Not even close, but it does make an eye-catching title! Yesterday we paid for a private ride (100,000/=) to Jinja where we will celebrate our anniversary in style. We are staying in a large room with a balcony overlooking Lake Victoria at the Palm Tree Guest House. It’s out of town and very peaceful. Even with our “missionary” discount it’s $70 per night but our last two anniversaries have been pretty tame so we will splurge. We ate at the upscale Gately on the Nile. Great food and a nice South African chardonnay. Our fellow diners were a threesome from the U.K. just finishing four months overland by truck from Johannesburg and a group from World Bank checking the end results of their funding. They seemed disappointed but not surprised to find that Step One was taken but on one could make the logical jump to Step Two. The African Dilemma.
We spent the day rafting on this King (or is it Queen) of rivers. Serge, who owns the Palm Tree, booked us with Nile River Expeditions, one of three companies conducting raft trips. Unfortunately the cost has risen to $95 but it does include lunch, a meal afterward and beer. Both of the guides, one on our raft and one in the oar raft, were Henrys. Our fellow passengers were all guys; one from Ireland, two from the U.K. and one from Pittsburgh. They are all on extended trips – three on eight month overland expeditions through Africa including places like Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan and Gabon. Bless their hearts!
The Class V rapids had big drops but were relatively short with long stretches of calm, lake-like water between. Even so the risk of capsizing or being thrown out was great. Several times the command of “hard forward” was followed by “get down!” and we drove to the (relative) safety of the bottom of the raft. Connie, with her surplus of common sense, protected her contact lenses and her personal well-being by riding in the somewhat safer oar boat where, seated along in the bow, she was subjected to the huge waves that engulfed the boat. Since they went first through most of the rapids, partially, I am sure to pick up survivors from our craft, she got some photos of us on “Silver Back”, one of the biggies.
All went well, even on some that were more waterfall than rapid, the only man overboard being the guide, Henry, when the raft went near vertical on one section. Until the last rapid, that is. The grand finale was a class VI, followed by a class V. While we portaged and Connie disembarked, the oar boat shot the Class VI. Henry, the other muzungu one, said it’s either very easy (if you enter properly) or impossible (if you don’t). They made it look easy!
After our portage we faced the final Class V. My mates opted to dive in after we passed through the first big part and float through the rest, leaving Henry and me to negotiate a 14 foot raft, and yours truly was thrown out in a beautiful back flip when we hit the big standing wave broadside. The raft and I collected several times before I could clamber aboard and began pulling in the others. So ended our day on the water. My soft muzungu feet had to climb the steep bank but food and beer were the reward at the top.
In all we paddled, drifted and splashed 30 kilometers down stream, mush of which will be flooded when the proposed hydro-electric dam(n) is eventually constructed. Then we had another 30+ kilometers of bad road in the back of the truck back to NRE headquarters, bladders full of beer and ready to burst.
Despite being waterlogged all day a shower bath dislodged Nile silt destined for the Egyptian flood plains. Then it was downstairs for dinner. Tex-Mex is the specialty of the house so I had chicken fajitas and Connie had cheese enchiladas, not bad considering it was prepared by a Ugandan under supervision of Serge, the Ugandan/British/Indian/Sheikh. Other diners, a mixed lot from Australia, Netherlands and USA, run a local orphanage as part of their missionary work and invited us for a visit.