Toyota Prius, who needs it?

Hello from Uganda!

It's been a very exciting week.
On Sunday afternoon we boarded a bus in Moshi, Tanzania heading Northwest (through Kenya) to Jinja, Uganda.
The 20 + hour wasn't too horrible.
We were already familiar with the Kenya-Tanzania border crossing so that went through with little difficulty (even though it was getting pretty dark).
The ride through kenya was dark, bumpy and cold.
Hillary and I didn't sleep much because we were just too cold. (It's Africa! It shouldn't be cold here!).
Jon, who's sleeping bag was too large to place under the bus slept like a baby. His sleep talking was slightly more embarrasing this time, as it was in front of about 50 very tired African people.

We think that we crossed the equator at around 3AM or so

We arrived at the Kenyan-Ugandan border after the sun had come up. The two immigration posts are further apart than the Kenyan-Tanzanian, but still very walkable.

We narrowly avoided getting sent back to Kenya (and not allowed into Uganda). This was due to very stupid signage on the Ugandan side.
At one point, (I guess as we were walking onto the "Ugandan side" we walked through a large gate with it's door wide open and nobody standing in front of it.
Being the logical people that we are, we started walking through, on the way to the immigration office.
Just as we were crossing, Jon noticed that 2 other tourists were being yelled at by police who were sitting to the side of the gate (not in clear view at all).
The police were threatening to send them back to kenya for not stopping at the very open gate.
Apparently we needed to stop at the gate to show our passports, although there was absolutely no indication that we needed to do so, nor anyone telling this.
So, we showed our passports and proceeded with little problem.

The Ugandan Visa went up in price by $30 on July 1. That was a sucky thing to find out.

Our first stop in Uganda was Jinja, the supposed source of the Nile river.
We spent a day doing some pretty insane white water rafting.
We also visited the site where the Nile starts (they claim).
Its a very weird tourist site.
There is a statue of Ghandi there because some of his ashes were scattered there.

From Jinja, we made our way to Mbale.
Our ride was interesting as we were in a car with a goat and witnessed a pretty serious fist fight along the way.

After a night in Mbale, we headed north to Sipi Falls, which, in my opinion is the most beautiful thing we have seen there.

Our driver to Sipi used a very interesting technique to conserve fuel (which is a BIG thing here - people fill up with about 2-5 litres at a time).
We noticed that our driver would bring the car up to about 70km/h and then put the car into neutral and turn off the ignition until we almost came to a stop, then turned the ignition back on, acclerated again, and then back to neutral etc.
Needless to say, it took a long time to get there, but definitely good for mileage (I guess).

We spent a day and a night at Sipi.
Lots of beautiful hiking.

Now we're back in Mbale after in the middle of a visit with the Abayudaya.

The Abayudaya will have to wait for another post.