Para- Para- Paradise

I’ve spent the last three days in absolute paradise.  I’ll get to that later but I just had to get it out of the way.  I left less than three hours ago and I miss it already.  But first, there were more shenanigans to be had in the town of Jinja.  Last time I left you, I think I had just finished a “booze cruise” on the Nile River and Lake Victoria.  That was a great time, but the party carried on at the campsite which is little bit out of town, whereas I was staying at a hostel in town.  It was a nice place, but I had been planning to move out to the campsite where there were apparently meant to be more people and a better atmosphere.  So, the next day I packed up and headed out to the campsite for a little relocation.   It sits on a perch above what used to be the Bujagali falls on the Nile River.  However, the recently constructed dam has stopped the flow of water and killed the waterfalls there, and it is now nothing but a big pool of calm, slow-moving water.  This area of Uganda is actually one of the premier destinations in the world for white-water rafting and kayaking (who knew?) and there is a large kayaking culture here.  People from all over the world come to run the rapids of the White Nile, but the dam has ruined some of that.  There is still a very good rapid section, but I’m told that it’s nothing compared to what used to be here less than two months ago, before the dam ruined it.

But more on the rapids later, first the campsite. Now, I say ‘campsite’, which it kind of is, but it has a bar and internet and I was staying in a four-person dorm, so it’s more of just a hostel with optional camping.  It’s a cool place with lots of nice people and a gorgeous view of the sun setting over the Nile River (if I ever find internet at a decent speed again, I’ll upload some photos).  Like I said, the main thing to do in Jinja is raft and kayak the rapids, so there are lots of raft guides and kayakers from all over the world stationed here.  Another good feature of the place is that right outside the entrance gate, there is a stand that offers tasty chapatti meals at a low price.  It’s nothing but a little wooden hut with a couple of Ugandan guys sitting inside.  Their menu offers several different types of chapatti wraps, the most expensive one costing the equivalent of $1 US.  You can get one with egg, tomato, avocado etc. or one with banana and nutella (or peanut butter but umm…nutella) and several other varieties.  Typing this out, I’m beginning to realize that it may sound weird that I’m going into detail about this, but it seriously rules.  If you wanted to, you could live on $2.50 US per day for food.  All the backpakcers go there, and they’re open at 5 AM until 11 PM.  Oh and the best part: right beside it there is a piece of wood with this million dollar sentence written on it: “It’s like there’s a chapatti in your mouth and everyone’s invited.”  Now tell me that isn’t one of the greatest sentences ever.

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough rambling about chapatti. After doing not much for the first day or so at the campsite, I made friends with quite a few people, two of them being kayakers.  One is from India, his name is Bhupi (not Boobie), and he works for the company I rafted with as a raft guide.  The other is Chris, from England, and he is here to spend two months running the famous waves of the White Nile.  The two of them met while raft-guiding together in Norway, and have both come here for the legendary white-water of Uganda.  Also in our little clique were Trina from New York City, Mary from Montreal, and two Dutch guys name Mike and Enno.  I’ve been hanging out with this group for almost a week now and we’ve had some good times.  On one day, Trina, Mary, Enno and I had not much to do, so we hired out these two guys with a little fishing boat to take us on and hour-long tour of the section of the Nile that is right outside our campsite.  For the most part, it wasn’t overly interesting.  There were some monkeys that inhabit a little island in the middle of the river, but they weren’t anything to write home about.  Still, the four of us had a fun time being paddled around the former Bujagali falls for an hour or so.  The “interesting” part of the trip (for lack of a better word) happened as we rounded to corner on one of the islands in the river.  All of a sudden we were in plain view of two men bathing on the banks of said island, one stark naked and shaking his gigantic penis at us.  Trina turns to Mary and says something along the lines of “oh my god I just saw the biggest penis I’ve ever seen” and so, of course, we all had a nice little gander. (And to be fair, yes, it was a gigantic penis, easily the biggest of the hundreds I’ve seen…wait what?)  This attention excited the bather, and he began shaking his junk with even more force, until he had somewhat of a helicopter effect going on.  This caused Trina to loudly cheer at him, and he yelled back at us, and began motioning us over.  Unfortunately for him (and maybe Trina too) we were headed the other direction, and so a proper meeting did not take place.

