I spent a night in a hotel after the climb but the next morning I wanted to get back to Kampala. My friends wanted to spend a few more days around Fort Portal so we split up. I ate breakfast and showered then headed out to the road in the direction of Kampala to hitch hike. I was dressed in my usual boots, shorts, no shirt and my long hair was drying in the wind as I stood on the side of the road waiting for a ride. In about ten minutes a black sedan came by and saw me. The driver hit the brakes and stopped right where I was standing. I casually started talking to him about where I was going etc but he interrupted me briskly and just shouted, "Get in the car! Quickly!"
I was a little taken aback by his seeming rudeness but for some reason I complied with his request. He punched the pedal even before I had the door closed all the way and he raced down the road in a very agitated state. I wanted to ask him what was up but he started to talk first. He spoke clearly but with severe tension in his voice, "You must not know what is happening in our country do you?" I shook my head no and he continued. "Something very very wrong is going on. It is very dangerous. Idi Amin has gone crazy again. He and his soldiers are killing and torturing more civilians. He has declared marshal law and told all of the people from India that they must leave the country and not take anything with them. If they don't leave quickly he will torture and kill them. He has also declared Uganda to be under the rules of the Koran. These rules include no short pants above the knees for men or they will be killed. No long hair or you will be killed, No hair on the face or you will be killed. You are standing along the road in violation of all of these new rules and the army is just behind me. If I had not come along and found you they would surely have killed you with Idi Amin's favorite method of tying you to the ground with your arms and legs splayed and then smashing your crotch area with a big hammer to kill you painfully but slowly. They have already done that to many people."
While he was talking he saw some trees and brush along the side of the road and he pulled around behind them and drove practically all the way into the grove until the car was hidden out of view from the road. He told me to get on the floor and he threw a blanket over the top of me just in case. Almost right away a caravan of military trucks went past us on the road. I could not see them but I could sure hear them and feel the vibrations from the heavy trucks as they sped past us. After they had gone by we waited a while to give them some time to get way ahead of us. He told me more about the situation as we waited.
"Idi Amin has declared war on intellectuals and on Indians. I am afraid for my life and I work for our government as the Minister of Agriculture. I went to school in America and in England. Idi Amin does not like anybody smarter than him around and he only has a fourth grade education and some Israeli military training so he is murdering all the people that went to university especially in a different country like I did. He will kill me for sure. I am on my way to my home in Kampala and I am gathering my things and fleeing to Kenya. You will have to come with me to Kenya or they will torture and kill you for sure. Our country is in chaos. God save us!"
He told me more gory details on the drive to Kampala about the whole Idi Amin history. He told me, "The banks were all robbed by him before he told the Indians to leave because he knew they stored their cash and jewelry in the safety deposit boxes. He murdered many people from the opposition tribe to keep them from taking away his rule. Many of them had fled to Zaire or Kenya already. They couldn't flee to the Sudan or Ethiopia because there were wars going on in those places. Idi Amin closed the newspapers and now he personally writes the only newspaper allowed in the country. The airport is closed. The trains are not running. Everything is a total mess and very very dangerous. I hope we can get out of here alive. It will take me two days to get all my things together in Kampala then we will go to the border together. You will have to hide in my house until then. You can not even show your face to anyone. "
He was clearly terrified himself. So I stayed hidden in his house and he spent all day for two days collecting what he could to flee the country. Just in case, I came up with a contingency plan to flee at night alone if I had to do that. It was just in the case that he did not come back to the house. Then when he was ready we got in his government issued car and we left for the border with Kenya. At the border he was very nervous. He pointed my door at the Kenyan border and told me to watch in the mirror and if anything went wrong I should immediately jump out of the car and run as fast as I could run into Kenya and just hope that I did not get shot. He planned on bribing his way out of the country. The flaw in the plan is why should they accept a bribe when they could just take everything? I hoped the fact that he was driving an official car would intimidate them into letting us through. I sat in the car watching. It got a bit animated at one point and I put my hand on the door and checked that it wasn't locked. Then they all started to laugh and he walked back to the car laughing and joking as we headed over to the Kenyan side. As we pulled up to the gate entering Kenya he let out a big sigh and started to cry like a baby. "I am crying for my country right now, not for myself!" I knew why he was crying. I was right there with him. I was scared shitless sitting there wondering if we would make it out and the relief when we did was enough to make a grown man cry.
Showing posts with label Uganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uganda. Show all posts
Monday, May 3, 2010
Climbing Icefalls and Summits
The next morning we woke up in our cabin and made a big breakfast. Over breakfast we studied the maps of the mountains to make our final assault plans. The weather did not cooperate with us as the peaks were all fogged over. We hiked up further to check out our planned trail with binoculars as best we could with the poor visibility. We found an ice fall that looked interesting and fun so I said I wanted to climb up it to practice my ice axe work. My friends thought it was too dangerous but I went ahead and started to climb up it.
