Safari!

It's approaching two months since my last update. I won't offer any excuses it is mostly down to laziness and partly down to my fear of having to sort through all my photos to provide a visual narrative of my tales. Don't worry, I'm going to do it in chunks rather than one long nonsense (Sorry to those of who consider this to be a long enough nonsense).

Where to start?

During my silence: I have been on my first safari, have had surgery for the first time in at least 20 years, had more toilet escapades and have added a new member to my family.

In chunk one I'll cover the safari, the surgery and the toilet incident; you'll just have to wait to hear about Alan.

Murchison Falls: Having left Kampala for the first time the previous week, having an amazing time in Jinja (Bujagali Falls, not Bugolobi - sorry, Mrs Kiwenuka), I couldn't wait for half term and a mid-week trip some 300km northwest to Murchison. I'd been told that if I wanted to go on safari and see loads of animals, Murchison is the most heavily populated although not the most astounding by all accounts: a good place to start.

Not the ideal start as my little travelling group of new teachers was reduced by a back injury and a death in the family. I'll leave you to imagine my reserve regarding these drop outs and the almost doubling my costs! It did mean more room in our safari van, which I really should have exploited by bringing at least some sort of sleeping bag/blanket/cushion.

Being stuck on motorways for over an hour can be fairly tedious in the UK, but in Uganda 12 hours travelling up country is anything but tedious. For one thing you are pretty terrified the entire time: boda drivers performing stunts to weave through the traffic in all conditions; giant trucks electing to overtake at 100kph on blind corners on two lane motorways; and local villagers swarming round the van whenever it paused and poking you in the face with every variety of meat-on-a-stick you can imagine (if you're imagining anything other than cheap and nasty chicken and pork then I've overestimated you). Overlooking these slight concerns, you are confronted with the most stunning scenery I, in my fairly limited experience, have ever seen: giant tea and sugar plantations, the most ridiculous plant life (including sausage trees... yes, sausage trees) and a mixture of aspirant, heavily polluted and messy urban centres and isolated rural settlements in the most rudimentary huts. Part of me wishes that we had stopped and had a chance to take it all in properly, but another part of me was very aware that 12 hour journeys don't really need any optional delays.

I lie, there was one optional delay. About half way to Murchison we stopped at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary to do a bit of rhino tracking. Unfortunately the tracking element was minimal to say the least. After around 2 minutes we were confronted by three adolescent rhino bulls and spent the next half an hour chasing them around with my camera. Hopefully my pictures demonstrate just how close we got to them, at one stage I was fairly convinced I could've mounted them with relative ease... I've always fancied my own Battlecat-style steed. The first few minute was really exhilarating, but I was really surprised by how quickly I grew bored and it made me wonder if I've been ruined by Western zoo-culture and David Attenborough. 

Back on the road, our driver, Joseph, took it upon to make sure none of us got bored. One of 22 kids and having just fathered his ninth child (Jeremy Kyle would love the family); he was full of interesting stories, advice and local knowledge about the landscape we were speeding through. He also proved invaluable in handling the mobs that attacked the van with offerings of food at each stop.

7:30am we set off and arrived at the camp site, just outside the park, at about 6:45pm with about 15 minutes to erect our tent. Thankfully, previous experience in Jinja made me an expert and construction was painless (on the second erection) and we were able to settle in at the camp bar for a few drinks. Mosquitoes and travel fatigue forced us to bed at a thoroughly unrespectable hour, but not before some Germans had helpfully pointed out that a rather large hippo had decided to explore the camp site.

No photos of this particular chap as I was advised my flash may send him into a rage and see the end of the primitive camp site facilities and a death or two. However, I followed him around for a bit and was in complete awe at how close I could get with him seemingly not giving two hoots.

One of my companions had booked a safari tent (minor luxury: electricity, a raised bed, a mosquito net) while my other companion and I were in the normal tent. We were the only non-safari-tenters and were told we had to camp in a separate area: the car park. Ridiculous. I'm still angry now, it was a sodding car park, one which was used fairly frequently in the evening and left us fearing being crushed by a Jeep throughout our stay.

