2009/02/10-21 best trip ever

Größere Kartenansicht

uganda. what a wonderful country - i am so glad that i actually visited eva; who turned out to be the perfect guide & host for me.. thank you for that!

we visited a lot of interesting places and i must say that i would have never expected it to be that beautiful; both nature and wildlife simply stunned me.

uganda's nature

besides being fascinated all of the time, though, i got to learn a lot about the ugandian culture & lifestyle.

lifestyle in uganda

people refer to us whites as muzungu, which is a common african term for strange, white people.

contrary to the austrians, who also have various terms for our foreigners, they mean it friendly.. it is simply their way to address us. in general people are very open-minded and interested; they have a good sense of humor, and if they are stunned, they laugh. so, for example, it is very uncommon for them to be able to swim. when we told them that we could, they non-believingly laughed and said 'man, you are good, muzungu'.

body contact is usual - it is possible that you hold your counterparts hand during the whole conversation. although homosexuality is illegal [that was quite shocking for me] men run around holding their hands.. just in a non-sexual way.

the way of conversation is totally different to the austrian, too. deriving from luganda, they do not use please or thank you too much; they mainly talk in commands. e.g. 'you take this', 'you go over there' instead of 'would you like to have this' etc. this is not being rude, it is just how they talk and how you answer. bargaining is also very common, it is a form of communication. when they offer you a certain price [which is generally a muzungu one, i.e. at least thrice as high] you just say 'you must reduce the price a bit' a start negotiating. something i had to get used to but turned out to be quite fun.

people have a simple lifestyle, but they seemed really happy to me. i really had to get rid of some of my prejudices.

ugandan people

food is awesome, too. local fruit are mangos, papayas, bananas, pineapples and avocados. we almost daily mashed tomatoes with them and filled chapattis, incredibly taste bread-crêpe-things.

to sum it all up - this was the best vacation ever and i hope to go back to this country soon. although the standards are low, the quality of life is undescribable due to the positive atmosphere.

2009/02/17-19 safari

the grand final of my trip: a safari through the murchison falls national park.

we shared our bus with an old-ish spanish couple and a british family - who we also shared our humor with. almost right from scratch it was - certainly among other things - hilarious.
we were accomodated in little tents and before 'moving in' we were told to beware of warthogs and hippos, as they might linger along the campsite. the warthogs actually came close, which i really liked.

the safari itself was just indescribable. in the morning we had a game drive through the nile delta, in the afternoon the boat ride to the falls followed.

the safari rides

as we saw about a zillion different wild animals, i actually learned a lot about the creatures. first of all did we see 2.5 of the big five - those animals, which are most dangerous to hunt [nowadays it is illegal to hunt anyway]: buffalos, elephants, leopards, rhinos and lions. the reason for the 0.5 is that our guide saw a leopard running away, which kinda counts for our group, i'd say *smile*.

murchison falls' wildlife

second i learned to differentiate between different animal families:

• baboons are no monkeys, they are baboons [well, duh!]; this means they are bigger, not as smart and don't live on trees. apes are even bigger and most intelligent; like chimpanzees, gorillas etc. anyway, they all belong to the primate family.
• in german we use the word 'schwein' not only for the 'swine' family, but also for the subcategories. i.e. it took a while for me to get that warthogs are no pigs are no wild boars.
• bugs and beetles are not the same, either. bugs suck your blood, they have nozzles; beetles on the other hand bite with their tongs.

besides being taught a whole lot of stuff [impressive, isn't it?!], we hung out at night and got to know some interesting people, which made me learn even more about different countries and cultures. again, the humor seems to be similar all over the place.

eva

moni

martin from england

andy from simbabwe

johann from namibia/south africa

fred, the woodcracker
[who loves to hang out in my scarf and scare the hell out of me]

sally, the moth
[who we would love to hook up with fred]

on our way back home we hiked on top of the murchison falls; the stunning view was the perfect end of the safari and my vacation! i will never forget this experience.

the murchison falls

2009/02/16 where the nile is rising

jinja is a beautiful city on fruitful ground due to the nile river and lake victoria; therefore not only tea and sugar grows, but also the flowers are stunning. via boat and boda we discovered the surroundings.

jinja is a highly frequented tourist place: you can not only find a monument of mahatma ghandi, as a part of his ashes was scattered here..

