Surviving the Nile
Linda and i survived the class V’s of the Nile River. fyi, rafting here is pretty different than there, apparently the goal is not to do the rapid clean but to flip the boat and see what happenes. Kind of crazy hitting a huge wave, getting thrown several meters and either getting lost in the water or having a death grip on the raft rope and holding your breath until the long class V rapid is done with and see where you pop out. Crazy stuff! People flying all over the place… no pictures obviously, but we did buy the video which was made.
We almost gave up on going actually. We were to meet the minibus at a hotel a block away at 7:15am, we were there at 7:10, waited until 8a, called and was told in 10-15 min he would be here, at 9am we decided to leave 
no rafting for us. then a minibus with four locals pulls up and tells us to get in to go to Jinja…hmmm you can imagine our hesitation, so we used their cell phone to call the company and verify. All was ok, except for the late part. It was an exception to the company that otherwise has a very good thing going and even gave us a sweet discount off the rafting because of the delay. They cut of the first rapid to save some time, but we didn’t miss anything other than another swim.
Felix, had I known you have never seen a banana tree I would have taken a nice picture, but I think we are done with banana places now I may have a general scenery pic that has some though. We did camp one night on the boarder of Uganda and Congo, which is a small river with noisy hippos.
Eleven more days, but it should be all easy from here…nice lodges and hopefully a much better guide!
-t
Tags: africa, Africa Journal, TravelRelated posts
sweet pix!! I am soooo envious of you two. what a fabulous trip! well, except for the swimming class V rapids; no thanks. troops of primates, 200 spp. of birds, hippos, elephants, lions, tigers and bears…oops, got carried away there. glad to hear you survived the wild river ride and that you’re seeing so much wildlife. can’t wait to hear more details and see more pix.
- tim
I was sitting in the first row and the raft flipped backward. Tori said I flew over everyone else. I can’t remember much other than me falling into the river and drank some nile water, popping up and seeing the rafting 50 meters away.
mommy, why is that baboon doing push-ups on top of the other baboon? is that deer trying to get a ride from the other deer? look mommy, that bat’s insides are falling out!
(www.booh.com - “don’t click unless you are 18″ - those are classic!)
-tz
what great pictures ! and beautiful countryside, can see why people leaving the crowded cities would want to stay there. big sky
but, blech, no nile river germs please ! (just kidding)
Oh, the Class V rafting trip sounded awesome to me. Good thing that Linda is a good swimmer.
Speaking of Linda, ok Tim, I just checked out Linda’s pictures. Woah… when I was asking about pictures of bananas, I did not expect to see a, um, bat banana!! Anyhow, have fun, be safe, stay dry… -felix