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jessiewre · 5 years ago

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Day 25

Weds 29th Jan

Woke up in the internal room with windows into the communal area and Phil was all fresh and keen to get moving. CLASSIC PHIL.

After showers, breakfast arrived with a spanish omelette, toast and curiously two sticks of carrot on the plate. Maybe they’d run out of avocado or maybe they like carrot an egg together.

A girl from the hostel called Kessia started asking us about our plans for the day and we ended up chatting to her and a Germany guy called Patrick for about an hour, getting SO many tips about Kenya & Tanzania. Kessia also told us how to get to Jinja that day and where she recommended we stay, even letting us use her phone to reserve a room.

Such a useful conversation, resulting in an actual plan for the day plus tons of other great nuggets of info. She even gave us her WhatsApp number in case we had more questions - RESULT.

Also - we mentioned the annoying taxi guy we’d got to know in Kabale and how he was everywhere we went trying to rip us off. And German Patrick said he had a similar situation. Then he asked us the guys name, which of course I couldn’t remember, so we showed him the sneaky picture I’d taken and IT WAS THE SAME GUY. There was no escape from this dude.

We got an Uber to the New Taxi Park she told us to get the bus from and it was not quite as easy as we’d hoped. The place was RAMMED with vehicles and people and the ground was muddy and wet. We squeezed our way in between vehicles and people constantly asked us Where we were going. When we said Jinja, some people would just look away (as it wasn’t where they were going) and others would point in the direction they thought the bus was.

It was mayhem to be honest.

And the only buses we could see were the small basic ones, not a nicer one called a Coaster, as Kessia had described. One guy we spoke to told us these were the only buses to Jinja, they were 15000 per person and that there were no Coaster buses. So we said ‘Well, our friend told us there were Coaster buses available and they are 7000 per person’.

He looked annoyed and said ‘You are lying yourself, there is no Coaster bus for 7000’.

I’m fairly certain he was a few seconds away from saying ‘I swear on the Lord above’, so we walked away from him and followed another guys directions to the Old Taxi Park where he thought the Coaster buses were based.

It was an effort traipsing around the chaotic bus park, squeezing in between buses while they tried to drive around, people overtaking us while we carried our bags front and back, being told to ‘be careful’ by one lady, then we found the exact bus to Jinja that we needed, the larger Coaster bus for 7000ush per person. And there was one double seat left woop woop, so neither of us had to sit on the fold down seat. We paid an extra pound each for our luggage and the bus left, spending about 20 minutes just trying to leave the taxi park.

I tried to film out the window to capture the chaos but someone said ‘Put your phone away, they will take it’ so Phil requested I stop hanging his phone out the window.

As we were on a bus, obviously Phil fell asleep fairly quickly. After about 45 minutes he woke up full of hope and said ‘Hey, what city are we in?’.

I looked as his hopeful little (its not little) face and said

‘Uh, we are still in Kampala bruv’

The pain and sadness on his face was brutal.

Bless him he was under the illusion that we were nearly there, arriving at Jinja any minute.

So to dampen his pain, we watched the Crown and zoned out.

Phil had a lady squashed next to him on the fold down seat and everytime someone got on or off she would shove her large bum in his face. The bus stopped at one point and a street seller opened my window and thrusted in about 25 large sticks of cooked chicken thighs on them while another managed to get her hand in with a basket full of cooked bananas wrapped in newspaper. It was like GoGo Gadget Arms and the food fell past our faces and into the centre of the bus as they tried to sell their goods to the locals.

As the journey dragged on, hunger began to kick in and Phil reminded me of the curry doggy bag we had from the night before. He was getting more and more annoyed by the length of the journey so I took it upon myself to organise the curry. I was like a scientist in a lab with my hands inside the bag on my lap, trying to decant the rice into the aloo Gobi dish without throwing it all over the vehicle and ourselves. Phil was getting really annoyed, I think the lady next to him was starting to get to him and then I tried to feed Phil a mouthful to help his hunger. But it was like his wedding day had arrived and he was covered in rice like it was confetti and he was fumin. He was like ‘I don’t want any food, forget it’.

WHAT AN ABSOLUTE RESULT.

So I tucked right in and it was bloody delicious.

I’m not pure evil though, I obviously left him 3 grains of rice to enjoy.

After getting the bus at 1pm we arrived in Jinja at 5pm, just the double of what we were expecting then.

Two bodas quickly appeared and we half-heartedly asked if they had helmets, knowing full well the wouldn’t. As a compromise, we said Ok please drive slowly.

Boy did they take this seriously.

We were overtaken by old ladies on bicycles we were that slow.

After a painful 20 minutes, we arrived at the top of our hotel road and we asked how much - knowing full well that 5000ush was what Kessia had paid for the journey.

It’s always funny when we have two drivers, as they look at each other with a side eye to try and work out how much to say (ie. how much to exaggerate the price by).

My driver looked at us and said ‘Ok, 20000 each’.

It’s so disappointing when they lie in your face!

We told them we knew it was 5000 each so he said

‘Ok, 15000 each then’

We settled on 10000 each just to end the conversation and walked down to Nile River Camp.

The Safari tent we’d reserved was like glamping, with proper beds and furniture and a little light bulb, and there was a big restaurant area with a beautiful view of the Nile.

Phil went for a run immediately to work off the 3 grains of rice from the bus snack while I chilled with the incredible view.

We massively over ordered food - nachos, vege burger and the intriguing ‘3 homemade loaves oven warmed with hummus, olive oil, balsamic vinegar & tomato onion salsa’.

But overall, it was proper average food and we absolutely could not finish it.

Two people sat on the seats near us, so we immediately offered our leftovers to them despite the nachos looking like a major car crash, as this is acceptable and normal here. People are happy to accept food from others whatever the condition of it! They happily tucked in and it was a relief to see that the food would not go to waste.

We ended up hanging out with Winfred and Jimi the rest of the evening. Both from Jinja, Winfred was a social worker and Jimi was a footballer. He told us about his potential move to the UK as Swindon Town had scouted him, so look out for Jimi Ola coming to a footie game near you.

Phil & Jimi talked about Phil’s running etc and they drunkenly agreed to do a run the next morning, joking that Jimi would be like a bullet and Phil would be like a tomato.

I left Phil to his beers and air guitar while he was trying to explain to them who Oasis were and he joined me an hour or so later.

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