Kevin and I had an absolutely wonderful time together here. The trip started with him coming to Kitgum for 5 days, during which I had to work, he came to the office and hung out with some coworkers, we went to Kidepo Valley NP (and crossed the unmarked and unguarded border into Southern Sudan), and we went to a memorial day cookout several Peace Corps people, a Spanish MSF employee, David from Oxfam (who thankfully returned my Its Always Sunny dvds that his colleague had borrowed in Feb and failed to give back when he left Uganda in April) and a few other random people who happened to be/live in Kitgum. From there, we braved taking the bus from Kitgum to Kampala - Homeland: The Northern Express - and arrived, very much to my surprise and probably thanks to Kevin for staying awake the entire ride, without being victims of theft. After a night in Kampala, we were picked up by Nile River Explorers and headed to Jinja to go whitewater rafting on the Victoria Nile. Neither of us had been rafting before, and I think we were both a bit disappointed with the lack of adventure and the high amount of "downtime" during which we had to paddle for about two hours to get to more rapids. Either way, it was still a fun experience, and hopefully we have a DVD of the day heading to Boston as I write this. Unfortunately there are no photos, both because we didn't think to bring a camera for before/afterwards, and because they don't have photographers taking action shots (but you all know that if they did, I'd probably have purchased some of the ultra-touristy action shots). After that all-day adventure, we crashed in Jinja for a night, and headed back to Kampala to stay at the Golf Course Hotel for one night before embarking on our safari tour. The GCH was awesome - perhaps the nicest traditional hotel I've ever stayed at; it's right downtown, super-fancy, catered towards business travelers, I believe (the ICC conference seemed to be providing most of the clientele while we were there). It also has the 6th revolving restaurant in Africa, and the only one in Uganda, which we were able to eat at. The safari was lovely - we began on Friday morning and drove just under halfway, stopping at Mihingo Lodge at Lake Mburo National Park for the night. It is by far the most gorgeous lodge I've ever been to; it's built into the mountains with fantastic views. Unfortunately we were there for less than 24 hours, but we were still able to see zebras & elands drinking from a watering hole from the balcony of our luxurious tent and vervet monkeys playing on the rocks right next to the deck! We also had a boat trip on the lake, during which I had a minor panic attack and discovered what is quite possibly my biggest fear in life: hippos. No joke. Our boat was very small, and hippos are quite large and cause many deaths to people in boats. We went with an AK-47-wielding UWA guide, but that's not very comforting when he's in the back steering the boat directly towards herds of hippos and you're in the front. The next morning we left Lake Mburo bright & early for the drive to an equally amazing stay at Bwindi Lodge in Buhoma. To my surprise, we drove a slightly indirect route that took us through the outskirts of Queen Elizabeth National Park, where we saw some herds of elephants and the destruction that elephants can cause when they knock down many trees. We arrived too late in the afternoon to go on our scheduled nature walk, so we instead tried to do a self-guided walk within the park, but were told it was closed because the mountain gorillas were in the area. So we instead went for a walk along the river on the property, walked around the community, visited a couple craft shops, and went to the local orphanage and saw children sing & dance in what was quite possibly the most non-touristy tourist attraction ever. We had a relaxing night, hanging out in the main building, and talking with the manager. The following morning, we woke up super early to go mountain gorilla tracking! Hooray! We both expected it to be much more difficult than it actually was; they say that it can take the entire day to reach where they are, but it only took us about 10 or 15 minutes to reach where our group of gorillas was. We spent about an hour seeing them/photographing them, and one of the juveniles even came up and tugged on my pants leg (and didn't bite me)! They say that you're supposed to stay a certain distance away from them, but lot of the gorillas came close to us, and the UWA guides were great about positioning us in the best places for great shots/views. Since we were done with our tracking in about two hours, we headed back to our lodge to change and have a snack; we got there, the staff told us that the gorillas had reached the property before us; unfortunately we missed most of them, but we were able to see a straggler next to the main building! Later that day we went on the self-guided walk in the park as well as a nice 3-hour hike up to 3 waterfalls in the rain before returning to the lodge for drinks, dinner, and good conversation with our guide and the two other guests staying at the lodge. The following morning we embarked on the day-long journey back to Entebbe, where our hotel was decent, but definitely outdated and sub-par compared to the GCH and lodges we'd recently stayed at. Our trip ended with a day in Kampala, picking up my packed suitcase to send home with Kevin, eating some good, American pizza at the muzungu shopping mall, and braving the taxi park to buy some underpriced bootleg DVDs.
Here's a summary of our trip in photos (I'm excluding things from Kidepo because I got really excited about it after we went and already posted some photos). There are many, many more photos; some I uploaded to facebook when we had internet access in Kampala/Entebbe, but the rest will have to wait until I'm home or somewhere else where facebook isn't blocked.
- The day after Kevin arrived, at our monthly staff feedback session (free dinner & drinks)
- Before going to dinner at the revolving restaurant in Kampala
- The mass of long-horned cattle that blocked the road to Lake Mburo
- Sunset view from our deck at Mihingo Lodge in Lake Mburo
- View of our banda at Mihingo
- Walking along the river at Bwindi Lodge
- Mountain Gorilla
- Juvenile gorilla playing
- Silverback
- Third waterfall that we hiked to
- At our hotel in Entebbe
- At the "beach" at Lake Victoria
What an adventure - can't wait to see ALL the many pictures I know you both took!!!!
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