Camping Again

A few weeks ago -over Easter weekend- we were able to get away with some friends for a great weekend of camping. Andrea had Good Friday off as a national holiday, so we took off in the late morning in convoy with our friends Sion, Emma, their daughter Niamh, and their lovely big black dog Griff (actually spelled differently as it's a Welsh name, but I can't for the life of me remember it, as Welsh words make less sense to me than Chinese words). We drove North to the Ugandan border, crossed over into Kabale, through it, and a few miles out of town, headed off the beaten track, and up into the high mountain passes to Lake Bunyoni.

The worst roads were tied between the single-lane dirt roads into the lake area, and the awful dirt roads in our neighborhood. The most time-consuming portion was actually crossing from Rwanda to Uganda. Sion and I handled all the paperwork, and girls and dog stayed in the SUVs. We had one predicted office for passport stamps and visas (efficient, though it ought to be for $50 US per passport). Then for the car there were FIVE offices to go to just for the Ugandan government, including one for security and one separate one for the police. While in the police office we asked the very bored female police officer whether we were required to purchase third-party insurance for their side of the border, and she had absolutely no idea. Strange, but we shrugged our shoulders and bought some (there are at least 3 insurance offices at the border), and then exchanged Rwandan Francs for Ugandan Shillings. So of all our travel from door-to-door, we were on the road about 4 1/2 hours, with a good deal of that at the border.

Then once we arrived at the lake, we dropped off all our gear (and it was a lot) in the transport company's office (a tiny wooden shack with a desk), parked the cars in a lot, then watched porters load all our stuff on a stretched-out rowboat with an outboard motor. With six or eight chickens. Because of Griff, they decided the goat could wait for the next crossing.

We jumped in as well, and were off to the middle of the lake.

Ten minutes later we were disembarking on Bushara Island and climbing through the forest to the reception area.

In the interest of not taking forever to get this out, I'll continue it in another post soon.