..but also has river nile its source here.

like on the aequator the feeling of just being there is more spectacular than the place of interest itself.

nontheless we absolutely enjoyed discovering it:

this is the monument of john hanning speke, who discovered the source. we certainly had to have a fotosession here..

after a while we moved on to the bujagali falls, certainly by boda again. due to the sandy dust i passed my glasses on to the driver.. nice, huh?


again, the area is just wonderful, sitting by the water simply relaxes.

although one should certainly be careful to not fall into the water.. it's strong.

2009/02/13-15 little paradise

banda is a very small island among the ssese islands in lake victoria. the kenian dominic bought it like 20 years ago, built a little house ['the castle'], and since 1999 tourists and visitors can book a place to stay there. it is simple, but beautiful.
lucky as we were, we only shared the island with the staff and 7 dogs.. this means that we had 2 days all for ourselves. only an american guy, who took care of the place, was there to check on us every now and then and have lunch & dinner with us.

we had a wonderful time discovering the wild animals, chilling at the beach, watching sunrises and -sets and hang out at the 'castle'. just enjoy the pictures from paradise:

banda island

after arriving on friday we were told that there were no harmful wild animals around. that's why we felt like playing 'robinson crusoe' and wander through the woods. not only then, but generally the paths were full of spiderwebs, which we had get used to. i must have caught a poisonous one, or maybe had an allergic reaction, but right when we finished our little tour a strongly itching rash appeared on my neck.


slightly panicking [as we were 3 hours away from civilization] we asked the staff for help, which nodded knowingly and brought me some aloe vera; which apparently grows around here.


this made me feel quite fancy [you pay a whole lot of money here to get the real aloe vera stuff], and i felt better after an hour. thank god, the rash disappeared as fast as it had come.

2009/02/13 on the way to banda

on friday we took a boda-boda to access the new taxi park more easily. bodas are either mopeds or bikes that can carry one or two people. the rides are somewhat more expensive than taxis, but way faster as they can wiggle through the traffic jams.
one thing you certainly have to keep in mind is that you better not think about the way they drive.. just grit your teeth and get it over with [or simply enjoy]!


after doing the groceries for our accomodation [dominic, the owner, asked us to bring some stuff that we'd like to eat] and an hour ride we arrived in kasenyi, a little fishertown where the boats hit off to banda island once a day.

the transport to banda island is via fisherboat, the transport onto the boat, though is.. well, quiet unuasual for our standards..

the boat ride itself took 3 hours and was really exhausting as we underestimated the power of the sun.


both view and copassengers were quite nice, tho.

nontheless we were kinda relieved as we finally arrived banda, our little paradise for the weekend.

2009/02/12 downtown

kampala downtown is simply crazy. masses of people running around incredibly close to each other,

..traffic jammed all of the time in- what it seemed to me [but i was misled] - absolute anarchy.

after arriving at the new taxi park [which is a curio itself] we lingered along the road to the owino market, where locals buy second hand shoes, clothes and accessories. if you're lucky or rather bargain hard you get brands like 'converse' or 'timberland' like really cheap. as a muzungu [white person] they certainly try to overcharge you; but that's alright. we also had to high five every second person for the american president after they had asked us if we were 'a sista of obama?' [which we certainly are].

the business district or rather parliament area seems pretty westernized, where you see plenty of wealthy people running around. furthermore we found a coffee house-ish thing, where they sold sachertorte [well, kind of], as the owner stayed in austria for several years.

as the stimuli were quite intense i was pretty happy to finally chill out there.

2009/02/11 3% lighter

today we took a taxi to masaka district, which lays on the aequator.
before getting deeper into that i should explain the public transport system.

these taxis can be somehow compared to our buses: they take up to 20ish people [although they are only licensed for max. 14],

..they are comparatively cheap and they always take the same route with marked stops.
what is different, though, is there efficiency - they only start, when they are full [which means that if you are the first on it, it's possible to wait for an hour before it leaves], you can ask them to stop whenever you feel like it and at the taxi parks or rather at their stops a zillion people try to sell you stuff.. which turns out to be quite handy when you're hungry or thirsty.

after a two hour ride the driver let us outat the aequator. it's not that it looks a lot different here, but just the feeling that you are now standing on it is quite exciting. this is subtly marked ..

the rest of the place is rather touristy. a lot of craft shops..

..and somewhat overpriced coffee houses [which still offer great food].

for what it's worth we got to learn some special things about the aequator.

if you stand on it you will weigh 3% less than usual; if you stand on the northern hemisphere water flushes clockwise, if you stay on the southern, anti clockwise.. and: if you flush it on the aequator itself it just goes down straight. amazing, isn't it?!