I woke up in my nice safari tent with no hangover
thankfully. Some say that rafting is a great hangover cure, but it’s not
something that I’ve ever wanted to try out. At about half eight, I and a few
others got into a truck to go into Jinja to rendezvous with the rest of the
rafters either staying at the hostel in Jinja or coming in from Kampala. This
was supposed to be a sell out today, the main reason why my friend wasn’t joining
me. He was told it was full up and so ended up doing the tandem kayaking the day
before.
At the muster point for the first briefing I got my dull cup
of coffee and ended up chatting to a bunch of randoms. An American on a long
trip through Africa, a couple of girls who he’d met the night before in the
hostel and a young English / Northern Irish married couple from Edinburgh. I’m
not sure what it is about Edinburgh and Uganda, well apart from Amin being the
last King and all that, but I feel like I’ve disproportionately met more people
currently living in Edinburgh in Uganda than most of my trips to Edinburgh. It
has to be some weird Amin thing.
Tangent over with, since there were six of us we’d decided to
join up as a group and crew the raft together. First briefing over with it was
time for the obligatory cold rolex and fruit salad after getting your personal
flotation device and helmet. I happily munched on this breakfast on our way to
the put in point. 2.5 out of 5, the rolex was dull, but the fresh fruit salad
(watermelon, pineapple, passion fruit and sweet banana) made up for it.
Second more in depth safety briefing by the side of the
river and we were ready to go. Our guide then took us through the practical
training on the flat water before the first rapid. One of the key things that
you need to learn is how to get back in the boat if you’re not. It’s pretty
straightforward, if fairly inelegant, for a lump like myself. You hold on to
the rope on the outside of the boat with hands about a shoulder length apart,
get your body horizontal is and extend your arms away from the boat immediately
followed by pulling yourself towards it whilst kicking with your legs. As long
as you get your elbows locked you’re golden as you kick and flounder your way
back to the inside. Even if this is tricky, pulling someone into a boat when
you’re inside is dead easy too. Hold on to the life jacket (not the body), dunk
them, then pull them up whilst they are kicking with their legs. At the same
time you fall over backwards in to the inside of the boat having them fall on top
of you. Simple.
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| Example safety raft |
Sadly the act of voluntarily falling over the side in to the
calm warm water before getting back in the boat was too much for one of our
number and she decided to spend the rest of the day in the safety raft, and we
hadn’t even practiced flipping the boat which we did next. Practice over with
our six person crew, five punters and one guide set off for the first rapid.
The guides always ask you how crazy or gentle you want your experience to be
and thanks to that dumb invention called democracy we went for medium instead of
the cray-cray that I was advocating. As such we dodged the awesome waterfall
and went down the fairly dull channel to the right of it. Nice and gentle in
the raft.
The rest of the time was pretty uneventful, but still good
fun. Lunch was the usual glucose biscuits and freshly macheted pineapple from
the safety raft. And you can’t go wrong with sweet fresh pineapple. 2.5 out of
5. We got to the grade 6 and got out to walk around it. Trust me if you saw it
you’d do exactly the same, the power of the river is staggeringly awesome. We
put in just after, and managed to get right in the middle of the big hole
immediately afterwards and somehow didn't flip. There were some
pictures were you couldn't see us or the boat whilst going through this rapid.
This was definitely the highlight of this trip.
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| Not us, but you get the idea |
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| Again not us, but you get the idea |
We were one of the first groups to the buffet / bar area, so
after a quick change in to dry clothes I got my Nile Special and plate of
jacket potato, spicy beans, really good roast beef and baguette. Damn good grub
would eat again. 3.5 out of 5. Enjoyed more free beer waiting to
see the photos and in the truck back to the campsite. We managed to get back
before dark and so I joined up with the others still around from the previous
evening and went for the Bacon and Avocado Burger for my dinner.
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| Pic represntative |
The patty was reasonable, not that massive, but fairly tasty
and well-seasoned. It was cooked to medium and topped with a couple of rashers
of streaky bacon and a couple of slices of creamy avocado. It’s a fairly
classic taste and texture combination that worked well. The chips were nothing
to write home about. To be honest I’m getting bored of commenting on dull chips
so will only comment on great or terrible ones from now on. It’s still a pretty
tasty burger. 3 out of 5.
I think, but I’m not sure if there were all sorts of
shenanigans that night and possibly the previous evening. I’ll save them all for the next update even if it
doesn’t all stack up to the right chronology. The evenings at NRE kind of blur
in to one for me, always a good time, but I do know that I was knackered and so
headed back to my tent at a very poor 10.30pm.
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| Back to where I started the day |
Lastly just wanted to say thank you again to everyone for the wonderful leaving present of two superb days rafting on the Nile. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
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