Dancing in the Dark
Today was a great day in Montreal. After going to bed at 5.30am (gulp!) I woke up at 11.15 and set off for my cycling date with Daniella. I had been playing poker the night before with the Montreal boys and the time had literally flown by. How they all manage to stay up until that time and not worry about work I never found out, although I suspect Louis and Yorvis are secretly millionaires, Mikhael was between jobs and Andres was working afternoons. Never found out what Ben was doing, but in the morning he was gone. I only lost $10 over 2 games though and didn’t buy in, so I think my gambling problem is under control and now I have had a good practice for Las Vegas!
1/2 a Mile high
Thursday was the the day I had to move out my hostel, so I woke up on time and sorted out my stuff a bit better. I also really needed to finish up the tourist things as I was still hoping to get a ride the next day to Montreal, although I hadn’t heard back from Dave. I sent him another message and then went for a good walk back into Kennsington Market and China town. I had bought a ticket for the CN tower for $20 which wasn’t cheap, but i figured I had to check it out.
I got my camera out too and took some photos, not saying they were any good, but I have been a bit lazy with the photography so far and needed to become more concientious about my new hobby. Lunch was at a vegetarian chinese place that gave me a massive portion, easily enough for 3 people so I had to get a carry out (which I then left in the hostel). I wandered down to the CN, swiped my ticket and headed up to the top. It was quite good fun, the glass floor was good, but not really that scary. Its so tall it doesn’t seem real. Would love to bungee from it.
Mark had finally agreed to let me stay and also had another surfer, Bonnie from LA, who was due in too. We all swapped messages and I was angling for a lift from the hostel which didn’t really work, but I was just too lazy to get the subway. I left it too late too, and by the time I staggered out with my stuff I realised my knees were kind of sore so just go a cab. Bonnie is great, and a true travel writer, as it she works for a travel magazine. They dont do editorial content anymore which is a shame, but Im sure she has plenty of good advice for that field.
Mark, Bonnie and I had to get to a big bookstore before closing at 9pm as the New York Times had an article about couchsurfing and Mark was quoted! Nice! So we got the subway in and the wandered through town in the evening before heading to the reverb club to watch a band that Megan knew. Where are all the melodies these days? I dont think its because Im old, I think its because I knew what a good band sounds like but I can’t really see them making it. The band after called ‘After Party’ were much better, had a hot singer too which is nice.
Maria also came so when that was over she drove us to the Cadallic Lounge to meet the other CRs. Dave was also there and apparently got told off for not getting back to me about the lift the next day. It was all good though as a couple of guys that live in Montreal were going there on Sunday and I was welcome to join them. Another couple of days in Toronto and a chance to dance salsa on friday night! Winner!
Dry and Dusty
The next stop was Tamale, but we had quite a journey ahead of us to get there. For starters we were on the wrong side of the lake, and our choices were a car ferry at 9pm, or a people boat at 7am. We were strongly advised to get the earlier one, and I guess that was the best choice. Earlier start = sooner to town. Most of the germans had come to the hotel too, but they all had an early night, not like us party animals! But we saw them all at breakfast, which was a greasy omlette on half a baguette with tea, coffee or milo. What, no rice crispies!?! There were a few unhappy faces on the guests, but, what you gonna do? This might also have been due to failed attempts at having a shower in the morning too, but there were buckets and scoops, stop moaning!
The owner ferried us all to the ferry in his car, 4 people at a time, getting us all there far too early, but then early enough to shove us all up to the front so we could watch everyone else arrive and get on. It was a pretty
large open top wooden boat, about 40′ by 6′, and they packed a lot of people on it, along with god knows what else, bikes and chickens…. At least we all got seats, they put all the kids on the floor under the seats. Poor little buggers. After an eternity of loading, they fired up the engine and we were off! Or… not. We went about 10 meters out, they cut the engine, drifted over to another part of the shore and loaded up some more people. The sun was getting hot now, lets go! Another 10 minutes of faffing around and we left, the other side was about an hour or so away, the lake was pretty calm so it was a pleasant enough trip across. Not much to see apart from groups of dead tree trunks from the flooding to make the worlds largest artifical lake, but I now know these can be very dangerous, run over one just below the surface in a crowded boat and you can capsize.
Happily there was bus waiting for us on the other side, get your wooden chit giving you a seat, pile your bags on the roof and get
on board. I got in, realised I was missing 2 inches for my knees and got out again. Thinking I’d snagged the best seat in the front I was quite happy, until I realised I had to share it with another guy and the kid who helps the driver, Still, I had some leg room, and I even had the chance to hop out whenever the bus stopped. The extra guy got off soon enough anyway so I was sitting pretty…. right next to the engine! Couldn’t sit next to the window, I had leg room but my leg were being baked! Oh well, I just grinned and bore it for the couple of hours it took to get there, the roads being dirt tracks we didn’t make the best of time, but it wasn’t too bad. At least we didn’t break down, or crash, which is always nice.
