Uganda - The final leg and finally travelling again!

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So 15 countries and 135 days since leaving home we've reached Uganda! It's great to be back, its such a fantastic and beautiful place! Since I last wrote in Arusha things have picked up and travelling has become exciting again! We spent our last full day in Tanzania on safari in the stunning Ngorugoru Crater. The day after I wrote last we (us 3, the 2 swedish guys and the 3 girls from devon) got driven 2 and a half hours to a small town a short drive from the crater where we set up camp for the night. It was nice to just be a small group who got on well, that night was Sweden's first euro 2008 game against Greece - both me and Rob have adopted Sweden as our team due to a serious lack of England... Anyway we spent a little while going around this small town in the dark, down bumpy roads in search of the game and managed to find it! It was so much fun having a few beers in this small bar and we got really into it, Sweden came out with the win too - great night! The next morning we were up at 6am to drive to the crater, after entering the national park we drove up the side of the crater to the rim. When we got to the edge and looked out over the scenery it blew us away! Like no place I've ever been in my life, surely some of the most stunning scenery on the planet! Its a huge crater, 20km in diameter and filled with grassy plains, lakes and forest - all home to amazing wildlife and surrounded by lush green hills making up the craters walls! We had a full days game drive and headed around the craters edge to the rocky little descent road and drove down inside. We were on the game drive until 2pm and saw some amazing things! A lake literally turned pink by the thousands of flamingos, huge migration style herds of wilderbeast and zebras, wild ostriches, a pack of hyenas scavenging on the head of a wilderbeast that had clearly had the rest of its body devoured already! We also saw hippos and crucially a large pride of lions resting 20m away in the grass. We thought this was cool until maybe an hour later a male lion walked up, rubbed itself on the car (his tail went in the window and we touched it!) before turning round and pissing all over the side of the safari van! So so funny! Such a highlight! Worth what we paid alone! Sadly though we didn't see the rhinos we were after, they are still very rare due to poaching. A cool last day in Tanzania and we headed back to camp and had a nice last night with the rest of the overland group before driving north to the kenyan border the next day.

It was a long days driving to cross into Kenya and drive up to Nairobi although it was cool to see mount Kilamanjaro - Africa's highest mountain - on the way. We reached Nairobi in the evening and got stuck for ages in solid traffic before finally getting to the drop off point in Nairobi city center. Here we said goodbye to the rest of the people plus our guide and driver - it was great to be off the tour finally! Me, Rob and Katie plus the swedes, english girls, Cassius (a cool english guy from Hong Kong), Heather (cool american) and Stephen (cool aussie) got ourselves some taxis sorted to a budget hotel well placed centrally. It had been weird driving through Nairobi's suburbs thinking that this is where the trouble of previous months had taken place, it all seemed very peaceful now. Tonight was sadly Katie's last night with us - she was flying home from Nairobi tommorow, as were the English girls. This called for a big night and all of us went for a meal at a nice restaurant and had a really nice evening, reminising etc and having jokes! Couldnt believe where all the time had gone! When the bill came, 'Nairobbery' lived up to its name unconventially, they'd tried to charge us for 42 beers when we'd got through only 22! After sorting that out we headed to the nearest club we could find called Florida. It had men in red tuxedos on the door and looked like a laugh so in we went! The place was so funny, blaring out all this classic music and seemingly quite an up market place except for the fact that 95% of the women inside were very forward prostitutes. I decided to invent a girlfriend and stuck to that story for the night but it was a hilarious and we danced cheesily all night. It was pretty surreal, altho still not quite as full on us our experiences in Hong Kong! Couldnt believe Katie was going from this to Q bar in Reading in a matter of 48 hours or so! Stumbled home at 4am and went to sleep in a BED! Long overdue after a month camping.

