A road trip in Uganda over the April Fool's weekend - now that has to be asking for trouble! I wanted a little adventure and I was not to be disappointed.
On Friday evening we set off to Masindi to stay in the oldest hotel in Uganda. Back in the day, the Masindi Hotel must have been quite the place to stay; Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart stayed there when they filmed 'The African Queen', as well as the writer, Ernest Hemingway. I would hope that the stars of the silver screen of yesteryear were treated to slightly better service than we were ... I bet they were not told to take the buffet dinner because the chef could not be bothered to cook at such a late hour! Still ... thr place has a certain charm and we enjoyed a peaceful night and a hot shower before heading off to camp in the wilds.
On Saturday afternoon we discovered that while it is expensive to swim in the pool at the lodge, the staff will happily allow you to sit by the poolside and dangle your feet in the water for free, as long as you have a drink. After a final trip to the last loo we set off to our campsite on the Nile Delta.
We decided we would go directly to the campsite to set up our tents before our game drive, but happened to see a lone lioness, a tower or totter of giraffes, a sedge of Ugandan crested cranes (in fact a whole volary of birds, including a single vulture, not a wake of vultures), a congregation of plover and a bloat of hippos. Sorry ... I got a little carried away with the collective nouns there!
A we set up camp, the winds picked up and dark clouds gathered. As you may be aware, I am not the most competent of campers and found the extra trials from the elements a little trying. As it has not rained for weeks, the ground was solid and we struggled to hammer in our tent pegs since we had all forgotten the car jack and had to improvise with a car jack!
Despite the menacing clouds and the distant rumble of thunder, we escaped the rain and we were able to barbeque without umbrellas. We then proceeded to go on our night safari, without, I hasten to add, the presence of a guide. We didn't have enough space in our car and some of our party claimed to know the park well enough to direct us to all of the nighttime action. Miraculously, we did not get lost, although some of us had doubted the word of a man who offered to guide us through the park at night, but had forgotten to pack his tent pegs, a toothbrush or a sleeping bag!
Bedtime came and we crawled into our tents. I was a little on the warm side, since my sleeping bag, originally purchased for Mount Kilimanjaro, was designed for temperatures as low as minus 15. This however, turned out to be quite a tactical move. If you make yourself hot enough over the course of the night, then your body will sweat out any excess fluids and remove the need to get out of the tent in the middle of the night for a pee. Good news indeed when you can hear the grunt of hippos in very close proximity. Genius move, some would say!
Our morning game drive was not without its drama either. As we headed back to camp, we saw a group of cars (what is the collective noun for 4X4s?) We headed over to see what amazing animals were gathering, only to find some of our friends looking perplexed at the underside of their car. That would be the car containing the family with a 12 month old baby, of course. Broken brakes, a failing clutch and a burst tyre. There was no hope of any of us getting it back on the road. And we were still by the Nile Delta, 30kms from the safari lodge. So we waited and waited and relied on the hope that some vehicle would pass and be willing to take on a few extra passengers. Of course we were lucky and we all got back in one piece.
Am hour later, we were back in the lodge and decided that as long as we could have a good cup of tea, then we could take on the world! :)