Uganda - White Water Rafting, Tracking Chimps and Teaching Orphans

November 1st 2013, 7:02:00 pm

After crossing into Uganda our first stop was Jinja, the second largest city in Uganda and its unofficial extreme sports capital. We had a free day here to do whatever activities took our fancy; some people went and played mini-golf, some went and played regular golf, but I opted for white water rafting down the White Nile.

All up there was seven people from our Dragoman group who went along, who with our American guide Tyler made up a full raft of people. We got taken to the "put in" point where we were given some breakfast, sorted out with high-flotation life vests and paddles and then were led down to our raft for some basic training, which involved things like paddling in time, turning, getting down low in the raft, flipping the raft and climbing back in. It was all pretty straightforward stuff and the water was a lovely refreshing temperature. A lot of people struggled to get back into the raft unassisted, but I surprised myself by being one of the ones who could! I can't even do a single chin up, but I guess climbing back into a raft probably uses a lot of the same muscles that I built up last year being stuck on crutches for nearly 6 months.

The first rapid of the day was one of the most fun and memorable ones, it was basically a three metre waterfall drop off, followed closely by two more pools of rapids. We went down the waterfall, which felt like a theme park flume log ride on steroids, then paddled as hard as we could for the bigger pool of rapids but the current was too strong and we ended up going down the less turbulent path.

White water rapids are rated on a grading scale from one to five, with five being the biggest rapids, and we were told that all of the rapids we were going through that day would be between grade three to five. Perfect for someone like me who's never done it before :) It's not actually as scary as it sounds, because the White Nile river flow is very high volume, that means the rapids are really big, but they're also really deep so there's much less chance of coming into contact with rocks. Lots more exciting and safer to boot!

During the day we went through eight rapids in total, and having never been rafting before I was a bit surprised how much calm floating down the river was involved between most of them. When after the first two rapids Tyler told us we had about 45 minutes until the next rapid I initially thought he was joking. There was plenty of opportunities for us to jump in the river and just float along next to the raft.

On the third rapid of the day the water surged right as we got into the biggest part of the rapid and flipped the whole raft. Finding myself suddenly underwater like that for the first time, I instantly forgot everything we were told about holding onto paddle and lost it right away. I tried to surface but kept coming up under the raft and its baffles. I started to panic a bit, but managed to calm myself down and realise that I can easily hold my breath for more than a few seconds, so I held my breath and fumbled my way to one of the sides of the raft and grabbed onto the rope. I struggled to keep my head above water while we were still in the rapids, but once we were past them it there was a pretty awesome wave of feeling alive!

I think pretty much everyone else who was doing it for the first time had similar experiences, many lost paddles were retrieved for us by the safety canoe guys.

We were told how a dam that was built two years earlier has changed the river a lot. None of the old rapids still exist, and new ones have formed. We're told that it used to be the best white water rafting rapids in the world before the dam was built, the "put in" used to be at the actual campsite that we were staying at, but now the river running past that area is significantly deeper and there's no rapids along there at all, hence having to drive 40 minutes in the morning. I still thought it was fantastic fun, but it would have been great to be able to compare it to how it used to be.

On the last rapid of the day we were told that if we didn't get flipped anyway, Tyler would give the ok and we could all jump out into the surging white water if we wanted to. It was an awesome feeling being in the tumultuous water, this time being well clear of the boat. It felt like being in a giant washing machine, with the water dragging you in every direction, rapidly one after another. It really gave you an appreciation for the raw power of the river.

Next point of interest was in the Budongo forest, where we went in with guides to track the chimpanzees that live there. The group was split in two since only 12 people are allowed in the forest at once, which was further split into two groups of 6 with a guide each. I thought that the forest felt quite a lot like the Australian rainforest around the area where I grew up on the Far North Coast of NSW.

Not long after entering the forest we heard chimp sounds off in the distance, and saw several fresh nests that they apparently make to sleep in at night and use only once. After walking for a while longer we heard more chimp calls coming from behind us and realised we'd passed them somehow.

