On the 22nd April we once again broke up from school for another holiday. Our travels began with a week long trip to Kenya. First of all we had to collect our Kenyan visas at the Busia Border. THis was a farily simple process, athough I somehow ended up getting scammed by a money exchanging man for 20,000USH which was somehow related to me being allowed to use his toilet...In Kenya we had a lovely time. We spent a couple of days at Lake Elementeita - famous for it's flamingoes! Here, we went on a long walk to a hot spring where we sat for a while ad watched the local Masaii woman washing themselves and their clothes in the boiling water. From Elementeita, we moved on to Naivasha via a bumpy ride in a pick up truck! We stayed here in a place called Fisherman's cmap. We had planned to cook our own dinner, but this plan was spoiled by a huge thunderstorm. From our shelter, in a little hut, we heard a big bang and looked out just in times to see the air filled with dust where lightning had stucka massive acacia tree and had brought it to the floor! Scary stuff! After attempting to dry all of our soaked belongings, we went to bed early to the sounds of hippopotomus roaring in the nearby lake. The next morning we were up at 4am to begin our journey to Hell's Gate National Park - by bike!! This was a somehow difficult task as we had a 5km cycle in the pitch black with only a couple of malfunctioning torches! Eventually, we made it to the Park Gates, paid our entrance fees and cycled into the Park just as the sun was rising.. The scenery around was beautiful - flat stretches of land broken by huge towers and cliffs of rock stretching to the sky. As we cycled we saw herds of antelopes, impala and zebras all around. Soon, we also came into contact with a group of buffaloes and I can tell you buffaloes are rpetty scary and HUGE close up!! The best moment of the day probably came when we cycled round the corne to find a pair of giraffes amongst the trees. We got off of our bikes and stalked them through the undergrowth for a while until the took fright and galloped off. The day was broken up by an amazing gorge walk and by constant snacking on the copious amount of snacks we had brought with us. The day would have been incomplete without a crash and Becky provided us with this spectacularly when she went flying over the handlebars while in hot pursuit of a group of zebras!! She was left with a lot of cuts and bruises plus a bicylce whose peddle fell of every few minutes, which made the remaining 25km a bit of a challenge!!

After Hells' gate we made our way back to Uganda via a quick detour to Nairobi and the Masaii market. Back in Uganda, we decided we hadn't seen quite enough lakes yet, so we headed to Lake Nabugabo near Masaka, for a few very nice days in the sun! I was slightly put off the swimming though by reports of water cobras and leeches!

Next stop was Jinja where Roxanne had decided she was going to attempt the dreaded bungee jump over the River Nile. So, we headed off to the Adrift camp site to witness the event. I decided to mgo up the jumping tower with her to take photos of her fall. On the way up a rather nervouse Roxanne was reassured by the instructor that the boda ride we had just taken to the place was far more dangerous than what she was about to do. Little reassurance when your jumping towards a raging river with just a towel around your ankles! I didn't feel at all jelous - just standing on the platform made me feel pretty ill. Very impressive!!