Day 2
Country
We had arranged for the taxi driver who we hired from the airport to come back this morning to take us to collect the bikes from Charles. A short drive later, we were at Charles and Sumin’s place where we had a huge bowl of mango and pineapple fruit salad. Their two kids Bridget and Nathaniel were lovely and excited to see us. After we signed the contracts and paid Charles we set off on the bikes. We had one brand new one with only 161 kms on the clock and the other had done about 21000 kms. Both were Indian made Bajaj (BM100) Boxers. Unfortunately they were not electric start models but were easy enough to kick over. Charles came with us to the petrol station where we filled up the tyres with puncture proof slime and tanks with petrol. Petrol was only slightly cheaper than in UK – about a dollar a litre. We then rode a couple of kms down the road with Charles who pointed us in the general direction of Masaka. Five minutes later down this dirt road I noticed the speedometer cable from Ron’s bike had come loose and was dragging on the road. It didn’t take us long to clean it up and bodge a repair with a cable ties and we were riding again soon. An hour or so later we were at the Equator where we met a Japanese cyclist who we understood had been on the road for a year and was riding from Ethiopia to South Africa. More dirt roads brought us to Lake Nabugabo where the Church of Uganda ran a holiday resort and campsite. The grounds were beautiful and it was cheap enough to camp at $5 per tent. They also had a restaurant where they made us some food and James nipped out to get us a couple of Nile Specials! We had pitched our tents right by the lake and there were no other campers. After dinner there was nothing to do and it was pitch dark so we sat around for a bit chatting and went to sleep at about 9.30
