First off - sorry for the delay! Internet access has been a bit scarce lately, and we seem to have become very, very busy over the last couple of weeks! I do have a few posts ready to throw at you though - so forgive me for doing it all at once!
So amongst all the working and volunteering stuff, there really has been a whole bunch of fun touristy (and otherwise) stuff thrown into the mix too!
Last weekend Jen & I took off to Jinja - the birthplace of the Nile (or so the Ugandans say). We got a hotel room purely for the view, and had a balcony that overlooked the Nile and the setting sun. Unfortunately the same hotel also had bats in the lobby and ants crawling all over one of the beds in our room. Lesson learned - never get a hotel room purely for the view! But the rest of Jinja was great. It’s a much quieter town than Kampala and it was nice to be able to cross the street without fearing for your life!
On Sunday we went on a horseback safari (really a glorified horseback ride) along the banks of the Nile and through neighbouring villages. It was a great way to spend a morning, though really only reinforced for me the fact that I’m not the best on the back of a horse. Andrea would have been proud of my attempts at trotting - I tried to post, but failed miserably. And cantering... well, I won’t get into the cantering. Suffice to say that I’m not meant to ride horses! Beautiful views though, and I always love going through villages and seeing what life is like there. I’m such a sucker for kids - kids everywhere really, but in remote places especially. I love how excited they are and how they’ll chase you through the village - it’s all really quite thrilling! But, being on the back of a horse and all, it was hard to really engage. A nice tour none the less!
Then this past weekend, our original plan was to go to Mount Elgon and Sipi Falls... this was of course until there were massive landslides in the area. So instead we decided that we deserved a little weekend in the sun - so we headed out to the Ssese Islands, a group of islands, complete with white sand, in the midst of Lake Victoria. It was such a great weekend! We met a group of other mzungus (white people) from all over the world who had come to Uganda for all kinds of different reasons - some social work, some teaching, some engineering, some renewable energy - all really interesting though. We all hit it off right away and spent the rest of the weekend lounging around on the beach, playing a ton of frisbee, hanging out around bonfires.
On our only full day we decided that the 9 of us would charter a fishing boat to take us out and about amongst the islands for the day. So off we went, 9 white people and the boat’s owner, in a group of islands that doesn’t see an awful lot of tourism (especially considering how great the islands were!). We found an isolated island that we called home for the afternoon and designated “Mzungu island” - it was great to spend the day touring around, swimming, eating fresh pineapple and drinking nice cold beers. Definitely my kind of weekend!
This weekend?
SAFARI!
Hippos, here I come! :)
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