Jet Boating in Jinja

10 December, Friday; Jinja, Uganda. We had a day of leisure today – no planned activities for the group, which is a nice change of pace. Ben and I decide that we’d rather do jet boating with Adrift instead of a full day of rafting. I didn’t expect to have as much fun as we did on the jet boat, even though we were doused with rain. We hung around at the bar this morning and watched two people bungee jump. We were hoping to see a third, but she chickened out after being up there for at least 20 minutes.

We left for our jet boating excursion at 12:30 and foolishly didn’t plan ahead. We didn’t eat lunch nor did we bring water or money, so we were a bit bummed to find out the drive to the starting point was about 45 minutes! To top it off, the driver was slow as heck and it started down pouring on our way. When we arrived, we were told we’d have to wait for the rain to die down, though the boat driver’s mind was quickly changed once he realized we’d have to get going. Hey, we were going to get soaked anyways. We clambered into the small boat in a very unladylike fashion and then got a brief preview of the power of the boat as we made our way across the river to the island resort island to pick up a few folks. After a safety briefing, we jetted off. And I mean JETTED off. It was fantastic fun and VERY wet. By this time, the rain had eased and even stopped, though we barely noticed since we were constantly getting sprayed with water. We sped up to the rafts that were making their way down the river. Of course, we didn’t just leisurely pull up to the rafts. We had no choice but to spray them with water before we could do that! We picked up Karen and set off up the river to check out the waterfalls. We spent our time skimming quickly across the water and up and down rapids. The most fun part was the spinning. There are no seat belts on this boat, so you have to watch the driver for hand signals and then brace your legs and hang on tight. Once he stops, you are thankful to still be in the boat just in time for the back splash to crash over and drench you. Just after we dropped Karen off in her raft in time for her last rapid, it started pouring down rain. We were already soaked, so the water didn’t bother us, but getting rained on while driving up to 80 miles an hour is very painful. The ride back was a bit painful – like pins and needles flying at your face. Gavin, our driver, expertly navigated us back.

We dropped the other passengers off at the resort where we’d set off, the Wild Waters Lodge. We were soaked to the bone, so owner of the resort offered to let us come in and dry off and have some tea. We jumped at the chance. The owner’s daughter was very polite and guided us to the main lodge and then ran ahead to get us towels. They family was very hospitable and the resort was gorgeous. Their daughter jumped in the pool to get warm and we decided to join her for a few minutes. The main lodge is open-air and faces their pool which overlooks a series of grade 6 rapids. Much nicer digs than our tents. The manager offered us some warm blankets to cover up since our dry clothes were on the other side of the river. To top it off, we were served tea, coffee and a hot chocolate from clean, proper ceramic dishes, accompanied by some tasty lemon biscuits. It was glorious! Even though we were not paying guests, all of the staff and the owner’s family was very hospitable. This seems like a great place to stay and will definitely be on our short list WHEN we come back to Uganda.


Braving the rain in the pool	View from the lodge over the pool and falls. This blurry pic doesn’t do it justice	Enjoying a hot coffee from a proper French press in a proper mug	The pool and main lodge

Ben probably gave their offsite IT guy a good chuckle. While we were there, Ben noticed that they were having problems with their internet. They were SMS’ing with their tech support guy and were a bit confused by the directions which we understood as running a traceroute – “hit the windows key, type R and Enter cmd, type tracert and Enter and then tell me what happens.” Ben helped them out and then started dictating what to SMS back, but then decided to do it himself. All of the sudden, the IT guy got an SMS from the manager’s phone saying “I can ping the default gateway but the next hop timed out.” Their IT guy must have been scratching his head, thinking WTF? We thanked our hosts and departed, enjoying the walk through the resort on elevated pathways. The resort is on an island and the only way to get back to the mainland is via a canoe. One of the staff kindly escorted us under umbrellas. They really take care of you here and we’d felt so welcomed. We were ferried back and then Rebecca and I hastily changed into our dry clothes in the van before leaving with our boat driver, Gavin. He stopped along the way and treated us to some beers from the smallest-ever pub. It was the size of a broom closet! The ride home was much more pleasant and was filled with discussions about jet boating, the Nile and travelling in New Zealand. Three of our group had spent the entire day rafting and we enjoyed hearing their stories when they returned. We enjoyed dinner and then chatted at the bar for a bit before heading off to bed. Our last night in Uganda – sadly.