Post-Nile

On our weekend off, we slipped away to the touristy town of Jinja. It's located about 2 hours North East of Kampala, so a total travel time of about 7 hours from Mbarara (see map above). Jinja's claim to fame is the Nile, and lots of fancy resorts have popped up on its banks. After a night in Kampala, we boarded a bus and headed out to Jinja. Before rafting, a couple of our croup decided to bunjee jump over the nile. I was not inclined to join them. Jumping off of really high things just isn't very appealing to me.

But who cares about that stuff. I need to talk about the Nile itself. For those of you reading from a certain Californian All Outdoors Whitewater Rafting, I will describe the river and its rapids as best as I can. The river is incredibly deep and wide, so the currents feel completely different than a California river. When I swam in the calm stretches, I could feel a bunch of different currents pulling me in different directions. The guide (Jeffery, a Ugandan who spoke with a strange mix of Ugandan and Australian accents, his use of slang (ie: weecked, Bro, cool, sweeeet) even more disconcerting) claimed that the river was 40 meters deep, but I don't really believe that. Maybe 40 feet? Chest high to a duck?

The rapids themselves were just ridiculously big. High water Merced stuff, but bigger than anything I have ever seen. They classified about four of the rapids as fives. I wouldn't disagree, but they weren't at all technical, just huge. In fact, our boat flipped on two of the big ones, and since the river is so deep, we just got pushed really far down and thrashed around a bit, but I didn't hit any rocks at all. The guide called forward paddles all day, once calling a back paddle but never calling a turn. But holy crap were those rapids big. At one point we went over a 9 foot waterfall, and all of the waves and holes we hit in other rapids towered over us. I do have some video footage from the trip that I'll show some of you, and if I can get this connection to cooperate I have some pics to post now.

Let me go over a few of the differences between this company and All Outdoors. First, and most unsettling, was that we were not allowed to wear shoes of any kind. We had to raft barefoot. This went against everything I have ever learned about rafting and I put up a good fight to keep my tevas on, but of course eventually conceded. And besides some walks through the mud and manure, no harm came to my feet.

The commands were pretty much the same, although we were told to get down in the boat on pretty much every rapid, another testament to the river's lack of technicality. The guides did not need paddlers at all, just a couple good J strokes and we were perfectly lined up. We were never told about swimmer's position, so when people fell in they just flailed about until a safety kayker came and plucked them out of the water. There was no high side command, a call that would have come in handy quite a lot. But that brings me to the strangest aspect of the company. I'm sure that the guides were flipping the boats on purpose. They'd line us up straight for any rocky rapids, but at the big ones, they'd turn us sideways to the waves, forcing us to flip. I'm not complaining. Flipping in those rapids was ridiculously fun, and makes for some great pictures and video. But boosting DVD sales by purposely putting guests in danger is a bit against AO policy.

But, they broke one more of AO's policies at the end of the trip, that being the famous no beer rule. We were each given 2 or 3 giant Nile Specials after the trip, which I have to admit was really nice, and made the bus ride back quite a little party. At one point, we passed another party of about 100 people running down the road. They surrounded the bus, caked in mud and playing drums. The guides explained that this was a circumcision party, and that it was a rite of passage for the 16 year old wearing a big feathery hat. The post-rafting energy from our bus mixed with their pre-circumcision energy to create a very loud, and incredibly unique party. That is not something that happens very often on the bus ride back from the South Fork.

Also different was the life on the sides of the river. We didn't see anything too crazy, but did see tons of monkeys, a couple river otters, and a whole bunch of crazy birds. There were people lining the edge of the river as well, although here they were bathing or gathering water, a very different use of rivers than that of humans in North America. About half way through the day, a rain storm broke out, drenching everybody. It poured and poured, which was actually kinda fun until the thunder and lightning broke out. Luckily it was a fairly brief storm and we managed to avoid being struck by lightning.

After the rafting trip, we had a delicious dinner at a hotel resort nearby our campsite. We met a man there who insisted we join him at a local night club to be filmed for a new video promoting tourism. Many of us were curious about African night life, so agreed to come with him later that night. We crammed into the back of a station wagon, and arrived at an unmarked door in a pretty sketchy part of town. There was one streetlight, and many people walking around the dirt roads. We figured we made a big mistake. We got out of the car and tried really hard to look cool, but it's hard not to stand out when our skin glows in the dark. As soon as we were allowed into the club, however, we were much more at ease. It was a pretty normal club, with lots of black lights, loud music and many bars. There weren't even that many groping prostitutes! We stayed for a little while and were filmed dancing (for who knows what). But, getting up at 6am and rafting all day really takes it out of you, so we headed back to the campsite in a crazy monsoon, praying that our tents would be dry inside. Mine faired well, and even though it rained for about 9 hours straight, I woke up dry.

So it's official. I cannot post pictures here today. I may try again soon, but otherwise you'll all just have to wait until the weekend. I'll be back in town this Saturday, and will update again then. After that, I only have one short week left in Uganda. I'll be home (the California one) on December 12th.