World Wittering

We stumbled out of bed before daylight, shivering from the effects of our shared flu, and staggered to where our taxi was supposedly waiting. The penny dropped twenty minutes later when we were still without a lift and Lee discovered her purse was missing, last seen in said taxi the previous evening. Much cursing ensued and we scrambled to arrange a replacement lift to our 7am bus. Fortunately, we were soon speeding down the hill to central Nairobi and were relieved to take our seats on board.

I had taken the liberty of booking us onto the Akamba Royal Class bus and we were soon comfortably ensconsed in lovely big comfy armchairs with extra legroom and served a cooked breakfast, just what the doctor ordered. We bundled ourselves up with plenty of tissues, got dosed up on paracetemol and settled in for the twelve hour journey, only leaving our seat for the chaotic border crossing into Uganda.

The reason for our journey was Lee’s sudden decision in India that we simply had to go to Rwanda to see the mountain gorillas – supposedly “the best thing you could possibly do in Africa”, or something. Many hours and vast resources had been expended in Mumbai trying to facilitate this, contending with the seemingly incompetent staff at the gorilla booking office, the rules forbidding the transfer of funds out of India and the hassle of trying to arrange a transfer from Barclays bank by fax when you are unable to give them the actual amount to be transferred – fascists.

Anyway, Lee had finally, we hoped, got it sorted, and we were now on our way to Kigali in Rwanda, via Kampala in Uganda, by way of consecutive punishing 12 hour-plus bus rides – hence my decision to pay a few quid more and go for a spot of luxury. Neither country had been on our original list of places to visit when we drew up our ludicrous itinerary, and neither was a country I’d ever given any thought about visiting, but as we were in the neighbourhood…

Our lovely, friendly, warm, comfortable, nice, lovely, warm and, above all, comfortable bus deposited us in the mayhem of Kampala shortly after dark with no local currency and nowhere booked to stay, oh, and feeling like death. We threw ourselves at the mercy of a taxi driver who immediately proved his worth by taking us to a nearby ATM – in a stroke proving the Lonely Planet are liars on the path to hell, they said there were none but there appeared to be one, with accompanying armed guard, on almost every street corner.

Next, we drove through the relentless evening traffic, which put even Nairobi’s nightmarish rush hour into perspective, and eventually reached the Backpackers, a wonderful haven of traveller tranquility on the hill overlooking the city, where Dave from Norf Lundin graciously gave us a bed for the night. Lee immediately collapsed beneath the sheets, while I sought sustenance, both solid and liquid, in the bar. Whilst there, I was also able to book myself on a trip to raft the source of the Nile, an opportunity not to be missed, even in my weakened condition. “Ah, a 7am start you say?” Harumph.

I returned to the room to discover that I had forgotten to order any food for Lee and, even worse, she had remembered she was hungry. Harsh words were uttered. I say uttered, I mean screamed. I returned to the bar to be told the kitchen had closed. All they had was cake, on display on little cakestands on the bar. “Give me a slice of each” I said, hedging my bets. “Ah, oh, on second thoughts, give me two slices of the one which doesn’t have ants crawling all over it, thanks.”

Once more into the darkness, dear friends, once more, I left Lee snoring and skulked out to imbibe as much coffee as possible while I waited for my lift. The bus arrived soon after and we then spent a riveting two and a half hours roaming the various other hotels in the city collecting other, erm, white water enthusiasts, including – oh thank the Lord! – a dozen twentysomething American girls who spent the entire journey showing off their uncanny impressions of Paris, Nicole, Britney and Lindsey in between texting and being generally obnoxious. Fortunately, I seemed to be only person not in a group and so was able to sneak under the radar, hunching into a corner of a back seat and being taken for an inanimate object.

A mere four hours after dragging my aching carcass out of my slumber pit, I was at Jinja, being briefed on our route down 25km of the Nile, just north of its source in Lake Victoria, and including five Class 5 rapids – the most dangerous it’s possible to raft.

We took to our boats and paddled into the river before being given a brief run through of the various commands and techniques necessary to make it to the end alive – these included “paddle really hard”, “hold on” and, for the really big water “Oh Shit!”. Then they turned the raft upside down so we could get used to falling out and we were off. Our boat had two Canadian guides – the voluptuous, smiley Marie-something or other and Frenchie, who had three toes missing from one foot after an ominous sounding “grain silo incident”. The rest of the crew was made up of a pair of ageing US military types, one of whom was already fluorescent pink with sunburn (yeah, good luck with that out rafting for a day at the equator mate), a pair of gay Germans and one of the American girls with a quite unfeasible facial hair problem who sat in the front next to me but didn’t appear to grasp that the raft was propelled by means of PADDLING with that PADDLE – THE ONE YOU’RE HOLDING!

Suffice to say, we hit the first three class fives, we were flipped out of the boat in a variety of spectacular and quite terrifying ways and I drank a lot of Nile. When we weren’t being dumped in the river by ferocious torrents of white water, we were paddling seemingly interminable distances beneath the mercilessly beating equatorial sun (yes PADDLING, with the PADDLE, LIKE THIS, OH FOR GOD’S SAKE WOMAN!) and watching with mild amusement as we all turned pink and the American turned a sort of glowing violet with dark red welts.

And then it was lunch, ham and cheese sarnies and squash on a tiny island (Can someone please shut those American girls up before I go on a pre-prandial killing spree, can’t you see I’ve got the sniffles).

I’m not sure what was different after lunch, perhaps it was just that we were all just a wee bit heavier, or maybe even we were finally getting the hang of this rafting thing, but we managed to stay in the boat as we tackled the afternoon’s mostly class 4’s. Finally, we reached the approach to a class 6, where we would disembark and carry the boats around, before getting back in for the final, and most difficult, class 5 of the day.

We were given the treat of going down last and watching how the other boats fared with this two part rapid. I took great delight in the expressions of exteme terror on the faces of  the American girls, and even more delight as their boat flipped at the first part of the rapid and they dragged themselves like drowned rats into the rescue boats. And then it was our turn.

We made it safely through the first big drop, paddling hard and crouching low, holding tight when the “Oh Shit!” command rang out, then it was back up and pounding full pelt with the oars to get the right position for the second hit. The “Oh Shit!” rang out again and we crouched and held, but to no avail as we were hit by a solid wall of water, turning the boat one hundred and eighty degress in the air and dumping us all into the drink.

But we’d done it, completed the course and the adrenaline buzz was amazing. We trudged up the bank to the bus where cold beers were dispersed and dry clothes pulled on. I swiftly coughed up a ludicrous amount for a DVD and photo CD of the day and then we were back on our way to Kampala, round the houses and then finally back at the hostel around 8pm.

I met Lee in the room and we repaired to the bar where I regaled her with stories of my derring do over an extremely poor pizza and some lovely refreshing beer before she filled me in on her day – she’d made it into town and booked us on the following morning’s bus to Kigali, the 6am standard class boneshaker, oh joy, time for bed, but first, what the hell, just one more beer.