African daze

After the Serengeti safari, Andrew and I said farewell to Matt for the time being and headed back up to Nairobi. Matt took off for Zanzibar, and some R&R on the beach. Andrew had to catch a flight out of Nairobi at 11:30pm that night. We got into Nairobi around 7pm, and headed to the famous restaurant "Carnivore." At Carnivore you, surprisingly enough, eat all kinds of meat. Waiters walk around with different animals on a stick and carve you off as much as you want. A fine way to end any Africa tour, by eating all the animals we had spent the past few days watching. My favorite was probably ostrich, while Andrew seemed to enjoy the camel best. It was good fun and a great way to send him off. I had so much fun the past few weeks and was pretty exhausted from it all. I headed solo into Nairobi and hit a dorm bed in the hostel for the next 12 hours at least. I spent a few days relaxing around Nairobi and planning the next adventure. Matt and I had left with tentative plans to meet back up again in Kampala, the capital of Uganda (just west of Kenya). I headed there on a 12 hour bus ride over some of the worst roads i have ever been on. Just the bus ride was an adventure. About a third of the way into the ride the axel broke off and was bent under the chassis, we had to get a replacement bus which didn't take all that long. Finally got into Kampala at night and I was personally escorted to the 'new taxi park' by two nice Ugandan cross country runners that I had befriended on the bus. They found the right taxi for me and got me the right price, and I was off to the 'Backpackers Hostel.' A fantastic place it was, with all kinds of great folks. Hung around Kampala for a few days organizing a rafting trip for when Matt showed up and hanging out with a good group of folks from all over the place. Matt showed up on the 4th with a British guy named Dave, who he met on the bus from Dar es Salaam to Kampala. Dave's a great guy, a licenced safari guide in South Africa and working on his certification in Zambia. He also has a degree in Zoology. We had a fun night on the town in Kampala, went to sports bar and watched some of the African Cup soccer matches with a rowdy crowd. The next morning we headed to Jinja, a hour or so drive east on the North Shore of Lake Victoria and the start of the Nile river. The Nile, longest river in the world, starts here and works its way north through the Sudan, and Eygpt. It sports some world class whitewater and we were keen to raft it. We went with Adrift (http://www.surfthesource.com) and had a hell of a good ride. There were a bunch of class 5 rapids, it was great. We went through one rapid and got devastated, flipping and swimming. We made it successfully down after that, completely flipping over only once more. We had lots of time to just hop out and swim through the calmer sections. Swimming in the Nile, amazing day. We finally safely made our way through the last rapid called "the bad place." It was super fun, and a fitting way to end our time together, Matt and I said our heartfelt goodbyes as he was heading back to Nairobi, for a flight to London on the 8th. It was sad to see Matt go, we've had an incredible time together and will hopefully meet up in South America sometime in the near future, but with funds falling fast, it's all up in the air.

I'm now traveling with Dave the zoologist and safari guide. We just got back from NE Uganda, and a four day trek up the 5th? highest mountain in Africa: Mt. Elgon (14,193ft). It was a spectacular hike and I'll get photos online and tell you all about it soon.