April 7 - 12, 2016
This week was Genocide Memorial Week (GMW) in Rwanda. The schools are closed and businesses are all closed for the first day or two, and then they are only allowed to open for a half day for the other days. No alcohol is served in the restaurants. It's a very solemn time. And one that we felt we would have difficult participating in -- so we took a family vacation. We drove north to Uganda.
John spent many days researching possibilities and coming up with an itinerary. We knew there would be a lot of hours of driving, and sure enough -- it was a loooooooot of driving. To make things worse, because of some crazy Google maps, GMW, and a torrential downpour, it took us an hour just to get out of Kigali. The first day ended up being about 12 hours of driving -- from Kigali to Entebbe, Uganda. The kids were great. Very patient and did not complain. Even at the very rustic road-side toilet stops!
In Entebbe, we stayed at the wierdly cavernous, but nice, "Sanctum Hotel". Sight-seeing here included the botanical garden and a fun zoo. We hired a guide at the garden, who did a nice job showing us the flora and fauna. At the zoo we passed on the guide, and were entertained by the many animals in "close to real" kind of settings for zoo captivity. For example, the chimpanzees and "big cats" were all in open spaces -- just with big fences. No windows and cement floors for them to live on like I'm used to seeing in U.S. zoos.
After two nights at Sanctum, we drove further north about 3 hours to Jinja. Again, the trip could have been 2 hours, but with Kampala traffic as jammed as it always is, it took 3 hours.
Jinja likes to call itself the "source of the Nile." (Rwandans disagree, and say Lake Kivu is the source of the Nile.) In any case, it was fun to stay at a guest house called the "Source of the Smile". (It was not a dentist office!) It had fun and interesting decor all made with things from nature and recycled things like wine bottles and all sorts of tiles and pieces of mirrors. Had a bit of a hippie-70's feel.
The first night we went to dinner at "The Keep", a restaurant in Jinja that Isaac selected from his research on-line. It was great! We all enjoyed it. They had great espresso drinks, a "15 minute" menu and nice wait staff.
The next day, (Sunday), in the morning we just hung out at the lovely guest house pool. John, unfortunately, was feeling pretty ill due to some bad food, so we took off for the afternoon, leaving him to convalesce in bed. That's when we took Isaac to the bunjee jumping place. Oh my! The staff there were obviously experienced in helping people, probably many mothers, be at peace with paying $125 to have their child thrown over a ledge! Seriously, I was scared. But Isaac wasn't. So we paid, he got weighed, and then they took him out to this crane-like apparatus, 44 meters above the river. He jumped! It was pretty amazing! A small raft-boat was right there to pick him up and in a matter of about 10 minutes he was back -- all smiles and laughs. He wanted to go again! (Mom said "no".)
From there we drove up the river a ways to a place that offered kayaking and stand-up paddling. Naomi and I got a 2 person kayak and Isaac tried out a stand-up paddle boat. It was beautiful, calm and had a kind of "secluded" feeling out on the river. Since they built a damn on the river, it is very wide and calm, almost like a lake, but there is definitely still a current. Naomi enjoyed it a lot, and Isaac did, too. Even though he actually found a way to nap for awhile on his stand-up boat.
That night the three of us went out to eat without John, who still did not feel well. The next day he felt much, better, though -- thank you God! We all went into town and spent way too much on souvenirs, including some snacks at the "The Source" cafe (started by an acquaintance of John's). That day, Monday, we drove from Jinja to Kampala. And on Tuesday, we woke up very early to beat the traffic jams, and got out of Kampala by 7am. We got home to Kigali around 5pm! Much better timing on the way back.
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