I made belays about every twenty feet so that if I fell or if the ice gave way I had a better chance of not getting hurt. The rope was heavy to carry but I worked my way up. I checked the integrity of the ice often to make sure it would support me. Ice can quickly get weak when the sun hits it so I had to hurry and finish climbing before the ice was too dangerous. Of course my buddies were right about it being dangerous to climb up ice falls. They are called ice falls because dah ice falls in them and it can be really deadly when big chunks fall on your head or any body part for that matter. I dropped a few chunks down from my perch and they hit the bottom really hard. I did not want to fall or that would be it. We were two weeks away from medical care so even minor injuries could be fatal this far out in the boondocks. I looked around from the top for about thirty seconds and then climbed down quickly taking all my hardware off as I went down. My friends had sat and watched me climb and had a few comments about the ice chunks I sent down from above and how I took too many chances and trusted my skills and equipment too much. I agreed with them but what the hell I wanted to live life not sit and watch somebody else climbing I wanted to do it myself. I was glad I climbed up it because it was fun, I learned things, I got a good workout and I was kind of proud that I was able to safely make it.
The next day was also not good weather so we went up one of the lesser peaks to look at the glacier we could see from the basecamp. We hiked all the way to the top of the glacier that morning. I wanted to go out and walk on it but my buddies again thought it was too dangerous. We found some old wooden skis hidden by some rocks near the summit. I looked at them and they appeared to be from the 1940s by the look of the boot clamps and color of the wood. They were likely left here by Benito Mussolini's men who surveyed the early maps that we used. I was feeling really gutsy and I announced that I was going to ski down the glacier. My friends thought about physically restraining me when I said it. I looked at them like I was crazy and maybe I was but I strapped those suckers on my boots and using my ice axe for a pole I took off down the glacier. I was a bit worried about falling into crevasses or flying off the end if I went to fast so I controlled my speed and looked for the smoothest areas to ski over. When I got to the bottom I flipped myself into a sitting position and then rolled over onto my front with my hands wrapped around the ice axe and my fingers interlaced as tightly as I could and then dug the tip of the ice axe into the glacier and came to a well controlled stop. I retrieved the skis and walked off the side of the glacier. It took my buddies about an hour and a half to hike down to where I was waiting for them. The German did not look so good to me.
We helped him back to the cabin and laid him down on a cot. We looked up his symptoms in our medical guide we had with us and he had just what we thought, altitude sickness. We had drugs with us for this condition but they had to be injected IV and none of us had every done that. I read the directions in our guide and offered to do it for him. It went smoothly. I did not kill him or anything. We got some porters together to carry him down to a lower altitude because he could still die up high where we were even with the drugs. I tried to talk him out of going into shock by just talking very calmly and slowly and trying to explain everything to him. He was pretty disoriented but we told the porters the facts and they rushed him down the mountain.
Now there was only three of us left to climb up to the top of Mount Stanley. The next day was better but still not a good day to climb. We made a decision to climb up higher and put up our tent so that we could get an earlier start on the summit. So that is what we did. It was a good plan except for how loud the hyraxes were with all their screaming. The next morning we arose and ate our premade breakfast and went to take the tent down and we found that the tent was just one big sheet of ice and it was not going to come down. We decided to just leave it and come back for it later. We lucked out and had a very clear morning. Our climb to the summit was more of a mountaineering hike than a rope and harness with carabiners. We spent most of our time triangulating our position and making sure we were on the correct path. The summit was awesome! We could see down to the jungles on all sides both to Zaire and Uganda. We didn't stay long because the wind was already picking up and the visibility was dropping. We checked our ropes and did some practice belays before heading back down to the basecamp. We picked up the tent on the way. The days sunshine had melted the ice it was coated with. We climbed two more peaks before packing it up and heading back to Fort Portal.
We had one more problem with the porters on the way down. We ran into some mountain elephants and the porters were very afraid of the elephants. If they decided to charge we had no defense. We did not bring a gun powerful enough to stop an elephant. We decided to retreat and wait until the elephants had time to get out of our way. We made some tea and lunch to kill a few hours then we took off again for the bottom. We never saw the elephants on the way down. Just before we got down about two days hike from Fort Portal we ran into another group of climbers coming up. We talked a few minutes and then they asked us if we had any matches. They were going mountain climbing and they didn't even have matches! They were clearly not prepared for the cold and snowy icy conditions that they were heading into. My Canadian friend tried to talk them into turning around before some of them got killed by their own stupidity. We left them and made it to Fort Portal without a problem. Our German friend was not waiting for us. He was fine but went ahead to Kampala without waiting for us.
This trip was one of the most spectacular things that I have ever done in my entire life to this day. I am so happy I made the effort and did this. When people ask me where was your favorite place on your travels this is my response, "The Mountains of the Moon!"
