My Last Day in Africa

I've been pretty busy being a tourist for the last 2 weeks or so, and it's been fun but tiring and internet's been mostly quick stops in cafes and so on. As a bit of a random observation, I think if I walked down the street in London, Ontario I'd have trouble finding an internet cafe. Yet in any African city they're a dime a dozen. Irony?

Our first destination was a place called Lake Bunyonyi. It's a mountain lake with lots of islands and rainforesty surroundings. A really pretty place and apparently Uganda's honeymoon capital. The unfortunate part of our trip there was its brevity. We left early one morning, stopped and did a little game drive in Queen Elizabeth National Park (lots of fun, and only a little taste of what was to come) but by the time we traversed the potholed roads there it was late afternoon. We had time for a boatride and a quick swim before dark, and we left the next morning at 7:30 am. Mostly it's the kind of place that would be nice to go to and sit around, relax, take in the surroundings for a few days. Regardless, it was nice to have seen it. In some ways it actually reminded me of Muskoka... if you replace the eucalyptus trees with pines and oaks it could fly.

The other wonderful redeeming quality of Lake Bunyonyi was a hot shower. After a month of hyperventilation under ice cold water in the shower it was wonderful to have as a luxury something I take as a necessity back home.

The next morning took us back to Kampala with a little stop for another game drive at a place called Lake Mburo. Lake Mburo has a problem. It doesn't have very many animals in it. To be fair, it was neat to see our first zebra, even if it was from around 400 yards off.

The trip to Murchison Falls National Park was much more fruitful in the animal department. Saw elephants, antelopes of various descriptions to the point where you ignore them, lots of neat birds, baboons, and the highlight was probably the giraffes. A boatride up the Nile to the falls had equally impressive birdlife, tons of hippos and crocs. The next day we hiked up to the falls - the lack of safety precautions in Africa means you could essentially walk into the falls if you desired. Neat to be that close.

Our next adventure was rafting the source of the Nile. Apparently some of the best white water rafting in the world, and possibly going to disappear with plans to build a dam on the river. After the initial teaching session - how to paddle and how to hold on - we set off. The first couple rapids are rather tame, and even our first Class 5 (apparently the classes go higher than 5 but 5 are the highest you can take in a raft) was pretty wet but still sort of felt like the log ride without as big a drop. That started to change with a Class 3 where our guide dumped us - essentially go into the rapid sideways and the boat will flip. From there two class 5's were a wild ride before lunch. I couldn't bring myself to drop $45 American for the video, but I peered over the shoulder of the guy at lunch and it looked pretty crazy. The final rapid before lunch we didn't flip on, but it was a 3m waterfall that you go straight over. Also cool. The afternoon was more flat water, paddling and burning sun, with a few decent rapids interspersed. The final rapid - called "The Bad Place" wasn't nearly as bad as some of the others we'd been on... I think we took a pretty tame line through it.

Then a 20 hour bus ride to Arusha, Tanzania. 20 hours on the bumpiest, loudest, most uncomfortable and above all dirtiest bus you can imagine. I'll say no more.

Our 4 day safari in Tanzania was great. We saw Tarangire National Park, The Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. Tarangire was amazing for its elephants, which we got very close to, zebras by the hundreds, the most amazing birds of any park we'd been to, and a great shot of a giraffe taking a drink. Serengeti is a little bit tinged by a case of food poisoning which put me out of comission for some of it. But we finally got to see lions, including a mother and three cubs and the others saw a leopard while I was sleeping off the chicken. At about 6:30 as the sun was rising and we were getting set to go on our morning game drive a family of elephants, probably 6 or 8, walked right by our campsite. Quite spectacular. The vastness of the Serengeti also deserves some mention. Big rocks that jut out of nowhere, inspiring thoughts of The Lion King and keeping Circle of Life in my head incessantly throughout. And despite being one huge flat plane, there are subtle variations in vegetation throughout, and corresponding different wildlife. With only an evening and morning I'm sure we did it a disservice, but I'm glad to have seen it. Our final stop was the Crater. Our campsite on the rim was cold. As promised, but I think I was running a bit of a fever in the aftermath of the day before so I mostly huddled in my tent. The drive added flamingos, a rhino from at least a kilometer off ("oh... yeah... I think I see a horn there... with these 10X binoculars) plenty of buffalo, another couple lions and the impressive vista of what is difficult to conceive as a volcano crater simply because of its size.

Back to Arusha, and from there it's been travel - a combination of bus and air this time to make a much more pleasant journey. I'm down to single digits of hours left on the continent.

It's been a great experience. I've seen all these animals before, but there's something about seeing them just living wild minding their own business which has a completely different effect than seeing them in a zoo. White water rafting is just a good thrill ride, and I always enjoy those.

Pictures (I took around 750) will be forthcoming when I'm back on Canadian soil. Hope to see anyone who's actually reading this soon!