WEATHER: Hot and 27C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Finally getting out of the truck
BUMMER OF THE DAY: I’m homesick today = sad Bernie
BUYS OF THE DAY: Bottle of water at 1.50AUD
WORD OF THE DAY: Curl up in a ball
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: Monkeys, leopard tortoise, 100 warthogs, water bucks, zebra’s, deer
CAMP SITE RANKING: Very basic finally drop toilets for the first time all trip and ordinary shower - 2 out of 5 stars
I don’t know what I dreamt last night, but I had a very restless sleep and the minute I woke up at 4.50am I thought of home. I miss my god-daughters, my best friend and my home which is no longer mine. This was going to be a curl up in a ball day – I can have one of those every now and then right?
Up early, meant I beat everyone to get all my stuff to the coach, as we are leaving Rwanda and heading back into Uganda today. I even had time to catch up on my diary with a cup of tea as the rest of the crew woke up. What a grandma I am turning into.
So all packed and on the truck, we left our home for the last 3 days. We have over 400km to cover today and a border crossing, so leaving at 7am Jools hoped to have us at camp by 5.30pm. This is one of the longest travel days we are to have, so we need to suck it up, it was worth it to see the gorilla’s yesterday so bring on the 8 hours on the truck.
We only had to drive around 40 minutes to get us to the Rwandan border. The process was similar to what we have done in the past, we get out, line up, show our passports and then we get stamped out of the country. As I hadn’t had my globetrotter’s book stamped yet, I had nothing to lose on asking the immigration guy if he would do it, and he was more than obliging, so I now had my Rwandan stamp. Yip yay. Our passports then got checked as we walked the 60m through no man’s land to the Ugandan check point. I was the passport collector with the 50USD fee, and I stood and got everyone’s passports cleared and stamped letting us back into Uganda. He was a very thorough official, taking his time, checking all the pages and signing a proper signature in all 22 passports. He was in no rush. He wasn’t as friendly as the Rwandan guy, but I had nothing to lose asking him about my Ugandan stamp for my Globetrotters book and blow me down he stamped it no problems! Yay – now all the countries are up to date. The whole process for both borders took around an hour. Crossing back to Uganda we lost an hour and wound our watches forward.
We stopped at Kabale at midday for lunch. As we had a long day, we were given 5000 shillings to go towards lunch today. This was also the place that we stopped at on the way through that had free Wi-Fi access. I ordered a chicken burger that looked exactly like the beef burger when it came out and the internet wasn’t working to well, but it was good to get off the truck for an hour.
My tentie is back sitting next to me today, but still not much has been said to each other. I think she is switching tents and moving in with one of the other girls, but she hasn’t said anything to me, so we will have to see when we pull up to camp this afternoon. It really upsets me, the whole thing, as I don’t think I have done anything wrong and she is treating me like a leper, but I am going to have to let it go, otherwise it will ruin the rest of this portion of the trip. Add that onto a few short text messages from the ex-husband and my homesickness, can this day get any worse? Man I am really feeling down today. I need a hug from my little people; they always bring a smile to my face when I need it. In saying that my across the way seat buddy, Jo, knew how I was feeling, so she brought a smile to my dial and leant me her toy puppy that she was given by her nieces. So I pulled out my Elmo and they kept me company for the rest of the afternoon. Jo is awesome and I will definitely be visiting her in Ireland next year. It was good to have some-one to bounce some frustrations out with.
We drove for another 2.5 hours to a town called Mbarara where we stopped for 20 minutes, to refuel the truck and toilet stop and then drove another 1.5 hours to get us to our camp for the night at Lake Mburo. As we finally pulled into camp there were warthogs everywhere just grazing on the grass, apparently they will be around us all night, but after watching some of the group getting their photos they don’t seem too flighty or angry, so it will be fun to have some wild animals in camp. So off the truck we get and my tentie goes with Janet, so I am now in a single tent for the next 4 nights. Gee that is really disappointing and a little humiliating. So I had to ask Jools to help put up my tent, once the poles are in I can do the rest, and I am on the edge of the camp. If my tentie wanted to still be friends, she would have at least explained what she was doing and at least offered to help with the tent. In saying that no-one else offered or has checked how things are, so after dinner I am going back to my tent to crawl into that ball I have wanted to do all day. What a fucked day all round really.
There will be a change of groups in Nairobi. We thought the people going through to Tanzania would be on the same truck as us peeps going all the way through to Cape Town, but we have learned that 7 of the Tanzania’s will be on a different tour, and just 4 of us will be on the Cape Town run. So I’ll get a new tentie and make some new friends, which could be just what the doctor ordered. In saying that I have made and met a batch of amazing people who are either leaving in Nairobi or moving onto the Tanzania truck, and I am going to miss them and wish I was going with them. It’s my Greek Posse equivalents but African L
Well once the sun went down we learnt pretty fast what Lake Mburo meant. Mburo is a little fly and common to the area. No shit, the second you turned on a light you would be swarmed by thousands of these fly things. When you are in the middle of nowhere except the moon as your only light, it was necessary to turn on a light. So the light would go on to plate your dinner, off goes the light to eat, light back on to go back to the table for the main meal, serve up, eating dinner in the dark, light back on to wash dishes and then it pretty much forced everyone to bed, but it was just after 9pm and we had to be up at 5.30am to pack up and leave camp by 6.20am for our safari walk in the morning. I blew my nose and there were 3 flies, and I rekon I swallowed around 50 and the rest of the group was in the same boat. Little buggers.
As we were camped close to the lake’s edge, there was a man walking around the camp all night with a rifle to keep the hippos at bay, should they decide to come anywhere near the camp. There was an Exodus truck in and also some other random group and they were closer to the water than us.
There seemed to be a storm brewing, with a lot of lightening in the sky. It was giving us a great display while we were eating dinner by the camp fire. Would it rain? When I went to bed, my window flaps were all open; hmmm should I get up and close them should it rain? I thought I would risk it till this massive clap of thunder rolled over us and I decided to get up and out of the tent to close all my windows and roll down my door. I also heard a few others getting out and zipping up their windows as well, so it was pretty funny to hear all the zips zipping.
Tomorrow is a new day – I’ll pick myself up, dust myself off and march on, but everyone is allowed to have a bad day and mine was today. We are only human after all and we can’t be happy and smiley all the time. I just needed a hug. I know when my Bestie reads my text I’ll get an electronic one and that will make all the difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment