good times on the nile

Last weekend was my final vacation outing in Africa and this time it was in Uganda for a Nile River rafting adventure.  I, along with Matt and our friend Ashley, took a 5:30 AM bus from Kigali to Kampala, the capital of and largest city in Uganda.  In my last post I mentioned the bus ride to Gisenyi as the worst I’ve ever had, well, we have a new winner.  The nine hour trip was the Ironman of painful bus rides.  The combination of loud music, loud people, tiny and rock hard seats, and terrible road conditions made the ride excruciating.  Looking back, if I had the money, I would fly into Kampala for about 20 times the cost.

The best parts of the trip were the ridiculous movies they played.  The first one was Rage and Honor II, which was a terrible martial arts movie from the early 90s that featured hilarious characters (like a Hulk-sized Swedish henchman with long platinum blond hair and anger issues) and dialogue that would only be considered entertaining on a bus going to Uganda.  If you don’t believe me then consider the movie’s tagline: “The body can be a deadly weapon… When the body is a lethal weapon.”  I freaking kid you not.  To make this whole cinematic experience even more over the top, the movie was dubbed over with the voice a very loud man explaining what was going on in the scenes and creating his own dialogue in Swahili.  The second movie, The Sweeper, was equally terrible and included every idiotic action sequence (like a chase scene featuring a biplane) a B-movie budget can afford.

We arrived in Kampala around 2:30 PM and exchanged some money into Ugandan shillings.  We were staying at a hostel called Red Chilli Hideaway but we did not know where it was in the city.  We were told it was somewhere toward downtown so we started walking.

Kampala was the most crowded city I have ever seen in my life.  The sidewalks were filled with people and shops.  Street vendors (which are uncommon in Rwanda) littered the streets and sold everything from grilled corn to bootlegged Obama inauguration videos.  But the craziest part was the number of vehicles on the streets.  There had to be tens of thousands of minibuses parked and driving around the streets.  Because Uganda was a British colony, they drive on the other side of the road; this only made things more dangerous.  Mototaxis were everywhere too and neither the driver nor passengers wore helmets.  In-sane.

We managed to get down to the Old Taxi Park, a place downtown where thousands of minibuses parked and loaded and unloaded their passengers.  We asked a traffic cop to help us find the minibus that went to our hostel.  She was very friendly and, like most Ugandans we met, spoke English.  She swiftly moved through the rows of idling buses and I tried to keep pace.  Matt and Ashley were lagging behind so I stopped to wait for them.  All of the sudden it felt like someone shoved me hard in the back.  I managed to keep my balance and stay on my feet.  When I turned around I saw a minibus where I was standing and the traffic cop screaming at the driver.  I got hit by a freaking bus!  The conductor and his buddies who saw the accident came out and started apologizing.  The cop was still yelling and it looked like she was about to crack skulls with her baton.  I told her I was okay and Matt and Ashley caught up.  I told them what happened and we continued through the maze of parked buses.  We finally found the bus that went to the part of town we needed to go to and thanked the cop for her kindness.

The ride was comfortable but a little frightening.  The buses there are only allowed to hold 14 people, so we weren’t crammed in like sardines.  But the skill level of the drivers was low and traffic was heavy.  All the horror stories I heard about Ugandan drivers were true’; it was like driving in a city full of teenagers after a night of drinking.  I was happy to get to our destination unharmed.  We got out of the bus and walked up a paved street to the hostel.  We checked into our little room (two uncomfortable beds and a small dresser) and went back to the bar area to eat.  This place was Westerner-central!  There were dozens of Americans, Canadians, and Europeans.  The owner was a European and the whole place catered to that crowd.  The menu had American food, there was a pool table, and American music played in the background.  We enjoyed our burgers and drinks and went to sleep early.

After a night of uncomfortable sleep, we woke up and had breakfast.  There was a minibus waiting for us to take us to the rafting company’s location in Jinja, which was right on the Nile River.  The drive took about two hours and featured near head-on collisions and views of Uganda’s beautiful landscape.  We drove past slums, farms, tea plantations, and factories.  I even saw railroad tracks for the first time in two months!  As we neared Jinja, the sky became cloudy and it began to rain.  The rain lasted only an hour or so and subsided by the time we reached the beautiful location where we would begin rafting.

The company had fruit and tea waiting for us and we left our backpacks and passports with the front desk.  We met the rest of our rafting crew: two Americans, four South Africans, and two Brits.  Our two guides, Inko and Moses, gave us a safety briefing and we put on our life vests, helmets, and paddles.  We walked down to the rafts and split into two teams.  The three of us went with Moses and one of the Americans and the two Brits.  We practiced the forward paddle and back paddle on still water and practiced flipping the boat and water rescue.  Matt volunteered for being rescued by the kayak.  He was a terrible volunteer and basically demonstrated how not to be rescued if you fall into the water.

After the practice it was showtime!  The safety raft and rescue kayaks went down the first rapid – a category five with a gnarly fall – to be in position to save us if we flipped over.  The other team’s raft went first and then it was our turn.  We paddled hard until we got to the edge of the rapid then we ducked down into the boat.  We fell a few meters down and crashed hard into the water below.  I lost control of my paddle and it smacked me in the teeth, Matt nearly drowned, Ashley managed to get a bloody lip, and our “experienced guide” Moses fell out of the raft.  A great start.  After Moses climbed back in, we high fived with the paddles and continued down the Nile.

We hit several more smaller rapids and a few more category fives.  There were definitely some close calls but somehow the three of us managed to stay in the boat.  We didn’t flip over at all, even when we tried to on purpose!  That meant we were either awesome or terrible; I like to think it was the former rather than the latter.  We did get to jump in and swim around before we ate lunch.  The sun was out and hit us hard but we were having too much fun to be deterred by its intense rays.  We continued down the river and ended with a category 4 that almost wiped us out.  We exited the rafts after about 27 kilometers and 4 hours of rafting.  We hiked up a small hill, had some sodas, and got a ride back to the camp.  After a chicken dinner, the three of us boarded a bus back to Kampala.  The whole rafting trip cost only $75 and was done through Equator Rafts.

We arrived late in the night and walked back to the bus depot to catch our midnight bus back to Kigali.  We were exhausted but still stoked from the trip.  Amazingly, there were even more people out at night than during the day.  As we walked back to the depot, Matt told us to hold on while he checked his backpack.  It turned out someone jacked his hat and toothpaste from his backpack.  It could have been worse I guess.  We got to the depot with time to spare and we just relaxed until we boarded the bus for another torturous nine hour trip back to Kigali.

This last excursion was definitely the best one I had this summer.  I am happy we got to get out of Rwanda and do something as unforgettable as rafting the Nile.  Tomorrow is my last day here so I will have one more quick post before I go.  Matt is already gone and Maurice leaves before I do.  Right now I am off to have my last goat brochette!

Until tomorrow…

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