My time in Tanzania came to an end much too quickly for my liking! :( The time I spent there was truly inspiring and life changing, the people I met were all absolutely fantastic and will certainly be missed dearly! I thought 6 weeks would be long enough and it was long enough to call it home and make a new family, and truly develop a bond with some of the people I met there and fall in love with all of my babies. I would much rather have preferred to stay longer, but I have other exciting things planned so I had to go on. One day I will for sure be back though! My best wishes to everyone I have met in that amazing country! You made the trip thus far just that much better!
My placement was finished on June 24th, so after a lovely but very long dinner out for mine and some of the other peoples last nights at a Mediterranean restaurant, came home went to bed. Then started the horrible ordeal of packing....somehow managed though I think my bag was literally almost bursting at the seams! Then a girl who came at the same time as me named Lindsay (also from Canada and I headed off to the bus station to start our long long journey to Uganda.
Our bus left at about 2PM and about 18 hours later we arrived into Jinja, Uganda around 7AM. The buses weren't so bad, luckily I slept most of the way, only once only having to have Lindsay run after the bus because we almost got left at the Kenyan Border...but all was well! We took a boda and finally arrived into Explorers Campsite into Bujagali Falls, which is absolutely gorgeous! It has dorms, tenting areas, permanent safari tents, and double rooms.
Somehow our reservation had gotten mixed up, but we ended up staying in a safari tent for the first two nights, the view from our little porch was gorgeous as it overlooked the Nile down below and just an amazing view with tones of monkeys and birds over head.
Our first day we just chilled out and didn't do a whole lot, went back into Jinja to exchange money and get a smoothie and wander around.
Monday morning we woke up early, and prepared for our full day of rafting the Nile that we had ahead of us. We got on a bus to go meet up with the rest of the rafters then drove for 40 minutes or so to our take off point. After we did our safety briefing on land we divided into groups and got into our rafts. In my raft we only had 5 all together...max is 9. It was Lindsay, I, and two girls traveling separately but both from the states and our guide Jeffrey (who was continually saying Happy Days! and Fuck the Paddle!-in regards to whether or not we should try and hold on to the paddle in the case of us flipping)! Once in the water we did our in water safety briefing and training, of showing us how to paddle and doing practice flips and explaining what to do when we flip in the rapids. Then off we went.....we were the first group to do the first "rapid" which is actually a smallish waterfall...haha and amazingly we didn't flip but it was a good fun start.
There are 8 sets of rapids all together...6 big ones in my opinion. Our raft ended up flipping on 4 of these rapids! The first couple times are a little terrifying because you get caught under the boat and you get sucked back from the undercurrent and wave after wave topples over you. Sounds scary than it was I think...ha I was pretty much just going off of adrenaline the whole time, but thus far on my trip my fear of water has diminished substantially! In between rapids we would just float down the river chilling...i would occasionally get pushed in ha...but it was okay because according to our guide the crocs here were vegetarian......haha I have found that locals all love to lie and joke, you never really know what to believe....obviously he was joking there. In reality there were not really any worries of hippos or crocs because the water is to rough in most spots for them. During the breaks between rapids we would also pick up the 3 boys who were river boarding, essentially going down these Class 5 rapids, on a boogie board. Crazy I thought at first, but then realized at the end I had pretty much gone down every rapid without even a boogie board because we were flipped in so many times. On our last set of rapids....this is the set that nearly every boat flips on...we managed to actually be one of the only groups to make it through............except for me....because when we were nearly vertical on a wave. I ended up flipping out of the boat backwards, only to be crushed by waves and then have the raft run over me again lmao! This was the only time though that I needed to get one of the safety kayakers to come rescue me! ( The guides and safety kayakers were absolutely amazing, and it is crazy the things that they can do! Some of them have even been asked to go and train for the Olympics...so we knew we were definitely in safe hands)
After all the rafting was said and done, we were given an amazing supper all you can eat and all you can drink! Here we were dubbed the swim team, because we essentially did swim down the Nile through the Class 5 rapids lol, my guide also had to kindly point out that I had flipped/fallen in the most as well! HA! It was great fun!
After we came back to rest, and take some tylenol for our now sore joints!
Tuesday we did pretty much nothing all day and then went on a sunset cruise all you can eat all you can drink again! Ha and had an absolute blast and met up with some more cool people. Afterwards we had to say goodbye to over river board friends Jason and Bryan, but went back to the campsite and met lots of other awesome people had a really fun night, and went for a midnight swim in the Nile....pretty amazing I won't lie!
Wednesday was a day of recovery and relaxing, and now today is Thursday, so we will be checking out and Lindsay wants to go Bunjee Jumping!
Then on to another bus adventure, Lindsay back to Arusha, TZ...myself to Nairobi, Kenya....though I will be arriving at about 5:30AM only to start orientation at 9:30AM a mere 4 hours later. Then Saturday I will be off to my Maasai village to be teaching for the month! Will try and get some sort of internet sometime, though I am not sure when!
For everyone who reads this, I hope you are all having an awesome summer....have a blast at C-fest for those of you who are going, sad I can't be there! Love you and miss you all :)
