Uganda: As we walked across the bridge border from Kenya to Uganda, we had no idea what was to come. Looking back, it ended up being one of our favourite countries and we had some of the best times in that blessed little kingdom. Although we had some attempted pick pockets greet us as we got off the bus in Kampala, it would be our only bad experience in the country. The bus ride into Uganda revealed one of the most lush and green environments we could have ever imagined. We were excited to see what this little country with such a big reputation would offer us. We settled in immediately to the Red Chili Backpackers, which had almost as many vervet monkeys as guests staying there. It also included a 500lb pig and several goats and chickens running amuck in the bar at night. One particular goat had a nasty habit of stealing guests food in the bar, and caused himself and the owner much anxiety as was routinely chased and kicked around the building. The Red Chili Backpackers is a little enclave of activity tucked away in the city, where every night is a raging party with a great mix of locals and foreigners breaking it down. We couldn’t help but spend a few days there, soaking up the atmosphere and frolicking with monkeys at the poolside.

  After we left Kampala we decided to split up and go our separate ways for about 2 weeks. Dan wanted to do a hike in the RwenzoriMountains, and Tom wanted to track Chimpanzees in the Congo Rainforest. Dans hike was a little more than was anticipated, and turned out to be a full on tumultuous expedition. Most of the 10 day hike was in waist deep bogs, until it turned into a sheer blizzard like any he had experienced in Canada. It was a strange feeling to be only 40 kms from the equator while being immersed in a torrential blizzard. Dan crossed through 11 ecological zones, starting in lush tropical jungle, and ending up clamouring across glaciers on a blizzardous mountainside. The final ascent was on Stanley Glacier (the 3rd highest peak in Africa), where all members of the team have ice picks, cramp ons and are harnessed and roped to each other so if one person falls through the ice, the others could pull him to safety. The lead guide, Jehosephat fell through a crevice, but was quick enough to put his arms out and save himself. Another guide, Benard, slid down the whole side of the mountain into a glacier lake, ending up with a swollen and busted hand. At the end of the 10 day trek, there was an immense feeling of joy from Dan, the two guides and 6 porters as they arrived safely in civilization.

  Meanwhile, Tom headed out to a place called the ImpenetrableForest. It is part of the Congo basin of vast steaming jungle in the absolute heart of the African continent. Tom stayed in a tree-house, high up in the rainforest canopy. The tree house was 3 kms from the nearest building and his time there was some of the greatest times of his life. The life that exists in that forest is overwhelming. He happened to be there during a once every 4 year butterfly migration, and at one point every square inch of my body was covered in butterflies as he sat high up on his tree top balcony. You could hear the torrential rainstorms as they came from kilometers away. They come down with such ferocity that you can hardly hear yourself scream over the deafening roar of the raging storm.

  He spent many nights walking through the jungle with his headlamp on.  The most amazing thing Tom did was head out to track Chimpanzees, our brothers from other mothers. After walking with his guide for a little over 2 hours, as they noticed half eaten fruit all around our feet was when the chimps started to scream and hoot from the treetops incredibly loudly. Without them even realizing they had stumbled into the midst of over 150 chimpanzees, and they came down immediately to see who we were. They came crashing through the bush and banged their fists on the tree trunks to display their strength, eventually becoming calmer and coming right up to them, equally fascinated with us, as we were with them. Some of the males weigh in excess of 200lbs and  certainly feel more like being amongst a group of humans rather than animals. The whole time in the jungle was such an amazing experience, as Tom was the only visitor the park had for 2 weeks, and the only person to stay at the treehouse in the last month. Tom felt very sad to leave that place after his 10 days, but was excited to see what would happen next.