I made belays about every twenty feet so that if I fell or if the ice gave way I had a better chance of not getting hurt. The rope was heavy to carry but I worked my way up. I checked the integrity of the ice often to make sure it would support me. Ice can quickly get weak when the sun hits it so I had to hurry and finish climbing before the ice was too dangerous. Of course my buddies were right about it being dangerous to climb up ice falls. They are called ice falls because dah ice falls in them and it can be really deadly when big chunks fall on your head or any body part for that matter. I dropped a few chunks down from my perch and they hit the bottom really hard. I did not want to fall or that would be it. We were two weeks away from medical care so even minor injuries could be fatal this far out in the boondocks. I looked around from the top for about thirty seconds and then climbed down quickly taking all my hardware off as I went down. My friends had sat and watched me climb and had a few comments about the ice chunks I sent down from above and how I took too many chances and trusted my skills and equipment too much. I agreed with them but what the hell I wanted to live life not sit and watch somebody else climbing I wanted to do it myself. I was glad I climbed up it because it was fun, I learned things, I got a good workout and I was kind of proud that I was able to safely make it.
The next day was also not good weather so we went up one of the lesser peaks to look at the glacier we could see from the basecamp. We hiked all the way to the top of the glacier that morning. I wanted to go out and walk on it but my buddies again thought it was too dangerous. We found some old wooden skis hidden by some rocks near the summit. I looked at them and they appeared to be from the 1940s by the look of the boot clamps and color of the wood. They were likely left here by Benito Mussolini's men who surveyed the early maps that we used. I was feeling really gutsy and I announced that I was going to ski down the glacier. My friends thought about physically restraining me when I said it. I looked at them like I was crazy and maybe I was but I strapped those suckers on my boots and using my ice axe for a pole I took off down the glacier. I was a bit worried about falling into crevasses or flying off the end if I went to fast so I controlled my speed and looked for the smoothest areas to ski over. When I got to the bottom I flipped myself into a sitting position and then rolled over onto my front with my hands wrapped around the ice axe and my fingers interlaced as tightly as I could and then dug the tip of the ice axe into the glacier and came to a well controlled stop. I retrieved the skis and walked off the side of the glacier. It took my buddies about an hour and a half to hike down to where I was waiting for them. The German did not look so good to me.
We helped him back to the cabin and laid him down on a cot. We looked up his symptoms in our medical guide we had with us and he had just what we thought, altitude sickness. We had drugs with us for this condition but they had to be injected IV and none of us had every done that. I read the directions in our guide and offered to do it for him. It went smoothly. I did not kill him or anything. We got some porters together to carry him down to a lower altitude because he could still die up high where we were even with the drugs. I tried to talk him out of going into shock by just talking very calmly and slowly and trying to explain everything to him. He was pretty disoriented but we told the porters the facts and they rushed him down the mountain.
Now there was only three of us left to climb up to the top of Mount Stanley. The next day was better but still not a good day to climb. We made a decision to climb up higher and put up our tent so that we could get an earlier start on the summit. So that is what we did. It was a good plan except for how loud the hyraxes were with all their screaming. The next morning we arose and ate our premade breakfast and went to take the tent down and we found that the tent was just one big sheet of ice and it was not going to come down. We decided to just leave it and come back for it later. We lucked out and had a very clear morning. Our climb to the summit was more of a mountaineering hike than a rope and harness with carabiners. We spent most of our time triangulating our position and making sure we were on the correct path. The summit was awesome! We could see down to the jungles on all sides both to Zaire and Uganda. We didn't stay long because the wind was already picking up and the visibility was dropping. We checked our ropes and did some practice belays before heading back down to the basecamp. We picked up the tent on the way. The days sunshine had melted the ice it was coated with. We climbed two more peaks before packing it up and heading back to Fort Portal.
We had one more problem with the porters on the way down. We ran into some mountain elephants and the porters were very afraid of the elephants. If they decided to charge we had no defense. We did not bring a gun powerful enough to stop an elephant. We decided to retreat and wait until the elephants had time to get out of our way. We made some tea and lunch to kill a few hours then we took off again for the bottom. We never saw the elephants on the way down. Just before we got down about two days hike from Fort Portal we ran into another group of climbers coming up. We talked a few minutes and then they asked us if we had any matches. They were going mountain climbing and they didn't even have matches! They were clearly not prepared for the cold and snowy icy conditions that they were heading into. My Canadian friend tried to talk them into turning around before some of them got killed by their own stupidity. We left them and made it to Fort Portal without a problem. Our German friend was not waiting for us. He was fine but went ahead to Kampala without waiting for us.
This trip was one of the most spectacular things that I have ever done in my entire life to this day. I am so happy I made the effort and did this. When people ask me where was your favorite place on your travels this is my response, "The Mountains of the Moon!"
Mountains of the Moon
In the Tarzan books the location is in the "Mountains of the Moon" or as they are also called the Rwendori Mountains. We arrived in Fort Portal from Kampala after a very nice all day cruise through Uganda. Uganda is a beautiful green tropical country with rolling hills, farms, grassy valleys, jungles and glacier capped mountains along the western border with Zaire. As we neared Fort Portal the farms got smaller and further apart and the rolling hills were quickly turning into foothills and then real mountains.
