I was up earlyish after a quiet night, although the f**king danish wankers
that arrived at 1am and then proceded to take an hour getting into bed while
bumping my bunk every 10 minutes didn’t help. They performed the same rick
the next monring at 6am… Newbies… I went into town to get breakfast at
the 1000 cups coffee place. Seemed ok, although I couldn’t understand why
they had one table and loads of empty space. I got it and the people after
had to sit at the breakfast bars. I also started writing my journal as I was
approx 8 days behind at this point. (As I write this I’m 10 days behind, so
its getting worse!).
I choose to walk towards the UWA, but knew I would have to get a bike
sometime as I only had a vague idea of is location. I walked past the
Scandinavian Bus Company who have routes all over East Africa and went to
have a look, and there were Sindy and her friend waiting to get on their
Tanzania bus. Had a quick word and told her I would see her in India….
maybe! Strolling on I came to the British Council so after some rather
excessive security checks I went in for a quick look and sat reading the
papers for an hour. But time was pressing and i still didn’t have a gorilla
permit.
I took the first Boda-boda that waved at me. He didn’t speak english… Still
some helpful passerby translated that i wanted the UWA by the British
Embassy, agreed a price (rather too quickly) and off we went. 1 minute later
we were at the British Airways office with him expecting the quickest buck he
had ever made! I knew where it was from there after my random wanderings of
the day before so I directed him back to it, paid my $375 (gulp! £200!!!) got
my permit and had a look at the Musuem next door. Expensive day or what!
Still I was now set, and since you can’t see them any cheaper anywhere else
with the prices fixed in the neighbouring countries I decided to grin and
bear it. At these prices I think it might well be a truely ‘once in a
lifetime’ experience for a change.
On the way back I walked all the way into town and must have been offered a
lift 20 times. Of course it is crazy to walk when you have the money (or so
the locals think) but its nice to see new things at your own pace and is good
excercise, even if it was mostly downhill. My reward was finding a great
little India Restaurant called Masala, so I stuffed myself with great curry.
2 days was enough in Kampala though so I was determined to leave the next day
(in fact I could have done everything on monday morning so I was really
slacking). I had read about a place called Banda Island on Lake Victoria
which sounded quite enigmatic so I planned on heading there the next day.



You might also want to read....