And so all good things must come to an end - I'm referring to Uganda of course. Entry from Rwanda was easy (no silly rules about in which passport to put the visa) and on a bright sunny day I headed to Kabale, the nearest town at 20km from the border. The aim was to see the only part of the country which I hadn't yet trample on: the west and southwest. A particular aim was to see a bit of the Rwenzori Mountains (without paying to go in) and the nearby crater lakes.
I stopped first at the town of Mubende - I mistake I later realised, as there really isn't much to do there. The Bradt guide book which was lying around Kampala Backpackers detailed a nice little walk that could be done. Could I find that right roads? Could I? The hell I could. Locals were surprisingly useless mainly because so few of them spoke English (an aberration, surely). 'Where's New Kampala Road?' was often met with pointing towards Kampala itself. I made up my own walk and it was fairly rubbish but not outrageously bad.
Fort Portal, however, is a decent wee town. It's named after an English chap called Portal, some governor or another, and there really was a fort there. The good thing is not the town itself - fairly average - but the Rwenzori Mountain backdrop. I found that my camping area at YES Guesthouse looked over fields and onto the mountains themselves. Not a bad choice there. I was the only guest that day and Carol, the American owner was hosting a leaving party for a German couple who'd been NGOs in Uganda. Would I like to join them? It was so hard to refuse and the food was fantastic. At the party also happened to be a couple of Peace Corps workers and a sex therapist from California who was in Uganda doing a couple of months volunteer sex education. Considering evangelicals and some MPs in Uganda want to introduce the death penalty for homosexuals I was surprised that such a person was even allowed into the country, however it seems that the average Ugandan has no hang-ups about this sort of educational experience.
One Bradt-recommended daytrip from Fort Portal was to go to Amabere Falls and caves. A pleasant walk - 'far, far but not too far', to quote a local who gave me directions - was made through farmland to a camping site next to the falls. They had a bloody entrance fee! The caves were really just an overhang and the waterfall not much taller than me, however the whole ensemble of the walk, the weather and something to see at the end of it passed muster.
It was also at YES Guesthouse that I met Grant and Sebastian, from South Africa, traveling from John O'Groats to Cape Town by bicycle for charity. They were great fun and have a website here: www.cyclenorthsouth.co.za
My first aim after leaving Fort Portal was to see the crater lakes in the nearby town of Rwaihamba, about 20km south of FP. We're still in the Rift Valley here folks and there's pleny of evidence of this. I went to Rwaihamba with Tony, an Englishman on holiday and stayed at the local community camp and spent several days walking around the lakes. They really made for some great scenery with the Rwenzori Mountains in the background although Rwaihamba market, billed as the second biggest village market in Uganda, was somewhat more low key than I was expecting (I guess it depends on how they define a village). There was occasional bad weather - not enough to drive me out of the tent and into more permanent shelter - however there were enough clear skies to make the trip a winner. The icing on the cake was not just the vervet and colobus monkeys that frequented the camp site but also a small family of mongooses who turned up at the entrance one morning.
Heading further south along the Rwenzoris I stopped at Kasese: quite a lifeless town, yet one that is in an ideal location for some walking, in this case up to the small town of Kilembe where the now-defunct Kilembe copper mine is located. Considering my map showed I was walking into mountains the road was surprisingly flat and the walk very easy. Kilembe was clearly a town on decline or perhaps one which had already declined and given up: I ate lunch in a dingy 'restaurant' which had co-opted an old warehouse, converting part of it into a kitchen area, meandered through the very low-key market (one which made the Rwaihamba market look positively heaving) and then spent a while pottering around and photographing the rusting, crumbling mining machinery sitting very much unloved on the other side of the river from town.
Although I had absolutely no plans to go gorilla trekking - sorry Bobo and family, I have better ways to spend $500+ on this trip - I decided to do the next best thing: go to the gates of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (where the gorillas live) and look in. To get there, specifically the little sleepy hamlet of Buhoma I first had to get to Butogota. To get to Butogota I first had to get to Kihihi. The ride was pleasant and certainly off the beaten track - sometime as we were passing the Queen Elizabeth II National Park the van driver turned off onto a muddy dirt track and kept going and going. Kihihi is indeed far removed from the fast-paced world although they did have a UNHCR-sponsored signpost in town pointing the direction to Butogota, other towns and the Congo border. I suppose refugees don't have maps.
A quick overnight and early the next morning I found a pickup heading to Butogota - away I go! At Butogota - even smaller than Kihihi - I recharged with a staple Ugandan breakfast of tea and chapatti before heading to Buhoma and the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. It's only 16km away, so why not walk? I certainly had the offer of transport - bodaboda drivers were offering a ride all the way there for 10,000 shillings ($5) but no, the best way to see somewhere is to see it slowly.
I should now pause to mention that in Kasese the high quality shoes that I bought in Nairobi for about $20 fell apart, no more than four-and-a-half to five months after I bought them. Sadly they were rubbish, the soles made from such soft rubber that a hole developed under the balls of my feet. I looked at the local Bata shop - the only shoe shop in town - and the only shoes going (aside from school shoes) that would fit my feet were some 'Bata Industrials', basically boots for worksites. They are made from hide thicker than my own, have steel caps and are surprisingly comfy. However, when wearing them for the first time I strongly recommend that you do not plan to walk a 32km round trip. As it happens I probably walked about 20km in total - thanks to picking up various lifts on the way there and back - but not before large sections of skin separated from the soles of my feet. Now that my feet have toughened up the boots are great!
I would need, therefore, to relax and soothe my poor feet. How convenient then that I had planned to spend a couple of days at Lake Bunyoni (allegedly one of the deepest lakes in Africa, after Lake Tanganyika). Bunyoni is close to Kasese, where I waited a few days for the weather to clear as rainy season was upon us, before taking a bodaboda motorcycle taxi to the lake shore. I could take a motorboat for $7.50 or for a fraction of the cost go in a canoe. Thankfully the canoe comes with a chap who helps the hapless tourist paddle but even so after about 45 minutes I appreciated just how much more body-building work I could do if I really wanted to.
(I would mention Mbarara although I spent less than 12 hours there, most of that time sleeping, and it looked like a pretty boring town anyway).
Bunyoni was as pleasing as the brochure made it out to be, the weather was fantastic and I met some more travelers including one from England who is heading to South Africa on pretty much the same route as me - we're Facebook buddies now. The island was small - you could walk around it in 30 minutes max - although thankfully I came armed with a book and they had a library on the island! Wow, not bad. I ended up going through two books in two days.
And so, sadly, Uganda came to an end for me. If you ever have the chance to go there, do. You'll find that there's quite a lot packed into a small country, you can't spend your money (unless you go wild and do lots of safaris) and chances are you'll meet some interesting and fun people. My parting moment from Uganda was staying in the tiny border town of Mutakula - in a guest house in no-man's land (where most of the village was located) - before crossing to Tanzania and a well oiled tourist machine's promises of a great time.
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