Arriving in Bujagali Falls we signed up for an evening of quad biking along the banks of the river nile, ending with dinner in a local village. This was a heap of very muddy fun... although it was a little disconcerting stopping at each of the rapids on the way to be shown where the white water rafting is done. The dinner consisted of 6 different types of carbohydrate, beans and cabbage... but was surprisingly nice. It was also fun sitting in a locals house with her five kids eating by lantern light due to the lack of electricity, with a TV for decoration. The kids were sweet and as with all Africa kids treated us to some songs.
The next day we went back out into a different village to watch a movie. There's a charity organisation here called 'Soft Power' which sets up schools and medical centres and one of their fund raising activities is to have a weekly movie. They have a generator to power the laptop and projector, as again there's no electricity in the villages. This week it was Blood Diamond and it was a really moving experience watching it in Africa and we're both sure that our response to the movie was very different than it would have been back home. There were only four mzungus there the rest of the audience being local(primarily young children) and we were really disturbed by the laughter that was their reaction to all the violence and women and children getting shot.
The highlight though and the main reason that people generally come to Bujagali falls is for the white water rafting on the Nile. This was terrifying at least in the lead up. We had watched the DVD from the trip that ran the day before, and even Jason started to wonder if this was a sane thing to do. The day started with breakfast whilst we listened to the guides be briefed on all the important things (like, please put on your shorts before you leave so that we don't have to wait around for you?!) It was a bit like listening to a school teacher berate naughty children and did little for our confidence. We then piled into two buses and a couple of trucks and headed for the Nile.
After a few practice paddles, turning left and right we started to approach the first rapid and were promptly told to jump out to swim through it. The 7 of us in the boat looked at each other wondering if he was joking (Our guide was called Alex, but quickly got nicknamed Jaffar as his evil laugh distinctly reminded us of the evil villain in Aladdin). It turns out he wasn't joking and so we all swam through the first rapid. After clambering (or being yanked into the boat for those of us with no arm muscles... all but 2) back into the boat he promptly flipped it, so we'd know what that felt like too. At this point he was not our favourite person!!! Eventually we reached the first 'real' rapid of the day, meaning a grade 5 - the hardest grade that is allowed to be commercially rafted. The rapids here are totally different to those that we rafted in New Zealand. There it was about the height of the fall, here it is the volume of water and the waves!! You head down the rapid to be met at the bottom by a wall of water which the boat then attempts to go over or through... consequently it is quite common to get flipped out. In the course of the day we were only flipped once which felt like quite an achievement! The best rapid was Silverback which consists of four seperate waves. The first is actually two diagonal waves which meet in a point, we hit this dead on and the boat went completely verticle, we all thought that we were going over and to avert this Jason who was sitting in the front lent forward over the top of the boat to try and bring the bow back down (it worked). There is this amazing shot on the DVD of the bottom of the boat and Jason (from about the waist up) coming out over the top. Of course today he is complaining about the massive bruise on his chest from when we came back down and he slammed into the boat.
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