Uganda Week 3: Kampala and Jinja Rafting

 

Uganda Week 3: Kampala and Jinja

Saturday, August 7:

Peter, our guide and driver, picked us up and took us to the Uganda National Museum.  The museum has a collection of exhibits on everything from musical instruments, to traditional tribal headdresses, to the history of the colonization of Uganda.  Outside the museum they have several examples of traditional huts built by the various regional tribes.

Traditional huts and the Uganda National Museum

Traditional tribal huts with modern Kampala in the background

Tribal headdresses

After a tasty lunch at Café Javas, we went to the Gaddafi (or National) Mosque, which sits on top of a hill right in the middle of Kampala (It's named the Gaddafi after Muammar Gaddafi, who helped pay for the mosque).  In order to tour the mosque, the girls had to cover their hair and where a wrap around their waist.  The men had to where a large tunic if they were wearing shorts (we decided to wear them anyway).  The mosque was beautiful inside.  Our guide, Fatima, explained some of the significance of the architecture and took us to a large copy of the Koran and sang a few verses to us.  We then climbed the 272 steps to the top of the minaret for a 360- degree view of the city.  Kampala was originally built on seven hills, but now spreads out over several more. 

These are actually cakes made by Cafe Javas

Tasty lunch at Cafe Javas

Making our way to the National Mosque

Getting ready to enter the mosque

Inside the mosque

Getting ready to climb to the top of the minaret

272 steps to the top

360 degree view of Kampala

Downtown Kampala traffic

Our next stop was a souvenir market.  We spent a few hours searching the stalls for treasures. Most of the vendors were friendly and not too pushy.  After we bought what we wanted we had dinner and headed back to our apartments to hand wash some clothes.

 

Chameleon by our apartment

Time to wash clothes

Sunday, August 8:

In the morning we went to the Buganda Palace.  This used to be the royal palace for the Kingdom of Buganda until a military coup led by Idi Amin took over.  Since there was a lot of death in the palace, it is no longer used.  We then walked down to a short concrete tunnel that was used by Idi Amin as a torture chamber.    The guards would fill the tunnel with electrified water to keep the prisoners from escaping.  We had another great lunch at Cafe Javas. 

Buganda Royal Palace

Idi Amin's cannon

Torture chambers

Artwork painted by our tour guide

In the afternoon we went to the Catholic Martyrs shrine. The shrine is supposed to be a modern take on a traditional hut, but it looked like a spaceship or upside-down engine from a star destroyer from Star Wars.  The shrine honors some of the early Africans that converted to Christianity but were then killed by the king.  Around the grounds were gruesome and very realistic monuments to each of the martyrs.  As we drove back to our apartments, it started to downpour with lots of lightning and even some hail.  We hurried back to get our laundry off of the clothes line.

Catholic Martyrs Shrine

Part of the Shrine used for pilgrimage gatherings

Memorial to one of the martyrs

Monday, August 9:

Our ride came at 5:45am to pick us up and take us to whitewater rafting outside of Jinja.  When we arrived at White Nile Rafting camp, they had a big breakfast set out for us.  Afterward we got all of our gear and rode to the put in point right below a dam.  We waited until after they opened the gates and let some more of the water out.  We got going fast right from the start.    During a slow section we practiced tipping the boat and getting back in.  We had initially signed up for the Level 3 family float, but after our guide Ibrahim saw that we were all comfortable and capable paddlers, he decided to take us on some bigger level 3s and 4s.

One of the first rapids

Practice flipping the boat

 

During one of the calm spots in the river we tied the boats together and ate fresh pineapples and cookies. At one area the boat had to be carried since it was a level 6 waterfall.  At Itanda Falls (the bad place), they carried our boat around another level 6 section, but put in for level 5 rapid.  At first, a few of the kids were a little apprehensive, but then decided to do it.  We almost flipped, but everyone held on. 

They portaged the boats around this spot

Locals jumped in the picture with us

Our guide was hanging on to Elise

Itanda Falls, aka "The bad place"

We portaged the boats around the Level 6 section

Class 5 rapids... we almost flipped

 Later on, Becky, Marcus, and Siena floated down some level 3 rapids on boards and a tube.  Jacob, Elise, and I stayed in the raft and put Elise up front for some of the rapids.  After over 3 hours we finally pulled out and took a bumpy, dusty ride back to the camp.  When we arrived, they had a very tasty barbeque dinner waiting for us.  In the evening the kids played pool while it rained and then sat by the campfire.  We had the whole camp to ourselves.  Around 10pm we all made our way to our tents for the night.

Becky tubing through the rapids

Marcus body boarding through the rapids

Siena body boarding through the rapids

Elise riding up front

White Nile Rafting Camp

Waiting out the rain

Tent camping at the river camp

Tuesday, August 10:

Early in the morning the rafting company had a driver take us into Jinja to our next place.  It was not easy to find since the host on Airbnb only gave us the road name, not the full address and wasn't real helpful in finding it.  We finally found after stopping and talking with some locals.  It was not exactly what was advertised.  It was a house, like we were expecting, but it was pretty run-down and not the cleanest.  The bathrooms remind me of a prison cell in an old rock and mortar prison. 

