Jinja to Kampala - July 27th

July 27th, 2008:

Short: Nikolai hurts, Lunch at Bujagali Falls, Drive to Kampala, Relax at the hostel

Long: Nikolai woke up this morning feeling like he had been in a motorcycle accident. Not wanting to come across the hostel employee from the night before, we quickly left and headed for Bujagali Falls. Thirty minutes later we found the falls to be less your quintessential waterfall, and more like heavy rapids. We drove down to the river and found people congregated at the edge watching rafters, and kayakers, negotiate the heavy class IV / V rapids. As can be seen in the picture, Nikolai has had better mornings.

We ate lunch at a nearby café and decided it would be best to drive to Kampala and relax over the next two days. The drive was quick, only two hours, and we arrived into Kampala in the early afternoon. One brief observation from the drive…Since Tanzania, we have noticed that all of the countries we have been in have allowed private companies to advertise within towns and along roadways. Many of the store signs, and the majority of the street signs, are actually paid for by private companies, with Coca Cola leading the pack. It has not been uncommon to pass a town in which every store has a large, Coca Cola sponsored, name sign placed out front. Mobile telephone companies seem to have the contract for all of the street signs as well as the city distance markers. You simply can’t escape the advertising. On the drive today we noticed that MTN, one of the countries mobile network providers, has contracted with towns to paint their stores in yellow, the MTN colors, while another network, Zain, is painting them in bright pink. In some of the smaller towns we passed through, almost every roadside building had been painted.

Once we arrived in Kampala we searched for our guidebooks recommended hostel, only to find it had been closed months before. We decided to stay at another hostel called “Backpackers,” and after navigating Kampala’s maze-like road network, pulled into their compound. After locking up a dorm bed, I went to take a shower but found the water was shut off. As can be seen in the posting by the hostel’s management (Picture below), Uganda, like many other African countries, has been having electricity issues that affect a wide range of other services, water included. That evening, the power went out for hours. We therefore went to bed dirty, and exhausted, although the latter had more to do with the previous night’s drama.