Lowri Davies

I’m back in blighty and finally caught 10 minutes to update the website! Uganda, once over the food poisoning, was amazing! Big waves, big rapids, warm water, sunshine, a laid back atmosphere? and good company – what more can you want from a holiday?

After? my last update, we went to Nile River Explorers for a few days of paddling Day 1. The NRE site is a lot more lively, full of rowdy, drunken rafters (punters and guides alike) and the rapids are generally a little more challenging. There is a wave? on this section called Ugly Sisters wave, which is great but has a horrible pourover behind it and if you miss the eddy it’s a bitch to try and get back up.? To get back to camp, you ride on the back of a local moped called a ‘Boda Boda’, with your boat and paddles on your lap. Possibly the scariest and most dangerous part of the holiday, but a lot of fun!

Sam Ward made the video below of one of our days paddling the Silverback section with Myles, Simon and Duncan (the guys on a Liquid Satisfaction course with Sam). We have plenty more footage so will have a video of more substance soon…

Easter Saturday we returned to the Hairy Lemon to play on Nile Special, Club Wave and do the Day 2 section (including Hair of the Dog wave, which worked late morning at these levels). We practiced air blunts, helixes, donkey flips and banter with the Canadians. Slowly the island got quieter and we almost had the place between Andy, myself, Billy Harris and his new wife Carly, Sam and Pete by the end of the week, which was great.

**My favourite 100? photos from our trip can be found in this gallery (click here)**

Something that really struck me out there was the eclectic technology that people had in their lives. I saw a mud hut with a Sky TV satelite dish attatched to it! Everyone seems to have mobile phones, even the very poor. I suppose it is the easiest way of communication for them.

It was also very apparent from speaking to Sam and Pete who run the Hairy Lemon that there is a lot to deal with when running a business there. While we were there, they had a morning adventure trapping trespassing fishermen on an island for the (lazy and corrupt) police to come and collect. They have several staff to oversee, again often lazy (at least the men it seems) and have to put up with stories such as when Sam asked a worker about a missing pineapple to be told “Ah, the monkies did it!”. When asked why there was no mess from the monkies eating said pineapple, the worker replied “he swam back to the island with it”!? Other challenges include that they want to pay well, particularly to the staff that work hard for 12-14 hours a day, but have to be careful not to pay over-the-odds and outbalance the local community. They often have problems with fishermen and want to show that they are not a walkover but at the same time do not want to cause bad feeling within the community towards the Muzungus (white people). None of this would you ever suspect from sitting the other side of the bar, feeling the? laid back and easy going atmosphere and seeing the? happy faces? of the staff. Something to ponder over your cornflakes.