Tuesday, October 19, 2010

photo recap: Alanna + Dogs

Many new friends along the way.

Wild Spirit Lodge, Nature's Valley, South Africa


Amampondo Backpackers, Port St. John's, South Africa


Sugar Shack, East London, South Africa


Shoestrings Backpackers, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe


Cool Runnings Backpackers, Senga Bay, Malawi


Mayoka Village, Nkhata Bay, Malawi (the saddest, closest-to-death dog I've ever seen)


Rwenzori View Guesthouse, Fort Portal, Uganda


Jinja, Uganda

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Summary: The Rest of Uganda

Hokay! Back on the blog train. Here we go. It feels a bit funny continuing on after Alanna's eloquent conclusion to all that we experienced, but that is the whole we've dug ourselves into, isn't it?

So where were we? Yes, I do recall now! Lake Nkuruba, near Fort Portal, Uganda! Kitchen embarrassments, adorable thieving children... (Aldrin, I totally forgive you).

Lake Nkuruba

Lake Nkuruba is one of Uganda's 'crater lakes,' dozens of which can be found in this part of the country. (I am not up to speed on their history, but an overwhelming amount of evidence leads me to believe that these lakes are in fact flooded craters). Nkuruba is small, round, entirely choked with lush Ugandan forest, and feels about as far removed from everything as one could hope to be. Our daily swims would invariably coincide with visits from assorted groups of local boys who'd appear on opposing shores, hop onto homemade rafts and splash over to our side to swim badly and make a lot of noise. To us, even after four days of lake visits, the kids' varying styles of undergarment remained their sole distinguishing feature.



Thinking back to failed raft-building attempts as a kid. Turns out all I needed to do was buy a plane ticket to Africa and lash some reeds together.



We had two Canadian encounters at Lake Nkuruba: first off, the lake's hefty black-and-white colobus population were paid a visit by a group of monkey researchers from McGill who stood and pointed at a group of monkeys for twenty minutes and then went swimming (hey... does that mean I'm a monkey researcher?!). We also met and spent a good deal of time with a woman from Vancouver who it turns out is on my friend's baseball team! Hi Lisa! (Sorry we didn't take any photos of you!)

If Willie Nelson were a Black-and-White Colobus Monkey

The road to Rwaihumba village, with the Ruwenzory mountain range in the distance. Behind those is the Congo! Spooky.

Packing Avocados in Rwaihumba. This village claims to have the "3rd largest village market in Uganda" (pretty big feat I know) but I assume we were there on a non-market day because, well, there was no market.

Bananas at Rwaihumba.

After a fantastic time at the smallest lake visit of our trip, we caught a bus to Kampala for the third and final time. The trip wasn't so bad, we snacked on grilled bananas and were treated to Celine Dion music videos and the second half of a Thai action film.

Our final stop in Uganda was Jinja, the country's second-most populated city. Jinja is located where the Nile River first feeds out of Lake Victoria (which is a very big deal, because the Nile is a super-long river if you haven't heard). Our choice of accommodation, the Triangle Hotel, overlooked the lake and was situated in a neighborhood of fascinating dilapidated art-deco residences set on spacious palm-lined lawns. The area had evidently been at one point inhabited by wealthy whites – our hotel was sandwiched between a golf course and an abandoned yacht club – but all the homes are now in serious disrepair and likely at quadruple their intended capacity. The walk from the minibus stop to the Triangle had a surreal Palm-Springs-via-Mad-Max vibe to it.


Spot the Man

This hotel was across the street from ours, and is definitely not a hotel any longer, but we were informed this is where Ida Amin stayed when he was in Jinja.

The Triangle Hotel pool. Best pool.

Our hotel, while slightly run-down itself, still sided as one of the more luxurious places we stayed, with poolside bar service, TV, and a private lakeview balcony. The place was giant and well past its heyday: entire wings were closed semi-permanently and the building's only other patrons seemed to be the East Indian owner's large family. But the hotel did have the standing to host an prestigious conference of some kind, because near the end of our stay, after we'd readied ourselves for yet another quiet swim under the ornamental crocodile-arch, we found our usually deserted poolside overrun with large important-looking Ugandan men in military uniform.

One evening we decided to take advantage of room service and ordered butter naan and a scotch. I made a pretty large fool of myself ordering the scotch.

One morning we hired a guide to float us out to the actual specific source of the Nile: a small patch of ripples where, he explained, the water visibly accelerates as it leaves Lake Victoria. Apparently the patch of ripples was a little more dramatic before they built a giant hydroelectric dam downstream and therefore raised the water level. Once again, a small and unremarkable landmark rendered even more unremarkable in favour of providing electricity to thousands of homes. When will it end?

And they say Africa isn't safe.

Our driver, Captain Rasta.

At the source of the Nile! Our guide was not too familiar with exposure settings but I do not hold it against him.

Also on the tour we stopped at a small grubby island next to the 'source' to stretch our legs and engage in photo-ops. While no larger than an average bachelor apartment, the island was home to at least half a dozen fishermen and a small souvenir hut. The fishermen didn't exactly have homes, but our guide led us to a group of miniscule tents – to our eyes indistinguishable from piles of garbage – where they slept when it rained.


Our guide (sorry mr. guide but I do not remember your name!) cutting up some jackfruit for us to taste.

Other valuable sights along the way included an (even smaller) island inhabited by a colony of massive yellow monitor lizards, and a tour of all the niches along the shore where fishermen stash their nets to bypass overfishing laws, as only line fishing is permitted. We passed a few fishing boats, and our guide half-joked that “all fishermen are always in a bad mood” and what with the garbage tents and the fact that their livelihood will probably be extinct within the decade and yet they're still forced to risk crippling fines in order to survive, well, it's not too improbable a generalization. (That said, the lizards seemed fairly content.)

Lake Side View Hotel

Giant marabou storks, each one of these comes up to my chest, they are everywhere. (Insert off-colour reference to Uganda's birthrate here.)

Krest Bitter Lemon, our new favourite Africa drink.

Again with the birthrate thing?

From Jinja we took a bus across the last border crossing of our trip into Kenya and bid Uganda adieu. Whether it was the country's size, its bus network or just that the places we wanted to see were fairly spread out, Uganda was the country we were able to see the most of, which felt good. It gets pegged as an 'in-a-nutshell' African country, and the description was appropriate for us: we did the safari thing, we did the crazy-ass city thing, we drank beer in loud overstuffed hostels and we drank beer among little tweeting birds. While not the first notion of Africa for most, Uganda is a beautiful little package perfectly situated for small-scale tourists such as ourselves, where every corner merits exploration (the exception being the north corner, where the Lord's Resistance Army is doing really, really awful things to people). And I haven't even mentioned that we shelled out $450 to see the mountain gorillas! That's because we didn't! And we still had an amazing time. So there.