Tamale is a city, but you wouldn’t guess it from walking around the place, more like a largish town. The American girls had recommended the Catholic Guesthouse as the place to stay, however the girls wanted to go Muslim so we walked the short distance to the Alhassan hotel. Even after viewing the rooms I dont know why we stayed there. Maybe we were tired, but it stands out as one of the worst places I had stayed, ever. The guidebooks give it a real pasting in the reviews and even mention the ‘hot box rooms on the ground floor’, guess where we were staying…. Still, location, location, locations eh! I had a shower in the bath from the pipe sticking out of the wall triying to avoid being slimed from the rampant fungi growing up the wall, the toilet flush was a wire sticking out of the top with a chipboard wooden seat. No mirror or sink. I had to swap out the lightbulb in the bathroom so I could see in my room. The beds sunk in the middle, with bed sheets that didn’t fit (always a favourite to find yourself sleeping on a filthy matress in the morning), there was lino on the floor but full of large holes and really dirty. I wasn’t even cheap!! It was like one of the worse rooms from the Paper Street house in Fight Club. What a shithole….
I asked the girls why were were staying there, and didn’t get a good answer, but still, it was only for one night. We went out to explore the town, find some food and sort out our bus for the morning. After checking in at the STC bus station we were given some vague instrustions for finding the other bus station to Mole, then we wandered around there for 10 minutes trying to work out where the bus departed from. We had some vague idea about it at the end, we had to come back the next day atfer 8am to buy a ticket from someone in the station, and then the bus would leave at 2.30pm. Clear as mud. We walked around the market and found an internet cafe which was pretty fast, just a quick check on the mail and then off to a little restaraunt for some food. We had the usual fun with the lack of service, I asked the waiter what time it was and he said ‘oh yes!’ and ran off! huh? Seems like his watch was broken so he had to go check a clock. The place also had the usual stupidity of having the bar seperate from the food, so ordering drinks means they have to pass the information on…. but the food was ok, which is good after waiting so long since the greasy omlette in the morning.
Anna had to call her brother back home on his birthday, she didn’t get long for her money, but at least she go through. We bought a few things and went back on the internet for another hour before heading back to the shitty hotel for a nap. There wasn’t much else to do in town, I had a wander around and saw a few people from the boat/bus. I was still looking for a charger as my mp3 player wasn’t being charged by the one I bought in Accra. I also managed to do some laundry which was long overdue while I had the chance. Later on when the girls woke up we went back to the same restaraunt we had lunch and sat on the roof drinking beer, shooting the shit and trying in vain to get some food from the chef, there was no water so this was a problem, and he kept coming up to us to as since the waiters were so totally useless. We eventually got some food and inevitably attracted the attention of the local male population, two guys came over to talk to us, but they were ok. One left after a while and despite stealing all of the girls cigarettes we agreed to let him show us one of the local bars.
Ah, what a silly night, we sat outside one of the bars by the Cultural Exchange Center on plastic chairs getting drunk, salsa dancing, refusing to talk about our broken hearts, finishing off all the beer in the place, racing each other around the CEC (sprinting when drunk is not a good idea), talking about music, thinking but never managing to get up to dance to the cool African music playing, finding the only non-homophobic man in Africa, drinking baileys and eventually completely emptying the chest fridge of all liquid. The bar wasn’t even that busy, but popular with the expats, of which Tamale has its fair share and more so in the case of the Dutch. We staggered off to find some water, which is a challenge when drunk in a tiny town in west africa at 1am, but we managed it in the end and got back to the hotel. I was really looking forward to a night in that scrotty bed!
Tags: lunch, money, Travel, salsa, guesthouse, brother, drinks, seat, wanderings, sun, mail, boats, mirror, journeyRecovery
Dragged myself out of bed in the afternoon and got myself back down to Osu to buy a charger for my gadgets. I’d found one the previous day in a camera shop which would do it but didn’t want to carry it around all day. I bumped into the yannks playing Jazz from the previous night and got chatting about what they were doing and what I was doing and they’d done the boat trip up the Volta Lake recently and told me the guide book was wrong about the times. The ferry leaves in the afternoon, not the morning, so could leave the next day and get it. In the camera shop I got chatting to a Indian girl from London who was there with her Ghanian boyfriend, she said she loved it, but was really just there to drink and have a good time. Like most people she knew nothing about the eclipse, but she gave me a tip on her favourite beer.
I got my charger and went back up to the food court to wait for the girls; we’d arranged to meet up at 4.30pm for lunch. They turned up just after, not looking their best, but then it was a long night. We ordered pizza and Jo came over for a while too. That is a girl on a mission, she’s heading to South Africa overland and has done 8 months already, then shes heading back north to Tanzania. I hope she makes it through Nigeria ok because its not the quietest place in the world at the moment. Her and Pam were living with some Rasta guy and his family, and its not very good to turn up in the morning and sleep all day :p She was going to see the eclipse in Accra because she was staying to do a couple of week volunteering.
Jo left and the three of us went and surfed for an hour while we waited for the sushi place to open at 7.30pm. When we got back there the owners were at the door, shrugged and indicated they were closed. Damn. We wandered down to the other sushi place, sat down and looked at the menu, but it was so stupidly expensive we didn’t feel any shame in getting up and leaving. Im sure the staff were happy to go back to sitting around listening to music as they were when we came in and interrupted them. No rice and fish for us then so we went and sat at the container bar again and had a beer. Some guys car started burning across the road which was some entertainment, but it was a fairly quiet night. The girls chatted to a Danish girl next to us for a while, I sat there not getting a word.
