Uganda - The Trip of a Lifetime

I just returned from the best weekend of my life.

The seven of us adventurous enough to travel to Uganda headed off to the bus stop at 2 pm to catch the Kampala Coach to Jinja. Due to the fact that everyone and everything is on Africa time here we departed at around 4:30 from Arusha. The bus ride was quite the experience… 18 hours on the way there and 20 on the way back, but it was not nearly as bad as I expected it to be, we actually had a pretty great time. The bus took us from Arusha to Nirobi and then on to Jinja. As soon as the sun came up in Uganda we were blown away, everywhere we looked was lush and green; it was one of the most beautiful places I have seen. We arrived in Jinja at 11 am and were taken to the backpackers hostel where we had a delicious lunch and settled into our room.

2 pm rolled around and we anxiously waited for the bus to take us to the source of the Nile for our bungee experience. We rode in an open back truck through some of the local areas to the Adrift bungee site. It was interesting to see the differences between Jinja and Arusha in terms of the local atmosphere. After arriving at the site and signing our lives away we climbed the stairs to the platform 145 feet above the Nile. Andrea and I jumped first holding on to each other for dear lives. It was so much fun we both got out of the raft at the bottom and ran up to do it again. Everyone had a blast jumping, I was the only person who had ever jumped before so it was fun to see everyone’s reactions after their first bungee. After jumping and a quick drink we walked back to the hostel and hung out for the evening, played a few games of ‘lasti kardi’ and talked about our amazing day.

The next morning we woke up, packed and got ready for rafting. After a delicious breakfast and quick brief on the day we found life jackets and helmets and hopped on the bus. There were 7 rafts on our trip; our group filled one. As we passed over a bridge just before our starting point we saw a huge crocodile hanging out on a rock… luckily there was a rapid between him and where we were getting into the water. We arrived at the starting point, chose our guide and got into the raft. Our guide, Alex, was awesome, he started off by briefing us and training us in the calm water; we jumping into the water and practiced getting back in, went through all of the commands he would be yelling at us through the rapids and covered all of the safety stuff. Our first rapid was a class 5 and really kicked the excitement up for the day. Throughout the day we went through 8 sets of rapids ranging from class 3 to 5. We had a light lunch in the middle of the day (consisting of half a pineapple each and some cookies), and took a short swim in the water. The rafting trip was way better then anything I could have hoped for, it was by far one of the best things I have done in my life. We went through crazy rapids, flipped the raft, swam in the Nile, it was a blast. At the end of the day we were taken to the company’s campground for an awesome barbeque before going to Kampala for the night. We took the shuttle to Kampala and stayed at a hostel for the night, in the evening we played cards and hung out chatting about the day.

The next morning half of us decided that we would go back to Arusha that afternoon so we headed to the bus station to buy our tickets. The bus back was fine, I did not get as much sleep as on the way there, but the hours seemed to pass quite quickly. We were all so excited to get back into Tanzania, it definitely has become home for me. As soon as we crossed the border and I realized how happy I was I became sad to think that I had to leave again in a few days. It was the best weekend I have had on this trip and possibly the best and most adventurous weekend of my life.

I have now come to my last day in Arusha and am very sad and slightly scared to leave. It does not seem real that I am leaving tonight; it is going to be a difficult adjustment. Arusha has become my home; I cannot believe that I do not know when I will be returning. Despite my leaving anxiety I am very excited to go to South Africa now and spend some time in Cape Town, and I am excited to get home and see everyone, I have missed you all so much. I will write again from Cape Town, assuming I have internet access.

Kwaheri! xoxo from Africa