Cindy and John’s Adventures

So in Kisoro, the mtn we decided to go up is called Big Pile of Stones because in this volcanic area if you want to cultivate your land you have to dig out all these volcanic rocks and so there’s all these little piles of stones all over the place – and so that’s how Mt Gahinga got it’s name!  Kind of cool.

Anyway, we got up at 5:00 am to filter water/had breakfast of toast and got picked up by our Special Hire taxi at 6:00 am to be at the start of the trek at 7:00 am.  Apparently we got lucky because Peter and Sandra, the 2 Germans, signed up to do the same trek as us and were told to be at the gate at 6:00 am by the same guy that told us 7:00 am.  Luckily they were staying right outside the gate so they just went and had some tea and hung out for a while.

It was really a nice trek although our guide must have stopped at every single plant in the joint and told us if we crushed it up or ate it or whatever it would be a help for worms, malaria, depression – all these herbal remedies that, while interesting, will never be remembered by Cindy or John.  Unfortunately, the views kind of sucked because of the fog but we did see a glimpse of the golden monkey (it looked like a big cat to me – but it was kind of fast).  We were also passed by the guys that do the gorilla tracking and apparently the tourists that spent the $500 were able to see them which is really good because that would totally suck if you spent that money and didn’t actually see the gorillas.  Us non-gorilla tourists had no chance to see them as they were in from where we hiked.  Oh well, somehow I think we’ll survive.

Anyway, we were back in town by 2-3 pm and went and got our bus tickets – 6 am but as far as we were concerned, the first bus would be the only bus we would take in Africa again even if we have to wake up super early.  Waiting around for 3 hours just aen’t going to happen! The next day we were heading to Lake Bunyoni to relax for a few days since we hadn’t really slept in like 2 days because of the early wake-up times…

So, at the start of our trip, we wanted to go see the rare Mountain Gorilla.  Then we found out the price in Uganda to see them went from $360 to $500.  For 1 hour.  And other people that went have said they could have left it off and been very happy.  So that’s why we went and saw the chimps instead.  Because $1,000 USD doesn’t grow on trees.  Apparently we aren’t alone because we’ve met a bunch of people that decided to skip it when the price went up.

But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t go to one of the parks where they hang out!  We decided to go to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park to climb a volcano.  Luckily, these aren’t active.  So, in order to get there we went to Kabale from Fort Portal (where we barely slept after the toilet at the hotel went haywire in the middle of the night and it was going to flood the room so we had to change) – we caught the 6 am bus and got there in the afternoon.  John was not feeling very good for the first few hours because we decided wine the night before was a good idea.  We stayed the night at Edisira where we met this cool woman from Denmark who gave us an awesome recommendation on a place to stay in Kampala (where we’re staying!) – then went on the worst matatu ride of our Africa journey.

4 1/2 hours on a minibus with 25 adults/kids stuck in it is not pleasant.  Especially when the kids are young and the bus doesn’t stop.  So let’s see – pee/B.O. – oh and the seats – not very comfortable.  I still haven’t recovered.  Oh and I have a bruise where I was shoved up against the window.  I have never wanted to get off a minibus so much and not even care how I was going to get the rest of the way there.  Oh and the road was terrible.

Anyway, we finally got to Kisoro – the gateway to the park.  We stayed at the Hotel Virunga and arranged the 12 km transport to the park through them and arranged a hike in the park the next day with the UWA.  We decided on the smaller of the 3 – Mt Gahinga because Sabinyo had 101 ladders going up it.  And Muhavura was pretty much straight up.  We had already done one of these African straight ups and 101 ladders sounded like just a pain so we decided on the “big pile of stones”.  It was in the middle so we were hopeful we would be able to see the other 2 if it was clear.