We had to be up for check out at 10.30 which was fairly painful! Me, Rob, Andreas and Toby left the others at breakfast and went off to try and get ourselves a bus ticket overnight to Uganda that evening. Tried a company called Scandinavia Express (which Toby + Andreas loved) but they didnt have a bus that night. A company called Kampala Coach on the other hand did, and we booked on the 8 o clock bus to Jinja, Uganda (source of the nile!). A 12 hour journey. We headed to the internet to sort out a few things - the guy next to me was really into writing his essay on 'how to maximise kenya's bee keeping potential' - and then grabbed some food and snacks for later. Wandering around Nairobi was nice and it seemed like a really cool city that we all decided we liked, regardless of what everyone says about it. However, when we got back to the hotel to meet the girls at about 2-2.30pm we were missing one of our number - Katie. Her flight was supposedly at 11.30pm however when she'd nipped online to check in online, she found out it had been changed to 5.30pm without them telling her and had already had to dash off to the airport after the girls had tried to find us! So we handnt even got to say goodbye after 4 and a half months. It was really sad and we were all a little emotional - thanks emirates. Me and Rob, the swedes and the remaining girls went to a nice coffee place and just chilled out, it had been a strange day and I felt a little strange thinking of Katie about to board a plane home! We wandered around some more exploring and came accross some great places such as 'the international single ladies conference' and 'iran convention'. We gatecrashed both. People arent allowed to smoke anywhere on the streets here so we found it amusing when we came accross a 'smoking area' on a pavement with 20 or so people frantically puffing away. That evening, we has some food all together before some sad goodbyes - me, rob, toby and andreas had to go catch our bus before the girls had to go to the airport and cassius was staying in kenya for a bit. We waved goodbye as we walked through Nairobi with our backpacks on. It was actually quite a cool moment walking through the chaotic matata (mini bus taxi) stop - we were free and finally backpacking africa - finally doing it ourselves. I relished the moment! We got onto our bus which was so new the plastic hadnt even been taken off the seats! This was too nice! It even had a tv playing reggae music videos! We muscled our way out of Nairobi and me and Rob had a good chat and thought about Katie on her plane while we were on the bus and the girls were at the airport. After all being together so recently we had all gone seperate ways! Got a reasonable amount of sleep on the bus - which played the reggae all night - a window somehow got smashed out behind me which even more strangely I slept through. It made the bus freezing! A kenyan girl who had been sat there moved next to me as Rob was asleep on the back row. We passed through towns like Eldoret - which played host to some horrible violence recently before reaching the Uganda border at 4am! Tired and cold but happy to be doing this, we got off the bus and walked accross into Uganda and got our visa before getting back on. I was back! Talked to the kenyan girl for a while after the border about anything and everything - she was a med student in Uganda as it was cheaper there!

After a little bit of sleep we arrived in Jinja at 7.30 in the morning. Hopped off and took in the sights around me - the lush green scenery and red dust roads. So good to be back! We headed off down the road towards the town, and the backpackers we were trying to stay at and came across a railway track that was a shortcut according to a cool local guy. So there we were, 4 Muzungu's with big backpacks walking along a red dusty railway track at 8 in the morning. It was fantastic! We found our way easily to the backpackers which was sadly full. They had another place 8km upstream on the nile which is 'where everything happens' and the guy said we could hitch up there with one of their trucks at 12. Sounded like a plan so we left our bags there and headed into the town center to explore. Its hard to explain but we felt really free after so long on that truck. Did the essentials, ATM and internet before heading back to the hostel and hitching on the back of the pick up truck up to the Nile River Explorers. It bumped its way up the red dust road and past little villages, such a cool journey. We got ourselves sorted in possibly the worlds cosiest dorm for 3.50 pounds a night and took in the stunning view from the terrace attached to the bar. We were 100m up on the banks of the nile winding its way below at the start of its long journey to the Mediterranean. It was huge and you could see some of the famous rapids! Such a beautiful place! We decided that regardless of lack of funds, we couldnt come here and not white water raft. It was 70 pounds for a full day including one nights free accomodation and one days free food. Sold! Credit card jobby! We're doing it tommorow (tuesday!) - cant wait! Hope we come back uninjured though! That night we watched the sweden match - the less said about it the better and went to the bar at NRE which was rammed! I had no idea there were so many travellers here, we had a really awesome night - I was drinking Nile Special Beer again and loving it! After way too many we, and a bunch of people we'd met, decided it would be a great idea to go skinny dipping in the nile - and it was! The water was great! Andreas however decided it was an even greater idea to go sliding down the concrete slide used for cannoes and tried to stop himself at the bottom which just ended up with him hitting some rocks! Hilarious 2 days on - hes healing well hahaha! Classic travelling day really!

Yesterday was a chillout day, I wrote some diary and we walked down to the famous Bujagali rapids with a bunch of people we'd met. Really amazing - the force of nature is unreal. Cant believe we'll be taking these on tommorow! We went for a nice refreshing swim at the peaceful part of the river where we'd swam yesterday before a quiet night at the bar watching the football. Me and Toby caught a boda boda (motorbike taxi) into town today and went to the official 'source of the nile' and waved goodbye to some water beginning the 3 month journey through Sudan, past the pyramids and into the med. We came up with the idea of putting a message in a plastic bottle and seeing if anyone gets it upstream! Just catching up on some internet now and about to head back! Rafting tommorow is going to be amazing! Sorry again for lack of pictures, it really is impossible to get them up. If I find a faster connection in Kampala (going there on the evening of the 18th) I'll try and get some up. If not its not long till I'm home so I could do it then!
See you all in a month or so, possibly less if things dont work out in Mityana - all a bit unorganised to be honest, despite a lot of sent emails!
Luke

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