And Now It Is Time To Leave the "Pearl of Africa"

I started this post while we were still in Uganda, and now will be finishing it since our return to the States.

After a couple of wonderful days and a great hike, it is time to bid farewell to Ineke's and Uganda. I need to come up with something to do here, so that I can come for three months at a time!  I will miss the incredible green of the countryside, the bird calls early in the morning, the flowers and butterflies, Ineke's cooking and the beauty of this place. 

We had an uneventful drove for Ft. portal back to Entebbe.  Stopped for dinner at a restaurant right on Lake Victoria, and I actually went wading in the Lake!  It is one of the ten largest fresh water lakes in the world, by volume.  For some reason, it was kind of a cool thing to do.

Uganda:  miles and miles of tea plantations, mountains treed all the way to the top, rich red earth, hundreds of bods-bodas which are motorcycles used as taxis ( sometimes with three or four people on one motorcycle), busy and chaotic village markets, and amazing women weavers.  Next visit, I hope to be able to do some hiking and rafting over by Lake Victoria, the headwaters of the Nile and Murcheson Falls. 

The flights home were loooooooooooooooong and uneventful!  5 hour drive across Uganda from Ft. Portal to Entebbe, 3 hours in the airport waiting for the flight, 8 hour flight to Amsterdam, 4 hour wait in AMS, 8 1/2 hour flight to Minneapolis, 3 hours in the MSP airport, 5 1/2 hour flight to Anchorage, and an hour drive home.  Whew!  But it was so worth it.  And without air travel, it would take months of travel to reach Ft. Portal.  So sometimes when I whine about the length of the travel time, I try and put it in perspective . . .

Today my goal is to put together some web albums to correspond to past posts.  I will post the links and send them on.

It occurred to me this morning, as I was having breakfast, looking out at the fresh snow and leafless trees, that for the past 26 days, every  meal I have eaten has been either outside under the trees, on the veranda, or in a dining room completely open to the out-of-doors.  Guess I will have to wait a few  months for that to happen up here  :-)