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We arrive to the ferry crossing and there is a line of trucks off to the side and 2 lines of vehicles (plus maybe 15 motorbikes and 50 people). I'm pretty sure we see they motorcycle banana commuter. The trucks on the side have their own line, they're lower priority than the other vehicles / passengers (weight?). We're in one line of vehicles mixed between safari and sedans. There's another line between ours and the trucks that is much much shorter and we're not sure why. There are maybe a dozen vehicles in our line, maybe 2 in the shorter one. No one is moving. There are armed police that are casually directing people. We're there for about a half hour, my wife gets out to go check out some clothing shops that are in sight and I stay in the line. The creep Maribou Stork is always lurking where there might be human trash.  My wife comes back, unsuccessful and we're spotted by a boat tour guide that we met that morning waiting in line for the ferry. He continues his pitch for us to go on a boat tour of the river, tons of hippos. It starts to rain and everyone not in a car scatters to one of the local shops and hides. The rain goes on for about 20 minutes, pretty heavy. None of the cars are moving. After the rain stopped, our guide comes back out and continues the pitch. Everyone we encounter is a guide, hustling for the tourism dollar. It's hard to distinguish the ones that are legitimate and just pushy salesmen. All of a sudden a safari vehicle from behind us in our line jumps to the shorter line. The short line is moving!! Our hopeful guide tells us to follow the safari vehicle. Safari / tourist vehicles are given preference over locals he tells us, they're all about the tourism economy, so we get out of the long line and follow the opportunist. The opportunist gets on the ferry after aggressively posturing itself between other cars. One of the armed police approaches us and is very angry that we tried to cut the line. We tried to explain we were only following the local's instruction but it gets lost in translation. I stress that he's in charge and if only he would direct people, we would gladly follow. The cops were largely not involved in the madness of queueing. He directs us back and I back up and I park alongside the long line behind the one we were originally behind. All the locals are glaring at us as we reverse. Whoops. The long line jerks forward and I'm able to get into it from my alongside position. We make it almost to the front of the line but not onto the ferry, surely we'll be on the next one. At this point it's been about 2 hours we've been waiting for an 8 minute ferry ride. We talk about driving around the river but we've been waiting so long and we're so close to the front (and we're so close to the Congo where we do not want to accidentally go) we decide to wait. The ferry fills up. First with people, then vehicles, then motorcycles, then more people. It is jam packed. They start to shove off and don't really get anywhere. You can hear the engine running, you can see a current coming from the edge of the ferry, but all the ferry does is rotate 45 degrees and send a bunch of beached canoes wobbling from the current. Once again, there's too much weight. Also it's low-ish tide. They're stuck like a foot from the edge. http://imgur.com/D5oA2Er We wait like 10 minutes until a backhoe / frontend loader appears, maneuvering between all of us cars and jockeying to the front. The driver is impressive, it has to take a 45point turn to get the backhoe pointed toward the water, my wife has video, it was pretty impressive. They get up to the front and then spend like 15 minutes trying to get dirty river water into some part of the hydraulic system. Pouring doesn't so they wind up siphoning by mouth, ew. So the construction vehicle is right next to the stuck ferry, running on dirty lake water. People are like inches from the backhoe on all sides, I couldn't get over how close they were. There are still people arriving and jumping like a foot from the shore onto the ferry. Some guy jumps across with a full sized suitcase and he's right in front of the backhoe. The backhoe spends maybe 30 minutes pushing and coordinating w/ the ferry driver so the rotation combined with the backhoe pushing will get the ferry unstuck. It's pushing so hard it looks like it's going to tip (even though it's elevated on whatever those stands are called). People are still standing right nexty to it. Suitcase guy's feet are like an inch from where the backhoe is trying to move the ferry, pushing with all its might. I think the ferry ran out of fuel at this point. The backhoe changes gears and starts dredging up the riverbed near where the ferry is stuck. After like an hour of this they get it unstuck and it heads across the river. 30m later and it's unloaded, reloaded, returned and unloaded again, ready for us to board it. We get on the ferry and as its heading across we talk about which side we're going to swim to in hippo and crocodile infested waters to get to safety. She thinks I'm joking about the ferry sinking, but we ride across with the windows down just in case. I tell my wife I don't care which side we're closer to, I'm swimming to the hotel side, not going to deal with that damned ferry again. We make it back to the hotel, get cleaned up and ready for dinner. The 8 minute ferry ride took around 5.5 hours. The hotel is situated at the end of a channel off the river, the water is still and the hippos like to hang out.  Some kind of bird in flight  We have to schedule our dinner (the hotels up until now had all provided our meals, all inclusive, I think averaging around $120 per night, Uganda is cheap!). We're not allowed to walk outside (alone) of our tent after dusk because of the local animals. We get escorted by an employee with a flashlight who is constantly scanning every nook and cranny with his flashlight. After like 5 minutes of being seated for dinner he comes back and lets us know that there's a hippo wandering the hotel grounds so we naturally grab our headlamps and go try to find it. We're able to see legs as it runs from behind one tent into an alley, but it was for sure a hippo out of water wandering out hotel grounds. We're in the thick of it! The next morning we pack up and drive back to Kampala (around 400km. Will take most of the day). On the way out of Queen Elizabeth we stopped for a handful of bird sightings but we didn't get any new ones. We check into the hotel, call up the rental company to come pick up the car and coordinate a covid test w/ the hotel so we can fly to Tanzania in 2 days. This is the 3rd or 4th covid test I had for this trip. The hotel has cable and a cocktail bar so I watch the local MTVish station and hang out by the pool drinking cocktails. Next up: swampboat birding tour! spanakopita fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 20:32
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 05:13 |
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Thank you very much for the updates. Among the detritus and flotsam that composes the bulk of the internet (let alone the threads on this forum outside of AI), this thread definitely fits the definition of HOTCAKES
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Sep 13, 2021 05:05
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This thread and birb update is hotcakes as gently caress, great photos!