A group of Americans sat next to us too, I could have sworn they were English because they all looked like a bunch of Chavvy hooligans, but I guess I wasn’t too far off the mark. Tua spoke to one of them in the queue for the toilet and wasn’t very happy when she wouldn’t repeat the phrase ‘God bless America’ which they were getting the local boys to say. God bless Africa I say, America has run out of blessings. Seems like they were a bunch of soliders on leave and off on an adventure, of course there were 6 of them, heaven forbid they should be able to go abroad on their own or in a pair, anything could happen… like you might not be able to insult the locals or act like dicks because there aren’t enough of you.
We tried the beer recommended to by the London girl, although the waitress tried to put me off by telling us it was only 1% alcohol when the girls were in the toilet. They looked stunned when they came back and I told them, low alcohol drinks are like poison to your average alcoholic swede! The drinks came and we we relieved to learn this gordons spark ‘beer’ was 5.5% after all. We were not so happy to find it was a gin based alcopop! Ugh! We needed another 2 beers to get rid of the taste. It was going to be an early night though as sundays are always quiet in ghana and we all had to get up and moving in the morning.
The girls were still hungry though, so we drank up and went over the road to the burger place, for a burger… hmmm, they’d ran out of burgers. It would have to be Frankies then up the road, a favourite with locals, and not run by Ghanians so we had a good chance of getting served in a resonable time frame, ie our lifetime. The American GIs were sitting outside, we walked past them and up the stairs, and then rather strangley one of them shouted out ‘F**k Swedish!’, Anna instantly shouted back ‘F**k America!’ and we carried on up the stairs laughing. How bizarre!
Frankie’s is run by Libyans or some such middle eastern country so we all order Falafel’s with hummus as a side dish cos the girls said they were too dry. The hummus came first which we then ate and had to order another! They’re too efficient! Two big buses pulled up and about 40 teenagers came in with their teachers, the majority of boys in kilts. God knows what they were doing there, Anna and Tua were most intrigued, but not enough to start chatting them up, they looked about 14. The Americans were no longer hanging about outside, it was midnight and time to get some sleep. The girls were also getting the ferry the next day, but staying with their friend who worked in the American embassy. Nice to have a maid to wash your clothes isn’t it?!? I said I would meet them on the boat before it sailed at 5pm and we got taxis home.
Tags: cars, dishes, buses, toilet, drinks, lunch, sleep, eclipse, beds, girls, Travel, taxi, clothes, wanderings, boats, queuesAnother night in a one horse town (with gas station disco…)
I left at 5am the next day, quite why they have to have so many buses all leaving at the same tmie, all on the same route, all not considering about leaving until full and all driving around for 1+ hours after the ‘departure time’ is beyond me. If they left at fixed times people would be there or miss it. Pretty frustrating, but when you’re ready for the idea you just wait and dont get too pissed off, what can you do? At least the buses are big ones, so they rule the road and hopefully give you a figthing chnce if you crash. Most even have seatbelts if you can dig them uot from under the seats, you might have to bodge together a couple of belts to get them to work too :p I bought a ticket to Mbrara, which is about 2/3 of the way back to kampala and my ultimate destination was fort portal where i was planning on seeing the chimps in the nearby NP. I slept most of the way up there, put on your music and sleeping mask and try to ignoring the person hiting the back of your seat or hitting your window to sell you some deat animal on a stick. I jumped off the bus and had to find an ATM as priority no one. I wandered about town sweating in the midday sun with my backpack weighing heavily on me, but i was stinky anyway and couldn’t get any worse. I restocked my funds and then thought about going on to fort portal that afternoon, as it was only about 12.30pm and enough time. Back at the bus station I was told if I waited in a certain place a bus would come about 5pm… bit too vague for me. I could take a shared taxi, which was the worst option as they really pack them in and any accident is a deathtrap for all concerned. The only other choice was a bus next day at 6.30am, looked like it was a night in Mbrara then! I got a desperatley bad hotel room for a couple of quid, no shower, just a bath, but it was too late to move and the shower option was much worse. All the linen was numbered for the room, I was in room 21 and stole a towel from 23. I dont know where mine was. I soaked some of my clothes and went to find some food. I passed by the post office and went in to ask when the post bus went to Fort Portal, if at all. It was sitting outside about to leave. I had had a guy nearly shouting at me in the bus station telling me to go and get on a Matatu to get to Fort Portal, I guess he didn’t understand its nice to have some idea of options, ie spend the night and go the next day, instead he thought Im disrespecting him because I didn’t instantly go jump into a 4 wheeled coffin. Some other guy listening to him ranting helpfully told me I was in ‘Black Africa’. Didn’t I just know it :p So I missed the post bus and since it was saturday there would be no service the next day. Bah. I had half the lunch I wanted and then the power came back on and I could order the rest :} Power cuts and load shedding were a constant source of frustration and annoyance in Uganda, you never knew if you were going to be able to charge something up or just have the lights go out at the most inconvinient time. The town wasn’t much, I went looking for a brush to help clean my clothes, which was hampered by the general maliase on the part of the shop workers. ‘Do you have a smaller brush than this?’ ‘No, that is all we have’ /ponts to other shelf ‘Um, what about this one then?’ ‘Ah yes’ I guess most of them are just there to spot shoplifters, they dont do anything else. I did my laundry and it started raining, great. The petrol station over the road was having some kind of disco with a massive PA pumping out annoying music all day. It rained and rained, I went out for a quick meal and a PA on a truck parked up outside and played competing distorted musak with some ‘DJ’ yelling nonsense. I uploaded my blog in an internet cafe and hid in my room, still it rained. What a great saturday night…
Tags: sun, atm, animals, sleep, seat, rain, taxiThe Gorillaz – kids with guns
My taxi driver warned me several times to be ready at 5am, he would be knocking on my door! I was up at 4.50, brushed my teeth, grabbed my gear and waited! typical, had he ran off with the deposit I had paid him or was he just useless? I called his number, nice waste of £2.40 to hear him say he would be there in 1 minute. Bleh! My mobile provider had also finally mailed me to say they wouldn’t unlock my phone as agreed theh day before I left as it was second hand. C**nts! He showed up and off went down some very poor roads. Very slow and no chance for any extra sleep on this leg, there were potholes and rocks galore. 5 am was a pretty stupid time to leave since we were there a good hour before time, I got him to play me some African music on the way up and he didn’t seem to mind the same 6 songs repeating about 10 times. At least it wasn’t Michael Bolton!
I bought him some breakfast, it was about a quid each and we waited for the other 7 people to arrive. Eventually a Australian Couple, Darren and Amanda from Brisbane showed up with their driver. Dressed in nice new jungle gear too! :p They took a lot of holidays too since they both owned their own businesses, and were usually independant travellers but this time they had opted for a tour. Fair enough, not many backpackers would be splurging £200 on an hour with some gorillas anyway! However I got the impression this wouldn’t be the kind of trip my mother would find easy, and the group we would be visiting were the newest and potentially most challenging to get to. The other 5 people never showed up and after a quick pep talk hired a couple of porters to carry our stuff and drove about 4km to the path. I guess I could have asked for my $25 park entrance fee back as I never actually went into the park because the gorillas had recently moved just out of it. They weren’t sure why, possibly because of competition with another nearby group but they were still pretty close.
We began the hike down the rather steep trail to the bottom of the valley passing through fields and past a few houses along the way. The gorillas are all guarded to protect them from bush meat poachers, and also keep them away from the locals who, as you can imagine, woud rather not have to deal with huge 200 pound apes eating their bananas and terrorising them all the time. We were also protected by a couple of guards carrying AK-47s, which was reassuring since we were only a few kilometers from the Congo, and a few years ago several tourists were killed in the same park by Congolese guerillas. Lots of dangerous types then! With straining knees we reached the steam on the valley floor in about half an hour or so, crossed over and walked for another 10 minutes to where the rest of the guards and guides were waiting. We could see their camp nearby and passed through a few old gorilla nests where they slept before. They were waing in a recently slashed and burned area on the hill side and we dropped our coats, staffs and non essential items, got hydrated and went gorilla hunting!
Well, it didn’t take long, about 30 seconds and there was a gorilla sitting next to the clearing munching away on leaves! He didn’t seem at all bothered by us, quite happy to sit and eat, posing for photos. Darren had a nice digital SLR with a good zoom, and I reckon he got some great shots. I blasted away on my little canon. 2 minutes of playing model was enough and he rolled into the bush in search of better food and less attention. We crossed over a rather tiny plank over a small gully into the uncleared jungle and found another gorilla under a bush also eating. I guess thats what they do best :p We got pretty close, about 3 meters and the guide hacked us a better path so we could see him better. There were other babies in the tree that we could also see, not too clearly but making a lot of movement. We moved back down the valley in search of the boss. We saw him briefly along with a baby, but he disappeared quite quickly and we carried on to the stream below. It was great fun, the jungle is no barrier if you’ve got a big machette and dont mind getting dirty. We were slipping down near vertical slopes and pulling ourselves through thick bush, sploshing in bogs and trying to avoid big holes as we clambered over big fallen trees. There was another gorilla up the other side over the river and we could see the bushes move as he pulled leaves from the branches but we couldn’t see him. It was ‘too steep’ to get up and have a look, but it wasn’t that bad. We set off back the way we came looking for the dominant silverback we lost just earlier. The babies were still swinging away, but you couldn’t get a good photograph.
