace-building initiatives in a number of African countries. Her journey makes mine seem very tame - she’s visiting projects in Mozambique, DRC and Sudan. Arrived at around 7pm last ... read more

We crossed the border this past weekend to Uganda and rafted the Nile River from where it is released from Lake Victoria. It was a day long trip of white water rafting complete with four class 5 rapids, one class 6 rapid (unraftable), crocodiles, backpackers, and everyone getting dumped from the raft. The Nile has some of the best rafting in the world not just because of the extreme drop in elevation after it leaves Lake Victoria, but also because there is so much water, that there is minimal risks of getting mashed against a rock when you do fall out, which is inevitable. This coming weekend is our last in Africa, and I don't expect that we will do anything too interesting. We may post one more blog entry, but for further updates on our ... read more