On the lake without a paddle

We got back to the bike and started off down the hill. I wasn’t a sealed road but was pretty dry, we passed several buildings and people would wave and say hello, making the occasional comment to Joseph as we passed in the local language. Someone was standing in the middle of the road and this is when it got a bit bizarre. As I rode towards him I moved to right and he moved to intercept, I moved left and slowed down to pass him as, har har, he was having some fun with the tourist. But as I passed him he grabbed the handle bars! Im guessing he could easily have pulled us over, but i pulled against him and kept my balance but he did something and the engine then revved wildly like I opened the throttle full and we sped down the road for a second. I instinctly pulled in the clutch and braked a bit, but not too much as the guy was now behind us. The engine was on full throttle and smoke was pouring out the back, i killed the ignition and rolled some more until we went 100 meters and then I stopped to kick it back up. The engine was still on full revs and some nearby chap helpfully pointed out that the throttle cable had been pulled out when he grabbed the handle bars and it was an easy fix to put it back in. Stupid bastard! If he did that to someone who didn’t have their wits about them we would have been shooting down the road and heading for a quick and nasty accident. Apparently the guy was the local nutter but Im very suspicious that he knew exactly what he was doing and wanted to see me lose it. Still it would do no good to go back and lamp the guy so we kicked her up and got the f**k out of dodge. We didn’t head right back to the main road and town, but took a detour to the crater of an extinct volcano that overlooked the town. We hiked up with some local kids and I took a few panoramic shots with my camera, as well as some pics of the kids which they loved. It was a ogod spot to look up to the three huge extinct volcanos overlooking south-western Uganda, northern Rwanda and south-eastern Congo. Indeed one of the peaks was the border for all three countries, which I will have to hike up one day. We rode back into town and I had been so trigger happy in the batwa village I had to go and back up my photos onto my hard disk. Its a great little item, and saves me having to carry multiple memory cards. Although if it gets nicked or dropped I will be heartbroken! We then went west past the hospital with the sealed road ending as soon as we’d gone by. The bike was a pain to drive with the gears being the wrong way around but I was getting the hang of it by now. It was a beautiful day and didn’t look like we would be getting the late afternoon rain which had drenched the town the previous day. We passed a couple of cops and waved hello, well, how were they going to stop me even if they wanted to :p We turned off onto a dirt track and went a couple of winding kilometers down to the lake, ending at a new guesthouse that was being built, alledgely with the aid of the swedish government… We walked around to a little jetty and Joseph was yelling across the lake to a guy in a dug out canoe. He paddled furiously towards us and pulled it up on the bank. He collected a bunch of small branches of trees to keep our bottoms (semi) dry and we wobbled aboard. Now my arse isn’t *that* fat but you had to wiggle to get your hips into the thing. I sat at the front, Joseph behind and the fisherma behind. We kicked off and went in search of some otters. Pausing only to collect me a paddle (whether to make it more authentic or to cut down the work load, I dont know) we followed the lake bank around to the ‘otters garden’ seeing planty of birds flitting around, bright red dragonflies buzzing over the water and fish splashing off the surface as we interupted their feeding. A couple of ducks dove in search of food and seemed to swim for ages before popping back up. Apart from the wildife there was no human sounds apart from the plop of the paddle in the water and my panting as I did some work! But no otters! We had to go about 4 km and didn’t see a sign of them. We pulled up on a small penisular with great views of the volcanos and climbed up to have a look. Joseph and the fisherman were chatting away and he told me it was for sale. He said it was about £2k, which seemed very cheap for where it was, but there was no road (or electricty, running water or mobile coverage). There were a few rows of various crops and apparently it was owned by about 4 farmers who were trying to sell their various shares. We took a few pics and got back into the canoe. I was sceptical but intrigued. On the way back my sceptism was abated somewhat by the fleeing glimpse of an otter in the distance. So they did exist and weren’t just made up to get tourists to a scam ‘for sale’ penisular.

Tags: photos, stupidity, arse, cards, birds, tourists, guesthouse, borders, seals, brakes, rain, locals, photo, Travel