Week 7

Thursday 2nd June.

Back to the Kabale Hilton.

Woke up to the most beautiful view from our upgrade tent looking out over lake Bunyonyi. I spent the morning sitting on our 'balcony' writing weeks 3 and 4 of my blog while Alex walked around the lake fishing. He didn't catch anything but had a nice morning. We spent the rest of the day bumming around in the sun, eating and relaxing.

We left the lake at 5pm to make our way slowly down the shitty road, the alternative was to stay there another night and leave crazy early in the morning, so as much as we would have loved to have stayed at Lake Bunyonyi another night we were also happy not to have an early morning. We got back to the same 'hotel' in Kabale and set up our mats and sleeping bags in the hall again. Alex and Aileen were on cook group, and having lost Andrea in Rwanda, Emma joined their group. They made a yummy vegetable, curry, soupy thing. I spent the whole evening and night doing sweet F.A., laying on my mat in the scout hall type place playing games on the laptop and watching movies.

Friday 3rd June.

Adrift in Jinga, Uganda.

We were up at 5am and on the road at 6am. We drove all day only stopping three times. Once for breakfast at the petrol station we had lunch at on the way to Kable. Alex, Aileen and Emma set out cereals and bread in front of the truck in the petrol station and Marcus and I cleaned crouched on the ground of the petrol station. We stopped for lunch at the aids orphan shop we had breakfast at on the way to Kabale and got another chicken and avocado wrap. Delicious. We stopped once more just before the camp in Jinja at a mini mart/service station so cook group could buy some supplies for their sweet'n'sour sausages and rice dinner.

Arriving at Adrift Camp, Jinja, Uganda we were pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. We set up our tents on a small patch of grass between the bar and the toilets and set ourselves up in the bar. The bar looks over the great Nile River, which after our jaunt back to Nairobi we will be following all the way to Egypt. Also, from the bar you can sit and watch people do the 45 meter bungy jump and get dipped in the Nile. I didn't even think for a second that I might like to do it again, mum and dad will be pleased no doubt. There was also free wifi which is very exciting, but also was very slow.  Hopefully I will be able to skype mum and dad.

I forgot to mention that we have crossed the equator 4 times at this stage. We have to cross back into the Northern Hemisphere again making it 5 times in total. Pretty impressive!

Saturday 4th June.

Nile perch bonanza.

Alex was up early to go fishing in Nile. I slept in and then made my way to the bar to try and upload some photos. I managed to post some of my blog, but was unable to upload photos because the internet was so slow. I tried to call mum and dad on skype but it was to slow.

Alex came up for lunch, happy as a pig in s**t because he had caught some Nile perch. After lunch he went back to fishing and Felix and I caught a taxi into town with Mark and Jan so that we could buy stuff for dinner. I ended up spending most of the time in the line for an ATM while Felix ran down to the market to grab supplies.

Had a chilled out night sitting in the bar, watching the sun set over the Nile and organising photos.

Sunday 5th June.

Welcome home Farron and Leigh.

Had a relaxing day doing nothing much at all (its a hard life hey...). We watched as Jimmy, Benne, Aileen and Emma bungied, Alex went fishing and caught more Nile perch. He also hooked a massive fish which snapped his smaller rod. Impressively he managed to fix it 'McGuiver style' with some paper, glue and duct tape.

I managed to speak to mum and dad by calling their mobile phone via Skype. It was a pretty bad connection with bad feedback, long delays and it kept on cutting in and out, but it was so nice to hear their voices and their laughter. It made me feel close to home again even though I was sitting in a bar looking over the Nile River. I felt rejuvenated after speaking to them and then to make a good day even better, Farron and Leigh arrived at 5pm. It is so nice to have them home again, we all missed them.

Cook group made a really nice beef and potato stew and Farron made his dinner time speech about what we can expect the next day. Everything back to normal and how it should be again.

Just before bed I organised with the guys at the bar for Alex to get a big cooked breakfast in the morning for his birthday. The kitchen didn't open until 8am but we were leaving at that time, so they very generously said that they would open earlier and cook the brekky.

Monday 6th June.

Happy 29th Birthday to Alex!!!

I got up at 7am to make sure Alex's breakfast was being cooked and to grab his birthday present from Benne who had been stashing it for me ever since I bought it at Nungwi Beach, Zanzibar.

At 7.30am sharp Alex was up at the truck about to grab himself some breakfast when I gave him his big cooked breakfast and painting (I got him a large painting of lots of blue fish swimming in a circle. It kind of resembles a Magic Eye picture). He also received a bottle of Amarula from Mark, a really yummy, creamy liquor. While he ate his breakfast I went to pack down the tent and Mark kindly gave me  hand so that Alex didn't have to do it on his birthday.

Taking off at 8am we drove most of the day to get to our next camp closer to Nairobi on the shores of Lake Victoria. We arrived in the afternoon and set up our tents, making sure we weren't underneath a sausage tree. Lake Victoria, or at least the part we could see from camp, was like a big ugly swamp. Not at all what I had imagined. The camp was also 'different'... it looked like it would be the perfect setting for a haunting or bloodshed horror type movie setting.

