December 18-19th: Wicklands Arrive & Jinja

Greetings! The Wicklands arrived late last night. Ihla and I were fast asleep, but Tom was nice enough to meet them at the airport and take them back to our hotel. We woke up on the morning of Dec. 18th and had breakfast at the hotel. Unfortunately Tammy and Tyler's luggage didn't make it with them, as a result of missing and having to reschedule their flight. We left at about 11 a.m. with our driver Amis. Originally Tom and Dave were going to drive and we were going to do without a driver, but it only took them 45 minutes or so of being a passenger to realize how lucky we were to have a driver! We were driving from Entebbe to Jinja and needed to drive through Kampala. In the 20 years since Ihla has lived here the population of Uganda has tripled, but they haven't expanded their roads! We needed to drive through the Capital city of 4 million - right through the city center where most of the roads were two-lane! We stopped on Kampala Boulevard to try and exchange US dollars or traveler's checks. All banks have long, long lines and tellers don't use computers to calculate exchanges or do any transactions. They use tablets with about 2 carbon copy papers in order to provide receipts. Travelers checks aren't as readily accepted here as we assumed, so I needed to go to 3 banks in order to get some Ugandan shillings. Dave and Ihla were just trying to get money off their debit cards. In all, we stopped for over an hour to try and get $$, and the Wicklands were unsuccessful at getting any (we later realized that going to the ATMs were the fastest way to get shillings). The air in Kampala is thick with diesel fumes and all of us were feeling a little queasy by the time we departed (this of course didn't stop Tammy from buying a new pair of shoes to make up for her lost luggage!).

We arrived in Jinja about 3-4 hours after we started and it's probably 60-70 miles from where we started. Ihla treated us to two nights at the KingFisher Lodge, owned by Hans Fisher and his Ugandan wife Angelina. Of course Ihla knows them as they lived in Arua for some time when she and John lived here. We met them briefly on our last night there. The Lodge over looks the Victoria Nile and we could walk down to the river and watch the fisherman. Tilapia and Nile perch are predominantly the fish caught in the river. We watched two teenage boys bring up a tilapia they had just caught and sell it to the lodge. That was to be our dinner that night!

The next day we went to Bujagali Falls (forgive the political nature of the website - great pixs though). Tamara paid two boys 5,000 shillings (About $3) each to go down the falls with Jerry cans. They are about class 5 rapids! Later that afternoon we played cards, swam and relaxed.