We hacked a new path and found a way to the boss, Nkuringo, you could just see him through the trees. Our guide from the office, the little guy with the machette and Darren up in front about 5 meters away from us while I was gallantly helping Amanda through the brush when there was a mighty roar and Nkuringo stood up and confronted the 3 guys in front! I was glad I wasn’t in front as a fully grown male gorilla showing his teeth and lungs to you is probably not the most pleasant experience! Darren aparently got quite a shock (but no photos :{). The video was going and although I didn’t capture it I certainly got the sound! The guides were not too bothered though and just roared back at him, I guess they knew not to take any shit :p After we changed our underwear we sneaked up a bit more and found him happily eating away again in the clearing and you could see more movement in a nearby bush. We snapped away as the hour was nearly up and boy had it gone fast! We edged closer and Nkuringos son came out and started to play in front of us! Tiny little fella was rolling around and beating his cheat just a few feet away with his father watching patiently in the bush nearby. Cool!
We snapped away like mad until Amanda and my memory card ran out. Thank goodness for the video, which was better in the low light anyway. I had stupidly forgotten my tripod. At least I had spare batteries though! Eventually we had to go and left them in peace. Those gorillas are raking it in at £200 an hour, but what a great job! :p We hiked back up the hill, and I regretted hiring a porter but they made out it was miles and really difficult, which it wasn’t. Still Amanda had a hard time of it and they both had quite a trek to go as they had optioned a 2 hour walk through the NP rather than drive 5 hours around it. I was kicking myself for not being prepared for a lift north as they were heading my way. I had thought it possible but with my stuff everywhere and laundry being done it was not possible. Oh well. We got to the top and I went with them to the start of the trail in their 4WD, sending my taxi driver back to the office to wait for me. We had swapped emails and I promised to send them a DVD of the gorillas in exchange for their photos. Which is good because I suspect my photos were rubbish! They set off with their armed guards and since i haven’t heard about any tourists being kidnapped assume they arrived safe and well.
The cheeky s.o.b. of a taxi driver had accepted my suggestion I buy him lunch to the tune of 7,500 schilling, and told me there was nothing left to eat. I can believe it, the lying git would have cleared them out *if* he had eaten anything. It was impossible to spend 7,500 on lunch so my intention of tipping him went right out the window. Pity, I intended to give him more than he swindled out of me, pity for him anyway. And he cost me about 9,000 since i rang him when he was late! And he sealed his fate when we arrived back at the hotel and I struggled my bags, coat, sandals and various stuff off the back seat while he just sat there. When I managed to get it all in my hands he offered to help, nice one, goodbye….muppet! Back at the hotel, after i got over my heart attack over how much they had charged me for doing a few items of laundry I was soon tracked down by Joseph and we hammered out a deal for the following day. Local pygmy village, climb up a old volcano and off to see the fish otters in the nearby lake. We’d have a motorbike, I could drive if I wanted to.
Tags: possiblity, locals, madness, camping, photographs, banana, sandals, photo, sleep, bleh, hunting, photos, seat, taxi, mailBack to Kampala
For some reason I will never understand we left at 8am. Everyone on the other
bus wanted to get back to Kampala as soon as possible, but they left at 8.30
am. That makes sense… I had made a concious effort the night before and
ordered some breakfast, so wasn’t starving all morning like i was in the NP.
We all jumped on the bus and headed for the top of Murchison Falls nearby, no
rain today. it was gonna be a scorcher. Once there we were met by a friendly
female guide and she took us to a variety of viewing point whie reciting a
litany of interesting and informative facts about the area, all of which I
have forgotten. Im sure you can google them… The top of the fals was pretty
impressive up close though, with the nile rushing through a rather narrow gap
in the rock. Out guide and driver seemed convinced we were going to fall into
the water, despite being 5 meters from any danger. I guess they lose too many
tourists that way.
One ‘Obligitory photo session’ later we were back in the bus and on our way
back to the capital. I even tipped the guide about £1.50, I must be getting
soft in my old age. We stopped for another disappointing lunch at ‘the best
restaurant in Masindi’ and then bumped back to Red Chili. Few jourrneys could
be so boring. When you didn’t see anything interesting on the way there and
you’re now absolutely certain you’re not going to see anything interesting on
the way back. But you can’t go north as the Lords Resistance Army will make
mincemeat of any tourist foolish enough to do so, as proved by Red Chilli’s
owner Steve who was murdered up there last year.
I got a twin room as ordered but it wasn’t to last as I was kicked out the
following morning, which was annoying. However the evening was spent drinking
with Neil and watching the apparent slow death of his relationship with
Philipa as they would both shortly returning to their respective countries.
Kinda sad, but you never know… We were forced into taking the BBQ option as
they were not serving food, but I ended up doing better than Neil, despite
the poor veggie options. They both planned to head off early the next day to
see Mt Edgon in the east. My lack of tent and sleeping bag (read planning :p)
prevented me from excercising any such similar option.
Lotsa Beasties!
We had to be up and off at 6.30am exactly since we needed to get the 7am
ferry. We didn’t envision this to be a problem since we had walked down to
the ferry in about 10 minutes the nigt before, so it was really close. As it
was we ended up waiting aroud for teh ferry as it just left as we arrived. We
spent the time in taking photographs of the hippo that was lying in the river
about a meter from the shore. The guard with a gun wasn’t impressed with us
all getting close to it, but the real danger with hippos is when you get
between them and water. There was no danger of that happening. It didn’t look
very healthy, with a couple of big gore marks down its flank but it was a big
bugger!
