Down the Mountain and off to Hong Kong

 
 
 
 

Ok well my last blog left off during the night before I began my ascent--it also had quite a bit of spelling/grammmar mistakes which was due to the fact that I typed the entire thing on a Palm Treo. But anyways, I went to bed that night with the idea that I would get up at 7:30 and go get breakfast at the hotel restaurant and eventually get into town at 8:30 when the banks open to get more money. In reality I did get up at 7:30 and had breakfast but the bank part became a bigger problem. The hotel flagged a private taxi down to take me into town for money and then eventually to the ranger station at the beginning of the trail (about 15 miles away). I got into town but once again my cards did not work at the ATM, so I had to resort to Traveler's Cheques. Please note, NEVER BRING TRAVELER'S Cheques to Uganda. I went to Barclay's bank and they said come back in a couple hours because they have not received exchange rates for the day....no go. Then I went to Stanbic bank where most Ugandan's leave there money, or at least the ones in Mbale. The place was packed and it took about 30 minutes just to get someone working on my exchange. To pass the time though a group of British kids, around 16 years old, came in to exchange money. They had just finished the mountain and were now preparing to do some community service stuff. The one boy was peculiar and his most random question was, "What do Americans think of the movie Borat?" or "Do Americans make fun of Canada?" Finally after an hour and a half of "processing" they were finally prepared to exchange the cheques. So I got the money which would pay for the park fees, tent rental, and more driving costs--all of which turned out to be a bit more than expected.

I arrived at the ranger station around noon, which was quite late because they recommend to start hiking in the morning so you do not get hit by the rain plus it can take up to 6 hours to get to the first camp. It also did not help that I tried, unsuccessfully,to get a 25% student discount. Finally at around 1 pm I was ready to start hiking. I was introduced to my guide, Moses, and a porter which I never got his name---apparently he was just my porter to the last village before the park entrance because then I got my actual porter who's name was also Moses. The beginning of the hike was fairly easy, we were still outside the park and we were walking through the small villages. The best part was that because the mountain is spread across Uganda and Kenya the people here primarily speak Swahili (because back in the day kids were used to smuggle items across the mountain from each country and so Kenya's language has stuck). I was pumped and immediately started to use some of my Swahili, though most of it was not coming back to me that quickly. Finally we got to the last village before the boundary line between the park and villages. We stopped to have a break, I bought some passion fruits for the journey and also had a taste of a local brew. Basically imagine a really watered down bad beer with dirt and flour mixed into it and thats a local brew. It is pretty nasty and both my porter and guide gulped it down. Eventually we set back off and my real porter joined us. As expected it started to rain and I became very proud of my gear purchases--my backpack came with a waterpoof cover so nothing would get wet plus I had a waterproof jacket on. So I was dry except for my feet. Even with my new hiking shoes they were no match for the muddy mess that was soon to come. Once you get into the park, on the trail we were hiking, it goes up quickly, very quickly. We were not even over 2000 meters and I was getting tired because I had not eaten since breakfast and we were moving rapidly to make up for leaving late. Then we reached, "Dead Man's Wall."

To Be Continued...