We decided to have lunch at Travellers Rest and ran into the 2 Germans from the CVK we had met previously.  The had a harrowing experience getting to Kabale as well.  They got on a minibus and they had to change 2 times into 2 different minibuses just to go what took us 2 hours the day before.  I guess nothing is ever easy.  They had a long walk ahead of them so we bid them on their way.  They walked 12 km with their big backpacks to a campsite – we found out the next day that it took them 3 1/2 hours!  Yikes – glad we arranged transport!

So after a brief visit to another place that was full…which we couldn’t call because the Lonely Planet’s phone numbers – can you say that half of them didn’t work?  I swear, we wanted to chuck the book out the bus window half the time.  And it seemed like if the book REALLY RECOMMENDED somewhere, that it’s like an athlete being on the cover of sports illustrated – they’d be closed down – anyway, we ended up at the CVK Resort/Campsite.

It was great – good food – really quiet – except for the frogs at night – oh my goodness!  Can you say loud!  Wow, I didn’t realize how loud they could be!  Anyway, we arranged to see the chimps at 8 am the next day.  And we decided to walk from the CVK to Kibale where the chimps are located.  It took us 2 hours.  In the dark.  In the forest.  It was fun but leaving at 5:30 am – kind of dark.

And we could not lose this dog that hung out at the campsite.  We thought we locked her in but she must have known a way around the gate.  Not exactly the smartest dog either.  She almost got shot at the park because they didn’t want her bouncing around the national park.  And she almost got attacked by a baboon on the way back.  But apparently, according to 2 Germans, Sandra and Peter, that were staying at the campsite too, there are baboons there too and they are afraid of her so when she saw a huge family of baboons on the road back to the CVK she just bounded up to them and let’s just say they were WAAAAAAAYYYYYY bigger than she was.  I thought she was going to get us killed because baboons are not very nice when they are provoked (so we’ve heard) – and we were with this dumb dog.

Anyway, the chimps were okay.  Apparently it wasn’t hot enough that morning because the chimps had no incentive to come down to the ground since they weren’t hot in the trees.  Everyone said we were lucky to see the chimps (even in the trees) but I felt a bit ripped off.  They did look like humans hanging from the trees though.  Like you can tell they’re 99% of us just by body movements and stuff.   But the monkeys on the way back were really cool.  There were like 5 different kinds and we also had some right outside our banda (thatched room at the campsite).

The next day we caught a matatu back to Fort Portal where we stayed the night so we could catch another long bus ride to Kabale.  We wanted to go hike a volcano in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park and Kabale is the portal for that.

So we get back to Kampala and find out from the Backpackers that our trip got cancelled.  Which is so funny considering the Red Chili Backpackers who we wanted to go with has been booked for about a month out.  Granted the Red Chili was cheaper but you’d think they would be the next logical choice since they were 2nd cheapest.  So we decided to scrap Murchison Falls and just head south to see the chimps.

Our hotel, the New Gloria Hotel, said to go with Kalita to go to Fort Portal.  So we called Kalita and they said starting at 6 am they had hourly departures until noon and they didn’t wait until they fill up to leave.  Hello, we have been in Africa for almost 4 months.  Why that didn’t sound fishy is beyond me.  So we get there around 7:30 and didn’t leave until 11 as the bus didn’t leave until it was full.  We’re so gullible sometimes.  There were like a gazillion matatus and other buses that left between the 2 times but we had already bought tickets.  Lovely.

Anyway, we got to Fort Portal and stayed at the Hill Ton.  Isn’t that a kick?  We can say we stayed at a Hilton in Africa.  It was pretty good – they were doing renovations and man, do they need to learn how to paint – it looked like a kid just slapped paint on the wall.  We then went to a couple of tour agencies to see how much it would cost to see the chimps.  One said $200.  The other was like $180.  We’re like, this is ridiculous.  Transport to see chimps and the entry fee.  The entry fee was $95.  So like $100 for transportation.  Not going to happen.  And it wasn’t even that far.

So we arranged for a special hire taxi to take us to a campsite partway to the park.  The adventure continues…

So after doing nothing the next day except for walking to a waterfall which was really a rapid…we headed to Mbale because we were contemplating doing Mt Elgon. We stayed at this place called the Mt Elgon View Hotel who said that since it was Sunday that the UWA (Uganda Wildlife Assoc) wasn’t open until the next day. So we hung out and got woken up by a bus that was apparently going to honk for 2 hours waiting for people to fill it up. Because in E Africa they sometimes don’t leave until they’re full.  Okay, most of the time.  Except for the first bus in the morning.
The next morning we went to the UWA and decided it was going to be too much of a pain. I mean we’d have to rent all the stuff to camp and decide what to cook while on there – but we couldn’t understand what we should bring to cook since we didn’t have a stove and we’d have to be cooking over an open fire and…we just hadn’t thought this through enough. So we decided to pay for a special hire taxi to Sipi Falls because at almost noon we were assured probably a 3 hour wait for a matatu to fill up to Sipi. And it was semi-reasonable. So we arranged it through our hotel and we ended up staying at a place called the Crow’s Nest.

We arranged with a guide to take us to the 3 falls of Sipi but he misunderstood and took us just to 1. Which ended up being okay because we just wandered around the town instead. We wanted to get to the Elgon National park and do a hike since we weren’t able to do the big hike we wanted – but to get there the next day we would either have to walk it (2 hours one-way) or pray it didn’t rain since Moses at Crow’s nest had arranged for transport if it didn’t. Luckily it didn’t rain much. I’m not really understanding the whole why the roads suck totally to national parks. I mean, they really suck around here. There is really no way it could happen if it rained.

Anyway, we were lucky and this guy in this truck took us up to the park.  With a bunch of people in the back of the truck.  He was very entertaining.  John asked him why so many kids ran around naked here (it seems like we’ve seen more naked kids here in Uganda than in the rest of Africa).  He said that some people would always be naked if they could – even as adults.  So after an unbelievably rough journey we got to the park and paid our $30 USD a piece to get in and got our guide, Alex and his gun.  We never saw any big animals, but I guess it must be necessary for safety purposes – we hiked to Tutum Caves and the most amazing waterfall.  If we felt the need to take a REALLY UNBELIEVABLY COLD SHOWER, this would be the place.  Great water pressure.  Only bad thing about the hike was that it POURED on the way back.  I was like, oh great, that means we’re walking back to town.  But luckily enough it only poured inside the park.  So our ride came and picked us up after helping move some bricks and dropping off bamboo on the way down and dropping off various park employees.  Oh and he tried to buy a chicken because “he liked the color”.   I know NOTHING about picking out chickens, so I’m not sure what color he was looking at because it just looked like any old chicken to me.

Anyway, the next day we headed back to Kampala because we had booked a 3-day Murchison Falls trip via the Kampala Backpackers and it was leaving in a couple of days.  But we had to go via Jinja because John forgot his headlamp at the backpackers there and they had found it.

So we get up the next morning and decide we want to see Jinja by bike.  So this guy at the backpackers rented us bikes that we could just bike for the day and then bike out to the Bujagali Falls campsite which is like 10 km away and he would come pick them up.  So…following a cartoon map…yes, another cartoon map…
We head out to the Source of the Nile.  Guess why they call it that.  It seems kind of weird since Uganda is in the middle of the continent and the end of the Nile is north.  And in my head rivers should go south.  Anyway, it’s pretty, but really kind of lame because it’s kind of where the government decided the Source of the Nile should be – there used to be a waterfall but they cabashed that to make it more stable so it’s not really the original Source.   And of course we got lost.  But, that’s just classically John and Cindy.