The ferry came back and we all trooped on after the vehicles, the great big
dirty thing spewed out diesel fumes as it ferried us across the nile. It
looked nothing like a proper boat, just a big lump of steel with a huge motor
and steering wheel strapped on the wrong way. Across the other side we paused
to photograph a coule of antelope by the river, and a troop of baboons near
the crossing point. Nothing special though, our driver herded us back into
the bus (now happily with the canopy open) and we joined the other buses
heading into the park proper.
We had a bit of a convoy going on there for a while, but we really only
stayed with the other red chili bus and soon lost the others. The wildlife
was great, but it was threatening to rain so rather dark. I was cursing my
stupidity for leaving my spare camera battery still on charge at the
campsite, but with then LCD display off I still managed over 100 photographs,
and I had my video camera as backup. We started by seeing plenty of antelope
and deer, lots of species, then some buffalo and giraffe. We had the
highlight early on however as we saw a lioness about 300 meters away, magic!
Big Five strike one! But it got better as the lioness was followed by 2
younger cubs. Not babies, but only half their mothers side. Great stuff! Wild
lions!
Progressing through the park (the largest in Uganda) we saw heaps more
giraffe, a few herds of elephants up close, large herds of buffalo, warthogs,
large birds, plenty more deer and antelope. It only rained a bit, but we
could see big sheets of it off in the distance. Rather luckily it didn’t come
our way. It was a great morning, much better than Ghana (although with the
extra expense) and the afternoon promised to have much nicer weather. Check
the photos! :p
We went back to Red Chilli for lunch and then back down to the river for the
boat trip up the nile. I remembered my battery this time! :p We had plenty of
people on the boat right away but went over to the otehr side to collect even
more. Not too crowded though and they have the rather sensible policy of not
allowing more than 14 people on the top deck at once. We cruised up the nile
with loads of Hippos and Crocs on the way. Our driver told us to sit on the
left and that was the best suggestion ever as that was the side that was
closest to the bank going up and returning. We saw big fish eagles and
various other birds (ask a birder!), pretty good, but not as good as the
morning. The sunshine made it better in someways though, and after about 2
hours steady cruising we were at murchison falls. We couldnt get that close,
as the water falls pretty fiercely, making rapids and turbulence at the
bottom, but we ran upstairs for a few pics and stayed there for most of the
way back.
I chatted to a Danish guy who was married to a rather nice Uganda girl and
they had a cute toddler crawling around, also called Mark! Awwww. Going back
was more of the same, only punctuated by the silence of the engine stopping
followed shortly by some white guy coming up t inform us ‘I dont want to
worry you but the engine has just died!’. Hey ho, no worries here, just chat
away and float down the river. A 5 hour delay would make a more exciting
annecdote, but after half an hour the engine was going and we carried on. Big
deal.
Back at Red Chili I made an effort to chat to the people from the other bus.
They comprised of a missionary group from England (mostly unrelated) who were
on a whirlwind mission of mercy to feed lots of people and do a few tourist
things, a couple of American girls and an English girl. I had a talk with the
missionary lot about what exactly was munching around the night before, they
favoured the hippo idea, I was in the warthog camp. Since no one had actually
got their lazy asses out of bed to look it was still open for debate. We
begged to differ on this one.
The American girls had been here for 2 years volunteering and we all did the
usual bitching about America and it politics. They were both heading to
Tanzania for a while and Sindy was heading off to India for 6 months to study
yoga. Cool! I told her I was also thinking about going to India in the early
winter to learn paragliding. Turns out the place she would be studying is in
Pune, just outside Mumbai, which is where the paragliding place is. Hmmm ;p
Might have to look her up eh!?! Maybe ‘drop in’ :p
I then played ‘guess where you’re from’ with Katie, the English girl. After
chasing each other around the country it turns out she was from Blythe Bridge
in Stoke. Which makes her random Stokie number three for me, lovely girl,
shame she was going home the next day. She got my email so Im expecting a
message from her any day now…:p We all chatted and drank Nile beer by the
Nile but it was getting on and we all had to be off in the mornning. But then
there was some excitement in the camp, the dutchies came back and said there
was a Hippo running rampage through the tents. Ok, thats an exageration, it
was calmly eating some grass, but it had been a fun day. Wildlife,
breakdowns, strange female coincidences, a crazy hippo would have been a
prefect end to the day.
You’re not supposed to get between them and water, and more people have been
killed by Hipps than any oter animal, but the nile was a good 20 minutes
wadle away. A few people took some flash photos, crazy idiots were gonna get
us all killed, but the Hippo didn’t seem to mind. I climbed the wall of the
gents (protected by a handy gate on the door) to take a few pics and it just
kept eating. The flash only really works if you’re about 2 meters away, so
along with lots of other people we got a bit bolder and chased it around the
camp for a while. No gorings, no casulaties (apart from the grass), everyone
got bored and went to bed. Including me. The muching moved off and slowly
came back and the Hippo snagged my guidelines as it walked past, the same
thing that had woken me up the previous night. Mystery solved! He walked past
my tent so I spent s few nervous minutes with my camera poked out the tent
flaps as he walked past, just a meter or so away. What a great day, and I was
only 27 hours into my African trip.