Two Canadian girls that I had met while volunteering in Kenya, Kiersti and Rilla, were heading up to Jinja from Kampala, and we eventually met up at the campsite.  I was planning on going rafting again with them, but they were using a different company, and it was way cheaper for me to go a second time with the same company I had already used (it’s about half the price to go a second time).  So on Thursday, while Kiersti and Rilla took off to raft with Adrift (questionable name for a white-water rafting company), Enno, Trina, Mary and myself went rafting with Nile River Explorers.  Technically speaking, it was more or less the same as the first time that I went, so I won’t explain the fun again.  However, being that this time around I knew the people in my boat before-hand, it was much more fun.  Joining us four were two of Enno’s friends that were in Kampala, and they met us at the beginning of the trip that day.  One was a woman from Paris named Delphin (I may be spelling that wrong) who showed up for a day of getting tossed around by the Class 5 Nile rapids wearing high-heels, tight jeans, and a leather belt.  I don’t know how she survived the day, but it looked incredibly uncomfortable.  The other was a man from Barcelona named Jose (stereotypes for the win) and was simultaneously awesome and infuriating.  He was awesome because his English was terrible, he had a stereotypical Barcelona accent (Barthhhhelona), and said “oye-oye-oye” at least a couple dozen times throughout the day, and it came off like a catchphrase.  He was infuriating because our raft-guide would be shouting at us to paddle, and Jose would completely stop and turn around to continue carrying on his conversation.  Now, ok, being sociable is fine, 90% of the day was socializing, but when the guide tells you to paddle, you fucking paddle.  Regardless, it was an extremely fun day full of nasty spills and gigantic gulps of Nile water.  We finished it off by relaxing back at the campsite with beers.

And now on to the indescribable glory that was my last few days.  Near the take-out of the raft trip i.e. where you finish and get out of the water, there is a sizable island in the middle of the river which is inhabited by a small contingent of die-hard kayakers. I noticed their kayaks leaning on trees on the banks of this island the first time I went rafting and resolved to look into it.  A little research revealed that this was an island called the Hairy Lemon and it is legitimately one of the greatest places on Earth.  For $26 US a night ($22 for camping) you can stay on this little slice of heaven, everything included.  It is owned by a kayaker named Paul, and is inhabited because of its proximity to the world famous surfing wave known as The Nile Special (“surfing” meaning kayak surfing).  Kayakers from around the world gather here to spend months surfing and throwing tricks on this one wave on the Nile River, and staying at the Hairy Lemon puts you a ten-minute paddle from it.  The alternative is to stay in Jinja and follow the rafting-trips down the rapids, but this involved a lot of boring flat-water and so most people just end up staying on the island.  Trina, Bhupi, Chris, and I headed down to the island a few days ago, Trina, Bhupi, and I just for a couple nights, Chris for probably two months.  You have to get ferried the river to reach the island in a small wooden boat, and it wasn’t the sturdiest of boat-trips. I was staying in a dorm, but Chris had brought a gigantic tent for his two-month stay, and so we helped him set that up.  Most people on the island have pitched smallish personal tents, but Chris brought a friggin house with him.  It has three “rooms” and could probably sleep a dozen people.  It looks ridiculous compared to all the small tents on the island, but to be fair, he’s spending two months there and I think I agree with his decision to go all-out. 

After setting up Chris’s tent and a bit of (excellent) lunch, we were shown around the island.  It’s small in that it takes about five minutes to see the whole thing, but it is absolutely magnificent.  There is nothing to do but relax and enjoy the beautiful views of the Nile River from all sides of the island.  The owner has set up a Frisbee-golf course (frolf) and he kicks ass at it.  It is a nine-hole course, par 34, and the targets range from garbage cans to specific trees to sign posts.  I honestly haven’t had a better time in a long while just walking around the island throwing a Frisbee, enjoying the scenery, and hanging out with people from various walks of life.  The owner is really good, and in my short stay on the island, I honed my skills a bit too (though I was frustratingly stuck on a personal best round of 30.  I will break that when and if I go back though).  I was addicted to playing frolf while I stayed there, and why wouldn’t I be?  It was a half-hour of wandering around the beautiful island with friends, sipping beers (and sometimes smoking joints) and just chilling out.  Other than frolf, there are also several great swimming spots, a volleyball court in waist-deep water, and two “chill-out zones” with insanely comfortable pillows and hammocks.  I spent many hours doing nothing but relaxing in these areas, sometimes with a book or my iPod, and sometimes with nothing at all, for hours on end.  It may sound dull, but I shit you not, it was amazing.  There is nothing to do on the island, and I mean that in the best possible way.  The food is all included in the price, and three times a day, all the guests on the island would meet for a meal of superb food.  For the second time since starting to type out this post, I realize that it may seem weird that I’m ranting about something that sounds mundane at best.  Maybe it just needs to be experienced, but this place is absolutely magical.  I originally planned on only two nights, but extended it to three, and I strongly suspect that, if it works out, I will try to be back there for New Years and maybe four or five days.  Seriously you guys, this place rules.  I did nothing all day but relax, play frolf, swim in the Nile River, eat excellent food, drink beer, and smoke Ugandan pot.  If this doesn’t sound like enough for you, then you’re living your life with fucked up priorities.  The three of us that left today didn’t want to go at all, and Chris was beaming the whole time about the idea of spending the next two months there.