At around 3-4am I was woken by my tent buddy squealing in some distress (a girl, incidentally). The hippo had decided to come and check us out and was sniffing and stomping rather loudly; no concept of the time, the inconsiderate bugger. Anyway, I've received rather a lot of abuse for not really consoling her and instead simply telling her to be quiet and immediately falling back to sleep. Just to clarify, I wasn't grumpily demanding my peace, rather I was advising her that shrieking would probably intrigue the great oaf even more.

We weren't crushed, but it was interesting to see we'd had other house guests as well. I'm convinced it must have been warthogs, but baboons is another potential suggestion, who cleared out the shared section of the tent and took particular interest in a drinking game called HalliGalli, which was scattered around our tent.

Two days and two safari trips. I was left slightly disappointed by missing out on lions (apparently we drove right past a couple), but hundreds of giraffes, several herds of elephants, a lake of hippos fighting, birds of every colour and the beauty of the grassy savannah made it well worth it. I took about a thousand pictures and am still trying to sort through them and get them down to a manageable number. However, we were right to just go for two days; as great as going on safari is, it quickly becomes repetitive if you're in the same place for hours.

Before we left we also went on a boat trip along the Nile to Murchison Falls themselves. Not the biggest or most powerful waterfall, but stunning nonetheless. I'm not sure if my pictures have captured it, but a magnificent rainbow seemed to be coming out of the Falls and gave it a really magical feel. The boat stopped at the bottom and we had a 2-3km march up to the top, where the views were at the finest. It looked so fresh that my mind could not stop thinking about diving in... probably best I resisted that urge. The experience was spoilt a bit... about half way along the march, I felt a familiar sensation in my stomach and had to sprint to the top and gambled that there would be no snakes lurking in the quiet spot I chose to relieve myself. Disgusting!

This is already a sizeable chunk, so I'll try to be concise now. After a harrowing night-drive (three probably life-ending crashes witnessed along the way) we arrived back to the relative comforts of Kampala and, the following day, agreed to meet some friends to celebrate our return and share our tales. I decided to walk the last 500m or so to the bar just to wake my legs up after the boda journey.

In England, the pavements are well lit, generally flat (with the occasional raised slab to help those fully versed in the philosophy of compensation culture) and extremely safe (if you can avoid teenage gangs). In Kampala, the pavements are not lit at all, have huge holes in the them and are more dangerous than walking in the middle of the road. Apparently this was common knowledge to everyone apart from me.

As I ambled along gazing at the distant lights of Kololo's array of bars, I felt my standing foot wobble and then the paving stone tumbled down into the drain it had been hovering half over, taking me with it. The drain was around two metres deep and I disappeared from street level, but my impressively girly shriek had a number of Ugandans running to help me. I didn't need help, I pulled myself out with relative ease, but my left leg was in utter agony and my ribs were severely bruised. In the interests of retaining my credibility, I chose to continue to the bar and drown the pain with some well chosen beverages after a quick bit of a cleanup in the toilets. Whelping, I left about an hour later.

I let it heal for a week, but a complication with the way my blood clotted left my lower leg with no circulation and rapidly turning purple. Hospital. They seemed more concerned than I'd imagined and fairly quickly had me ready for minor surgery. Painkillers and an IV cannula, tie in my mouth as they dug deep into the flesh above my shin and then 'massaged' the clots out of my veins. Agony! They helpfully showed me the first clot they removed, which had a diameter of around 3cms.

Horrible. Approaching two months now and I'm still having to go in twice a week to get it dressed, but the agony died down after maybe 6 weeks. I'm proving to be fairly injury/sickness prone in Uganda, but I figure I'll get it all out of the way in the first six months and then I can enjoy myself without fear.

Hope you enjoy the pictures and I'll blog again very shortly as our almost-4-week Christmas holiday starts on the 14th!