  We regrouped on the shores of LakeBunyoni in southern Uganda at Kalebas Cam; a tiny camp  directly on the lakeshore. We had no idea how wild the next 7 days would be. It was good to be back together again, and we were eager to share our experiences with each other.  We could not have hoped for a better place to share stories. LakeBunyoni is a gorgeous lake set in amongst terraced hillsides, and is itself over 2,000 metres deep. The local people come and go on their dugout canoes, and there is a real sense of peace in the area. That peace was only to be broken by the escapades of the two of us, and our now legendary new friends Roland Krol, and……ULF. Things started off slowly as we got to know Roland who is the Dutch owner of this camp. His long time friend and confidant Ulf, a german man. It quickly became an episode of Fear and Loathing in Uganda, as we discovered our new friends were maybe the two craziest people we have ever met in our lives. Without an ounce of exaggeration, Ulf is far and away, the funniest human being either Dan or Tom has ever met in their very short and brutish lives. To give some idea of who Ulf is, he is a 62 year old man, with an 18 year old Ugandan girlfriend, and his escapades include; swinging from the rafters of a local bar, collapsing the entire roof of the building on to its patrons, waking up in the bar the next day at 3PM as his flight was scheduled to be leaving from Kampala, offering to pay the bill by pulling out his gold teeth which of course the bar owner excused him of when he couldn’t bear the sight of Ulf trying to rip out his teeth. Performing cunnilingus on his young girlfriend in the midst of a packed bar of disbelieving onlookers, until the local police threatened to arrest the group of us if we didn’t leave. One morning we decided to bring Ulf a shot of tequila in bed, as he had done for us so many times, and he rubbed the lemons all over his penis as a practical joke on his unsuspecting girlfriend. The days of the camp were spent in extreme tumultulism, as Roland decided to close the gates and declare the camp closed to the public. It was a heady concoction of early morning tequila shots and countless bottles of wine and Nile Gold. Ulf had a penchant for skinny dipping and rolling around naked at inappropriate times. After Ulf failed at ordering a palette of beer by helicopter, we settled for our quickly diminishing supply of elixirs. During our time in that part of Southern Uganda a bad batch of local moonshine was going around. The home-made alcohol was lethal, and was killing more people in the area than they could keep track of. Luckily we didn’t try any of it, as Roland had warned us beforehand. What was most unsettling about this was that these particular people sound a huge drum from on top of the hill whenever someone dies. It became very disturbing when we realized every morning as the drum rang out across the lake that each bang represented another person dead from the night before. It was with a wretched liver and a teary eye that we bid adieu to our larger than life friends and headed out for the border into Rwanda.

  As we had over extended our stay in Uganda, we had no more than 2 days in Rwanda.  This suited us just fine, as thiere was a eerie feeling on the streets that stemmed from the aftermath of the genocide in 1994. Even in our short time there, we realized that Rwanda is far different from the rest of Africa. For whatever reason, the Rwandan’s are very organized and orderly. The streets are all paved, devoid of garbage and traffic lights at every necessary cornet. It is maybe the only place in Africa where the pedestrians have the right of way. With our deadline to meet Toms family friend Sybille on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania, we headed off eager to be back on the beach. 

  Our Ethiopian Airlines flight out of Addis, which was nearly empty, was enjoyable, however expensive. In an interesting business plan, the government owned and funded Ethiopian Airlines has decided to fly Addis to Nairobi 6 times a week but clearly the demand is not even close to that, as our flight was maybe 10% full at best. This explains both why such a short flight ended up being so expensive, and why Ethiopian Airlines year after year loses far more money than it brings in. Just one of the many mysterious business practices that we fail to comprehend. Ethiopian Airlines is routinely awarded as Africa’s best performing airline, given the amount of the gross annual budget it eats up, it is indeed a generous and costly burden that the almost entirely bankrupt Ethiopian government chooses to shoulder for the convenience of countless aid workers and regional business men alike. Keeping in mind that 40% of the Ethiopian economy is made up of foreign aid, and that the country is almost entirely devoid of schools, hospitals or any transport infrastructure, the airline is a rather conspicuous priority for the government to continue to uphold. With all of that aside, we were very happy to see how green and lush the plains of Kenya looked as our plane got closer to Nairobi, a stark contrast to the somewhat dry and dusty landscapes of Ethiopia. In retrospect, Ethiopia ended up being by far the poorest and least developed country either of us had ever seen before.