We spent the first day negotiating for porters and guides to carry our gear and supplies and to show us the way to the top. We obtained the permits needed and ended up with almost thiry porters and two guides. We needed to carry enough supplies for a month and our climbing equipment. It sounds like a lot of porters but each man carried between 60 and a hundred pounds of weight so we could have used even more. The porters walked barefoot and were very strong and reliable. The guides helped us communicate with the porters and took care of any problems we had with them. There were very few problems. They were incredibly helpful and friendly with us. We carried about 75 pounds each, but we used backpacks whereas the porters just balanced the loads on their heads or used a sling hanging from their foreheads to carry their loads.
We took off after a big hearty breakfast and started to hike up the hills. At first the trail was wide and well traveled. The locals living up in this direction used this path to get back and forth to Fort Portal. As we walked on over the next several days the path got more and more trail like and less road like. The scenery was mind blowing. The mountains were visible now poking through the clouds. The white glaciers up on the summits looked impressive with the lush green tropical jungle background. We saw lots of lizards. They were brightly colored and just cracked me up because they would run rapidly for about ten feet then stop and do a bunch of pushups then flare out their throat and freeze for a few minutes before doing it again and again. I wanted to see more wildlife but we saw very little. Some monkeys that stayed away from us, a small snake here and there, and birds were about it on the climb to base camp. The guides and porters killed anything they saw move, usually before we could see it. That annoyed me a bit.
The vegetation changed about every thousand feet of elevation. The farms disappeared and the jungle changed as we climbed. The trees got further apart and the grasses changed. Then we hit a line where there was steamy fog and multi-colored moss and vines covering all the trees. The trees thinned out even more and we came to a muddy swampy area where we had to step or sometimes jump from clump of grass to clump of grass to walk. If you missed or slipped off of the clumps of grass the mud would suck your foot down to mid calf or so and you would have to slowly pull your foot back out or risk losing your boot. Quite a few times people went flying down to the muddy ground while trying to balance on one leg on the slippery clumps while pulling their feet out of the muck. We laughed a lot when people fell into it, until it happened to you personally, then it wasn't so funny getting covered in the sticky gooey muck.
We had our first problems here with our workers. The guides up front saw large footprints from a big cat and the workers all got frightened. We stopped and talked with the guides about it and then the guides talked with the porters and we continued on. For the next couple of days a big cat, probably a leopard stalked us and walked circles around our group. We would see the footprints still filling up with water in front of us behind us and on either side. None of us ever saw the big cat even though it spent two days sometimes within ten feet of us. It was unnerving to say the least. I tried really hard to spot it but it seemed to be invisible. Whenever the porters would see a fresh footprint they would scream out and scare the rest of them. Our guides kept them working and we continued on.
The jungles and trees eventually were gone and they were replaced by an alien looking area with ten to twenty foot high plants like lobelias and other flowers and plants that don't normally grow so tall. There were hummingbirds sucking on the flowers and bees and butterflies. It was very unusual to see weeds that are normally a foot tall everywhere else towering over your head.
We finally made it to our basecamp at about ten thousand feet in a gorgeous valley full of flowers streams, ponds, grass and lots of birds flying around. The porters and our guides made their own camp and we stayed in some cabins that were there just for climbers. They were very nice cabins with stoves and cots. We ate and went to sleep excited about exploring the trails up to the peaks the next day.
That night almost as soon as we fell asleep we were awakened by loud piercing blood curdling screams. We jumped out of our cots and ran outside expecting to see some sort of mayhem going on. The sound was like what you would expect to hear from a woman getting brutally raped. As we looked around and ran over to the porters camp they laughed at us. One of them took us for a short walk and showed us the source of the screams. A small mammal about the size of a woodchuck was just sitting by a rock letting loose with these terror inspiring screams. The porter just walked up to it without it running away and he kicked it to death. We were a bit appalled by his behavior but then he told us they were good eating and that they were a major portion of the porter's diet when they were up here in the high valley. I found out later that they are called hyrax. We went back inside and adjusted to sleeping through the constant screaming all night every night from then on. I was excited, if the weather held up then tomorrow the peaks!
Wiki link to Rwenzori Mountains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwenzori_Mountains
We spent the first day negotiating for porters and guides to carry our gear and supplies and to show us the way to the top. We obtained the permits needed and ended up with almost thiry porters and two guides. We needed to carry enough supplies for a month and our climbing equipment. It sounds like a lot of porters but each man carried between 60 and a hundred pounds of weight so we could have used even more. The porters walked barefoot and were very strong and reliable. The guides helped us communicate with the porters and took care of any problems we had with them. There were very few problems. They were incredibly helpful and friendly with us. We carried about 75 pounds each, but we used backpacks whereas the porters just balanced the loads on their heads or used a sling hanging from their foreheads to carry their loads.
