A break: south-west Uganda

Right. Another big lazy gap in blog updating. Argh. I'm back though.

This time, mostly photos: local and old ones, still from the dry season (or Easter time in our timeframe), from a week of in south-west of Uganda, stolen among a swamp of work.

Buried in the dust of Lira hot dry season, my heart desired cold and green - and south-western Uganda is nothing if not green. Besides, I couldn't really get out of the country anyway, because I was still waiting for a new work permit to be put in my passport - which in any case was too full to travel anywhere exotic. So after successfully combating work emergency I scraped a few days off, packed the vehicle and together with my friend and colleague Michele headed out of Lira. 

First stop were the crater lakes around Fort Portal. The first time I visited the area was two and half years ago, which... eeeek, sounds like a VERY long time. It was still the same, really - tea plantations, crater lakes, misty foothils of the Rwenzori mountains, and all very very green.

Tea plantations

Lake Nkuruba

Black and white colobus monkey

And just like all over southern Uganda, also full of banana plants. Banana is a staple crop in Uganda, apparently with some 50 varieties being cultivated... for boiling, roasting, frying, alcohol-making or plain raw eating. You choose.

Banana plantation

Transportation of matooke - banana for cooking

The next stop was Queen Elizabeth park, to visit my friend Oscar.

Lake George at the back

We even managed to squeeze within the visit a short game drive in the park.

But first an obligatory stop to change a flat tyre

Morning on Kazinga channel, which links Lake Edward and Lake George

From a short stop at Queen Elizabeth we continued to Kabale...

Proof that I did drive

Kabale town

... and from there through Kisoro, the main town in the south-western corner of Uganda, towards the Mgahinga national park, on the border with Rwanda and the DRC, with three spectacular volcanoes.

From left, Mt Muhavira, Mt Gahinga and Mt Sabinyo

I had been in that corner three years ago during my brother's visit, and I remembered that the road from Kisoro to the Mgahinga park was VERY bad (then the 14km between Kisoro and park HQ had taken us about an hour). It seems my memory isn't that good - the road turned out to be even worse than I remembered. So bad that a few kilometres before reaching the park HQ the clutch of my poor car gave up (undoubtedly also related to a foul Lira mechanic "repairing" the clutch a few months back).

Unluckily, this happened in the late afternoon, with only 2 more hours of light ahead of us, and just when it started to rain. Luckily, we managed to stop a car which in turned stopped a lorry full of bricks, which towed us to the nearest trading centre (which is how they call here a cluster of houses, small shops and eateries), where we waited for mechanics to come from Kisoro - while of course becoming the show of the whole (at that point already rather drunk) local community.

As things usually do, also the car problem was eventually (after a day and half) sorted (though the part when four unknown mechanics started to remove entire pieces from inside the car in falling darkness, surrounded by drunk village, was slightly scary), and we managed to hike up and down Mt Sabyinyo as planned, all its 3645m.

And after the hike came a deserved treat - my first hot shower since Christmas!

Hot shower smelling of firewood smoke (that's how you get the hot part) and falling from a sort of watering can installed below the roof (that's how you get the shower part), but hot shower nevertheless - SO good :-)

It was just as well that for the following days we planned a bit of relax, because with my spectacular muscle-pain I wouldn't be capable of much activity anyway. Lake Bunyonyi, close to Kabale, and more specifically Byoona Amagara on one of its islands, is just MADE for relax. Low key, fresh, green, not crowded. Playing cards, eating a lot, and a small hike up to (try to) warm up again the painful muscles.