After we settled in, we decided to go walk around downtown Jinja, even though the sky was really dark.  As soon as we got downtown it started to dump rain.  We waited out the heaviest rain inside a beauty salon.  

Waiting out the rain at the beauty salon

Using a generator to sew

We then went over to the central market, just to get out of the rain.  It was mostly just fruit and clothing.  By then we were starving, so we stopped and had lunch.  We had made it to the section of town that had tourists, so we looked around at some souvenir stands and bought some more stuff.  We hauled our finds back to the house and took a nap, since some of us had some stomach problems.  In the evening we walked back downtown to get some food at a store called "Walmart" (definitely not associated with the actual Walmart). 

Live chicken, soon to be dinner

Ice cream for dinner

Wednesday, August 11:

After breakfast we walked over to a place called Bike Ventures and rented bikes.  Right away Becky said there was a problem with her peddle, so I switched her bikes.  After a few minutes the peddle fell off.  Marcus went back with me to the bike shop to get it fixed (basically the guy just hammered a bolt into the peddle).  We caught back up with everyone else, then road out to a bridge that crosses the Nile River for some pictures.  After that we road over to see Lake Victoria in a really nice and quiet neighborhood.  

Our transportation for the day

Crossing the Nile River

Jinja bridge in background

Looking out at Lake Victoria

We were getting hungry and found a hotel that also has a pizzeria.  We met the owners, who are from the UK and USA and their kids.  The wife also runs a small orphanage in Jinja, so we are going to try and have Becky's parents talk with her.  After biking we went and got some really good ice cream at a shop that only employs people that are deaf.  We then went and did some more souvenir shopping and finally went to go get dinner, which was extremely slow (over an hour to get some of the food, and hour and a half for a pizza).  By then it was getting late, so we walked back to our house to pack up all of our stuff.

Great pizza for lunch

The kids really wanted to "fall" into the pool

"Fixing" my peddle with a rock

Menu at Ice Cream parlor that employs the deaf

More souvenir shopping

Thursday, August 12:

Our ride back to Kampala picked us up a little after 9am.  The drive was slow going, especially as we got closer to Kampala.  We were dropped off at our place for the night, which was another apartment that was somewhat close to the place we stayed previously in Kampala.  It was a nice and spacious three-bedroom apartment on the second floor.  We stuck around at the apartment and waited for the COVID test lab guy to come by and swab and test us before we fly out tomorrow.  The lab tech apologized for being late, telling us that he was in a small motorcycle accident on his way over to us (which wasn't a big surprise, knowing Kampala's traffic). 

Our three-bedroom apartment in Kampala

Last night in Uganda

Since we ate a small breakfast and didn't have lunch and it was almost 3pm, we all decided to find a place for a late lunch/early dinner.  Around a quarter mile from our place we found an excellent restaurant that made great pizza and pasta.  We had plenty of leftovers so we didn't have to go out for dinner.  On the way back we stopped by a grocery store to pick up some breakfast items.  In the evening Peter, our driver, came by to check on us.  The rest of the evening we started organizing all of our stuff to get ready for our flight tomorrow.  In the midst of packing, Siena realized that she had packed up a tv remote from our last place in Jinja (oh well, the tv’s didn’t work there anyway)! 

Friday, August 13 and Saturday August 14:

Everyone was up around 7am and ate all of our remaining food for breakfast.  Allan picked us up and took us to the souvenir market for some last-minute shopping.  Afterward, we drove to the center of Kampala where we had lunch and met up with Peter.  We said goodbye to Allan and drove with Peter toward Entebbe.  In Entebbe we were finally able to print off our negative COVID test results with a lot of help from Peter.  We then went over to the Entebbe Botanical Gardens.  It is a huge park along the shore of Lake Victoria.  As we were walking around, we found some monkeys with very young babies.  They were used to humans and let us get very close.  Later we walked over to a small beach area on Lake Victoria and looked around. 

The nice outhouse at the botanical garden.  Better have a good aim.

Monkeys at the botanical garden

Monkey selfie

Becky tried pulling this monkey's tail... he didn't like it.

Botanical garden

Shore of Lake Victoria

Lake Victoria

Last dinner before our flight

In the evening we had dinner at the same restaurant that we ate breakfast at on our first day in Uganda.  Peter dropped us off at the airport around 8pm.  It took almost 2 hours to go through all of the COVID checkpoints, security, getting tickets, more security and more COVID checkpoints.  Around 11:30pm we took off for our 8 ½ hour flight to Amsterdam.   A couple of us tried to sleep on the flight, but only got a few hours of light sleep.

Once we landed in Amsterdam, we had to take our carry-on luggage through another security checkpoint.  All of our bags were flagged and had to be searched.  Our flight ended up being delayed by an hour due to some refueling issues.  Again, we had to go through several COVID checks.  The 9 ½ hour-flight to Seattle was uneventful and no one got a lot of sleep.  Once in Seattle we made our way through customs and immigration (all of our stuff made it through), got our car and made our way back home (with a slight detour back to the airport to pick up one of Becky’s exchange students that missed her flight).  We finally arrived back home around 6:30pm Saturday, after roughly 45 hours of staying somewhat awake.

Almost home after 40+ hours of travel!