Day 50 Mud!

Tuesday February 1^st. Today didn't go quite as planned! Rough night of sleeping as the staff of the resort were up talking, singing and playing pool in the bar most of the night. We all had a lousy night's sleep, but no one got up and complained! Plus it rained most of the night, but luckily stopped before morning.

We were up and gone by 7:00. Drove most of the morning over rough roads, through valleys and hills on the way back to Kabale. We stopped a couple of times for supplies. In one town as I was walking around taking pictures in an alley, a man approached me, and said he was concerned about my 'identity'. He asked who I was and where I came from and wanted to see my identity card. I told him it was on the overland truck that I was travelling on. I said do you want to come to see it? He followed me for a bit, and I wasn't really sure what was going on, but I knew that if worst came to worst the guides would set him straight. But once he saw the truck he backed off and left. Weird...

It was longer drive than expected, but finally we turned onto the dirt road that led to Lake Mburo National Park. We drove for a bit, and then we stopped on the road because there was a truck with logs on it that had slipped off the road. The road was really muddy, slippery and narrow, so we could not go around. There were lots of local farmers that came to help. We watched and helped too.

As I was standing and taking a couple of photos of their efforts, I suddenly felt stings on my feet. I looked down and discovered my sandals were crawling with biting ants! As I danced around all the young kids were laughing and having a good time. It took me a few minutes to get them off of me. We all shared a good laugh.

Finally they got it back on the road only to have it go fifty metres and slid off again. Then a second one came along behind it and slipped off too! We spent about an hour trying to get both trucks back on the road and past us (we had backed our truck up to an area where we could pull off). Finally we got them both going and we reloaded our truck, and started out, and promptly slipped off the road too! We wound up in a deep ditch on the left side. Luckily all the guys came back to help us and after another hour, we managed to get out. Again we reboarded and drove the last two kilometres to Lake Mburo National Park.

As we set up our tents waterhogs and vervet monkeys wandered around the camp. We are camped by the shore of the lake and there are hippos in it, we can hear them calling. So we will have to be careful tonight as they will come out to eat the grass.

We booked a small boat tour of the lake, but after we boarded the driver told us he didn't have enough fuel! So, that was that. Interesting day.

Spent time updating, and then having a beer before dinner. We sat around the campfire for a bit, and then it started to rain a little so we all turned in.