Kampala Snake Park

Yesterday we finally made it to Kampala Snake Park!
I had been after a guarenteed smile for quite some time now, and this place sure did deliver! Construction is still not fully finished, but they already have plenty of snakes on show, as well as tortoises. They also intend to host some crocodiles in the future.
The best part is that the guide who shows you round, knows everything about the snakes on show and even climbs in with most of them and pokes them with a stick so that they move for you. I have some videos of this... I'll try to upload them, but I'm still learning how to use all this stuff.

After this the weather was quite grim, so we just went to the beach resort in Entebbe and ate a big mama (deep fried tilapia) and chips.

Yum Yum!! There were lots of those nasty Storks hanging round too... yuck!

Kyenjojo part 2

Sorry!

I just realised that I didn't actually talk about Kyenjojo like I had intended to, in the earlier post.
For me, the most exciting and interesting thing in Kyenjojo is a large pilgrimage site, about 3km from the town centre. It's not clear exactly what it commemorates. It's a mound of large rocks with the names of Saints carved into them. I can find any information about it, so for now, I'll just show a picture.
It's really impressive though!

Kyenjojo and the Rains

It's raining! It's pouring!

Or rather, it was. In Kyenjojo (Say "Chen-jo-jo"). On Wednesday. I don't know about these rainy seasons. They seem to be long, and just as one ends, another starts.

So for work, we had to do a long cross country journey. It rained the whole way, eventually, after travelling 80km along the road to Kyenjojo to Hoima, the roads became completely impassable, with overloaded lorries sliding all over the place on the mud.

Here is my face at being told we had to turn back.

Note, at least this allowed for plenty of knitting time!

It was nice to see all the Ugandan umbrellas come out!


The next day we had to do a load of driving to get to Hoima. But we made it.

It's not raining yet today... touch wood!

Murchison Falls National Park

So it was all a bit impromptu, but I decided to got to Murchison Falls this weekend with some of my friends from the office. Murchison Falls is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Uganda (probably second only to Bwindi Impenetrable forest), and I was so devastated that I left Uganda last time having not yet been there.

The National Park is built up around the falls and hosts elephants, giraffes, lions, Ugandan kobs, waterbuck. buffaloes, hippos and crocodiles. In the 1960s this was Uganda's best and most national park, attracting tourism from all over the world. Unfortunately political disruption and hunger later led troops and poachers to wipe out a vast majority of the game in the park, and animals numbers nowadays are much less dense.

So it was all left to the last minute and unfortunately, we couldn't secure any accommodation within the Park itself! We had to settle for staying at Masindi Hotel instead.

At first I was disappointed... until I found out that the Queen has stayed there!!! And Ernest Hemingway!! Oh and Katherine Hepburn when she filmed The African Queen. So then I found the accommodation quite suitable.

Masindi Hotel

We set off on Saturday morning and the roads to Masinda were pretty good. Through the park though, not so much (as you'd expect!) , Just look at the roadsign! Fortunately this didn't happen to us!

On Saturday afternoon we took a river cruise along the Nile to the base of the falls. We saw lots of game! Elephants, Hippos, Crocodile and Buffalo. It was so hot. I wish I knew the temperature, but it was the kind of heat when you have to breath with shallow breathes.

In the evening we had dinner at the Masindi Hotel. I had Fish & Chips. I think it's probably what Lizzy would have ordered!

Sunday morning, we caught the ferry to Paraa and then took a game drive. The park was so busy that there were no game wardens available so we just drove around aimlessly for a while. We saw some Giraffes, and I was thrilled, because these were the first ones that I had seen in Uganda. But no lions!

In the afternoon we went to the top of the falls. I spent the entire time there terrifies of the tsetse flies that were buzzing round waiting to bite me. They land on your clothes and then bite you, hard. I spent the whole panicking that I could hear buzzing.
It was so beautiful at the falls. They have been described as the most spectacular thing to happen to thee Nile along its 6700km length, and they certainly are exquisite! The noise is incredible, and I got soaked by the spray!

Epic Fail at Blogging!

Guys, I'm sorry! This is my formal apology. Life and work and everything got in the way! But now I'm back, and I'm yours and I will do my best to bring you some super stories over the next few months!

Remember to err is human, but to forgive, divine.

xxx

Boda Boda

Today I caught a boda boda for the first time. They're the motorbike taxis that operate here in Kampala. Before this, 4 little words from my guide book had been putting me off...

"FIVE DEATHS PER DAY"

But I really wanted to try one, so I picked today, a bank holiday, when the roads are virtually clear, to do it.

Boda Boda is a name derived from the phrase "Border to Border", as motorbikes were originally uses to transport goods across the no-man's-land between the Ugandan and Kenyan borders.

It was super, though I don't know if I'll do it again. I clung on so tightly to the bar on the back that my hand was slipping with all the sweat.

Gonna watch a film tonight! Perfect film to punctuate the day your first motorbike ride?

"New Moon" of course!
xxx

Kanungu

Eh up!

I was in Kanungu today. A quick search of Kanungu on Google shows that it's really only famous for two things at the moment.

The first is the terrible landslides that happened here just last week, in which 3 children were killed. Thankfully, the rains are finished here now, and the risk of this happening here soon is very low.

The second is the Kanungu Massacre, which is notorious throughout Uganda. It involves the murder of members of a religious sect in the year 2000. They were locked in a church and it was burnt to the ground.

I, however, felt very drawn to Kanungu.

For one, a little child shouted from a bush "Muzungu! Please wave at me!"

And secondly,

I have found my place in the world.