We’re heading south now – toward Rwanda. We've circled back and are almost into Tanzania again. Almost time to leave Africa and head to Europe.
We lost a day due to rain in Fort Portal, and another due to laziness. And another in Kasese because the room was pretty good, we found a decent restaurant and it was pleasant enough to stay. And we’re not in any rush at the moment, only a few hundred more kilometres to Kigali, Rwanda, where we need to be in a week.
And because we’re not in a rush, we’ve taken cover twice in the last few days (Saturday and Sunday over Easter) when a massive thunderstorm came close. Rainy season – you should expect that. We hid in a hotel room twice and waited and waited for the storm that didn’t come. But it meant we’ve had a few afternoons to catch up on a few admin things and start to look at were to go in Europe.
The last few days have been great (although the hot-cross-buns and chocolate easter eggs have been lacking). Scenery in the southwest of Uganda is rolling hills, and tropical and so, so green!
We’ve still been sticking to the asphalt roads but probably didn’t need to. The wet season is more localised than we thought it might be. We’ve seen storm cells pass us by, and a couple of times we’ve been sure the heavens are about to open, and it just sprinkles pathetically for a few minutes. But it's also rained all night a few times.
After a few days off, we went a bit further than we really needed to, to the town of Kasese. The guidebook doesn’t rate this town, but they must have been through before the streets were nicely paved. We thought it was reasonable, and the hotel room was (for the price) the best we’d been in in ages, so we stayed 2 nights. And they had Wi-Fi 😊
Riding on Easter Sunday we saw a lot of people in their Sunday best...including these two with the eldest, clopping a long in her high heels presumably to or from church
From there we rode two half days (just in the morning) before being scared away by the thunderstorms. One of the days was through the middle of the Queen Elizabeth National Park. Thank goodness. We’ve been seeing signs saying this park is ahead, for over 400km – a week at our speed. It was worth the wait: just riding down the main road we saw lots of herbivores: a dozen Elephant, several Cape Buffalo, Waterbuck, and plenty of other unidentified antelope. No hippos, but we did spot a huge Crocodile at a water crossing. All at close range – close enough for being on a bike. No lions, although we were paying a lot of attention – this might be our last chance to stumble over a lion outside of a safari car and apparently there are plenty in this park. Not exactly sure what happen the next day. The sun was out all day, and the road was great (more superb Chinese roads). We ended up doing over 100 km, despite being in no rush to get anywhere. This meant we’re a bit ahead of time, so we might stay in the last city we'll see in Uganda for a few days. Nothing really much to do here, but there is Wi-Fi.
There it's. So beautiful, I was a bit more confident taking photos, regretting what a scardy cat I was in Botswana. It was all fine as it stood there eating away...and then it turned to look at me, I think I said 'eek' and got out of there quicksmart
The view from the Chipati stall looking over Queen Elizabeth National Park. It being 10km away we were surprised and a little saddened to hear our Chipati vendor had never been down to it.
