26 July -- Entebbe to Bwindi (by David)

Secretly, I think we all looked on this date with some trepidation, for this was our nine hour drive from Entebbe to the Windy National Forrest. Caroline and I both share the unenviable distinction of smaller than normal bladder capacity. The thought of crossing Uganda with no clear idea of when and where we would stop (or could stop) was mostly one of just getting through the drive….and not driving my comrades crazy.

To my surprise, however, the trip went extremely well. After breakfast at the Pizzeria adjoining the Speke Hotel, we set off about 8:00 a.m. Our driver warned us that the first half of the trip would be fairly smooth, but that the second half was rather bumpy, an understatement, to be sure. But more on that later.

Color, dust and vibrations are the three words that come to mind in describing this trip. For every small village we passed, we often saw groups of school kids going to or from school. Uniforms are de rigueur from what we’ve seen of Uganda. Apparently, each school has a color as you would see groups of children walking together wearing one shade or another. Girls usually wear a very conservative colored skirt with a white blouse. Boys wear the same color for pants or shorts with a white shirt. Throughout the day, we’d see clusters of kids in cobalt blue, maroon, aubergene, black or red and white gingham. More often than not, the kids would initiate a friendly smile and a wave or shout out “Hello!” as we passed by.

Other color impressions include the fields of tea, which are reminiscent of that regretful product of the 60’s, sculpted shag carpet. The fields of tea plants were a remarkable shiny emerald green, very lush. We often saw them growing on impossibly steep hillsides. Other vegetation included the fuzzy green fronds of Nile Papyrus, which grows to a height of seven or eight feet and acres of banana trees which reach a similar height. In some of the drier areas, we also saw ant hills that were terra cotta in color. Most of these were around five feet tall, but every once in a while there would be a towering ant hill that appeared to be around eight or ten feet in height. Occasionally we would see knots of cattle with these amazing but incongruous horns rising straight up three or four feet above the cattle’s heads.

About half way through the trip, we stopped at the equatorial line, which was clearly marked with several signs and a couple of large concrete markers. At this stop too we were treated to the spectacle of tree filled with yellow and black weaver birds and dozens of their round, grapefruit-sized woven nests. Only after we were back on the Land Rover did Caroline share with us that three basins were set up on the side of the road offering a very fascinating spectacle. Roger has promised to document the coriallis effect in his blog so I won’t steal his thunder here.

For lunch, we stopped at a nice little restaurant, obviously set up for the tourist trade. Our driver, Josef, contacted the cook to see if he would prepare some local food for us as we had inquired about this the day before. We were very pleased with the stews (chicken, beef or vegetable) that were prepared for us, along with the cassava and other local vegetables.

The second half of the trip was pretty bone-jarring. We played chase with another bus and fought off more than one cloud of dust from approaching traffic or the trucks in front of us. The roads seemed to be a combination of concrete and stone. Not exactly cobble stone, but the end result was pretty similar. Some of the rocks in the road were easily the size of lunchboxes. So we bounced along pretty well for a good five hours on our second leg.

Once we got into the mountainous areas, the scenery was a welcomed distraction from the bumps in the road. The area we passed through was referred to as the “Swiss Alps” of Uganda. The mountains and valleys were amazing to look at, though it was a little unnerving bouncing along the road with just a couple of feet of shoulder between us and shear drops falling away to valleys several hundreds of feet below us.

I’ve just been told that gin and tonics are waiting for me up on our veranda….so I am going to close now! In short, we arrived at our hotel at the edge of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest around 6:30 p.m. We were greeted warmly with chilled fruit juice and extremely pleasant staff. After dinner, we took showers then watched falling stars for about an hour before retiring for the evening. Little did we know what surprises the day ahead would hold for us!