One of the most interesting aspects of the island is that there are constantly people coming and going (such as myself) and on our second day there, a group of twenty plus people arrived for a company retreat.  They were mainly Ugandans and were part of an initiative to get Uganda as a country to embrace the idea of organic farming, as well as several other goals.  While we were frolfing and relaxing, they were doing workshops and other pre-arranged activities.  We all ate meals together though, and dinner plus what followed was one of the greatest nights of my life.  It was a weird group that we had there on the island for that night: half of the guests were Ugandan locals, while the other half were assorted tourists/volunteers/drunken kayak enthusiasts from mainly the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US.  It was an awkward clash of cultures by one perspective, but on the other hand, it was the perfect storm for a party not to be soon forgotten.  Following yet another awesome meal, the alcohol began to flow and the good times were not far behind.  The Ugandans led a dance-party that I can only naively describe as “perfectly African” and it was so much fun.  At first, it was mainly just the locals joining in the fun, but after a while, the mzungus joined the action and started to shake our money makers.  We spent probably two hours dancing around the fire and attempting to imitate the Swahili that went with the dances (with hilariously disastrous results) before the mzungu “culture” started to gain a voice, and before long, we were all dancing together to a soundtrack that was 50% tribal African music, and 50% tacky white-people music.  I enjoyed the dance-party for a long while, before another activity caught my eye.  The owner of the island, Paul, is straight-up one of the weirdest dudes I’ve ever met.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s great fun, but he’s a little off.  He spends probably 95% of the day stoned, and on this night, he was wasted as well.  He brought out four sticks and attempted to teach James how to stick fight.  I should point out that this was Belgian James, as there were no less than five James on the island that night (no joke, we all thought they were just fucking with us at first).  James was too drunk to understand what was going on though, and after he was tired of getting beat to shit, I gave it a go.  Paul taught me the basics like how to block and where to strike, and before too long he was going at it with full force.  I was knackered in probably ten minutes, so we gave up in soon enough.  This was just in time for the fire-spinning though so Paul was not too let down that I didn’t give it a bigger effort.  There were three different people that had a go spinning fire.  First was Paul, who was pretty good, then it was someone else (I forget who it was, but I bet his name was James), and then it was a Polish guy whose name eludes me, and he was amazing.  I don’t know how to technically explain that he was awesome, but he put on quite the show and all the guests of the island were very impressed.  Later on in the night, after Paul had taken many more drinks, he gave the fire spinning another go.  It was going ok, and then he lit his hair on fire.  Instead of helping him, we all just laughed.  When it didn’t go out for a good ten seconds though, Rilla rushed over and put it out for him.  It was hilarious.

During the party, James (a kayaker from Australia) introduced us all to a shot known around these parts as the Bujagali Sunset, and it is the craziest drink I have ever.  You get poured a double shot of this blue alcohol called Zappa, and you then have to cover the drink with you hand and shake it so that you get some on your hand.  Then comes the fun: next, you light your hand on fire and “scrape” the flames into the drink, causing the alcohol to ignite.  You then hold the cup against your nipple (oh yeah, you need to be shirtless) and it suctions on to your body.  You then rip it from your chest and drink the shot, before finally holding the cup down on a counter and sucking the alcohol fumes out through a straw.  I know, sounds insanely weird, right?  After a couple of those, we all had burn marks on our chest.  Soon, we could take no more, and someone thought it was a good idea to go skinny dipping in the river, so for the second time in a week, I swam naked in the Nile River.

I fear that I have ranted for too long about this party/night of mayhem without really saying too much, but the more I attempt to write about my travels, the more I realize that words cannot do these sorts of experiences justice.  To anyone reading these inane ramblings and experiencing some sort of jealousy, I can’t recommend travel enough.  No matter where I go, I meet amazing people and have indescribable experiences.  You don’t need to have a plan at all or even that much money.  Hell, I had $6000 saved at the beginning of this trip and no clue what I would be doing in Africa.  Yet here I am, living the cheapest lifestyle possible (basically, this trip ends when I run out of money), yet randomly stumbling upon an amazingly unique place that I don’t want to leave.  This brings me to my final update for this year.  When I began writing this post yesterday, I was intending to head to Kampala for a few days and eventually into Rwanda for a bit.  However, this would mean that I would be god-knows-where for Christmas and likely alone.  I had always wanted to be somewhere that I enjoyed and knew for Christmas Day and possibly New Years, and I found that in the Hairy Lemon.  I don’t have to fly to South Africa to meet Hillary until January 11^th, so I have changed my plan to the following: I will head to The Hairy Lemon tomorrow and (assuming there is vacancy) stay there for the next two weeks approximately.  It is very slightly over my budget, but it’s only for two weeks and I feel that having a home away from home for the next little while will be worth it.  I plan on staying there until at least January 2^nd, which still leaves me over a week to explore Kampala, the southern bit of Uganda, and dip into the supposedly fascinating but expensive Rwanda for a few days, before returning to Entebbe to catch a flight to Cape Town. 

So, for those that care, it looks like this will be the last 8900 Miles post for 2011.  Have a safe and merry Christmas, and I will see you in the New Year.  I’m off to spend the next two weeks doing virtually nothing on a tiny little island in the middle of the White Nile, and I couldn’t be happier.