We took off after a big hearty breakfast and started to hike up the hills. At first the trail was wide and well traveled. The locals living up in this direction used this path to get back and forth to Fort Portal. As we walked on over the next several days the path got more and more trail like and less road like. The scenery was mind blowing. The mountains were visible now poking through the clouds. The white glaciers up on the summits looked impressive with the lush green tropical jungle background. We saw lots of lizards. They were brightly colored and just cracked me up because they would run rapidly for about ten feet then stop and do a bunch of pushups then flare out their throat and freeze for a few minutes before doing it again and again. I wanted to see more wildlife but we saw very little. Some monkeys that stayed away from us, a small snake here and there, and birds were about it on the climb to base camp. The guides and porters killed anything they saw move, usually before we could see it. That annoyed me a bit.
The vegetation changed about every thousand feet of elevation. The farms disappeared and the jungle changed as we climbed. The trees got further apart and the grasses changed. Then we hit a line where there was steamy fog and multi-colored moss and vines covering all the trees. The trees thinned out even more and we came to a muddy swampy area where we had to step or sometimes jump from clump of grass to clump of grass to walk. If you missed or slipped off of the clumps of grass the mud would suck your foot down to mid calf or so and you would have to slowly pull your foot back out or risk losing your boot. Quite a few times people went flying down to the muddy ground while trying to balance on one leg on the slippery clumps while pulling their feet out of the muck. We laughed a lot when people fell into it, until it happened to you personally, then it wasn't so funny getting covered in the sticky gooey muck.
We had our first problems here with our workers. The guides up front saw large footprints from a big cat and the workers all got frightened. We stopped and talked with the guides about it and then the guides talked with the porters and we continued on. For the next couple of days a big cat, probably a leopard stalked us and walked circles around our group. We would see the footprints still filling up with water in front of us behind us and on either side. None of us ever saw the big cat even though it spent two days sometimes within ten feet of us. It was unnerving to say the least. I tried really hard to spot it but it seemed to be invisible. Whenever the porters would see a fresh footprint they would scream out and scare the rest of them. Our guides kept them working and we continued on.
The jungles and trees eventually were gone and they were replaced by an alien looking area with ten to twenty foot high plants like lobelias and other flowers and plants that don't normally grow so tall. There were hummingbirds sucking on the flowers and bees and butterflies. It was very unusual to see weeds that are normally a foot tall everywhere else towering over your head.
We finally made it to our basecamp at about ten thousand feet in a gorgeous valley full of flowers streams, ponds, grass and lots of birds flying around. The porters and our guides made their own camp and we stayed in some cabins that were there just for climbers. They were very nice cabins with stoves and cots. We ate and went to sleep excited about exploring the trails up to the peaks the next day.
That night almost as soon as we fell asleep we were awakened by loud piercing blood curdling screams. We jumped out of our cots and ran outside expecting to see some sort of mayhem going on. The sound was like what you would expect to hear from a woman getting brutally raped. As we looked around and ran over to the porters camp they laughed at us. One of them took us for a short walk and showed us the source of the screams. A small mammal about the size of a woodchuck was just sitting by a rock letting loose with these terror inspiring screams. The porter just walked up to it without it running away and he kicked it to death. We were a bit appalled by his behavior but then he told us they were good eating and that they were a major portion of the porter's diet when they were up here in the high valley. I found out later that they are called hyrax. We went back inside and adjusted to sleeping through the constant screaming all night every night from then on. I was excited, if the weather held up then tomorrow the peaks!
Wiki link to Rwenzori Mountains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwenzori_Mountains
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Welcome to Paradise
Stepping up on the train took a bit of nerve but what the hell so what if I got arrested again. Bribe the police or pay the fine or both would be the worst case I thought. So I walked into the passenger compartment half expecting to be confronted by a train conductor but instead I got the surprise of my life!
The train car was full of beautiful 18 and 19 year old girls that looked like Europeans and they were all blonds and all turning around in their seats and looking at me. They started to scream! The screams were not out of fear but instead they were out of glee. I must have been quite the sight. I was wearing just my little shorts and boots with no shirt. I was tanned and very fit. My blue eyes jumped out of my tanned face. I heard one of the girls shout out "Tarzan!" Then they all jumped up and swarmed me. Grabbing me and touching me and basically fighting for position to be near me. I spoke something in English and they immediately started to speak to me in English with an accent. Questions were being fired at me from all directions. I was horny as hell, I had just drank 2 liters of great beer and now I was being attacked not by lions but by 22 gorgeous girls. I couldn't take it. I got a raging boner and the girls noticed it right away. They all seemed to want to help me with it. The tallest, cutest, friendliest one spoke excellent English and pretty much pushed the rest of them away and dragged me over to her bench seat and pulled me down with her. She grabbed my crotch and spoke a foreign language to the other girls and they all laughed together. I didn't care if they laughed at me. I could not believe my good fortune.
My friend told me that they were all from Denmark. They were here in Uganda to check up on a school that they had raised money for back in Denmark. They were also taking a tour around the country. They were on the train going back to Kampala when I ran into them. She was fondling me while she talked. I was fondling her too. I wanted to just tell them to line up because I felt like I was horny enough to do them all one after the other all night long. They seemed to want me to do just that. I won't go into the details of the night because this is a PG rated blog not an XXX rated one. Just believe me when I say I had a lot of fun that night and was a bit dehydrated by morning when we arrived in Kampala.
