A fairly leisurely start this morning as we all had a rough nights sleep – there were a few dogs that decided they didn’t like each other in the night and kept fighting near our tents. Den cooked eggs for breakfast which was a nice change although it was quite worrying to see vultures on the roof of the bar looking at us while we ate!!
After finishing breakfast quickly so as not to attract more vultures we headed into Kampala to a shopping centre to get supplies for the tour and buy anything we wanted to have personally. I bought some coffee beans, steers seasoning and batteries before going with Trip, our token American, to the coffee shop on the corner for some “Good African Cffee”. It was actually rather nice – I had an iced coffee and Trip had a hot chocolate but we both agreed that the setting combined with the fresh produce did make it good experience.
We passed out through Kampala and had lunch at the side of the road somewhere. The kids didn’t seem to come as close today but probably just as well as one of them was waving a machete. They did seem friendly enough however and cheered at us, as did a car full of businessmen when they saw our Tokoloshe when we drove through Kainjojo. I was in the front of the truck for this part of the journey as Jono was in the back fixing the window where I was sitting which allowed me to get some great photos.
We’re staying at the Chimpanzee Guest House for a couple of nights and the scenery on the way here was amazing. It was so lush and covered with so much tea which resulted in good photo opportunities. Another good photo opportunity was about 10km from the guest house when a whole herd of longhorn cattle came walking down the road towards us and went all around the truck on their way to wherever they were going.
It was raining when we got to the campsite but the setting here is amazing. The camp consists of lovely grounds on a hill, overlooking a lake and next to a tea plantation. The service was also great – the owners came straight out to greet us, followed shortly by a group of women who offered to do our washing for us for the equivalent of $7 a bag and a lot of us decided to make use of the offer.
Before dinner, which was a chicken curry of some description, I got on top of the truck with Al and Trip for some photos and to look at the scenery and I wasn’t disappointed!
I’ll try to get a good nights sleep tonight as I’m on truck lockup duty tomorrow and there are a few people that have decided to do the morning trek to see the chimps so I’ll need to get up early.