raftin the nile..

So rafting was unbelievable and I think I’m still not quite back into normal work mode yet. Wednesday night, five other girls from our program and I took an overnight train to Western Kenya where we would cross the border into Uganda. We actually got to drive through Kibera, (the biggest slum in Nairobi) at night, which was very cool since you would never be able to walk around to see what it’s like after dark, and the train tracks were literally feet away from the little shops and shanties. The train-ride ended up being 14 hours long (and was 4 hours late) but the sleeping cars were nice and we actually ended up getting a pretty good night’s sleep.

From there, we took a matatu to the edge of Kenya and bike taxis across the Ugandan border, where we picked another matatu to a town in Uganda called Jinga. The people from Adrift Adventures met us in Jinja at this random Chinese restaurant/Shell Station called Ling Ling and we rode in the back of a really nice truck (with cushioned seats and everything) to the base camp. We sat out on this deck over the Nile and have pizza and their Nile Special beer for our Thanksgiving dinner. We were about ready for bed after dinner and 26 hours of traveling, but we had very cool, four-level, intertwining bunks in the lodge to sleep in, which felt a bit like sleeping in a big jungle gym.

I had to wrap my knee up in the morning because it was already getting infected from scraping it up back in Nairobi (and I was a little concerned when I saw the look on the guides faces when they saw it and told me it was going to bleed and bleed and bleed). Fortunately, they were wrong and while it still doesn’t look pretty, it held up really well for the weekend. (Plus I felt pretty badass with my knee all bandaged up.)

So our raft was the six of us, plus Clarky, our British guide, and two Danish guys who both happened to be named Espen. (We all got put together because we were the only group doing a two day trip.) We were all up for going for the “wild” versus the “mild” ride, because how often are you rafting on the nile? ..Although I’m not sure how mild they really would be able to make it; it’s truly amazing how powerful water can be! Adrift has a ton of safety measures set up though; there’s a safety raft and then 3 or 4 guides around in their kayaks, so whenever you fall out, there are always people around to help you out.

The first day there were class three, four and five rapids. I think one of my favorites was a class five rapid called Big Brother, which has two huge currents coming together, but we also went over a fifteen foot water fall called Bujugali Falls- backwards, no less. However, the most intense part of the day, by far, was the rapid referred to as the Bad Place. Essentially. you can’t go through the middle of it without completely flipping your raft, and I think I was actually one of the first people flung out. I somehow lost my paddle, my helmet and my knee wrap in the process, and it was actually kind of scary because you’re sucked down in to the current, and then you come up for a second, but half of the time you don’t even have a chance to catch a breath before you’re sucked back under. But the guys on the safety raft rounded us all up, and it was a pretty mellow ride back to the camp.

So rafting was definitely intense, but incredibly amazing too! When we got to our camp for the night, they already have a barrel of drinks waiting for us, and we all just hung out for a while and had dinner. Later in the evening, we took a ride a little way down the river on the roof of a Landover to see this huge waterfall. One of the guides, Jeffery, went over the waterfall (a class 6) in a kayak, which is absolutely ridiculous! All of the kayakers were pretty crazy though- doing flips and tricks in the middle of the rapids like it was nothing. But the falls itself and driving there were absolutely beautiful. Uganda is a lot more lush and green and just more peaceful-feeling than Kenya. We drove by a big football game outside, and adorable little kids and naked babies everywhere. We sat around the campfire when we got back and had some fabulous pineapple punch and watched the stars, before camping out for the night.

Day two was a handful of good class 4 rapids and wave trains, and some lakes of non-moving water where we got to lay out and enjoy the sun while being pulled along by the safety raft. (A pretty good deal, if I do say so). Then, we got to actually surf on the last rapid in our raft, and were surfing it for over 30 seconds (which even the guides were saying was an incredibly long time!) We also got to try surfing the rapid ourselves on boogie boards which I could only do for a few seconds, but Justine was actually really good at. Finally (and sadly) we had to end our little rafting expedition but we got to trek up between little Ugandan huts with all these adorable kids running around to get back to the van to take us to Jinja. We had a cooler of drinks waiting for us again and got to watch a movie of our rafting adventures. (The guy who was actually filming us the first day had his toes bitten off by a crocodile in the Nile last year! We thankfully didn’t run into any crocodiles, but we did see a couple of little snakes, which I was not particularly excited about.) Before we left the camp, Madalyn, Erin and Justine went bungee jumping over the Nile, but I was definitely too scared and not about to be hanging from my ankles.

We had to take an overnight bus going back to Nairobi, as that was pretty much the only option that would get us home before Sunday night so we could start studying a little for exams this week. The bus was 2 hours late, of course, but we were completely exhausted by then and content to just sit outside and wait. We crossed the border with no problem, but had to stop in the middle of the night because a truck stopped to tell us there were thugs up ahead waiting for buses. We had to wait for a police escort which ended up being a tuck-load of military personnel, but otherwise the bus ride was uneventful and we made it back to Nairobi by 10:30 the next morning.

So now it’s serious crunch time for the next week. But it was soo soo worth it! (There are some pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/denisemoriba/Uganda although none from the actual rafting..)