🙂 Gorillas, Gorillas, Gorillas – unforgettable experience – outstanding life moment.
🙁 Too short! Genocide in neighbouring Rwanda 🙁
After leaving the comfort of our Diplomat Hotel on top of one of the seven hills in Kampala we headed off with our driver, Sadie from Nile Safaris. (*Note, this was in 1994 – in 2024 this has expanded to 12 hills!). A highlight from the hotel was the delicious flambe’d bananas – DIVINE!
The drive through padi fields was peaceful and scenic as lng horned cows watch us pass by – which belied the very real tension in neighbouring Rwanda. Hundreds of people were on the road carrying heavy loads and waving and smiling at us. We had opted not to read newspapers and were thus blissfully unaware of the genocide occurring – in hindsight these people must have thought we were from the UN as we were travelling in a white jeep. 🙁 We stopped off to buy bananas from locals.
We stopped en route to buy a lovely drum, which still has pride of place in our lounge. We paid $13 for it. Stopped at a lovely hotel with scenic views and decided to splash out on a bottle of red wine. The waiter donned white gloves and proceeded to make quite a ceremony of serving us … then we stated the wine … which was corked … he looked devastated and it was, by their standards very expensive a $20 per bottle! Another bottle was promptly opened – also corked – but we did not have the heart to say so, so we grinned and drank the vinegar with smiles! LOL.
The next morning we stopped at Lake Mboyini for a scenic boat trip.
We spent the night in a small mud house with a tin roof and kerosene lamps and enjoyed a goat stew… real Africa! The next morning was gorilla trekking day! Hoorah. We were so excited. We walked for about two hours … it was damp but the sun was out and there were beautiful butterflies. We then moved into the dense bush and found evidence of their nest!
Go to: Mountains of the Moon