We head out of the Source of the Nile and get caught up in this huge 200 plus groups of kids and have to end up carrying the bikes over them.  Something about an agricultural deal (kind of like 4H).  Luckily a few guys helped me out because I’ve got the muscle tone of an ant at this point.  I mean, exercise besides walking is pretty much non-existant.  John’s been doing pushups lately.  Did I mention that he didn’t really have a butt before, but he REALLY HAS NO BUTT now.  And can you say skinny?  He could use some of his mom’s cooking…

Anyway, oh yeah, we head through Jinja town to this viewpoint of the town.  This guy’s cartoon map is really getting sketchy at this point – luckily we’re in Uganda where you can usually find someone who speaks English (since it’s their official language but not everyone knows it) – so somehow we finally find the road to the viewpoint.  And oh my gosh it was a pretty darn big hill.  When everyone is pushing bikes up this hill it’s got to be a good hill.  Totally beautiful at the top though.  Definitely see why this guy heads people up there.  Then we hit a snag.  We are heading back towards town when this guy waves at us.  So John goes toward this guy because, typically, Ugandans are really friendly and nice – but this guy wanted to take his bike.  John started yelling at this guy to take his hands off the bike and being really loud about the whole thing and the guy let him go.  It was like a little gang of guys that I guess stole bikes.  Although I can’t imagine why you’d want to steal some of the bikes around here.  They’re a bit trashed.

Anyway, after 5-6 wrong turns we finally made it to the road to Bujagali.  It was kind of a long day and bikes on 2 people who haven’t biked in a really long time.  But totally fun – we had a good dinner at the Black Lantern (John had spare ribs – he was in heaven), had some wine with Kristi & Kelly and headed to bed.

Everyone comes here to raft the Nile, but we’re perfectly fine to stay on land for now!

Yes, we’re lame.  Yes, it’s been like a really long time since we’ve updated this lovely blog.  And John is looking at pictures right now.  So hopefully we’ll be able to update some stuff.  Anyway…

We head to Jinja.  The Source of the Nile.  Cephaeus dropped us off at the Kampala Backpackers and then we took a ride to the minibus park and then a minibus to Jinja.  To the Nile River Explorer Backpackers.  Which we didn’t know they had a shuttle between the two backpackers until we saw a notice on the other end saying they had a shuttle.  Just par for the course, I guess.  It was only a couple of hours to Jinja so no great loss.  So we check in and who do we see – Kristi & Kelly (probably botching their names) – our compadres from the 30 hour bus trip – they had been WAAAAY more productive than we had – then again, they had only 2 weeks left on their African part of their trip and we had, well, as long as we wanted – anyway, they were headed to the campsite and were just waiting for the shuttle – but we ended up going on the shuttle anyway because, we decided to Fly Across the Nile.

At the campsite they had this “wire” (actually a super-strong rope) going across the Nile.  Kind of like a really long zip-line.  After a guy went on a “trial run”, I decided I was going first.  So I sat in the little harness and zipped across the Nile.   About 3/4 of the way down this guy tossed me this buoy thing and I attached it to my strap deal and he pulled me the rest of the way by boat.  It was really awesome.  Not nearly as scary as Costa Rica.  But maybe I’m just losing the fear of heights.  HAHAHAHA!!!!!

After I got across John went Superman style.  He thought it was just okay.  Kind of fun.  Whatever – I thought it was cool.

So anyway, we hung out for a while and then headed back to Jinja on boda-bodas.  Which we hadn’t encountered before.  Boda-bodas are these little mini-bike deals that have a seat on the back and you just hop on and get from place to place.  Apparently they became popular because a bunch of people fled the Idie Amin regime to India where they’re popular.  They were unbelievably scary to me at first but now they just seem to be a good way of getting around for short distances without luggage.  Believe me, the without luggage part is a definite.  But that story is for a later date…

We ate that night at a place called Gateley on the Nile.  John had Pork Chops.  He was in love.  The food has been quite a bit better here than in Tanzania.  Well, Western food anyway – bit more variety in starches here than in Tanzania.  Anyway, that’s about it for Jinja – we headed to Bujagali Falls the next night with a promised bottle of wine for the girls…mmmmm, wine…

We landed in Kampala after our extra long bus trip and called John’s friend.  He came an picked us up and took him to his apartment.  It was totally weird.  John had worked with this guy at HP and the apartment could have been in the states.  Except for the fact that he had a cleaning lady and she washed his clothes.  It looked like a total bachelor pad.