As we exited the train the girls gave me the name of their hotel and made me promise to come over to the hotel later in the day. Like I would pass up that opportunity after so many months of being solo out in the center of Africa. I had every intention of catching up on my loving. They met up with their adult teachers at the station and took off in a couple of taxi vans to their hotel.
I put some clothes on and took off to find the post office to get the first mail in about six months. I also dropped my clothes off to get them cleaned and actually bought a few new clothes so I would be presentable for my girls later. I found their hotel right downtown but I checked into a smaller one nearby. I went into my room and took a shower and shaved with a new blade. What a treat that was. After getting cleaned up I took a nap since I had not slept the night before and I had no intentions of sleeping in the coming night either.
When I got up it was late afternoon and I headed to a nearby restaurant to stock up on some high energy food before I went to look up the girls again. It ended up that I did not have to go looking for the girls. Two of them were in the same restaurant I picked out to eat in. I joined them and we talked and ate and started drinking. I had a blast with them. They were quizzing me about my trip and they loved hearing all the stories of my adventures. I was clearly going to get lucky again tonight I thought.
One of the girls in the restaurant told me she wanted to leave her group and stay with me and travel around Africa with me. I thought that she was joking but she kept pressing me on it. At first I played along thinking she wasn't serious but the more we talked the more I realized that she was not kidding. She wanted to just drop out and take off with me. We hung out together for the next few days while the girls did some shopping and a few side trips around Uganda.
Instead of taking off with the Danish girl, I decided to go mountain climbing in the "Mountains of the Moon" with a Canadian guy, Austrian girl, and a German guy that I met in Kampala. We rented gear including parkas, crampons, ice axes, ropes and all the other usual mountain climbing things from a club at the University of Kampala. I told the girls goodbye expecting to never see them again and I excitedly took off to climb in the Rwenzori Mountains with my new found friends.
The Danish girl that asked me to let her come along on my travels got a bit pissed off at me when I left without her. I told her we could start traveling together when I got back and promised to meet up with her again. I did not expect for it to happen though. Life takes some strange twists and turns and we are not always in control of those which just makes life more interesting. Such is life.
The train car was full of beautiful 18 and 19 year old girls that looked like Europeans and they were all blonds and all turning around in their seats and looking at me. They started to scream! The screams were not out of fear but instead they were out of glee. I must have been quite the sight. I was wearing just my little shorts and boots with no shirt. I was tanned and very fit. My blue eyes jumped out of my tanned face. I heard one of the girls shout out "Tarzan!" Then they all jumped up and swarmed me. Grabbing me and touching me and basically fighting for position to be near me. I spoke something in English and they immediately started to speak to me in English with an accent. Questions were being fired at me from all directions. I was horny as hell, I had just drank 2 liters of great beer and now I was being attacked not by lions but by 22 gorgeous girls. I couldn't take it. I got a raging boner and the girls noticed it right away. They all seemed to want to help me with it. The tallest, cutest, friendliest one spoke excellent English and pretty much pushed the rest of them away and dragged me over to her bench seat and pulled me down with her. She grabbed my crotch and spoke a foreign language to the other girls and they all laughed together. I didn't care if they laughed at me. I could not believe my good fortune.
My friend told me that they were all from Denmark. They were here in Uganda to check up on a school that they had raised money for back in Denmark. They were also taking a tour around the country. They were on the train going back to Kampala when I ran into them. She was fondling me while she talked. I was fondling her too. I wanted to just tell them to line up because I felt like I was horny enough to do them all one after the other all night long. They seemed to want me to do just that. I won't go into the details of the night because this is a PG rated blog not an XXX rated one. Just believe me when I say I had a lot of fun that night and was a bit dehydrated by morning when we arrived in Kampala.
As we exited the train the girls gave me the name of their hotel and made me promise to come over to the hotel later in the day. Like I would pass up that opportunity after so many months of being solo out in the center of Africa. I had every intention of catching up on my loving. They met up with their adult teachers at the station and took off in a couple of taxi vans to their hotel.
I put some clothes on and took off to find the post office to get the first mail in about six months. I also dropped my clothes off to get them cleaned and actually bought a few new clothes so I would be presentable for my girls later. I found their hotel right downtown but I checked into a smaller one nearby. I went into my room and took a shower and shaved with a new blade. What a treat that was. After getting cleaned up I took a nap since I had not slept the night before and I had no intentions of sleeping in the coming night either.
When I got up it was late afternoon and I headed to a nearby restaurant to stock up on some high energy food before I went to look up the girls again. It ended up that I did not have to go looking for the girls. Two of them were in the same restaurant I picked out to eat in. I joined them and we talked and ate and started drinking. I had a blast with them. They were quizzing me about my trip and they loved hearing all the stories of my adventures. I was clearly going to get lucky again tonight I thought.
