Day 4
Country
Had a good night’s sleep and woke around 7 a.m. I rode to the Ranger’s office to charge my phone. I also found out that if we were to stay at the campsite for a second night we’d have to not only pay the camping fee but also the park entrance fee of $40 so over breakfast of porridge we decided to move on from here. It would’ve been good to go on the game drive (ride) without all our luggage but... As we were considering what to do we noticed some monkeys on my tent trying to break in! They were all over both our bikes too. Muddy paw prints everywhere but no damage done. We rode around all the tracks all day but didn’t see much different to what we had yesterday on the way in – buffalo, eland, warthogs, zebra, impala, baboons, eagles etc. We were told there were giraffes here and one male lion but we didn’t see them. I’m sure they would’ve seen us. The views from top of Kazuma lookout were amazing. By late afternoon we reached Nashara gate (the one we missed yesterday). Just outside the park gate there was campsite but it had no toilets or showers so we moved on to another called Leopard’s Rest. This was very expensive so we kept going until we reached a small village just outside Mbarara where we saw a sign for a campsite. An old gentleman of 108 (who we met) had donated his 40 acres of land to the community project on which the campsite was built. We stayed there that night and got told all about the community project. At length. But before we got there is had a small altercation with a bus driver. We were riding along on the edge of the tarmac road when this bus came up from behind me and couldn’t overtake me due to oncoming traffic. So he was beeping his hooter at me constantly wanting me to ride on the shoulder which I wasn’t prepared to do. So eventually when he got the opportunity to overtake me he ran me off the road by bumping me as he passed. Of course I was lucky to stay upright and not come off the bike. I was livid and went after him but I had no hope of catching up on my little Bajaj Boxer which had a top speed of 60 kph downhill. But, there was a police Check Point just a little way ahead where he had been pulled over. I wanted to punch his lights out but just shouted and ranted at him before complaining to the police officers about him. They said they’d deal with him and sent us on our way. Lesson learnt. Might is right. From then on if I something larger than a Bajaj looming in my mirrors I moved over to the shoulder. It wasn’t worth the risk.
