At the top of the falls & the long journey back...

Another bumpy ride back - red dirt and dust flying everywhere. We drive up the mountain on the perimeter of the park this morning, and I'm looking out the window into the forests at the side of the road. I'm dying to catch a glimpse of some chimpanzees, although I know the chances are slim. You can actually book multiple day chimp tracking or gorilla tracking excursions in Uganda, and when I come back to this country, I'm going to do this for sure - I've always been fascinated with the great apes.

I stand up and look through the sun roof, getting covered in red as the van in front of us lifts up dirt and dust and the wind carries it our way. A thin layer of dirt covers all my clothes and every area of exposed skin. I give myself a little sponge bath with Baby Wipes, and then give up - it is useless, I would need about twenty packs to get it all off. We're also covered in DEET. The tsetse flies are awful in this region, we've been warned. We aren't quite sure what these vicious little flies transmit - but we know it's something that we can't be vaccinated against. Dengue fever, we assume. (Actually it's something pretty scary known as "sleeping sickness").

When we get close to the falls, we pull over and get to hike up to the top. The water is rushing, as we look down on the Nile - on where we were yesterday, cruising around looking for animals. I feel a bit like we are the only people in the world. After some quick photos, we pile back into our van and prepare for a seven hour ride back to Lweza. Our "vacation" is coming to an end. Tomorrow we're back to our regular volunteer rotation.

The whole way home we are pelted with red dust - it's too hot not to drive with the windows open and too dirty to leave them open. Since I seem to be the only one wearing a light coloured t-shirt, all my trip mates are marvelling at how dirty I am. Although pretty much covered, for some inexplicable reason the reddy brown dirt is much more pronounced on the boob area of my t-shirt. When I step out of the van at a gas station, Dean calls me "Pigpen." Amy captures my awesome fashion statement in a photo that is far too embarrassing to post in this blog. I want a shower, stat. I'll remember this and laugh at it when I'm clean, for sure. There better be hot water when we get to our "base camp", because I have a feeling I'll need about 30 minutes to scrub all of this grime off.