Into Uganda

The first three days of the trip have gone well, but not smoothly. The group of people is OK, although only 2 of the 6 of us are making the trip to Cape Town. The other 4 get off when we cruise past Nairobi in two weeks, at which point we will gain 4 new people for the trip.

We had our first hiccup yesterday when we tried to cross the border from Kenya into Uganda. We arrived at the border to find that it was being blockaded by Kenyan truck drivers. Apparently there was an accident in Uganda involving a Ugandan military vehicle and a Kenyan goods truck. This led to the Ugandan military personnel shooting and Killing the Kenyan driver. So we had to make a 2 hour detour to another, smaller border crossing that was still open. We drove through villages along a dirt road, going no more than 20 mph. As we drove past schools, all of the kids ran out of the school and lined the streets, waving and saying "Hello!" or "Jambo!". It was amazing to see how happy they were to see us, though apparently they never see any tourists like us. This is most likely because when we got to the border crossing we found out that they don't issue tourist visas, like the other borders do. Our guide did some smooth talking and got our passports stamped anyway.

Once into Uganda we made our way to Jinja, where we camped along the Nile River near its origin. It was pretty cool to listen to the Nile rush past as I tried to fall asleep. The best part may have been the showers, which were on a cliff and overlooked the river.

We now make our way to south western Uganda, where we will trek in hopes of seeing a family of mountain gorillas.