Fort Portal and the crater lakes
Trip Start
Jan 22, 2008
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56
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Trip End
Aug 22, 2008
Fort portal,
Uganda
Monday, June 23, 2008
At 2am we woke up and walked to the main road hoping the bus was going to collect us, as planned, but as we had no way of calling to remind him he just had to wait and hope. At 2.45am a Kampala bus picked us up and took us to the other end of town, where we found our Fort Portal bus there full of people sleeping - including the driver!
I slept alot of the journey, which lasted for 9h (instead of the 6 we were told), but saw the elephants as we passed through Queens National Park.
When we arrived we found that taxi's were 25,000USH/8 pounds to the Campsite we wanted to go to at the crater lakes
big horns
. We thought they were trying to get too much money from us and therefore decided to just stay in Fort Portal instead. Before we knew it a shared taxi said he was going to the lakes and it would cost 3,000USH/1pound each - so we jumped in. 5 mins later he said we had to transfer taxis into another one (we thought that this was a con! - thankfully it wasn't), which ended up having 8 people in! karls foot was up on the window and everyone was really squashed up and I lost my feeling in my foot. It was such fun , especially when the driver only went about 20kph!When we arrived I was really dissapointed in the campsite as it did not have a view over the crater lakes and you had to go down a steep muddy slope to the lake. Also the lack of electricity and basic facilities seemed too much like what we had just left at Lake Bunyoni. This made us decide to only spend one night there and then go back to Kampala and south to the equator so we could put one foot either side!
One thing about he campsite was that all the proceeds (we are told) go to the orphanage across the road and you are asked if you want to stay a few days and teach/contribute in any way you can. We also just read an article in the local paper about how many teachers truant in Uganda since noone checks up on them and it costs too much money for them to get the school each day and therefore many children are left alone in the classrooms for a lot of the time
the waterfall
. This is especially bad since education is not free here and therefore many families are giving up a lot to enable to send their kids to school and why many children are not in schools but playing on the streets instead.We decided to go for a 5 or 6 hour walk/hike around the area the next day to see 3 crater lakes, the local villages and a waterfall with a guide. It was a beautiful walk and fabulous/beautiful waterfall. i did not, however, enjoy the steep 55° climb down which only had loose mud on the path - I nearly decided to go down on my bum, which probably would have been the best idea! I did, however, enjoy the cold shower under the fall , once we had climbed over the tree roots - but slipped on the moss and had a hufe bruise on my bum to prove it!
The last hour walking back, at the speed the guide and Karl walk really took it out of me and I had aches and pains the next day to remind me of it! I think it was the longest walk I have ever been on.. with all this walking you'd think that I would be rapidly losing weight huh!?! my question is why not!??!
The guide was really good. I just couldn't believe that he was not getting paid anything by the hotel/campsite for 9 months and then they will discuss it. So of course we were compelled to give him a huge tip - as I hope all the other tourists do. I just can't believe that the locals are paid about 50,000-80,000 USH a month (max 30 pounds) to work at all these hotels, while the white owners are raking in the money.
When we got back we spent a couple of hours watching the colobus monkeys that were in the trees in the campsite, while we waited about 2hours for our taxi to show up!