   Dans cousin Riz (aka Rizla), picked us up at the Nairobi airport and we could immediately tell that things were going to be different in Kenya. After not being in a private vehicle for many months, the simple joy of being picked up in a luxurious Land Rover, with air conditioning and self operating windows, as well as being on paved roads was almost too much for the weary travelers to bear. After a short stint through the horrendous Nairobi traffic we pulled into Riz’s first class gated community. We felt like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air as we rolled up to Riz’s crib (aka The Riz Carlton), set in palatial gardens with house staff and private chauffeur at our beck and call, topped off with a swimming pool and full workout gym, we took full use of the amenities to get some serious R&R. Riz didn’t waste any time getting us acquainted with the Nairobi night life, and we spent many glorious nights out on the town at our favourite haunt, Gypsys Bar. Gypsys was an interesting mix of upper class Kenyans; including Nairobis large Inidan population, the ever ubiquitous foreign volunteers and local prostitutes.

  Within days Riz’s friends had set us up to go on a tour around Kenyas national parks, including the world renowned Masaai Mara Game Reserve, and LakeNakuruPark. The savannah grasslands of Kenya are absolutely teeming with wildlife, and although the rolling plains seemed like a bit of Saskatchewan back home, the sheer density and variety of the animals reminded us that we were nowhere near Regina. The animals move in the thousands in this area, and we could not believe what we were seeing at any given time. We were immersed into a world with Prides of lions wandering around, cape buffalos and giraffes all over the place, hippos bobbing up and down in the rivers, a lone slinking cheetah and literally hundreds of thousands of grazers moving like giant swarms of bees across the land. We were extremely lucky in Masaai Mara, seeing most of the famous animals of Africa including driving right through the middle of a giant group of 49 elephants. After our first drive through the park, we were pretty shocked to see that we were staying in small pup tents no more than 1 kilometer from a group of lions we had seen only minutes before heading to camp. Luckily we had an armed Masaai warrior keeping watch of us that night as we slept in our own individual tents. We were comforted by the fact that this man had personally killed a full grown lion when he was only 15 years old, armed with nothing but a spear. Fortunately this coming of age ritual is no longer practiced making our warrior friend a rare individual these days. Going to the bathroom at night was a bit hectic, as the sounds of the bush really become amplified then, as well as the fact that our headlamps attracted so many small insects that you can literally not breathe when its turned on in front of your face. At one point during the night we were woken  by the commotion of a group of laughing Hyenas taking down an old Cape Buffalo, which itself is an extremely formidable animal. If nothing else, we were glad they had something to eat besides us.

  From the Masaai Mara we headed up to Lake Nakuru, a somewhat putrid sulphur lake full of giggling gaggling Pink Flamingoes, the beauty of these amazing birds was marked by the distinct smell of their guano as the lake recedes during the dry season revealing a thick layer of it around the shore. This park is also one of the last holdouts of the extremely rare White Rhino. More than any other animal, the Rhino made us feel as if we were truly in Jurassic Park, and we managed to see 3 of them around that lake. At one point we had a very aggressive Baboon rush our truck and try to jump in one of the windows after we challenged him to a staring competition after being specifically told not to look him in the eyes. However the one animal we were unable to see in Kenya was the leopard, but this would change eventually when we got to Zambia later.

  The sheer friendship of Riz and all his buddies that we met made us sad and a little reluctant to leave. But alas we got on board an all too familiar bus for a 14 hour drive across the border into Uganda. Although we didn’t get to see the most typical side of Kenyan life, it was a fascinating glimpse into the other side of Africa, where the privileged few rub shoulders at exclusive locales where a drink may cost more than the daily salary of the average labourer. It is as much a part of Africa as the usual poverty and suffering associated with the continent, and it offered us a much more holistic perspective of what must be one of the most diverse places on earth.