Tourorists

i know, i know, africa is scary, dangerous, full of guns, AIDS, poverty and charging hippos. people think, i couldn't possible travel there independantly without being devoured by soldier ants. so they give their money to a company that will drive them from Nairobi to Cape Town via every major tourist attraction. they'll be in a converted truck full of pub-rejects, driving all day, drinking all night. failing to notice that they're in africa as they'll be constantly surrounded by twenty other wuzungu and an alcoholic haze. where are they going? they don't know. to Cape Town! via all the bungee-jumping, river-rafting, ATV-crashing, gorilla trekking, abreviated safaris its possible to sell them.

but i'm not saying this for your sake. i'm saying it for mine. africa isn't any harder to travel than other places i've been to EXCEPT for the fact that all the other travelers are on these damn overland trucks. and when my wife and i slog through a long bus ride next to a woman with a puking baby and the sharpest elbows in the world in order to get to some exotic locale it's kind of off-putting to find overlanders there saying, "can you put on the football match?" and sending SMS messages to their workmates.

it's like you climbed everest to find a mcdonalds there. but with less ice and no crampons. you know what i'm saying?

but that's enough complaining. uganda has been much better than tanzania. we bussed out to fort portal where we spent a couple of lovely nights at lake nkurubu -- a volcanic crater surrounded by jungle and thick with monkeys. (i will now point out that black and white colobus monkeys disturbingly resemble hassids. check it out.)

from there, we went down to lake bunyoni -- a highland lake nestled under terraced hills and between overland trucks. then over the pass to kisoro and a stunning pass it was. the best scenery we've had so far. winding up a dirt road on a dodgy bus, past tiny, cute villages, lush fields of corn, beans, banana. at the crest, the virungas, catching the clouds on their sharp peaks.

most everyone comes to kisoro on their way to trek with mountain gorillas in congo -- buy a permit for $250, a day visa to congo for $30, and tack on a bunch of other costs to still come in under the $390 it costs to trek with the gorillas in uganda or rwanda. plus you get the congo stamp in your passport and a "i trekked with the mountain gorillas t-shirt" and the chance to tell everyone it was a mind-blowing experience. which it may well be. it's hard to say as we didn't go. lots of people told me Braveheart was the best movie of its year and that featured Mel Gibson playing a 15 year old in love and then screaming "freedom" as his innards were removed with a kinfe. color me skeptical. plus, if you paid $300 bucks to do something for an hour, you'd make it sound like a good use of money, too, wouldn't you?

but again, we decided not to go. we like gorillas. we just don't want to MARRY them or anything. especially when pythons are a cheaper date. we hired a local named joseph to hike us out to lake mutanda and another villager there to tromp around with us trying to scare up some pythons. no love, though. there were some there that morning we were told, but it was too hazy and the reptiles like the sun.

i asked Joseph how big the snakes get and he indicated a diameter of about two inches. so i told him about the snake i saw in malaysia with a diameter of about ten inches.

he thought i was nuts.

which i am. i'm also back in kampala with a head cold. and a phone number i can receive calls on. send an email if you're interested...