Day 3
Country
Rudely awakened by a flock of Hadeda Ibis (probably the loudest birds in Africa) flying past our tents making a racket just after 6.30 a.m. Popped my head out of the tent to a beautiful red sky and remember thinking shepherd’s warning? There were lots of vervet monkeys around but they kept away and didn’t bother us. There were a few fishermen in their vessels on the lake too. Siphoned some petrol out of one of the bikes and fired up our camping stove (which was a great find as it worked with gas as well as petrol, paraffin and even diesel!). God bless E bay! Coffee, porridge and cold shower later we headed back out on the road. Needed to find a local sim card but no one seems to have a nano sim. So I risked cutting a micro sim to nano size with borrowed scissors. It worked! However, the shopkeeper cocked up loading the correct bundle on to my account and I ended up with 1GB of data which I needed to use within a week. Which was OK as I could make calls via Whatsapp I thought. Except, there was no 3G or 4G signal! Never mind, at least others could call us. As we rode on, we could see rain laden clouds in the distance and even as we were thinking whether we should stop and take shelter it started to rain. So we pulled over and hurriedly covered our gear and ourselves in waterproofs. It rained pretty heavily for a while and we didn’t know it but we had missed the turning into Lake Mburo Wildlife Park. Luckily there was another entrance a few kms down the road which we thought was the turning we were looking for as we hadn’t realised we’d missed the one before. In Uganda they allow you to ride your own bikes through wildlife parks! No escorts or armed guards needed. Just pay the fees and ride. We did. It was great. We took the long way around to the campsite which was by the lake. The track we went on was much longer than the 9 kms we were told it was. So we were getting a bit nervous as it was getting dark. We just made it to the campsite before it got fully dark and pitched our tents. We ordered some food in the restaurant and had a shower before sitting by the lake drinking beer and listening to cicadas, frogs and crickets and the resident hippos grunting and snorting every now and again. The sky was full of stars. I love the sights and sounds of wild Africa.
