Rafting the Nile

I traveled to Uganda on December 10. It was a ten hour bus ride from Kigali (Rwanda) to Kampala in Uganda. My Ugandan friend Jonathan was there to pick me up from the bus, its always nice to enter a new city with a familiar face. I stayed with him and his girlfriend that night. On Wednesday I made my way east to the small town of Jinga. It's about 80 km from Kampala and famous for it white water rafting. I stayed at a great hostel in Jinga called the Nile River Explorers, they also have a place about 8km from Jinga. I transferred to the place outside of town the next day. The setting was amazing. It was on the banks of the Nile. The restaurant and hang out place was on a huge deck with priceless views.

On Dec. 12 I went rafting. There was a short orientation on land and then more in the water, including flipping the boat and getting back in. Rapids are graded from 1 - 6, rapids that are rated a six are usually only done by kayaks and not rafts. We did a series of 1 - 5. The first few rapids were pretty tame, but even those are a bit tricky sometimes. There was one five called Overtime. We got stuck in the middle on a rock, we got to look over the edge of a eight foot drop before we went down. There were a few anxious seconds. Here is a picture of Overtime, I can't take credit, I found them on Google Images.


The Last rapid of the day was called 'A Bad Place', and with good reason. The first part of the rapid was graded a six, so we had to walk around that part and get into the Bad Place half way down. It was no less wild looking. We had a few girls in our boat, they opted to leave our boat because we wanted to take the 'hard line' down. We ended up with six people. We got part way down when our raft literally stopped on what is affectionately know as a 'washing machine'. We were kind of surfing a wave and not moving, meanwhile we were getting battered. It was kind of what I imagine its like to ride a mechanical bull. Four of the guys got tossed from the boat right away including the guide, with only me and another guy left. We still weren't going anywhere, so I decided that I had to dive into a grade five rapid. I was tossed around like a rag doll and got quickly shot down the rapids. There were safety kayaks all around, so one of them came and got me.
This is the 'Bad Place"


It was an amazing day, so much fun and its very cool to say that I've rafted on the Nile. There were some flat places in between the rapids, we often got out of the boat and swam for those. The water was very warm and it was exceptionally hot for parts of the day, so the water felt great. The guide joked with us earlier that all the crocodiles in this area were vegetarian. There were six people on the boat, three of which were Canadian. Dominic from Toronto and Kevin from Brandon, Manitoba. We ended up staying at the hostel and hanging out for a few day and also returned to Kampala together. Its always fun to bump into a few Canadians on the road.