To add to our list of adventures while here in Uganda, Mike and I headed out this morning to head to Kisoro (a small city in the extreme southwest of Uganda, right on the border of Rwanda). Kisoro was our stopping point en route to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. We were picked up at 6:30am by Robert, our driver and guide for the weekend. From there, we headed over to the campus of Makerere University (the main university in Kampala) to pick up our other traveler, Meghana. Meghana is a resident in internal medicine from Stanford. Although we had never met before, I had emailed with her prior to her arrival to see if she would be interested in going to Bwindi with us and she was! So we met in the car and spent most of the rest of the car ride to Kisoro (which took about 10 hours) chatting and catching up. By the time we arrived at our destination, it seemed like we had known each other for longer than 11 hours!
The road from Kampala to Kisoro is anything but easy driving. Despite the fact that the distance is only a little over 500 kilometers, the drive takes over 10 hours because of the road conditions. While some of the roads are recently constructed, others are old, falling apart, and appear more like Swiss cheese with all of the deep, treacherous pot holes. Besides potholes, another problem was road construction, where the road often came down to a single dirt lane with heavy machinery on either side. We were also plagued by many, many speed bumps. They were quite excessive. Mike calls speed bumps "sleeping policeman," but as he described it, these were more like "sleeping armies." Ridiculous. And on top of all of this? Land slides. Because it is rainy season, there were many, many landslides during the latter half of our drive, which was in the hills of western Uganda.
I have to admit that I was quite grateful when we arrived at our guest house in one piece!
Despite the minor traveling woes, the trip really was quite pleasant. There were absolutely beautiful sites in pretty much all directions. The western part of Uganda is known as the "Switzerland of Uganda" with all of its rolling hills. The hills are covered in terraced farms, which make it look like the land has been covered in a patch-work quilt.
We were able to see Lake Bunyonyi, which travels inland from the Rwandan border for nearly 25 kilometers. It was gorgeous.
In addition, we had amazing views of the Virunga mountains, a range of beautiful volcanoes that form the border between Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. The mountain chain is composed of eight volcanoes, two of which are active.
Probably the best part, however, were all of the children who were so incredibly excited to see the "mzungus" (aka: white people). They would shout at our car as it went by, many running behind the jeep and waving crazily. When we stopped to take pictures, they would swarm the vehicle and ask (or rather demand) "Give me a pencil" or "give me a pen." Sadly, we had left all of our extra writing utensils at home, so had nothing to share...
The road from Kampala to Kisoro is anything but easy driving. Despite the fact that the distance is only a little over 500 kilometers, the drive takes over 10 hours because of the road conditions. While some of the roads are recently constructed, others are old, falling apart, and appear more like Swiss cheese with all of the deep, treacherous pot holes. Besides potholes, another problem was road construction, where the road often came down to a single dirt lane with heavy machinery on either side. We were also plagued by many, many speed bumps. They were quite excessive. Mike calls speed bumps "sleeping policeman," but as he described it, these were more like "sleeping armies." Ridiculous. And on top of all of this? Land slides. Because it is rainy season, there were many, many landslides during the latter half of our drive, which was in the hills of western Uganda.
I have to admit that I was quite grateful when we arrived at our guest house in one piece!
Despite the minor traveling woes, the trip really was quite pleasant. There were absolutely beautiful sites in pretty much all directions. The western part of Uganda is known as the "Switzerland of Uganda" with all of its rolling hills. The hills are covered in terraced farms, which make it look like the land has been covered in a patch-work quilt.
We were able to see Lake Bunyonyi, which travels inland from the Rwandan border for nearly 25 kilometers. It was gorgeous.
In addition, we had amazing views of the Virunga mountains, a range of beautiful volcanoes that form the border between Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. The mountain chain is composed of eight volcanoes, two of which are active.
Probably the best part, however, were all of the children who were so incredibly excited to see the "mzungus" (aka: white people). They would shout at our car as it went by, many running behind the jeep and waving crazily. When we stopped to take pictures, they would swarm the vehicle and ask (or rather demand) "Give me a pencil" or "give me a pen." Sadly, we had left all of our extra writing utensils at home, so had nothing to share...
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