We penetrated the Impenetrable!

The last days of our stay in Uganda were marked by increasingly sensational activities. First, we went for a white water rafting near the city of Jinja. For both of us, it was the first time on the white water. Honestly, before I even did not know what the rafting exactly was. We made it on the river called ... White Nile, the same Nile that is the longest river in the world, it has its source somewhere in Burundi, then through Victoria Lake flows into Uganda, and then up North to merge with Blue Nile in Khartoum and to form the one that most of the Europeans have seen in Egypt. Our rafting route had 8 rapids i.e. small waterfalls when the raft, which is actually an inflatable boat, falls nose down, everyone onboard gets seriously wet and shaky and often it flips over altogether. Out of three rafts around, we were the only one that did not capsize :), though occasionally we were losing our crew members including the instructor once. To keep long story short, while rafting on the Nile the adrenaline is guaranteed.

So, having raised our adrenaline level while rafting, we felt ready to go into the heart of Africa, to west Uganda, at the border with Congo and Rwanda, the country of high mountains. Our destination was Bwindi rainforest, one of the oldest wildlife sanctuaries in Africa, that is called by the locals the Impenetrable Forest. It is a thick jungle indeed, but what makes it really special are its very unusual and even more impressive inhabitants – mountain gorillas - our distant cousins, docile giants. The first encounter with them is a hair-rising experience. After two hours trekking into the jungle, we came finally to hear their grunts, but still could not see them as they were behind the thick 'wall' of leaves. While the rangers were cutting the foliage separating the beast from us, the grunts became more intense and we could just feel that something very big, and potentially dangerous, is moving without being able to tell if it moves fast or slow, towards us or the opposite direction. Suddenly, the gorilla appeared, it was much closer that we have ever imagined that it would be, something like one meter and a half – we were clearly within its hand reach. If it wanted it could easily crash us and looked big and strong enough to be able to tear us in half. We kept on hoping that the rangers knew what they were doing while letting us so close to the beasts - fortunately they did :)!

A short stay in a country that reinvented itself

In Rwanda there there has been a perpetual change over the last twenty years – Rwandans have new flag, administrative regions, names of the streets, and even official language - it used to be French brought by the Belgian colonisers and now its English. Why is that? The country has witnessed the greatest human tragedy that unfolded in the world during mine and Ieva's lifetime. During one hundred days of madness in April 1994, an estimated up to one million people were massacred, often battered to death, in an unthinkable act of ethnic cleansing. We will spare you all the accounts of atrocities we heard about. The Hollywood movie 'Hotel Rwanda' tells the story of the massacre and a Rwandan 'Schidnler' Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a luxury 'Hotel des Mille Collins', who saved many lives by allowing fleeing people to take refuge in this big and centrally located hotel.


The important and comforting things is that when we look around today's Rwanda, it is unbelievable that such horror took place here. The country is the tidiest and the best organised we have seen in Africa so far. Most houses are made out of brick, with A-top roofs, much more similar to the European ones than mud huts that are dominating the landscape in Tanzania and Uganda. Main roads are excellent. In an effort to keep the country even cleaner, all the plastic bags have been banned and it works - there are almost no piles of rubbish plaguing the streets in all the countries around. Even all Boda-boda (called here moto-taxi) drivers wear helmets and, most importantly, always offer one to their passengers! Also, there was surprisingly very little bargaining going on, while still the taxis have no meters, the fares offered to us where consistently similar and seemed reasonable. The intercity buses leave on time, even if not empty. What we liked the most is the motto of the governmental administration is: 'Your satisfaction is our duty'! It's such a shame that the Belgian administration does not follow this rule of conduct.


Clearly, after the unthinkable happened, the country had a new beginning! The reconstruction was generously supported by the international community and the government has not wasted the historic chance to make a new Rwanda a better place to live. Rwanda calls itself: 'the country of thousands hills and million smiles'. As far as the landscape is concerned, indeed we have hardly ever seen such a mountainous country. Almost all of those thousands of hills are stripped and checked by terraced hills on which vegetables and crops are being grown. No wonder that we ended up calling Rwanda – Switzerland of Africa. As far as million smiles is concerned, while Rwandans seem to be more well-off materially than their neighbours, at the same time they seem more reserved and less spontaneously smiling. Still they have been friendly, they clearly wanted us to feel good, but they were lacking this kind of inner happiness so characteristic to Africans. Is it because of the horrors of the past or just due to highland climate – a bit colder with often overcast sky? Hard to say, though the kids seemed as smiley and easy-going as their Tanzanian and Ugandan friends. We had a very funny situation, while passing on the streets of Kigali, hundreds or so children poured out of school to head home and while they saw us they full of good-natured happiness started greeting us: 'Good Morning Muzungu!', waving at us and shaking our hands. As we waved back and shook hands with the ones that were near us, a kind of general euphoria broke out, the kids jumping with joy, rushed all at us as every single one wanted our hand shake. It must have been quite an unusual spectacle, as we kept on moving down the street, surrounded by hundred of euphoric kids for something like half a kilometer, until we reached the bus station, which was ours and many of theirs destination.


We have not stayed in Rwanda long, neither we have taken many pictures. Nonetheless, it's a beautiful country, with scenic mountain landscapes, where it's just a pleasure to drive and look around. It's main attraction is Gorilla tracking in the Parc National des Volcans on the border with Congo and Uganda. As we saw mountain gorillas already in Uganda, we skipped that one. It's another highlight is chimpanzee tracking in Nyungwe rainforest in the South. Hopefully, one day we will come there to say hello to the Chimps; for the time being we wish Rwanda all the best!

