Uganda (again): Lake Mburo - Jinja

Our second day in Rwanda was a very rainy day which saw us doing not too much. Mostly hanging around at the hotel while the other half of our group trekked the (very wet) gorillas. We checked out a local textiles market but couldn't find anything we liked. The next day, we departed Rwanda and started our journey back to Nairobi as this part of our tour winds down. We spent most of the day in the truck as we crossed the border back into Uganda and headed for our camp for the night at Lake Mburo. Here we went on a two hour walking tour to look at the wildlife, including more Zebra, Impala, Topi (like an antelope), Buffalo and lots of Warthogs.

Another day in the truck saw us drive to Jinja, which is located on the River Nile right by Lake Victoria. Nine of the 15 people on our tour elected to do a full day white water rafting the next day, which saw us depart (after a few false starts and troubles with EFT machines) about 9:30am. We would negotiate 4 rapids in the morning and another 4 in the afternoon. On the third rapid of the day, our raft guide intentionally flipped us out. Most people ended up drifting down the river to be picked up by the safety kayaks and rafts that accompanied us. I managed to cling onto the raft as it went over and helped the guide go and get the others, including Amanda, who ended up on the safety raft with three other ladies.

The rapids were pretty gnarly – much worse than I'd experienced in Bali. On the fifth rapid, we lost two people who got thrown out and put through quite the turbulent ride through the rest of the rapid. On the next rapid, we discovered that our raft wasn't perhaps as inflated as it otherwise should have been as it folded on itself as we hit one of the waves and all of us, bar one lady who was sitting right at the back with the guide, were ejected into the water. We eventually got everyone back on and continued without too much fanfare to the last rapid, where I jumped onto another boat for a “hardcore” angle through, while the rest of our boat took the “chicken route”. About half way through the last rapid, our guide told us all to jump out and experience the “Nile Special”, which is basically negotiating the rapid wearing only your life vest as floatation. I got hammered as I “floated” through the rapids but it was quite the unique experience.

In between rapids, we were able to swim around in the Nile a bit, which was quite warm and refreshing, especially given it was a very hot day and we were all getting quite burnt, despite liberal application of sunscreen at every opportunity. We bought all of the professional photos taken of us digitally as keepsakes of the day. We wound down the evening in the bar (fancy that!). This was our last night in Uganda, we cross back into Kenya tomorrow.