One of the girls in the restaurant told me she wanted to leave her group and stay with me and travel around Africa with me. I thought that she was joking but she kept pressing me on it. At first I played along thinking she wasn't serious but the more we talked the more I realized that she was not kidding. She wanted to just drop out and take off with me. We hung out together for the next few days while the girls did some shopping and a few side trips around Uganda.
Instead of taking off with the Danish girl, I decided to go mountain climbing in the "Mountains of the Moon" with a Canadian guy, Austrian girl, and a German guy that I met in Kampala. We rented gear including parkas, crampons, ice axes, ropes and all the other usual mountain climbing things from a club at the University of Kampala. I told the girls goodbye expecting to never see them again and I excitedly took off to climb in the Rwenzori Mountains with my new found friends.
The Danish girl that asked me to let her come along on my travels got a bit pissed off at me when I left without her. I told her we could start traveling together when I got back and promised to meet up with her again. I did not expect for it to happen though. Life takes some strange twists and turns and we are not always in control of those which just makes life more interesting. Such is life.
East to Uganda
I finally arranged to ride into Uganda with a truck that was going to Queen Elizabeth National Park. So I left Goma for the third time. I was hoping I would not have to flee back to Goma yet again. The ride to the National Park was beautiful. We climbed over the mountains and down the other side. The scenery was fantastic very green and quite a few farms and small villages along the road. The road was also in better shape than the roads had been in Zaire. I was dropped off in a parking lot near the main lodge for the national park. I had no intention of staying in the lodge. I walked away from the parking lot and found a nice grassy area on a hill with a gorgeous view of the sunset overlooking the lake about a mile off in the distance.
I put up my tent, just as the sun set, with the front flap tied up to a large tree with overhanging branches and made myself some tea and dinner then kicked back in my tent reading my book by candlelight inside the tent with the mosquito net zipped up. I was enjoying reading for a few hours when I started to hear lions roaring. I sat up quickly and started to worry a bit about my safety out here without a gun for protection from the big cats. I listened and could hear them make a kill not too far off in the distance. There were other howls and growls that I wasn't sure what animals were making. Some of the sounds were really close. I relaxed after a while and went back to reading.
I was startled out of my reading by the loudest farting noises I had ever heard and then my tent started to shake violently. What the hell? I cautiously peered out the tent flap without unzipping the netting. Outside all around my tent were what looked like a couple of hundred gigantic hippos calmly munching on grass, farting and making gurgling, grunting noises. The reason my tent was shaking was because one of the giants was scratching his back on the tree trunk that my tent was tied to. I froze. I had heard that hippos kill far more people than any other animal or reptile in all of Africa. If I scared the herd they would turn and stampede back to the water trampling me in my tent. For the next couple of hours I watched them wandering in the moonlight eating the grass in the clearing I had put my tent up in. They walked right next to my tent and carefully stepped over the guy ropes I had tied to hold my tent down in case it got windy. Whenever one scratched against the tree I was worried that my shaking tent would collapse and scare them but it never did and eventually the entire herd slowly meandered off until I was again alone in my tent.
It took me a couple of hours to relax from the trauma of having such noisy gigantic creatures crawling around so close to me. I wanted animals and had dreamed about seeing them and experiencing the Africa that I had read so much about and seen so many times on television. The reality of being alone with large dangerous wild animals around that would happily eat me was a bit unnerving. Eventually I got a bit of nervous sleep in.
I was up and making my tea before the sun came up in the morning. I packed my tent up and hiked through the piles of hippo manure down to the lake. In the water all along the lake shore the hippos that had scared the crap out of me the night before were bobbing around peacefully. I was watching them swimming around when a tour bus pulled up and the tourists climbed out and started shooting pics like crazy with their fancy cameras with really long lenses on them. The guide saw me standing there alone and came over to tell me that it wasn't safe to be in the park without a vehicle to retreat into in case of attack from animals. I laughed and told him that I had camped in the park the night before. When I told him about the hippos all around my tent and the lions roaring and making a kill nearby he got agitated and started to scream at me for being stupid. I had been camping out in the wilds of Africa for about a year already and his park didn't seem any different to me than the jungles of Zaire had been. He called over the driver and they insisted that I get on the bus with them. They drove me over to the park ranger station near the lodge and dropped me off with the park rangers. We argued about my being in the park alone for a while and they did not believe me when I told them how I got there or that I had slept in the park the night before. However I did not have a receipt for the Park entrance fee. They charged me the entry fee and then put me in their Landrover and drove me to the Park entrance where they dropped me off on foot and told me to leave.
I was kind of glad they gave me a ride to the exit because I was heading that way anyhow and they saved me a long walk. I took off walking down the road heading in the direction of Kampala the capital city of Uganda. I was hoping to find some mail there for me when I arrived. I walked all afternoon along the road. I was wearing my hiking boots and short cut off jeans and did not have a shirt on. I was very tan after walking around every day like this for so long in the tropical sun. I came to a crossroad and there was a little stall there selling food and beer. I bought a couple liters of beer and some roasted peanuts and corn to munch on as I walked along the road.