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Sep 13, 2021 06:02
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taqueso posted:This thread and birb update is hotcakes as gently caress, great photos! Seriously. Thanks, OP. My wife had to go to eSwatini almost 2 years ago to complete her public health college course to graduate and it reminds me of how jealous I was of her safari experiences there. I do think if we make it back there together I'll save and make sure we have a driver lol
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Sep 25, 2021 04:25
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Really?spanakopita posted:Leopards are hard to spot 
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Sep 25, 2021 07:37
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Found a picture of the stuck motorcyclist. We wake up the next morning, pack up and head to the parking lot where there is an elephant grazing nearby.  We slowly drive past the elephant, drive back to Entebbe, check in at a proper hotel and decompress. I haven't had a good shower in days. I watched Ugandan MTV and had a cocktail by the pool and got a covid test. Then I washed my clothes in the sink and hung them out on the balcony. The next morning we got picked up by an arranged guide who is going to drive us to the Mabamba swamp.  Sidenote. They're really underselling the region by calling it a swamp, it was a beautiful wetlands. One of our goals was to find the Shoebill Stork. Super creepy muppet looking bird. They're not terribly hard to find with a guide, but you have to specifically go looking for them in a swamp. Cattle Egret, I think?  Cormorant and Pied Kingfisher  Purple Heron I think  Shoebill Stork. We have lots of stills of the bird being completely still. It's mostly an ambush hunter so getting motion was an exercise in patience. I have like 15 minutes of video of the bird being very boring with a couple of seconds of motion. Super cool to be in this things presence, it was super dinosaur-ey  Pied Kingfisher.  Palm nut vulture  More cormorant  Pelican!   Police checkpoint on our way out of the swamp. This was our first shakedown. The cop stopped us, chatted w/ the driver and then demanded we give him soda. Later we'd have kids ask for soda as we drove by, apparently it's a luxury. But we didn't have any soda! We had a 5 gallon bottle of water and we were flying out the next day so we gave him that.  The next morning, we fly from Entebbe to Arusha. I still can't figure out why calculators were banned. 
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Sep 25, 2021 16:37
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Eat This Glob posted:Seriously. Thanks, OP. My wife had to go to eSwatini almost 2 years ago to complete her public health college course to graduate and it reminds me of how jealous I was of her safari experiences there. I do think if we make it back there together I'll save and make sure we have a driver lol If you go through the travel companies that provide drivers / guides / cooks the prices are OUTRAGEOUS. Like thousands per day. By renting the car and providing your own food and doing your own driving, your main expenses turn into the permits to enter the parks. Our 3 week vacation probably cost 10k for both of us all in. And personally, I LOVED the driving. Especially in the parks, you're offroading all day long, just good fun.
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Sep 25, 2021 16:41
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Absolutely NO ENGINEERING allowed!
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Sep 25, 2021 17:52
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spanakopita posted:I still can't figure out why calculators were banned. If calculators are outlawed, only outlaws will have calculators. Love these updates, thanks!
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Sep 25, 2021 21:11
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EVERYWHERE 
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spanakopita posted:If you go through the travel companies that provide drivers / guides / cooks the prices are OUTRAGEOUS. Like thousands per day. By renting the car and providing your own food and doing your own driving, your main expenses turn into the permits to enter the parks. Our 3 week vacation probably cost 10k for both of us all in. Oof, thanks for the head's up! And yeah, bombing around in a land cruiser does sound fun, and the pig balls website can always lend a hand
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Sep 25, 2021 23:19
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spanakopita posted:The next morning, we fly from Entebbe to Arusha. I still can't figure out why calculators were banned. my guess is that they consider tools for measuring/counting to be smuggler paraphernalia
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Sep 25, 2021 23:51
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A compass has a really sharp point on it!
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Sep 26, 2021 00:20
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| # ? Apr 20, 2024 05:13 |
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I think we are done here? Sending to the Goldmine. Thank you OP for the amazing thread.
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Nov 7, 2021 03:59
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