Fauna trouble…
I was woken by something crawling across my face, not too big, and I was under a mosquito net, however its never a nice sensation, especially when you have to slap yourself on the forehead. and I missed! Happily it seemed it was a one off so no infestations of bed bugs or crabs to worry me further! 
The shower was a first, no cold water and the hot was far to hot to stand under, no shower for me! Quick breakfast and then jumping onto a minibus with a Dutch Mother and Daughter, American girl, Japanese girl and a Irish/Portugese couple. Not a bad mix, everyone was very friendly but there wasn’t really much to do apart from look out the window until we got to lunch up in Masindi. I was sitting next to Neil from Dublin, decent bloke and we chatted as we bounced around the road. The destination was Murchinson Falls NP, pretty far north, but no so north that there were problems with the LRA (child solider guerillas). I knew virtually nothing about the trip, i just knew that if I turned up to Kampala with no plan I would posibly end up sitting around the hostel, wandering around town gnerally doing nothing as I had done in Ghana. Not that there is anything really wrong with doing bugger all but thats pretty much all I had done in Dubai so it was time for some action. The road was fine (apart from all the drivers with death wishes) until we stopped for lunch and then it was onto the dirt. But the majority of the journey was over and we soon entered the park. As explained by the hostel manager who gave us a talk before we set off, the park was full of wildlife but we didn’t see any, apart from an occasional troop of babboons crossing the road. Eventually we found our way to the campsite, and luckily for some (not for me) there were a couple of bandanas free. I was in a tent, but I didn’t complain, it wasn’t too warm up there either and I wouldn’t be sleeping very much with my busy schedule. We arrived about 4pm so after a quick shower and walk around the camp I walked down to the Nile with Atsuko, the Japanese girl. This is the point when Im reminded to go out and buy some binoculars because they would have been very handy at this point. Still, there were a fair few hippos quite close to the bank we were on, or ‘Hippo san’ ;p It was also the ferry crossing point, so we watched a group of tourists head over to the savannah site of the national park in their various 4WD vehicles, as the Hippos grunted in the dusk. Cool. Hiking back up to the camp we stopped to take a few pics of a warthog that was muching away at the grass in the camp. Seemed pretty tame, but you have to watch it. I put my spare camera battery on charge behind the bar and had a couple of beers, just to pass the time you understand 
Got chatting to a Ozzie bloke called Scott who was on his way home after a good while away. I had dinner with the people off the bus which was ok, and actually arrived in a reasonable ammount of time. Shocking after the appalling service at Mole NP in Ghana. We sat and watched the bats fly around the restaurant but everyone scooted off to bed pretty early as we all had to be up for a 6.30am start for the game drive. Scott got his ipod and speakers out to entertain the staff and we had a good chat about the decline of coldplay and whats good in Australian music at the moment. He was buying sodawater and mixing in scotch from a plastic bottle in his pocket. The staff didn’t seem to mind but eventually he was hammered and stumbled off to bed. I did the same. I was woken up twice, once by weird noises, the second time by something bumping into the tent. I was quite desperate for a piss as I had drank quite a few beers, but I wasn’t getting out of the tent. The electricity went off at midnight, and although they had left a lamp burning outside the tent it was 40 meters to the toilet block. I lay there listening intently and then I oculd hear a steady munching noise. Probably the warthog, but I wasn’t going to go and find out. I slipped back into a uneasy, troubled sleep..
Im walking in the Air
Today was the big day I was going to do something touristy! I didn’t get up
very early after getting into ‘The Da Vinci Code’ which I hadn’t read before.
After a quick lunch of egg sandwiches on the roof I jumped into a taxi for
the 40km ride to Kakum National Park. I got there for pretty much the last
walk of the day, flashed my student card for my discount and hung around the
museum waiting for my guide. We had a good chat about our lives while walking
up to the canopy walkway a couple of Canadians had built 11 years ago. It was
just us two which was great because if I was going to see any wildlife it
would be now since I knew when to shut the hell up was trying to walk
quietly. Didn’t make any difference really, the jungle was pretty dense. You
could occasionally hear animals moving around but you couldn’t really see
them. The most interesting thing on the way up to the walkway was one of
those ferns that bunch its leaves up when you touch it. Yawn.
The Canopy walkway was hardly the terrifying nightmare Anna and Tua had
described it, but then Im not really afraid of highs and it looked solid and
pretty new. If it had looked like a deathtrap I might have changed my mind.
You really need binoculars t see anything up there, there were a few
butterflies knocking around but not monkeys ad virtually no birds. Apparently
there was one but was taking a picture in the other direction and missed it
Doh. All in all a great trip :p Still, it was nice to get up in the tree tops
and see over the jungle. I got a few nice photos, I hope. I’d hardly taken it
out with me because its not much fun to have no subject to take photos of. I
was constantly seeing great things when walking around but it feels so
intrusive to whip your camera out and point it in someone’s face.
