Take your plans and throw them out the window

To prepare for our trip, we spent hours and hours planning and looking up minute details.  Not only deciding where we wanted to go, but also finding out transportation for each location (usually buses), what time they leave, and how much it will cost. A week ago, I remember riding home from work and thinking about how some of our adventures won't exactly go according to the plans.  Being somewhat of a control freak, I was trying to prepare myself for the mentality of 'go with the flow' for when our plans don't work out.  Up to this point, I feel like we are putting that motto to go use and getting a lot of practice at rearranging plans on the spot.  Everything has been a whirlwind so far.

It started back in the U.S. when we missed one of our flights.  The thought made me feel sick to my stomach.  "Frankenstorm" was about to hit the East Coast and we needed to catch the next flight headed toward Uganda, or else we would have been stuck for days.  We had a couple choices to reroute to catch a plane out of the East Coast, and luckily we chose to fly our of New York instead of Washington D.C. because the flight we would have taken out of D.C. ended up being canceled.

So with a flight disaster narrowly averted, we continued with a positive outlook, and tried to get as much rest on the plane rides as possible.  We had originally scheduled an extra day in Kampala, Uganda, the fact that we lost more than half a day didn't feel like the end of the world.

We arrived in Entebbe, Uganda at 7am in the morning.  We found our luggage without a problem and breezed through customs to find a taxi waiting to take us into town to the bus station.  Kampala, the capital, is only an hour away, but we were unprepared for the overcrowded buses here, which are really more like minivans where they try to fit 16 people.  Each has a driver and a 'guide' who manages packing everyone in and collecting the money.  The whole way to Kampala, they were happily honking and waving at everyone along the way.  We made several stops to drop people off and pick them up before we finally made it to Kampala.

Kampala is a bustling city, and I've never seen so many people just hanging out on the street.  We were overwhelmed at first.  We were obvious stand-outs in the crowded street.  People with 'boda bodas' (motorcycle taxis) were calling out to give us a ride.  When turning a street corner, I heard "muzungu" several times, which just means "white person."  Little boys came up to us with their hands outstretched asking for money.

We managed to find a taxi leaving in the direction of our hostel (really much like the overstuffed bus we took to Kampala), and hopped on, looking forward to a shower and food because we had not eaten all day.  Our hostel was called Red Chili Hideaway, and that is very fitting because it took several attempts for us to locate it (including an extra bus ride).

When we arrived, we set up camp thinking we would have a relaxing night before taking the early bus to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest the next morning.  But we could eat or shower, we found out from the driver at the hostel that there would be no bus the next day.  There was only a bus that evening that left at 7pm and traveled all night.  So we immediately packed up our things again and took off.

The bus ride was hard to describe.  This was more like an old charter bus.  For all of the Webers,  Sam says that it reminded him of the buses in Ecuador where you close your eyes and say a prayer (being nighttime, it was good not to be able to see the road.  The roads to Bwindi are not always paved, so the bus shook violently over the bumps and ruts in the road, which made it difficult to sleep.  We were lucky we sat just in front of another American who was living in Bwindi for several months.  She was traveling with a native from Bwindi, and they graciously gave us a ride to our rest camp in the morning when we finally arrived after almost 12 hours.

Of course we headed straight for the food and showers when we got in.  We plan to rest for the remainder of the day and prepare for tracking the mountain gorillas tomorrow!

(Written October 31st)