Last days in Uganda
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Kabale,
Uganda
Thursday, May 15, 2008
When I last blogged we were heading back to Uganda to Lake Bunyoni, a popular chill out spot with travellers in Western Uganda.
We had a 4.30am start from Rwanda and got the bus from Kigali to Kabale (near to the lake). We nearly missed the town Kabale altogether as we estimated it (based on the journey there) to be about 2 hrs from the border. But a mere 15 mins from the border (luckily we happened to be awake) we saw a sign for Kabale public library, which we took to be a strong indication that Kabale might be closer than we thought, and found ourselves speeding (well these buses dont really "speed" anywhere but we definitely weren't stopping any time soon!) through our destination town.
After conferring with a few other passengers we got the driver to stop and he let us out. Then we found a taxi (or rather a taxi driver found us) and headed off in search of some accomodation. Having nothing booked, we had to check prices and availability etc and our taxi man really entered into the spirit of things, wondering if we could see ourselves sleeping in a cottage, and seemed to feel quite strongly that we needed to find a place where we could stay for two nights as it would be a hassle to stay somewhere for one night and then move again the next day! It was so funny with all three of us having our say it felt like it was a democratic decision between all of us rather than just the two!
Our acccomodation of choice was brilliant though, very compfortable and overlooking the lake and I was very excited that we would be having a proper sleep and not have to be up at a ridiculous hour to spend another day sitting on a bus!
Not much happened at the lake apart from a pretty pathetic attempt at cannoeing which involved us going around in a LOT of circles until someone came and showed us how to "pull" the water. After that we paddled in a perfectly straight line...right into the side of the jetty!
And I wish that was where our problems ended.
Sadly, my exit from the canoe was not as smooth as I would have liked and I ended up falling face down into the bottom of the canoe (right down, not just a trip) which gave everyone around quite a laugh. Feeling that our lake experience had probably not been as tranquil as it might have been, and thinking that if ever there was a queue to leave, this was probably it, we packed our bags and headed back to Kabale.
Our next task was to find our way back to Kampala and ultimately on to Entebbe so we could get our flight to Nairobi the next day.
We opted to catch the Post Bus from Kabale to Kampala...a decision that still haunts us till this day.
Here is why...
1. The horn - Deafening, annoying and going off every couple of minutes. It sounded like a distorted, more sinister version of something a clown would have in a circus.
2. Stopping a LOT - And not just at post offices but anywhere and everywhere, sometimes for a short while, sometimes for longer, without much rhyme or reason as far as we could tell.
3. Communication and toilet protocol - We are travelling with local people on local transport. They know the ropes. We don't. By the time we've worked out what's going on, it's usually too late. For example, by the time the man in the seat behind tells us that the driver has been saying people can get off for a "short call" (as they call it) people are already fighting there way back on to the bus with no intention of letting us past.
Leaving the bus at ANY time is not something to be entered into lightly. We have a very real fear of being left behind which stems from our journey to Rwanda when the bus started to leave whilst I was behind a bush mid-squat and even with Kirsty trying to hold up the bus I still had to jump onto a moving vehicle!
Basically, our journey back to Kampala was a long and bitter struggle to keep bladder control.
However, on finally reaching Entebbe that evening, we were lucky enough to meet up with Charles again from our school who had come to Entebbe to drop off a nephew at school. It was just a coincidence that we happened to be in Entebbe at the same time and it was great to see him and catch up. He came to the airport to see us off which was lovely but it was sad to be finally leaving Uganda.