Uganda - Murchison Falls

Uganda also has parks full of wildlife, while not so well known as the ones in Tanzania, still beautiful and at much more affordable price than the ones in Tanzania, especially if you travel with Red Chilli Hideaway.

Ugandan Life

If you ask us: how is Uganda? Our instinctive answer is green, all shades of green. If you ask us how are the people here? The answer is very friendly. There is kind of good vibe in this country. All we knew about it before our arrival was: it had one of the most cruel and paranoid dictator in the 70s – Idi Amin, portrayed in the hollywood movie – the Last King of Scotland; a devastating civil war in the 80s, fought by indoctrinated children soldiers; and very recent news – Uganda is getting increasingly involved in the armed conflict in its Northern neighbour - South Sudan. This was not very comforting. We also knew Uganda through my acquaintance from Brussels – Eva Valle, who for many years has been raising the funds for a charity providing schooling and shelter for street children in Kampala. She's been the only one (in our circle) who knew Uganda and actually was very positive about it.

From the beginning of our Ugandan stay we started getting convinced that we should rather share Eva's enthusiasm, instead of despair stemming from the press. We came on an evening flight from Dar-Es-Salaam to be greeted by the most friendly customs officer that we've ever met (the fact that he is congenial, unfortunately did not prevent him from charging us 50 USD for a visa). We also found out that the national language is ... English (we never fully understood is English is official or not, but most of the people speak it on top of their 'native' tribal language). The airport seemed tidy and well-organised, the road to the capital Kampala was in a good state.

The day after we had a number of things to sort out in Kampala and we quickly realised that in this super-jammed city the best way to move around is on a boda-boda, i.e. a motorbike taxi. Does not sound bad, however, there is one drawback - conforming with any safety rules is clearly at the bottom of boda boda drivers' concerns list, not only they willingly take three people on one regular two person seat, but they hardly ever wear, let alone offer a helmet; the first conversation between a safety conscious Ieva and the driver was like that: Ieva: OK, let's go, but where is the helmet? Driver: Helmet Madam, I've never ridden a bike with a helmet! Ieva: That's too bad, I've never ridden a bike without a helmet! On the streets of Kampala the high adrenaline dose is guaranteed, even if you don't use boda-bodas – the roads are crammed with hundreds of 12 seater minbus 'taxis', which in a constant zig-zag move forward at a snail pace in an ever ending traffic jam; all around the zig-zaging taxis are thousands of boda-bodas, slaloming their way ahead of the zig-zaging taxis. And then, there are tens of thousands of people, walking on the sides of the streets (most of the time there are no pavements), or weaving their way through this vehicle rodeo, in desperate attempts to get on the other side of the street. I admit, crossing the street has never been so stressful.

Kampala is a never ending string of shanty towns, low houses and all kind of little shops and workshops, the streets go up and down (sometimes very steeply) as the landscape is full of hills. The city centre is situated in a valley, so you can imagine how polluted it gets with all this stagnant traffic. Actually, after a half an hour boda-boda drive the eyes were full of tears from dust and other irritating particles. We were wondering how many cigarettes we would need to smoke to get the same intake of particles after spending half of the day on Kampala's roads. In spite of all that, Kampala feels safe and friendly, in the city centre the people sit and chat in cafes as in Southern Europe. If you forget about the pollution, the climate is excellent, never too hot, never too cold, with just right humidity level, which makes the country so green, and all this in spite of the fact that Kampala is almost on the Equator. This is because Kampala, as most of Uganda lays more than 1000 meteres above the sea level.

It gets busy on Kampala's markets

Apparently boda-boda is quite enjoyable

Which taxi goes to Butabika?

Would you like a fresh Tilapia, sir ...?

... if you eat-in Marabou storks also want their share!

The travel by bus gets hardcorish, sometimes

Tanzania Days 3-7

During five days we visited four National Parks and covered something like 2000 kilometres on the most bumpy roads that we've ever drove on (or rather been driven on). The name of Serengeti - endless plains in Maasai language – reflects very well its vastness. This park has one of the largest concentrations of wild animals on the planet and features spectacular migrations, we witnessed the one of wildebeests and zebras. Ngorongoro Park borders Serengeti and its key point is an 18 kilometre wide crater (which is actually one of the largest calderas (collapsed volcanos) on the planet). At an altitude of more than 2000 meters it offers spectacular mountains views and great wildlife encounters. Ngorongoro crater, including its rim, has been voted our favourite place. Why? For many reasons. Scenic mountain landscapes in an intense green colour, very pleasant temperature, and most importantly of all - on a relatively small space we could see loads of wildlife (including black rhino, lions, flamingos, hippos, zebras, etc – see the photos below). The fact that Ngorongoro is so compact, has one more advantage, it saves you lot of ass pain, as you don't need to drive so much on dirt roads. Tarangire Park features hoards of elephants - even Ieva that visited already quite a number of game parks, admits that she's never seen so many of them. On top of elephants, giraffes, antelopes, warthogs, and many others, Tarangire also is famous for baobab trees. And the last but not least – Lake Manyara park comprising an evergreen forest and a large, salty mineral-rich lake full of flamingos. Manyara is beautifully set at the foot of the Great Rift Valley. The Rift Valley is an attraction in itself – it's a super long trench 6000 km long separating two blocks of the Earth's plates that runs from Syria to Mozambique. Lake Manyara Park is full of monkeys – baboons, vervet and black monkeys; it also offers memorable views of giraffes, zebras and wildebeests in the pink background of flamingos feeding in the lake.




That's the narrative, though the pics speak the best for themselves :)