Yesterday (Monday) we spent most of the day on the road, driving to Fort Portal. It was about 300 km, but it took most of the day, because most of the drive was on narrow, dirt roads, filled with potholes. The sun was hot, and the dust from the road blew in through the windows. As usual, we were sharing the road with many boda-bodas, and people cycling with more on the backs of their bikes than I'm comfortable squeezing into the trunk of my car. Incredible.
We made two stops along the way for food, and at both stops, we recognized the same tourists that we'd run into at Murcheson falls the day before -- clearly, there are specific "muzungu-friendly" restaurants that all of the tour guides end up using. Our guide/driver, Dominic (of www.assuredugandasafari.com) was joking that the reason the ride was so bumpy was that he was lonely driving with all four of us sleeping, so he picked out the best potholes to jolt us awake. :)
We also passed through a town called "Kyejojo," which translates, literally, as "It's elephants!" It seems local farmers were finding that an animal was destroying their fields at night, so the villagers stayed awake together one night to solve the mystery of the disappearing crops. As the name might suggest, the culprits turned out to be elephants, so the town was named in honour of the farmers' started exclamations when they first noticed the animals galumphing through their fields.
Fort Portal itself is clearly a relatively well-off town. The roads are well-paved, there is very little garbage in the streets, and even our "budget" hotel has comfortable beds, hot showers, and soap in the bathrooms. The town is surrounded by tea plantations, which probably goes most of the way to explaining the town's relative economic security.
Most people come to Fort Portal to see the chimpanzees, but our budget didn't permit us that particular excursion. Instead we spent the morning at the local botannical gardens. When the guide asked us what our particular plant-interests were, and we mentioned herbs involved with pregnancy and birth, he excitedly found one of the female gardeners who had worked as a birth attendant, and she told us all about several of the local plants. We also toured the arboretum, saw a few monkeys, and sniffed many of the wonderful-smelling herbs. Our Dominic ended up buying a stevia plant for his kids back home (like in Canada, stevia is used as a sweetener here) and he took great care of the plant for the rest of the day, moving it to the shade, watering it, even bringing it into the restaurant with us where we ate dinner because he was afraid his plant wouldn't be safe in the car. We've named the plant "Steve."
We spent the afternoon at some local caves and volcanic hills. The walk to the cave was muddy and slippery, but the caves were interesting enough, and we saw another waterfall. The local name for the caves translates to "breasts," because the stalactites apparently resemble breasts. The local legend is that a king removed his beautiful daughter's breasts and threw them in the cave, because he had heard that his grandson would steal his kingdom -- as most similar stories go, he was too late (she was already pregnant, and still very beautiful) and the breasts continued to grow in the cave, and fed her infant son when her father banished him to the caves as well. We also climbed up the volcanic hill, and were treated to a beautiful view of the surrounding area.
There's a song with a line "You never know 'til you reach the top if it was worth the uphill climb" but here, the opposite seems to be true. The uphill climbs, tiring though they may be, tend to end in spectacular views -- today the top of the 1093 metre hill also featured hundreds of beautiful, colourful butterflies. It's the downhill climbs that tend to end in less spectacular sights -- and the problem with that is that they are also the ones where you have to climb up on the way back!
We went to a local pizza restaurant for dinner. We haven't made much of a point of seeking out Western food here, but after a long day with minimal food since breakfast, pizza has never tasted so good! Fresh pineapple on the pizza was a particularly special treat!
We head for Queen Elizabeth Park tomorrow. If it's anything like Murcheson, we won't have internet access there, so we'll update whenever we can.
Posted by Lyanne, Sarah, Alix, and Carolyn
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