Kigali, Rwanda to Entebbe, Uganda

Hi! I can’t believe we’ve already been on the go for 4 weeks today!
I’ll try to update you on what we’ve been up to since the last update. After our long stop in Kigali, we rode out of Rwanda via the less popular border in the North West. We were only just getting used to the luxury of tar roads, only to find the connecting road on the Ugandan side to be much like what we had experienced on the W. border of Tanzania. Having that said, the road was excellent for biking, packed with hair pin bend turns, as well as dramatic sheer drop-offs. Vegetation was different from Rwanda and we were riding through thick equatorial forests on our way to the prominent Lake Bunyoni, meaning “place of many little birds”. We found a terraced campsite on the edge of the lake and stayed a few days before moving north. One of the biggest attractions in the area is the tracking of the rare Silver Back Gorilla’s to which the Bwindi Impenetrable Nat Park which is home to half of the surviving population, at the ludicrous cost of $500!! Far too expensive. We decided we’d take the 4x4 route through the Bwindi…and just maybe we’d spot one. Well, we weren’t so fortunate but we did see a large primate of some sort briefly, before it scrambled off into the thick forest. The Bwindi route took us to Queen Elizabeth national park, where we joined a public road running through the middle of it. The vegetation changed drastically from the equatorial forest to wide open, flat savannah with straight roads. We rode through thousands of butterflies fluttering all over the show. We also spotted some mammals: a couple of buffalo and a herd of Ugandan Cob, which look very similar to our impala.

Soon after our exit of the Park we crossed into the N. Hemisphere .



This was all on our way to the Magestic Rwenzoris (the highest mountain range in Africa) – Jo’s uploaded a pic below. We didn’t take the time to summit the peak of 5109m…I’ll have to do that on my return to Uganda one day.
We then rode through from the Rwenzoris to Jinja . We thought that the trip would be fairly effortless and quick…but once again were proven to be a little optimistic on our predictions of how quickly we would progress along the route. We had to clear out of the way of mad truck/bus drivers who continue to disregard motorbikes on the road - yikes! We moved well up until Kampala, where we were stalled – we were given directions at one of the petrol stations which directed us right through the middle of the taxi rank. It was absolute chaos, navigating through all the taxis, boda-boda’s (motorbike taxis that are ever popular and unpredictable) as well as people, and then also moving in what appeared to be the opposite direction of everything else…
Finally we got to Jinja, the source of the Nile.


A group a school children watch a local rafter take a grade 4 rapid with a Gerry Can.


We watched one of the locals do a grade 4 rapid on a Gerry Can – Jo was keen to try it out but that didn’t materialize. We signed up with Equator rafting company for a trip down the river. Jo and I were at the front of the raft and hit the first rapid at a bit of an angle, I was sure the raft had flipped! I was hanging onto the safety rope of the boat, but was not in the boat. When I surfaced, I was surprised to find the raft still righted and most of the crew still in position! Adrenaline pumping! We rafted another 30 km before we ended off with a massive grade 5 rapid called ‘The Bad Place’. In really was a blast and pitty it had to come to an end.

We’ve been staying in Entebbe for the weekend with Carl Black and his family, who I know from TWR in Swaziland. He’s now working with another mission, AIM. We’ve been having a good time here, catching up, relaxing and even caught up on one of the big Ice Hockey matches between Toronto and Chicago.
It not all play here, we will spend this afternoon prepping the bikes and planning our route to Ethiopia. There is only one option for the section through Seredupi, Marsabit and Moyale – the isolated north of Kenya. Petrol will most likely be a little scarce, and we are also not sure how active the bandits in the region are, so we might have to join a convoy for part of the route. We’ll appreciate your prayers as we move through this area towards the end of the week.

Till next time.
Adios 