We pretty much did nothing for like a week.  Watched some really crappy movies in TV, went to the movie theatre and saw  Harry Potter at an American style theatre – we were amazed at the grocery stores.  I mean you could get pretty much everything you want except for anything related to Mexican food.  Did I mention that I miss Mexican food?  Oh what I wouldn’t do for a burrito…

Anyway, Uganda sure is different that Tanzania – I mean the food is tons better and I don’t get the gag reflex on any type of food except for local food – I mean we actually had Indian food that tasted like Indian food and not mushed up baby food with no flavor.

Well, anyway, John’s friend was trying to start a business here and so he had tons of stuff to do so we decided to finally leave Kampala and head to Jinja.

But before we left for Jinja we booked our tickets to our next destination – Bangkok!  Well, Bangkok for a week and then to Nepal where we’ll be volunteering for a month (or more) and then trekking for a month among other things.  I’ll be teaching English and John’s going to teach computers.  This should be VERY interesting.

So we head to Zanzibar – I was very optimistic that this was a totally blown out of proportion place because everyone says this is a “must-see”. And it was like $35/pp/one-way just to take the boat. Actually it turned out to be kind of cool…

Unfortunately there’s this little thing called the ocean that we had to cross over for 2 hours to get to this island. On a boat. So I took my friend Dramamine which made me take a nap. Meanwhile John watched some funky movie with Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas which looked mildy interesting for the 5 minutes I was awake for it.

So we get to Zanzibar and have to go to passport control even though we’re in the same country. They used to be 2 different countries since Zanzibar has been owned by a bunch of different people including Oman which used it as a slave market. Fun times, huh? They would ship slaves over from the mainland in Bagamoyo and then sell them. Anyway, we get some taxi to drive us to the north side of the island to a place called Nungwi.

Our driver was talking about Zanzibar a bit and he mentioned that NGO’s used to send over foreign English teachers to teach in the schools but they didn’t do that anymore. And my thinking is – what happened to all people that learned English from those foreign teachers – can’t they teach English? I mean come on – when does the cycle end? I think that was kind of the recurring theme throughout the region – and really throughout Africa.

After we checked out one place to stay and decided to move on we went to the next place, Amaan Bungalows where we stayed for the next 4 nights. At this point, we were pretty tired of sleeping in twin beds but luckily on Zanzibar they have Zanzibarian beds which are a double. I have no clue but the bed could fit us both on it. Bonus!

For the next 4 days we wandered around – Nungwi is kind of funky because you really can’t walk anywhere on the beach unless it’s low tide. Once it’s high tide you have to go inland to get around or wade. The beach pretty much disappears except for a few spots. We wandered around the north to see the dhows – so cool – when it’s low tide all the fisherman are repairing their boats and all these dhows are just beached. And when the tide rolls in they just shove off and all of a sudden they’re just floating around. We wandered around the other way the next day to Kendwa and they actually had a legitimate beach that didn’t go away at high tide. But pretty much we just swam, sat on the beach, ate really crappy food (other than the place we stayed at all the other places had seasoning problems – either really salty or really bland – when you have to dump a ton of chili sauce on a pizza to make it palatable – well, it just isn’t good) and talked about where we’re going next.

After the 4 days of lounging we took a shared taxi back down to Stone Town, where we had landed previously. It totally looked like a Moroccan medina. Narrow, twisting streets and pretty much if it wasn’t so small you could get lost in there for days. We stayed at a guesthouse called the Flamingo – pretty nice except for the mosquitos – thank goodness for mosquito nets – very basic – anyway, we went to the baths in the middle of the town, John got a Thai massage, we went on a spice tour (totally a waste of time, but they had good fruit at the end/and the best curry I think we’ve had in Tanzania) – it’s a very cool little town – oh and the spice coffee was really good – normal coffee with a bunch of spices mixed in – yumm – and wayyyyy better food here. I didn’t want to hurl thinking of the word “lunch”. And it was totally funny – at around sunset all these guys jumped off the side of the “pier” (actually, it was really just into the bay) – I mean over and over again and all trying to outdo the next…

Speaking of hurling – that’s what I did on the way back to the mainland. They totally overbooked this boat we took back and about 20 minutes from the mainland I couldn’t take it anymore and I had to chunk up the 1/2 of a twix I had for breakfast. Luckily John had the foresight to get us to the back of the boat so when we finally docked we were one of the first ones off the boat. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened.

