November 23rd, 2023
It was about a four-hour bus ride from Masindi to Fort
Portal. I learned another Ugandan public
transport lesson. The bus had a bench of
3 seats, the aisle and then 2 seats on each row. Since I had my small backpacks with me, I
opted to sit on the 2-seat side, figuring I’d less likely have someone sit
beside me. While we waited to leave the
bus station, I was frying in the sun. Realizing
that we were heading south, and it was the morning, I figured I’d be in the sun
for most of the journey. I considered
changing sides and while I contemplated, a young woman took the seat across from
me and blocked my exit until only the last row was available. It still seemed good to me as I was now
comfortably in the shade. Well, I would
find out that it wasn’t the best place to sit.
I should have remembered from when I was a kid riding the
school bus. You always wanted to sit
near the back as that is where you would bounce the most if the bus hit a
bump. This is no longer your strategy
when you are 52 years old…and this country has some serious speedbumps. We weren’t even out of Masindi, and I had
already been airborne, with my butt flying a few inches off of the seat. Some bumps were pretty jarring. Luckily, I noticed a pattern. When we approached an area where traffic was
required to slow down, we’d first hit 2 small bumps, close together, followed
by a set of 4, and then the big hump that was making me fly off the seat. So thankfully I could prepare for the
“flight”.
As we approached the small city of Fort Portal, named after
a young man Sir Gerald
Portal who was a diplomat from England in the late 1800s, the landscape
definitely changed, for the better.
There were small, lush hills, tea plantations and nicer looking houses
in general. I had heard that a lot of
the better off folks who live in Kampala like to escape on weekends to the more
relaxing and beautiful area of Fort Portal.
I had found a place online called the Kalitusi Nature Resort and it looked like a nice place to chill for a few days as my past week had been quite packed with wallet draining, yet fun activities. The place didn’t disappoint. Probably a few acres in size, even though it was on the outskirts of the city, it felt like you were out in the country. I was greeted by a friendly woman named Immy and she checked me in. My dorm room had six beds on two levels in a hut with steeply slanted roofs. That night’s dinner, cottage pie, was the best meal I’d had in Uganda, and they even made their own chili sauces on site with ingredients grown in their garden!
The garden view at Kalitusi:
The lounge area:
After a chill day, I told Immy that I should probably see some of the area, so she called a guy named Apple who came to the resort. For 70,000 shillings, he was going to take me for a three-hour tour on his motorcycle.
I ate some lunch and then we headed off on his bike. The roads were a bit rough leaving town, then
we were on a paved road before diverting off onto some super rough roads, if
you could even call them roads. One of
them really wasn’t a road, it was a large slab of broken rock that went up a
bit of a hill. As we bounced our way
along, it was similar to my quadbiking adventure near Jinja where every little
kid I saw would smile and yell out “Hello” or “How are you?”. I couldn’t help but wave and/or answer back.
About twenty minutes into the journey, we arrived beside the
first crater lake I would see and there was a hill that rose about 100 meters
that we would walk up to get a view of a few other lakes. The trail was a no-nonsense trail, it just
went straight up the 25-30 degree incline.
The panoramic vista from the top was stunning. We could see a few more crater lakes, with
the one just to the north of the hill we climbed a stark different colour to
the one we first saw. The first one was
a dark blue whereas the other one was a medium green, obviously affected by
some kind of algae. Off to the west was
the Rwenzori Mountain range and a dark grey storm front was approaching it from
the northeast and heavily dumping rain.
In the opposite direction we could see Fort Portal. I could see the appeal of this area, the
countryside was lovely.
A view of the first crater lake, and that's the hill we will climb.
Apple attempted to explain how the crater lakes had been formed, and I believe he was mostly right, but some of the time it was hard to understand his English. They are the results of violent volcanic activity on an extinct volcano or a volcanic fissure. When the pressure from the subsurface molten rock (magma or lava) is too much, it blows off the surface of the extinct volcano. Instead of forming a volcanic cone, the lava with ashes blows further away from the vent and forms a large basin and the surrounding area is built up by the rock debris. This is how the hill we climbed was formed.
The Rwenzori mountain range, mostly hidden by a storm front.
Apple mentioned that we were going to be heading towards the area that was just getting dumped on by rain. So we hung out a little longer until it started to dissipate, then headed down the hill and got back on the bike.
Starting to head back down.
It was a nice ride towards the mountains. We passed through a roadside market that was quite busy. Back at the resort, Apple kept talking about some crazy road that we were going to take and then I finally understood what he meant. The road meandered along the mountainside to the north, towards some plains below.
We cruised about 4-5 kilometers down the road, stopping here
and there for photos. It was strange
that all of the young kids were no longer smiling and yelling hi, but now it
was “Money, money, money”. I preferred
the former.
Due to the rain, there were a few mud and rock slides that
some crews were cleaning up. None of the
slides were currently blocking the road but on our way back up the road, we
witnessed a small slide that didn’t quite make it to the road. Kinda cool to watch.
On the return trip to Fort Portal, I mentioned to Apple that
I wanted to stop at a few places I had seen on the way there. One was a cool looking house that was made
from dried out bamboo arranged in some interesting angles, and the other one
was a medical clinic. Painted on the
wall outside the clinic I saw “Ultrasound Scan”, “In and Out Patients” but then
I thought I read “Female Circumcision”.
I know that this practice used to be done in this country, but I hoped
it wasn’t anymore.
Apple seemed a bit surprised to hear it too, although again,
occasionally things were lost in translation between us. I saw the clinic and told him to stop. He had gone about 50 meters passed it and it
was on the other side of the road, but I got off the bike and walked back to
investigate further. Apple did a u-turn
and drove up close to it, so I crossed the road to join him.
It did look like “Female Circumcision” but then we noticed a
hole in the pony wall. There was also a
bit of a gap between the FE and MALE part of the word. Apple figured it out before I did…it wasn’t
“FEMALE CIRCUMCISION”, it was “SAFE MALE CIRCUMSION” but the SA was now missing. Whew…
From a different angle...it was a bit more obvious.
A cool looking house on the way back:
Apple brought be to a few ATMs (the first one didn’t like my bank card), and then returned me to the resort, about 3½ hours after we began. I bought him a drink and we chatted a bit with Immy. It was a great way to spend the afternoon and see the lovely area around Fort Portal.
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