Just call me Moses- Rafting the Nile!

NO big deal or whatever... I just RAFTED the NILE this weekend with Carlee and Yeko... and it was AWESOME! It was incredible to be in a place with so much ancient history. And not just at the river... IN the river!

We took a taxi to Jinja on Thursday night. When we checked in that night they said that the dorms (a room with bunkbeds you share with 10 random other people for $5 a night) were full, so they upgraded us to the Safari tent ( a super nice fancy tent with two really soft beds that is usually $50 a night) for free. So great! They had American food at the bar and we shared a pizza. Haven't had one of those for a while! The next day we got up early and watched about 10 people bungee jump over the Nile. It looked way scary to jump but the bouncing around after that looked really fun. The sunrise over the Nile was incredible. Then we left for rafting. The company we went with was great and fed us a breakfast of fried boiled eggs, sausage, and amazing fresh pineapple. The temperature of the water and the weather were both perfect. Chris, our guide did some safety training when we first got in the water, teaching us how to protect ourselves and how to better hold an oar, including how to hold the oar when we hit a rapid in order to not hurt the people around us (He said "HOLD ON THE MOTHER FLIPPIN T-GRIP" many times!) I learned that the Nile is very safe to raft, because even though they are class 5 rapids (the most intense) the river is so deep that you will not hit a rock. You will just get thrown around in a whirlpool for a second and then surface again. So our guide was from Australia, we had three people from Singapore, Yeko was Ugandan, and then Carlee and I were American. It was fun to get to know each other in the stretches between rapids. We had about 30 minutes of calm water between every rapid and the weather was perfect for swimming. I was still very nervous about swimming though, because they said they had never seen a crocodile in this area of the Nile because the water moves so fast, and there are villages along the banks. But... let's be real.. this is the NILE river.. I was still scared! We didn't see any though, thankfully. We were on the river for about 5-6 hours. At the end, we all got out and they fed us a tasty BBQ. SOOoo good! That night we walked around Jinja (a really big tourist town) for a while, and that night they had room for us in the dorms (unfortunately) because there were a room full of very drunk Australians in the room next to us... who were very loud and I heard them yelling and screaming and throwing up all through the night. Lovely. Not as lovely as waking up the next day with vomit all over the porch. TMI? Sorry... Ha ha. 


The next day we watched the sunrise over the Nile (so beautiful) and walked around the souvineer shops in Jinja for a while then caught a Taxi home. Then Carlee and I went to Chat and Chino's and got some good American comfort food (French Fries and a Burger- SO good!) Then we all went out dancing at a place called Thatch Gardens. (Don't worry Mom, we were in a big group and it was very safe) It was so fun to let loose and have fun! What a great way to spend my weekend in Uganda.

Sunset on the Nile- INCREDIBLE!

Chillin outside our awesome Safari tent!

Riding the bus to get to the source of the Nile

This is my "OhmygosharewereallygoingtodothisIamgoingtodie" face

These awesome monkeys were wandering all over the Adrift resort where we were staying. So cute!

Insider our Safari tent! It was soooo nice!

The rafting company took all these cool professional pictures but they were charging $10 for a copy of each. Ridiculous, right? So the Singaporians and I split the cost for 1 photo. And that was all I was willing to pay.

Anyways we rafted the Nile and survived!