Uganda, the pearl of Africa

Or at least that is what Winston Churchill said about Uganda. Let's discover why he thought that. This is our first time in Africa (well, apart from Morocco and Tunisia), and here you are our first contact with this part of the world. Here we go!

The adventure had already started in Spain, apart from packing everything in our apartment and moving everything, a small problem raised. We booked our flight with the cheapest option to fly from Spain to Uganda, especially if you want a more flexible fare, as we wanted. That means that we were flying with Egyptair through Cairo. What a coincidence, just at the time when Egypt people decided to change the history of their country and Hosni Mubarak decided to decree a curfew, so our night flight from Cairo to Entebbe (the airport of Kampala, the capital of Uganda) was cancelled. Egyptair only wanted to refund the price of the ticket, but that was very inconvenient for us, so we had to negotiate hard with Egyptair so that they rebooked our flight from Madrid to Kampala. Finally on Monday Zuzana managed to get a new ticket for the way there with Brussels Airlines while keeping the ticket and the flexible fare with Egyptair for the way back.

There was only a little problem, we planned everything to fly at 15:05 with Egyptair, and now our flight with Brussels Airlines was at 6:40. That made the last two days being even crazier than expected, as a result Zuzana slept 15 minutes and I had to stay awake my second night on a row. The next day I was literally falling asleep on the plane while having breakfast.

We arrived to Entebbe at 22:45. First get the visa on arrival (queue), then get out through the scanner (queue)... ups... it's already midnight.

We got a taxi to the hostel and when we arrived to the parking the car was out of battery. After a couple of minutes, a friend of the driver came with jumper cables and they solved the problem. We were ready for the 46 Km from the airport to the hostel. After a while we were lucky enough to reach a tailback due to a convoy transporting the ballot boxes for the elections, and as you can imagine it was escorted by the police so it was not allowed to overtake it. "Fortunately" the convoy was following the same route as we were until almost the hostel. We managed to get rid of the convoy but that was not all. When we were just one kilometre from the hostel the car crossed a big pot hole on the road (full of water) and we got a flat tire. Great! It didn't take a long time to change the wheel and we finally reached the hostel.

I have to admit that I like this kind of adventures, as long as they are not too complicated. I usually think: "if in 6 months, I will tell my friend the story of this sitting in a terrace while drinking a beer and having fun, then it's fine". So when we were already in our room I knew that all that meant that we are going to have a great time here in Uganda.

Since then we are getting used to the life here, the transports in Kampala, looking for a place to live... but... I guess you are not expecting me to tell you everything straight away, are you?

Let's say that I still didn't have the time to take my camera for a walk, and explaining you all this country without pictures is not that funny. So... keep in touch and keep on reading!

Welcome to Africa!