Like this:

After the energy and excitement of Kampala, we were headed for western Uganda – Fort Portal and the nearby (crater) Lake Nkuruba. Since we arrived on a Sunday, the town was relatively quiet and it was a bit tricky finding a lift to the lakeside campsite (20km away) we had mind.  As a result, we had to try a new form of public transport – the saloon car taxi.

I should point out that getting where we wanted to be has never been a problem on this trip. At worst it has required a bit of waiting, since most matatu drivers prefer to leave only when full, or to stop regularly along the way to fill up with passengers.

Finding the right bus or matatu has also never been a problem, even in the most confusing of taxi parks, since touts tend to surround you as soon as you arrive on the scene. These guys get a commission from the drivers for getting them paying passengers, so they have good reason to be helpful. And, since there’s plenty of competition, a little bit of friendly haggling with them usually gets you down from tourist prices to local rates.

In Fort Portal, we were surprised to be quoted as much as 30 000 Ugandan shillings (R120) for the 20 km journey, but soon found someone willing to take 3 000 shillings (R12) per person. Apparently we just didn’t do the math – the first guy was offering us a car to ourselves, while the second one was giving us a ride as two of ten passengers he would pick up along the way.

I guess we didn’t think ten people could fit in a Toyota Corolla! Now we know better…as it turns out, the space around the gear lever in an automatic car is generally underutilised, and people’s willingness to pile on strangers’ laps (albeit with some giggling) generally also grossly underestimated

Since then we’ve used these cars a number of times – once you’ve seen it can be done without too much discomfort, there’s really no reason not to!

Lake Nkuruba was amazingly beautiful. The campsite was quite basic (no hot water and only bucket-’showers’), but the food was really incredible and the portions so generous that I’m pretty sure I’ve picked up weight from all the eating we did there. My new favourite dish is guacamole salad with chapatti, which basically means half a plate stacked with fresh avocado, red onions and chopped tomatoes, with the other half covered by a thicker version of what I know from SA as roti (aka chapatti).

The lake itself was idyllic, and quite obviously a crater lake, with its steep sides covered in thick forest. We used the two days and nights staying there to catch up on some sleep and laundry, and also spent an alarming amount of time watching the vervet and colobus monkeys of the forest at play. It sounds a little mindless, I know, but their antics are actually very entertaining!

(Yes, it seems we’ve fallen a full week behind on the blog! Still deciding whether we’ll skip ahead or catch up in Kigali, which is very quiet thanks  to the Easter weekend. Unfortunately, the keyboards seem to be inspired by the French, so without the regular qwerty keypad my typing has slowed down dramatically! On the up-side, I can finally type é by hitting only one button…)

Advertisement