Enter the bread basket

This morning finally felt like a vacation as we slept in till the last minute before the hotel buffet closed.  We actually even went back to bed after the feasting on a wide assortment of delicious food.  We laid around and waited for our transfer from the hotel to the airport to arrive.  After a 2 hour flight we landed safely in Entebbe, Uganda and met our new driver Vincent.  He’s an older man who was a little hard to understand at first, but a really nice man.  He explains to us that he had been expecting us to arrive early in the morning, instead we arrived late that night, the poor guy waited around for hours at the airport wondering where we were, I guess nobody told him that we had booked our own flights from Nairobi to Entebbe.  A slight misunderstanding because it was not explained to me that the tour company actually booked our flights while we were on safari not knowing that I had booked our flights months ago! Oops! In the end it all worked out but we quickly discovered why they wanted us to arrive early in the morning, traffic is INSANE here!  It’s a chaotic combination of trucks and motorcycles.  We had heard that Ugandan’s love their night life, and the drive through the suburbs of the sprawling city demonstrated this perfectly.  It’s rows and rows of kiosks selling BBQ meat and beer and there are tons of people gathered out front of each. All I know is I’m really glad I’m not driving! Once we arrived at the hotel it didn’t take long to realize what all the articles and books we had read about Uganda were talking about in terms of service.  I’m not sure what it is, if it’s a language barrier issue or an accent issue, but they don’t seem to be able to understand us very well.  We wondered whether they only heard what they wanted to hear or if they really didn’t understand us.  For instance if we ordered a tea, they’d say with milk? No milk.  Ok so tea with milk.  No I said no milk. And of course it would come with milk.  Oh well, I guess we’re now on what they call “African time”.  Tomorrow we have another very long day ahead of us as we make our way to the most south western part of Uganda to do some volcano trekking!

Well today we are in for one hell of a drive, but hey, it’s not like we aren’t used to it and have never done it before.  And at least we will get to see what the country actually looks like on the ground, well, the south of it anyway.  On our way down we drove through many small villages and the one commonality was the amount of bananas.  Neither of us had ever seen anything like it, the way they are able transport these bananas is quite amazing.  On our way out of the city it was transport after transport over flowing with bananas delivering them to the urban population who are getting ready for their work day. Vincent kept telling us that the entire country runs on bananas, that 3 varieties of bananas provide sustenance for the majority of the population.  The bananas arrive not by the bunches we see back home in the grocery store, but with the entire stem intact with dozens of these bunches per stem.  Watching them unload the cargo was interesting, but even more fascinating was the way the locals transport them via 10 speed bicycle in the smaller towns.  They are able to very creatively attach several of these stems to 1 bicycle with literally hundreds of bananas at a time.  It was quite the sight to see long lines of locals pushing these bikes up and down the shoulders of the highway.

Vast Farm Lands

As we continued further and further south, the terrain increasingly got more mountainous.  The scenery was absolutely stunning as we passed terraced mountain tops which make good use of all available terrain.  I suppose the trade off is that the entire region to the south has been cleared of trees and brush to make way for agriculture.  Here they grow beans, cabbage, corn, and potatoes…not what you’d expect of a tropical location, but I suppose these are the things that are easy to grow and provide nutrition for the locals.  The tropical, mountainous topography kept reminding Marlene of her travels to Colombia.  It was a very long drive, but at least our surroundings made it all the more inviting.  The most stunning of all scenes was after when we caught a glimpse of lake Bunyoni from high up in the terraced mountains.  We would be returning to the lake in a few days for some rest and relaxation.

After about 10 hours of driving we finally approached our destination.  At this point, the twisty turny nature of our drive had done a number on Marlene who was trying to find a position to sit in which did not make her feel queasy.  As the road turned from freshly paved asphalt to dirt, we rounded our last mountain pass, and there, way off in the distance, with absolute and distinct clarity, were the series of 3 massive volcanoes that up the Muhavura Mountain range, staring us straight in the face.  We pulled over to the side of the road to stare in aw and our driver turned to us with a huge smile and said “so…which volcano would you like to climb?” gulp!! I knew these volcanoes were huge, but to actually see them in the dying light of day was quite intimidating. Upon arrival into Kisoro, we made our way into the tourist centre to decide which volcano we were going to climb.  After intently reading all of the descriptions of the treks up these mammoth beasts we both kind of looked at each other with indecisive gazes.  They all sounded very intriguing but VERY difficult, a lot more difficult then anything we had read in books or on line and we kind of got the feeling that we had been mislead.  We opted for Mt. Sobynyo (Sovenio) which was the second largest of the 3...but still 3659M above sea level!  We based our decision on the fact that at the peak, we would be at a point where 3 countries meet:  Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo.  When we booked this trip we both had the urge to dip into the Congo for Gorilla trekking but decided it was not a good idea due to the constant instability in the region.  So….this would be as close as we would get to entering the DRC.  Oh yes, and in case it needs to be mentioned, all of these volcanoes have been dormant since the Holocene age J

The Virunga Mountain Range

We eventually checked into our guest house accommodations and were greeted by a lovely, smiling hostess who gave us both hugs and took our orders for dinner. She was incredibly friendly but we are quickly discovering there is a distinct difference in service level here.  The funny thing is that each place we’ve been to has HUGE menus but ¾ of the stuff on them are not available!  So often we would get our hopes up for something we hadn’t had in a long time, only to be told they don’t have that right now.  In addition, everything takes for ever to be made and served.

We went to bed early because 5:30am comes very fast and early.  Tomorrow we meet the mountains!