Halloween

Well things are plodding along here, Adrian has now arrived, tassie paddler from home and someone I hung out with a fair bit last summer. Also a couple more American boaters and a Swede have turned up too so there are a few more people around.
We’ve been heading down to the Ugly Sisters rapid a fair bit which has a great surf wave on it, unfortunately behind the surf wave is a large hydraulic and you only have limited time to roll up and paddle back into the eddy unless you want to test the power of the pourover.

The first day Kat paddled it she missed a few rolls on the lead in and ended up in a eddy on the opposite side of the river to the rest of us, unfamiliar with the rapid she got out of her boat to have a look but from what I could see the jungle like trees were too thick to get through. She looked upset, washing her face with water and sitting partly in the water in the eddy. When the boys had finished surfing they all ran the rapid to the left of the pourover and I decided to walk my boat back up a way and ferry over to Kat on the right hand side – after all I wasn’t leaving her to paddle and unknown drop on her own. I misjudged the force of the water when I was trying to get into the eddy huge boils and whirlies threw me off line and I looked over my shoulder to see a nice green line down through the sticky pourover. I called to Kat that there was a line and dropped in, to the boys in the eddy below it looked like I’d just dropped into one of the largest holes on the river… unbeknownst to them the green tongue of water I paddled down surged into a wave right when I hit and I got stuck surfing. Kat could see me but I was out of sight from the boys who had just seen me drop into what they thought was a hole and simply disappear. Kat witnessed my huge bounces and I pulled my boat round into a front surf and attempted to carve off the wave – suddenly I bounced high in the air and the nose of my boat dug into the green water as I landed – the result was I was air-launched out of the back of the wave. Anyway Kat paddled the right without a problem … hehehe not really sure I did the best job of rescuing her but hey, at least I provided her with some entertainment. Turns out she wasn’t upset at all but that the trees were full of ants that left her with numerous red stingy itchy bites all over her arms, neck and back – that’s why she was washing her face.
Yesterday I had what Timmy would call sub-optimal river bed interaction – ie. I hit a rock with my shoulder and have a lovely scrape and bruise. It’s a bit sore today so I’m taking the day off, trying to upload some photos which is painfully slow of course.
I’ve now extended my flights, so I’m home for Christmas – arrived at 1am on Christmas day in fact ;-)
It’s Halloween and of course – like everything at NRE this calls for a fancy dress party. Luckily Jinja market is a goldmine of amazing clothes and various knick knacks that create the most amazing costumes. I’ve picked a wedding dress (somewhat 80s in style) for a mere 20000 shillings (about $15) … can’t wait to see everyone else’s costumes tonight, we had a bit of a practice run on Saturday – Thatcher looks great in a string bikini and Robin Hood and Pippi Longstocking were in the bar too.