Amazingly though it had free wifi and was unbelievable fast. Faster than any internet I have ever used, ever! Thanks to this I managed to upload hundreds of photos, but unfortunately it was the middle of the night in Australia and we would be leaving early in the morning so couldn't skype anyone. Alex gave a big Nile Perch to the staff who said that they would cook it for us and we were told that cook group could have the night off because we were all going to order from the bar. It had been organised that we meet up with another African Trails truck as one of the guys on it had traveled down the west side (Marrakesh to Cape Town) with our crew. It was like witnessing a large family reunion. Fun was going to be had!

Alex's fish came out perfectly cooked and absolutely delicious, there was enough for everyone to have a small portion of it which was good. We all ordered out food which came out in drips and drabs. I ordered a 'fillet steak' (read: a small piece of bone with some fat, leather and griscle attached), but it was nice to be able to order a meal and sit down at a table and eat with everyone. Everyone was buying Alex drinks for his birthday and Darny, our replacement driver while Farron was away played a drinking game with Alex, and a few other unsuspecting victims. It went a little something like this: Alex had to mimic Darny's every move, much like a game of Simon says, but if he failed then he had to drink whatever Darny gave him to drink. Darny put his arms in the air, Alex put his arms in the air. Darny poked his tongue out and made a funny face, Alex poked his tongue out and made a funny face. Darny took his shot of tequila, Alex took his shot of tequila. Darny spat his shot of tequila back into the shot glass, Alex failed to spit his back into the glass. Alex had to drink Darny's spat out shot of tequila. Gross but very funny!

Aileen came to the truck and helped me make a fairy bread cake for Alex. She had never even heard of fairy bread before and I was happy to spread the joy around the world, she will now take fairy bread back to Canada and spread the word. We gave Alex the giant plate of fairy bread while everyone sang happy birthday to him.

Best. Cake. Ever!

The celebrations continued into the night, songs were sung, eels ate straws and fun was had. A great night all up.

Tuesday 7th June.

Nice camp in the making.

We had breakfast of avocado on toast and made our way to the next camp. We stopped for lunch in a small town and grabbed some meat and chapati. We got to camp in the afternoon and upgraded to a really nice permanent tent for Alex's birthday. Mum and Dad had sent him with a birthday card with some US$ inside, so that paid for the upgrade for two nights. It was a really nice place, everything was brand spanking new. Although there was no internet, no food at the bar, and there was meant to be a watering hole- but it hadn't been dug yet.

A game drive in Nakuru National Park, famous for the pink flamingos, was organised for the following morning. It worked out to be US$60 each for park entry and 1,000 shillings each for the safari car (US$11.60).

Cook group made roast beef and potatoes. It was Felix's last night on the truck so we had a few drinks and said goodbye to him. We also fare welled Jan, Benne, Jimmy, Darny and Janet who were all being driven to Nairobi in the morning. The week layover was originally planned to start this week, but had been delayed a week so that we could cruise back to Nairobi and stop at Hell's Gate National Park. The boys however had a plan to go to head down to the coast and took the opportunity to spend an extra week there, Felix's dad was arriving from Germany, and Janet's husband was arriving in Nairobi from Scotland for a week, whom she hadn't seen in over 7 months. We were also missing Fiona who had left to go to Nairobi from Jinja so that she could send her passport back to England to get an Ethiopian visa, because when we organised them in Harare, she was meant to be finishing in Nairobi and had not yet extended to Cairo, so didn't get one. It was weird having such a small group! We went to bed at a reasonable time and watched a movie, still tired from the birthday celebrations and knowing that we had to get up really early in the morning.

Wednesday 8th June.

Rhino, flamingo, and much more in Lake Nakuru N.P.

We woke up refreshed and ready for the day after a brilliant sleep in the most comfortable bed so far. Our safari car was there to pick us up at 6am as planned. There was me and Alex, Lars, Marcus, Aileen, Jerome, Geoff and BJ. Nakuru National Park was only about 15 minutes drive away from our camp so we were there when the gates opened and as the morning mist was still settled over the plains. It is a small park, only about 150 square kilometers,but it holds a great concentration of most animals, except for elephants because the park isnt big enough for even one nellie, let alone a whole family.

We saw everything we could have hoped to see, another brilliant game drive. We saw black and white rhino, thousands of pelican and pink flamingos, lions that had just finished with a buffalo carcass and we watched as hyena and jackall moved in to finish the job, there was two adolescent male lions with the beginnings of a mane fast asleep in the shade of a sign, baboons, vervet monkeys, giraffe, zebra, many different species of antelope including waterbuck, and right at the end of the drive as we were heading out of the park we caught a glimpse of a colobus monkey.

We stopped for lunch at Lake Nukuru Lodge, a fancy pants lodge in the middle of the park. Getting back to camp at 6pm we bought our driver Peter a beer, which he well and truely deserved after driving us around for 12 hours. We were told when we arrived home that there was no cook group as Farron had organised some locals to cook us a feast. They made a yummy roast potato and bean stew with a mountain of chipati bread. After dinner Benne and Jimmy had everything set up for a beer-pong tournament, but we were all so buggered from the massive game drive the tournament had to be postponed and we went to bed to watch a movie on the laptop.