We headed back and found 6-7 chimps walking along one of the tracks away from us, one carrying a baby on it's back. One of them split off from the group and we got to watch it climb up a tree and eat some sort of fruit, dropping the seeds down just in front of us.

We tracked down another one that was just sitting on the forest floor who seemed to be having something to eat and generally lazing about in the sun and spent quite a while watching.

The forest was generally too thick and we were too far away to get great unobstructed photos, but it was really cool to get to see the chimpanzees in their natural habitat, with some of their movements and behaviours seeming so close to human.

The next place of note was Queen Elizabeth the Second National Park. We went on a game drive here and saw some lions and gazelles and stuff, but nothing as cool as what we'd already seen. At one point we stopped in a village in the park by the lake, and got out to have a closer look at some hippos near the shore. Steve warned us not to get too close, but didn't specify how close. The general consensus was that "inside a hippo" was probably too close, but otherwise people were pretty fearless going right up to the edge of the water.

The highlight for us was a sunset cruise which closely followed along one bank of the river (o channel between two lakes? I'm not certain). It was probably the most densely packed period of animal watching we got to do all trip. We saw countless hippos and tons of exotic birds, crocodiles, buffalo and countless other critters.

We saw one hippo "mark its territory" by pooping while helicopter-ing it's tail around, with bits flying everywhere. An interesting technique to say the least.

There were lots of old male buffalo, sitting in the water that had apparently been chased away from their herds by the younger, stronger males. This is sort of like retirement for them, although they can sometimes force their way back into a herd.

And we got to see lots of hippo yawns, enough to actually get a decent "postcard" photo at last!

At camp that night there were a lot of hippos running around at night and eating near the tents, waking people up and terrifying them. I think I heard some noises off in the distance as I was getting to sleep, but being a heavy sleeper I managed to miss most of the commotion.

The last stop for us in Uganda (for this entry at least), was at Lake Bunyonyi where we stayed at a very scenic camp ground next to a very large and interesting lake. It has nearly 30 islands, its surface is nearly 2000 metres above sea level, and it's stupidly deep. Wikipedia says it's rumoured to be between 44 metres (which seems like it should be shallow enough to prove or disprove) and 900 meters (now we're talking!). The was a sign on the bank that claims it's 6,500 feet deep, or about 2000 meters, and since Wikipedia only lists "rumoured depths", I'm going with that since the sign is more of a citation than the Wikipedia page has.

While there we went on a little tour though a local village, where we met a woman that our local guide described as "a crazy old lady" that didn't speak a word of English, but was very excited to meet everyone, giving everyone a squeeze on the butt, women got a good boob squeeze and men with beards got a stroking. The whole thing was very amusing.

We also visited a school for orphans between 3-8 years old, run by Little Angels Uganda. We sat in on a class doing lessons for addition, subtraction, multiplication and spelling. We even got to get up do a bit of teaching ourselves, and nearly everything that happened in the class was followed by a song all the kids sang: "(name), you're so good and precious". It was pretty adorable.

After class there was more singing and dancing out in the playground, largely led by a very confident little girl with a good sense of rhythm. The kids seemed quite curious about my beard, which led to me being picked to go into their circle to try and dance along with them, showing the world that I have zero rhythm :P

We then helped serve up some lunch for the children consisting of bread, bananas, rice, porridge, and orange drink. During lunch the teachers ran a sort of spelling bee, where if the kids spelt our words they got an extra piece of fruit. Seemed like a good motivator for learning.

We made our way back to camp in dugout canoes, which felt like they might flip at any moment. I have to admit I feared a bit for my electronics until I was standing on land again.

That last night in Uganda we set up a mini-cinema around Steve's laptop and watched Hotel Rwanda, which is almost like an African Schindler's list. I'll admit my knowledge of the full extent of what happened in Rwanda way back when I was a child was pretty lacking, having a bit of context the night before we were crossing into Rwanda worked out perfectly for me.

The next day we were headed on to Rwanda for the trip highlight, tracking the mountain gorillas, but you'll probably have to wait months to read about that at the rate I'm going writing this stuff up :P Also, if you're interested there's loads more photos for each blog post up on Flickr (and Facebook), but these posts are probably already way too photo-heavy.