APRIL 5, 2008 (We Made it to Uganda)

Well after an exhausting 2 days spent on a jam-packed bus, Maggie and I have finally arrived alive in Kampala, Uganda. From a perfect rainbow arching over the road as we left Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania to the perfect sunset greeting us as we neared Kampala, the trip definitely had its highs and lows. The bus ride from Dar to Nairobi, Kenya was gorgeous. Tanzania surely has the most stunning countryside I have ever seen. With blood red soil and lush tropical greenery, it kept us mesmerized for hours. We got particularly excited as we saw giraffes saunter by us down the road and as the magnificent snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro came into view. There weren't very many stops along the way so we had little food and drink to sustain us, however, dehydration seemed like a better option than regular use of the holes in the ground that served as public toilets! We reached the Kenyan border as the sun was setting, the darkness fittingly mirroring our uncertainty of what lay ahead in that country. There were regular stops as army or police personnel boarded our bus along the way. Due to the darkness we saw little of the Kenyan countryside, but we reached Nairobi by about 10pm. It was then that we discovered (much to our dismay) that the bus would not be continuing on through the night and that we would have to wait until 7am the next morning to catch the bus to Uganda. The bus station was in a really dodgy area of town and so we decided it best to sleep in the bus station overnight. We were the only white people, which being Africa obviously isn't a surprise, however it made us feel as though perhaps we were doing something stupid that more savvy backpackers wouldn't dare do! A man named Joaquim befriended us and took it upon himself to look after us for the night. He helped us to get food and he slept close to us in the station's waiting room. Not that I slept...I had one eye open the entire night. The next morning we managed to find our bus to Uganda. It looked like it was ready to fall apart on the inside and out and it sounded like it too. As soon as we hit the road though we figured out why...they send the crappy buses on the road from Nairobi to Kampala because the roads are so wretched! You haven't lived until you've stared death in the face aboard a bus from Nairobi to Kampala. Armed with our sleeping bags as makeshift airbags, our nerves were shot as our bus lept from one side of the road to the other, then off the road into the ditch, then through the air as we raced over crater-sized potholes. Add encounters with speeding trucks that read "Danger: Petroleum" every 5 minutes and heart-stopping passing with only millimetres to spare between a truck and a sudden drop and we were in for one hell of a ride! But, T.I.A. (This is Africa) they say. The Kenyan countryside was beautiful, but we were happy to get across the border to Uganda. We heard that obtaining visas at the border could be a difficult task, so we were a bit nervous as we stood in line to talk to the immigration officer. She turned out to be the nicest person we met so far though and even offered to let us stay for an entire month because surely any less time was not enough time to see all the beauty that her country has to offer! As we merrily strutted out of the immigration office with our stamped passports, our smiles quickly faded...pinned to the bulletin board on the wall was a huge sign that read: "Ebola: don't be afraid, be educated." Yeah fucking right. Maggie and I held our breaths for the rest of the 4 hour bus ride to Kampala. We are FILTHY, hungry and exhausted, but we are finally in Kampala, Uganda safe and sound, drinking a couple of bottles of cold Coke at a backpackers' hostel. We have no idea what we plan to do in this country or even where we are going tomorrow, but we have a phone number of a friend's sister who lives in Uganda, so we are going to try and call her and then go from there. We will keep you updated!