The roads the roads they made me deaf you know....

So we have made it into Ethiopia the hassle with the visas has proved worth the wait! we left Jinja and crossed into Kenya we then drove for 4 solid days not fun if you have ever seen the roads in the north of Kenya you will know what I'm talking about but although the driving is hard the scenery is spectacular and changed every day ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! we arrived into Moyale and spent the next day driving to Aber Minch stopping off in a real traditional market where i got shoes made from tyres! and LP got a chicken and 1L of the local spirit for his birthday (fortunately the chicken was just on loan so after a pat it was returned to his owner and even more fortunately for him the spirit was tipped out 'by mistake') the day got exciting when we got 2 flat tyres! (driving at a ridiculously low speed how does that happen?....4 days on northern Kenyan roads wearing them down that's how!) the next day we drove into Addis Abbaba where we ARE IN A HOTEL!!! we had a traditional meal complete with injera (a spongy sort of pancake that tastes quite vinegary nice dipped in sauce its Ethiopia's answer to rice) today we spent the morning sorting out our Sudanese visas we pick them up tomorrow then its onwards and northwards.....

a little community spirit

So we are now on day 4 of being stranded in Uganda and not looking like we will be moving on for another few days yes the view and surrounding scenery is stunning yes the locals are amongst the loveliest people I've ever met yes the sun is shining but despite all these checks on the checklist boredom is beginning to set in to be fair there are only so many days you can sit and read then sit and chat then sit and blog come on passports! luckily today we were rescued bySoftpower an NGO here in Uganda and a registered charity back in the UK today we spent the day out at Matai primary school re-painting it in a beautiful deep red....along with painting myself in the same colour...(of course i didn't actually paint myself but i am covered in splatter!) at 9am this morning Kibiina picked us up from the campsite...(along with the long term volunteers)...and we walked though the village to the Softpower pre-school there are 3 classrooms there the oldest kids are 5-6 we went into their classroom and we introduced ourselves and the kids sung us songs then we moved onto the offices and and resource centre where there is a library a drama centre and a demonstration garden where kids can learn new agricultural techniques there is also a health centre and a brand new family planning clinic opening this month we got a full tour of all the facilities and then looked through the craft shop...(where i brought a little fabric giraffe to be friends with my little fabric elephant)... then we jumped on board the truck and drove for about half an hour to the school where we painted our little hearts out....listening to the lessons going on inside ...(i learnt what a preposition a noun and and a verb are...yeah i don't think i actually went to primary school)...when the kids stopped for lunch they surrounded us wanting to know our names they all sat watching us paint...(literally watching paint dry hehe)...we painted till about 1.30pm when we stopped for a delicious meal of chipatis rice beans and sweet potato we all visited for a while and Kibiina told us all about growing up in Uganda it was all really interesting then we brought a t-shirt as a donation to the charity and took a photo in front of our freshly painted wall then jumped back on the truck 'home' if we are still around Friday we may help out again....AMAZING day....great way to pass the time....

Google Putzi fly...its not pretty!

So yesterday LP was feeling miserable.... his own fault of course....he was nursing a chronic hangover it was a big night that i don't remember...mostly because i wasn't there...and that he doesn't remember due to the copious amounts of tequila he consumed! anywho yesterday afternoon his day got even worse he had seven "spider bites" five on one arm one on his stomach and one on his head above his eye....(which swelled right up making him look half Asian giving him the new nickname Li) anywho again turns out they wernt spider bites they were Putzi fly larvae that's right LP had maggots in his arm...they lay their eggs on wet clothes.. (laundry) and then when you wear the clothes they burrow in and feed we had to cover them over with Vaseline to suffocate them and when they wriggled to the surface squeeze them like a big zit then pull out the offending maggot with tweezers quite a gruesome thing really and very pain filled LP described them as little hot needles wiggling in and out!...so word from the now wise make sure laundry is in full sunlight and if it doesn't get sun blasted don't wear it for at least five days!...we do of course have photos and i also believe that Mark has a little baggy of the maggots kicking about somewhere!....

a little catch up...