Back to the YWCA we went – we had to get a “flat” which meant we had our own bathroom. That’s all they had left. We also arranged to go get our tickets on Scandinavian for our 30 hour bus tour to Kampala. Boy were we looking forward to that. We also had the absolute worst Thai food at this really fancy hotel – it just seems kind of weird that they couldn’t do good Thai food since they had all the usual ingredients like Lemon Grass, ginger and stuff – the climate is fairly similar – but yes, overly optimistic like all the food in Tanzania. So for the last meal we had in Tanzania we had, yes, you guessed it, Subway. Our saviour!!!

So to sum up Tanzania, outside of the L’Oasis Lodge the food kind of sucked (except for while we were on safari and on our Leshoto trek). The people were super nice. The scenery was exceptional. The infrastructure was a little iffy (but better than expected!). The Tazara was way cool. Zanzibar was worth the trip over. Um, that’s about it! We would come back some day. I think they’re in for some pretty big changes in the next few years!

So we decide to head to Zanzibar.  I figured this would either be the coolest thing or the most overrated thing.  We had met so many people that loved Zanzibar.  Zanzibar is this island off Tanzania that used to be it’s own country but now it’s part of Tanzania.  Originally it was established to take care of that lovely thing called the Slave Market.  Oh shoot, I forgot about Bagamoyo.  That’s what I get for not writing in this blog for a while.

Okay, Bagamoyo.  We decided to go see the ruins of Bagamoyo.  It’s an hour and a half away from Dar.  By minibus.  And let me tell you – I wish I had not had that tea that morning.  They are actually called Dali Dalas here and they just stuff a bunch of people in this minivan – it’s actually quite a neat system and as long as you aren’t going super far it’s pretty darn efficient.  Anyway, we eventually get to Bagamoyo and find a hotel – after first going to this one in the Lonely Planet that apparently closed down because the owners decided not to pay taxes – then off to another one.  It’s just so funny because Tanzania is apparently at the beginning of high season (starts at the beginning of July) and we’re quite literally the only ones at this hotel.  And we’re not talking about a small hotel, a really big one and all the other ones around there are pretty much empty too.  We end up staying in what we originally thought was a really cool room – literally a big hut sitting just inches from the beach – unfortunately the mosquito nets apparently didn’t work – which we have no idea how they were getting in – but John must have gotten bitten like 20 million times that night.

Anyway, the ruins.  They were pretty cool but not very well maintained.  They were built at the time when the slave trade was really big.  Bagamoyo is close to Zanzibar where the Slave’s were sold.  According to the guide we hired (who decided we should go there by bicycle which turned out to be really fun except for the lack of brakes – good thing it was mostly flat!), Bagamoyo means “leave your heart”, meaning if you get to this town and you haven’t been rescued by now you have no hope – you are less than a day’s journey to Zanzibar where you will be sold.  I know it’s a part of history but I just really can’t think it’s super cool to look at ruins that hilight the slave trade. 

The next day we headed back to Dar.  The taxi driver, Valencia, that camps out at the YWCA where we stayed at like 20 times – okay 5 times – drove us to the minibus terminal to get there and then told us how to get back to the YWCA by transferring.  That’s kind of the nice thing…even though we didn’t speak a ton of Swahili and the minibuses could have taken us for a ride, they just handed us back the correct change and treated us like all other people riding the dali dalas. 

Okay, really this time…Zanzibar.