The waitress at my hotel had foolishly told me that she would send people to
‘Oasis’ if they had stopped serving food so I took her advice (and my custom)
and went down there to eat dinner. At least there were more people than
usual, but they were mostly speaking German so that was me out of the
conversation. Was a nice place by the beach though and they had a good menu
so I was happy. Having tourists mean that they actually had some food in that
I wanted to eat, as opposed to choosing from a small selection of what they
could be bothered to cook. I was told many times that there was no bananas,
pineapples or oranges. Its Africa for cripes sake, go onto the street, buy
some and sell them to me for a massive profit!
Waste of a day
I got up feeling fine, I hadn’t drunk that much to feel bad the next day and
Ghanaian beer hasn’t given me a hangover yet, obviously I need to do some more
research! I found the girls eating breakfast by the beach in my hotel, the
local guy chatting them up wasn’t very happy to see me but I think they were.
It’s not fun to be the victim of unwanted attention all the time and they had
a understanding sympathizer in me after being stalked for 2 days! Tua was a
it worse for wear and had drunk just as much as Anna who is half a foot
taller, maybe Anna should just drink more. We played the chili‘s through the
bars sound system and Anna put on Belle and Sebastian, I think they liked my
mp3 player more than me! Some local suggested a game of volleyball with a
couple of german girls which seemed a good idea, except it was too windy and
we were too crap. I had a good laugh watching Anna nearly drown with every
second wave, you wouldn’t have though that girl lives in a seaside city but I
paid the price for laughing by losing my sunglasses to a rogue wave. Just as
I was gong to put them in my pocket too! 2 pearls of wisdom: Never turn your
back on the ocean and karma is a bitch.
The hotel food wasn’t that impressive, it was 1pm, I’d had no breakfast and
the girls would make sure I wouldn’t run out of money (they said) so I could
afford to eat again. For want of a better option we went back to Nana’s for
lunch. We all ordered and got drinks. The girls started talking about pizza
for that evening, you needed to give notice so he could make it. We asked
Nana and he said we should write it in his book for advance orders. I went
and got my mp3 player when the electricity came back on. I had quite a few
swedish albums which obviously went down well with the girls. They were
playing crazy Swedish songs singing along, drinking coke and getting hungrier,
but then Nana likes to take his time and get it right! He kept telling me
about some goat meat he was cooking in tomato sauce. Yeah, great! Like Im
interested in dead goats…
I guess I waited maybe an hour and half to ask exactly when our food would be
arriving. 6.30pm he said… at least we saw the funny side, the girls were in
hysterics (low blood sugar). Yeah, our idea of a good time is sitting in a
little sweaty room for half an hour with no fan that’s next to an open sewer
and then another hour listening to swedish pop while there’s a beach not 50m
away where we could be swimming! Not. We repeated our order and went and sat
on the beach in despair to return in half an hour. Kind of a wasted
afternoon, but there really was nothing else to do. The girls did want to see
the fort in Dixcove but now it was late afternoon and we still hadn’t eaten.
We played in the sand with the local kids for a while and followed the sewer
back to our food. We chatted to a middle aged belgian guy for a while who was
tucking into a lump of goat meat. Poor little bugger! Finally we got our
‘lunch‘, just before sunset. Time for a few more beers anyway, it helps the
pain :p Since I had just eaten I asked if I could hold off on my evening meal
until I was ready. I got it half an hour later to the girls delight, they had
wisely cancelled their pizza. We had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves,
scaring all the other tourists of with obscure western music. The Japanese
couple that had been sitting next to us at breakfast (and drinking beer it
was soon noticed) came for some food and took delivery of a bongo drum they’d
ordered. The guy gave a demo and he was pretty good. He said he sold them in
Japan fr $450, and only paid about $40 for it.
The local kids loved the girls and were getting cheeky to the amusement of
Nana’s wife. ‘I love you’ they said. ‘I will kiss you tomorrow’ and ‘i will
kiss you tomorrow at eight o’clock’. We put on Michael Jackson and started
dancing in the street with the kids, Nana disappeared and was asleep around
the corner, exhausted from his day of not cooking our food. It wasn’t that
late and we wanted to keep drinking but we were fed up with being in the same
place all day. We went looking for the party, but we’d drank our last beer of
the night. Alaska? Closed. Secret Bar? closed. We carried on down the beach
and although all the lights were off we could see 3 people smoking at the
sessions bar. Seems like this was the place.
The Rasta owner was a nice guy, he told us to come sit down and join the
party. He was cutting weed from a block the size of a video cassette, then he
rolled a massive bifta by the moonlight and lit it. The guy had some dread
skills! He went and got his bongo drum and we all stared singing some random
song. He tried to get the girls to sing whatever they were thinking about
and we could have some kinda freeform reggae improvisation session going on
but he was too stoned to explain it properly to them. I knew what he meant
but told him they were to white to be able to do stuff like that :p Mind you,
they we trying to teach me a simple phrase in Ghanaian to repeat over the drum
pattern and I couldn’t keep it in my head. The girls wanted to sleep so we
said goodbye. Ask I went to leave they asked if I wanted to buy some ganja to
take home! Yeah, I’ll take a couple of kilos! not! I staggered home to listen
to the Ozrics and Air.