So we are still in Uganda now in Jinja just chilling and waiting till our passports arrive back from Australia where they have been sent to get Ethiopian visas we should be here about 4ish days its a beautiful spot overlooking the Nile so not a bad place to wait it out....

when we left Kampala we headed up to Kibale Forrest national park where we walked and walked and walked the first day there we got up earlyish and took a walk along the edge of the national park looking out for some animals monkeys mostly we were well rewarded we saw 3 species the red tailed monkey the red colobus monkey and the blue cheeked mangabe we walked for about 2.5 hours and had just got back when it was announced that there were free chimp permits for the afternoon trekking so we wolfed down a super speedy lunch and headed into the national Forrest where we spent about 4 hours trekking these amazing primates we saw 2 family groups all females and young one group was a female and 3 of her offspring ranging in age from 11 to a tiny 4 month old baby! we sat and watched them for about an hour before heading deeper into the Forrest where we saw another 3 chimps we watched these for about 25 mins as we had to head back to camp they were so lovely but as it was the heat of the day not very active mostly just slowly eating and grooming! then we got back to camp where we sat for about an hour when it got dark we headed out on a night walk we saw a tiny bush baby and a load of frogs spiders and other creepy crawlys! when we got back to camp we were invaded by safari ants so all the tents had to be surrounded by paraffin and we couldn't shower as they were blocking the path there! the next morning we got boda bodas (motorbike taxis) into town to the Bogodi wetland sanctuary to go bird/monkey watching there are 8 species of primate in the wetlands and we saw 6 of them red tailed monkey, red colobus monkey, black and white colobus, lo'hoest monkey,olive baboons and ververt monkeys we also saw a Jameson's mamba it was huge and right above Sam's head! that afternoon we were all walked out so just chillaxed until evening when a local music group came and performed for us it was a really diverse group from wee kids to well the opposite haha! it was really fun and we got up and had a bit of a dance with them...

next day we left Kibale Forrest and headed to Murchison falls the biggest rapid on the Nile and the most powerful waterfall in Africa we had three days there mostly sitting around as it was intensely hot we did take a boat trip up the river to the falls and a game drive through the national park which was really cool and we got 2 more monkeys a sub species of the vervet monkey called the tantalus monkey which was in the campsite and a patas monkey in the national park along the river we also saw a ton of wildlife...and a boat full of....Japanese tourists!

we left Murchison and spent night in Masinda camping in the garden of the Masinda hotel that's right the Masinda hotel the one where the queen stayed along with the cast of river queen heck yes!

and now we are in Jinja just passing the time.....

Mzungu in the mist...

So I'm writing this up on word pad whilst i wait with baited breath to see if the Internet connection actually comes back on so forgive me if Ive missed some days here and there as i cant see my last post I'm going to go ahead and guess that the last post was somewhere before lake Bonyonyi and so that is where i will begin today's tale....

22 January 2011

so we were staying in a little campsite on the outskirts of Kampala we woke up at the crack of dawn to get out of the city before being hemmed in by large amounts of traffic it is somewhat surreal to drive through a major city in the darkness of dawn (and it always amazes me how many people are up and about at that time!) so anyway to cut a boring story to the point we drove all day to lake Bonyonyi a beaut of a spot close to the Rwanadan border here we spent a few days chillaxing in what i would like to say was sunshine but in actuality was the misty coolness that is the Ugandan mountainess we arrived late arvo and set up tents etc before wiling away the evening in the bar....

23rd January 2011

today was set to be a pretty boring day and instead ended up one of my favourite so far we spent the morning doing laundry (and i mean the whole morning it took me several hours of washing in a bucket! i will not let it build up so much from now on!) so then sometime after lunch we headed off on a walk around the lake no sooner had we left the gates of the campsite when a few kids fell into step with us they started to tell us all about the area and showed us this path heading straight up the side of the hill we walked to the top where we had a view of almost the entire lake and all its islands (including the smallest one a tiny island dubbed 'punishment island' as back in the day women who got pregnant out of wedlock were brought to the island and left to die if they could swim they were tied to the one single tree their only hope was if a local man couldn't afford a bride price he could row out and take the women and her child as his own) they also pointed out the mountain that is the border with Rwanda on the way back down we popped into the orphanage that is their home the orphanage is run by their auntie and houses 17 kids from 4 months to 18 years they live together in 3 houses they were the sweetest kids ever they showed us all their animals (including baby cows sheep and rabbits) they all sung and danced for us and we played games for a while John the eldest and one of the ones who showed us up the mountain teaches the wee ones to swim and coaches the local football team as well as helping out around the home it was the best afternoon we have had just hanging out with all these beautiful kids!.....

24th January 2011

boring day of driving from the lake across the Ugandan border into Rwanda.....

