After the excitement of the safari we returned to Kampala for our first Christmas together in 3 years. It was always going to be a little different though. We decided against buying alive turkey on the road and decided to just make whatever we could for Christmas dinner. I cooked up some roast veggies and Mum made a scrumptious lemon surprise pud and we had a very lazy day. Mum went for her first ever swim on Christmas day in an outdoor pool and in the evening we tried to watch the latest James Bond film on dvd on the terrace (don't waste your time, it is totally incomprehensible - I was very disappointed that the dodgy dvd shop across the road could not manage to find Only Fools and Horses for us). Then on Boxing Day, which is also Dad's birthday we treated ourselves to a lovely meal at the Emin Pasha - the very nice hotel with a lovely garden and so on in town.
One of Dad's favourite haunts in Kampala was The Surgery. He must've read up about it before arriving in Kampala because he was asking to be taken there on the second day, complaining of a gammy eye. He was immediately impressed with the quick service, because unlike in the UK, you can see a doctor within an hour's notice here, rather than having to book your appointment 6 weeks ahead of actually catching the 'flu. After a small wait, he emerges from the surgery, pleased that he does not have a tropical disease and retelling the expat doctor's claim to fame of appearing in 'The Last King of Scotland' (the rest of us have heard it all before). After the safari, he goes down with the notorious traveller's tummy and I although i had been telling him for several days that it sounded like an amoeba it took him the same amount of time to admit that I was correct, so sadly not enjoying the xmas dinner too much.
Just before Christmas we took a day trip to Jinja. Again the day was not uneventful. Before we had even got out of Kampala, I was pulled over by the police and heard those fateful words'Madam, did you know you had committed an offecnce?'Now the best way to get out of this is just to wait until they give you the cue to bribe them. I sneaked across 20 000 Shillings, but then unbeknown to me Dad had also given him the same amount. I was just living in fear that Mum was going to innocently whack out a whole stack of 50 000 notes and mistake them for the 5000s! After a serious wait in traffic we hit the open road and got to Jinja. After stopping for lunch, we took a bot trip out to the 'Source of the Nile' where the river meets Lake Victoria. It was a very small boat, so I felt a bit seasick afterwards, then we wended our way home. The journey back was going so well, until we hit a diversion sign. The only problem being that they only instructed you to leave the road you were on and didn't give any further directions - so we got very lost, to the point that we arrived at some government office that was unmentioned on the map and had to give the guard a lift, who then directed us home.
Our final day was spent in Entebbe, looking at the Botanical Gardens, which were in all honesty, a bloody mess, as nobody had bothered to clean up after a big party the day before, so we had to treck through the masses of litter that had been left behind. A bit of a shame really, as the guide book had promised that you could swing like Tarzan on the vines and would have really liked to have had that image in my head. In the end, we went back to my hotel, packed up and I said a tearful goodbye to Mum and Dad before heading off to Mombasa the next day.
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