This is the second in a series of nine posts covering our 13-day tour around Uganda with Mountain Gorilla Coffee Tours (“MGCT”).
After breakfast, we left Sipi Falls and backtracked to Jinga, the second largest city in Uganda, situated along the banks of Lake Victoria and the source of the Nile River.1
Our accommodation in Jinga, the Eden Rock Resort, was located near Bujagali Falls, about 10 kilometers from the center of town. Unfortunately, Bujagali Falls – which had been an impressive series of rapids popular for rafting – has been “drowned” by the rising waters from a recently built hydroelectric dam, transforming this stretch of the Nile into a lazy northward flow. Nonetheless, we were pretty excited, after months of traveling across Africa, to finally be staying along the banks of one its most iconic rivers.
After checking into our hotel and grabbing lunch, we headed back into town to take a boat ride out to the area where the river flows out of Lake Victoria. What otherwise would have been a fairly straightforward outing on the water was made into a somewhat dramatic affair by a looming thunderstorm that continually threatened to soak us. Thankfully, our luck held out and we remained dry.
Amusingly, although perhaps not surprisingly, there were vendors selling kitschy souvenirs on a tiny island out in the middle of the lake, at the area where the water begins flowing northward into the river.
Along with spotting various birds and lizards along the shore, we also made a stop at a monument devoted to John Speke, a British explorer who is credited with first determining that Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile.
Where We Stayed:
☆ Eden Rock Resort. One-and-a-half goats. The room to which we were assigned lacked a bathroom door, and the room to which we were moved had a bathroom door in name only – the thing didn’t shut. Our room was poorly lit and the bed was one of those where we rolled together in the middle. Breakfast was a sad affair, although they did produce more peanut butter upon request.
Where We Ate:
☆ Nile River Explorers Campsite. We had lunch here at this popular backpackers haunt located across and just down the street from the Eden Rock. Katie’s poor veggie burger had been burned to hell and back, but there were amazing smoothies that we enjoyed with a fantastic view of the water.
☆ The Black Lantern. After visiting the source of the Nile, we headed back to Bujagali Falls. We had dinner at this lovely hotel restaurant overlooking the river. We sat outside on the terrace watching the water and the vervet monkeys running about in the trees. We especially enjoyed the giant hummus and crudité platter.
1 Although this source – the Victoria Nile, which later becomes the White Nile – is just one amongst various tributaries that form the Nile River which eventually snakes it way north through Sudan and Egypt toward the Mediterranean Sea, it accounts for the majority of the water that the world’s longest river eventually discharges.