25th January 2011

up super early for the day we have been waiting for....GORILLA TREKKING! we had to be at the gorilla centre at 7am so very Early start we drove there in 4x4s and hung about while they split us into groups we ended up in the hard group meaning we climbed the highest and the furthest and boy did it take it out of me we drove up up up this bad bad road to a little village where we parked up and headed across the Fields to the entrance of the national park (by the time we got there i was pooped!.... and we hadn't even started walking up!) when we got to the edge of the park we climbed over a stone wall and the terrain instantly changed the bush became thick and closed in and the air began to feel wetter it really was gorillas in the mist as we walked up the mist closed in so much we couldn't see the ground off the mountain the path just went up up up and we were so glad for the wooden walking poles the guides gave everyone! after 2 hours hard slog we reached the point where the trackers had found the gorillas the group we climbed to see was called Amahoro meaning peace and was made up of 17 gorillas there are 3 silver backs (one dominant of course...and one with only one hand after losing it in a snare) and then some black backs females juveniles and infants the smallest was a teeny tiny 4 month old bubba riding on its mamma's back....at the centre we were told to maintain a distance of 7 metres but as the gorillas themselves move at times we were a mere arms length away....it was beautiful,exciting,amazing,brilliant i really don't have enough adjectives to describe the absolute coolness of it all....when it started to rain they nested into the trees and bushes hugging themselves and each other to keep warm just like a person would!....most of the time we watched them eating but it was mesmerizing! we had a few close calls when suddenly a gorilla would appear out of the bushes or change paths at the last minute and come really close but the guides are so experienced ll they needed to do was make reassuring noises and the gorilla would go back to what it was doing you could see in their eyes they knew exactly who we were and that we meant them no harm....it was just so....so...fantabulous if ever you get the chance to do it...DO IT!!!.... we spent an hour with them which just flew by and then we headed down the mountain slipping and sliding due to the rain i think everyone fell down at least once!...back at camp we just chilled exhausted after the climb...i slept SO well that night.....

26th January 2011

we got up early and drove to Kigali the capital of Rwanda where we spent the day exploring its such a cool place i think my favourite African city its so clean the people are friendly and its a stunning location built in and around the hills we got a taxi looking for a place to lunch but as we couldn't all fit in we split with LP and Sam taking motorbikes....only problem turned out the taxi driver didn't actually know where we wanted to go....luckily neither did the motorbike drivers so we were all driving in circles when we happened to bump into each other which was extremely lucky! we then changed plan and went straight to the genocide museum....its brilliantly set up with an indoor and outdoor section the outdoors is a garden and mass grave for 250,000 victims of the genocide we walked through the whole thing with an audio guide which really complemented the information in the displays the whole thing was absolutely powerful afterwards we just had to sit for a while and absorb it all....in the late afternoon we all jumped on motorbike taxis (yes even me! argghhhhh) and drove to the Hotel Des Milles Collines (the real life hotel Rwanda) we went in and had lunch in the poolside restaurant which is on the hill overlooking the city such a stunning location!....that night we had a meal in the hotel restaurant which was a tad disappointing the lonely planet gave it a great write up but we soon realised that it had changed....the first clue was that the food wasn't Ethiopian...and it was an Ethiopian restaurant in the lonely planet....we then had to wait almost 2 hours for our just average food....but the profits of the whole place do go to a charity giving artificial limbs to people with disabilities which is a good cause....and the place was called 'one love club' which is a good name!.....

27th January 2011

a long drive again we have hit a bump in the road somewhat the rules of entering Ethiopia have changed and we can now no longer get a visa at the border and so we drove back across the border to Uganda where we have to courier our passports to Australia to get a visa so we now get to explore this beautiful country a bit more extensively which doesn't bother me at all!....

28th January 2011

A pretty cruisy day in Kampala passports off this morning then we just hung about eating internet-ting etc a wee trip to the shops to get....wait for it....laundry powder! and that's about it tomorrow we hit the road towards lake Victoria some more national parks and hopefully some chimp tracking! life is sweet!....

So frigging quick!!!

So this is a super quick blog i don't really have time to do one but don't know when ill next get internet so here goes!

we spent 4 nights on Zanzibar the first in the pyramid hotel in stone town not really doing alot as LP was a bit poorly the next day we went on a spice tour it went all day and included samples of some very strange fruit mostly including a Dorian which smells a bit like death (and doesn't taste alot better...) they smell so bad they are banned on airplanes! they are a huge favorite amongst the locals tho! we also tried a jackfruit which looks and tastes a bit like a cross between a banana and a pineapple! weird in the afternoon after a scrumptious lunch we headed north to Mangapwani beach and slave caves and learnt a little about the area then it was back to stone town where we met up with Mary mums friend from nursing school who was kind enough to put us up for 3 nights! the next day we explored stone town with Mary it makes such a difference when you are with a local making it one of our best days out! that night we went to a concert at the music school a bizarre fusion of Swahili and a Norwegian jazz band was really cool though! next day we went out for the whole day snorkeling the best we have done so far and we saw dolphins from the boat! next day we headed back to Dar we drove all day and all the next day to Mesarani snake park where we got to hold a snake! cool! then we went to the Ngorrangorro crater (spelt so wrong sorry) where we spent one day and one night game driving best spot was elephants with full tusks they must have been about 2m long! then the next day driving to Nairobi where we are now and i am late to meet people for lunch so off i go sorry its so short!!!!......Asanti sana...(squashed banana)