The River Nile...AMAZING! Jon, Antony, Nicole, Zoe, Nadia and I rafteed rafted the River Nile, down Grade 3, 4 and 5 rapids. We had a massive spill as our boat flipped on a Grade 5 called 'Big Brother' and all "went for a swim" (basically being dragged along under white water until you eventually surface again however far down river the rapids decide!). It was pretty scary and I ended up stopping when I hit into some rocks which was pleasant. Our rafting guide said it was the fourth longest time he had ever spent under water, so it must have been a pretty hardcore one!
It was Nadia's birthday that day too, so after rafting we stayed at a hostel overlooking the rapids, and got massively massively drunk with everyone else who rafted that day and the guides. One of the other rafters was Shawny from Big Brother if anyone remembers him. He is absolutely mental but a proper nice guy. An indication of how mental he is was when he approached Nicole at the bar at about 10am and said "I just tried to do a fart but shit came out in my pants. I cleaned myself up though". ooookay...?!
We were rudely awoken the next morning by Velvet Monkeys fighting each other on the roof of our hut and spent the entire day incredibly hungover!
The next morning we got a ferry to the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, and stayed at a camp ran by two perma-drunk/stoned Germans (we arrived at 5pm and they were already both absolutely wankered!). The camp was cool though - all solar powered and hippy-ish - and they had a massive Great Dane called Shaka Zulu who guarded the place! We sat on the beach and watched the sunset over Lake Victoria which was absolutely beautiful, and the fact that it was just Jon, Zoe and I on the beach made it really nice. Zoe and I swam in Lake Victoria, though Jon sensibly refused. I'm pretty sure he will rather pleased when we contract Bilharzia and he doesn't!
The next day we had a tour through the jungle with a local guy called Thomson. His African-English was very strange. When we asked if he knew the football score from the night before his response was "I was not entirely present at the scene, but I shall gather all the statistics and tell you later"! Anyway, his guiding was excellent (despite it including random snippets of philosophical musings - "what is free will?" and "what do you learn from this tree? We learn that life is a struggle") and it only cost £3 each. We gave him our guide book to Uganda as a tip because he said he wanted to learn more to improve his guiding.
After the tour we went to the local Police Station to report Jon's camera missing, which took about two hours! We ended up being seen by the Chief of the Station who was wearing a Birmingham City FC shirt. He was very keen to talk to us and insisted we exchanged numbers. Whilst we were talking he had a call from one of his officers to help with something that happened "at the roadside" but he made him wait whilst he finished talking to us! He was a cool guy, who was studying 'Human Rights and Corruption' at the weekends to try and make the Police better for people.
Whilst we waited for Jon in the station a group of children randomly came up to Zoe and I, and started singing hymns and songs about Uganda and dancing - quite surreal!
Now we are back in Entebbe, and Jon leaves tomorrow for the UK. Zoe and I will go back to Kampala and then Antony and I will head to Gulu.
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