Martin:
Saturday morning we set off to Jinja - 50 miles east of Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria. This is the start of the White Nile one of the two major sources of the River Nile (the other, the Blue Nile, is in Lake Tana in Ethiopia where we'd be going in a few weeks time).
The rapids and waterfalls of Jinja are also one of the best places in Africa to go white water rafting. How could we resist? Rapids here are graded levels 3 - 5. There's a grade 6 too but only the most experienced rafters and kayakers are allowed on that. We settled for 4's and 5's. Extreme enough. Especially as we were tipped in more than once - and when you get caught underwater in the downpull of a rapid it seems like forever before you come to the surface again.
We went through 8 rapids in all. I think we stayed out of the water in 4 of them - 50% isn't too bad. A real adrenaline rush and at the end of the day, after we'd past the last rapid, we leapt into the water and the four of us drifted serenely down the Nile. Well fairly serenely, I don't think Sophie was totally convinced there weren't crocodiles about!
It was a lovely end to Dan and Sophie's far too short trip with us around Uganda. In the early hours of Sunday morning they caught a flight back via Cairo to the UK. It had been less than a week but Annemarie and I had loved being with them both. It was a reminder of how much we were missing back at home and very hard to say goodbye.