I was looking for a place to set up my tent for the night because it was already dark and the road was kind of devoid of humanity. I wanted a place that was near some other humans and safer than my night in Queen Elizabeth Park had been. Then I heard a train coming. The tracks were running right next to the road. I heard the train about ten minutes before I saw it coming very slowly toward me going in my direction. I had a thought as I guzzled down my second liter of beer. Jump on the train as it goes by and ride to Kampala tonight instead of putting up my tent and walking there over the next few days. I did not want to be seen by the engineer driving the train so I hid behind some bushes as the engine went past then I darted out and easily grabbed on to the train and nervously stepped up into the passenger car that I had caught watching carefully for any conductors or other train employees. Did I ever get a big surprise!!!!
I put up my tent, just as the sun set, with the front flap tied up to a large tree with overhanging branches and made myself some tea and dinner then kicked back in my tent reading my book by candlelight inside the tent with the mosquito net zipped up. I was enjoying reading for a few hours when I started to hear lions roaring. I sat up quickly and started to worry a bit about my safety out here without a gun for protection from the big cats. I listened and could hear them make a kill not too far off in the distance. There were other howls and growls that I wasn't sure what animals were making. Some of the sounds were really close. I relaxed after a while and went back to reading.
I was startled out of my reading by the loudest farting noises I had ever heard and then my tent started to shake violently. What the hell? I cautiously peered out the tent flap without unzipping the netting. Outside all around my tent were what looked like a couple of hundred gigantic hippos calmly munching on grass, farting and making gurgling, grunting noises. The reason my tent was shaking was because one of the giants was scratching his back on the tree trunk that my tent was tied to. I froze. I had heard that hippos kill far more people than any other animal or reptile in all of Africa. If I scared the herd they would turn and stampede back to the water trampling me in my tent. For the next couple of hours I watched them wandering in the moonlight eating the grass in the clearing I had put my tent up in. They walked right next to my tent and carefully stepped over the guy ropes I had tied to hold my tent down in case it got windy. Whenever one scratched against the tree I was worried that my shaking tent would collapse and scare them but it never did and eventually the entire herd slowly meandered off until I was again alone in my tent.
It took me a couple of hours to relax from the trauma of having such noisy gigantic creatures crawling around so close to me. I wanted animals and had dreamed about seeing them and experiencing the Africa that I had read so much about and seen so many times on television. The reality of being alone with large dangerous wild animals around that would happily eat me was a bit unnerving. Eventually I got a bit of nervous sleep in.
I was up and making my tea before the sun came up in the morning. I packed my tent up and hiked through the piles of hippo manure down to the lake. In the water all along the lake shore the hippos that had scared the crap out of me the night before were bobbing around peacefully. I was watching them swimming around when a tour bus pulled up and the tourists climbed out and started shooting pics like crazy with their fancy cameras with really long lenses on them. The guide saw me standing there alone and came over to tell me that it wasn't safe to be in the park without a vehicle to retreat into in case of attack from animals. I laughed and told him that I had camped in the park the night before. When I told him about the hippos all around my tent and the lions roaring and making a kill nearby he got agitated and started to scream at me for being stupid. I had been camping out in the wilds of Africa for about a year already and his park didn't seem any different to me than the jungles of Zaire had been. He called over the driver and they insisted that I get on the bus with them. They drove me over to the park ranger station near the lodge and dropped me off with the park rangers. We argued about my being in the park alone for a while and they did not believe me when I told them how I got there or that I had slept in the park the night before. However I did not have a receipt for the Park entrance fee. They charged me the entry fee and then put me in their Landrover and drove me to the Park entrance where they dropped me off on foot and told me to leave.
I was kind of glad they gave me a ride to the exit because I was heading that way anyhow and they saved me a long walk. I took off walking down the road heading in the direction of Kampala the capital city of Uganda. I was hoping to find some mail there for me when I arrived. I walked all afternoon along the road. I was wearing my hiking boots and short cut off jeans and did not have a shirt on. I was very tan after walking around every day like this for so long in the tropical sun. I came to a crossroad and there was a little stall there selling food and beer. I bought a couple liters of beer and some roasted peanuts and corn to munch on as I walked along the road.
I was looking for a place to set up my tent for the night because it was already dark and the road was kind of devoid of humanity. I wanted a place that was near some other humans and safer than my night in Queen Elizabeth Park had been. Then I heard a train coming. The tracks were running right next to the road. I heard the train about ten minutes before I saw it coming very slowly toward me going in my direction. I had a thought as I guzzled down my second liter of beer. Jump on the train as it goes by and ride to Kampala tonight instead of putting up my tent and walking there over the next few days. I did not want to be seen by the engineer driving the train so I hid behind some bushes as the engine went past then I darted out and easily grabbed on to the train and nervously stepped up into the passenger car that I had caught watching carefully for any conductors or other train employees. Did I ever get a big surprise!!!!
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