First impressions

Hello from Uganda! This will be a very short blog post, but it may take some time before I can blog again. Camping makes recharging my electronics a little challenging…

But I made it back to Africa, and Laf (my bike) too. All in one piece, although I haven’t gone for a test ride yet. I know I should before I take off tomorrow.

First impression: very friendly place. One of my first interaction with Ugandans was a security officer at the airport who looked at my bike and said: « I can see that you are brave ». The next one was a police officer who lent me his phone to call my guest house because my driver forgot to show up. But all went well and around midnight I was pitching my tent in the beautiful Via Via Guest House and Campsite. I even thought about not putting tent pegs, as the night was so warm and quiet. But little did I know that about half an hour later a thrunderstorm would hit us, full tropical style, and soon I was camping in the middle of a red mud river. Luckily my tent was up to the challenge and I managed to eventually get a couple of hours of sleep, between waking up because of jet lag, music, very loud frogs, thunder or the call to prayer at 5:30 am.

And today was my real introduction to Uganda, super friendly, no hassle, and my biggest challenge was of course to try to figure out the SIM card and cell service, but I am getting closer…

I also met a tour cyclist who just completed more or less the same route that I plan to do. Will chat more with him but he seemed to have enjoyed his adventure. He certainly travels lighter than I do. But I am in no rush, I’ll just do as much as I can do and take a bus to go to Kenya when the time comes!

So this is it for the first day. Gave a few high fives to friendly kids on the street, been called ‘Mami’ a few times by friendly ladies, and ate awesome street chapatis. Nice way to end the year.

Happy new year to you all!