The road to Kampala from Jinja was pretty good on the whole and we arrived in Kampala in good time to have a look around at about 11 a.m. Like every other major city we have travelled through the traffic was absolutely horrendous and again the mini buses which form the biggest part of the public transport being to blame. They nudge in and out of the traffic forcing their way here and there. We were travelling along the outside lane on the main Kampala road right in the heart of the city centre when a mini bus tried to force his way in front of us. Peter didn't give way and the next thing we know we clashed door mirrors and Peter carried on slowly forward. Next thing we heard a big ban, stopped, got out and the front bull bar of the mini bus had got hooked around one of our 4 camper supporting legs which are also used as anchor points for securing the camper to the bed of the truck.

The damage which was done was pretty serious at it ripped the leg away from the camper body meaning that we would no longer be able to take the camper off the truck as it would only have 3 legs to support it and also it meantthe camper was only secured to the truck by 3 points instead of 4. The traffic come to a standstill and people all around started to stick their noses in. Someone said it was Peter's fault and he should pay the guy compensation. Peter objected and said his vehicle was in front of the other so he wasn't in the wrong. The guy then changed his tune and rounded on the mini bus driver saying it was his fault. By this time we had blocked two lanes of traffic on the busiest road in the city.

The policewoman arrived and again told the mini bus driver it was his fault and he kept on denying it so the police woman got in the mini bus with the driver and told us to follow to the central police station. Peter went upstairs to make a statement with the mini bus driver still denying responsibility. The police were adament it was the other drivers fault and he should make us some compensation in cash for the damage. By this time the owner of the mini bus firm had also arrived. He wanted to pay compensation but Peter said it was more important that his vehicle was repaired so he took us across the city to a garage where between them Peter & the mechanics took the leg off, repaired the framework around the damage and reattached the leg. It was a great relief to us as this damage would have hindered the rest of our journey and luckily it was all repaired in 2 hours. However, the garage was also on a busy road where they started to repair the camper. Someone then had the idea of moving a small pick up out of the way so we could get the truck off the road. They did this, pulled out into the flow of traffic so we could reverse in and knocked a motor biker straight off his bike with him skidding along the middle of the road with no helmet. Peter just put his head in his hands as if to say what else can happen!

We left the garage and as it was getting late in the afternoon decided to just get to the campsite, Red Hot Chillies. We bumped into some people we met in Jinja, a young Canadian couple and a young Dutch lad who were all backpacking and had been on the rafting trip with Peter and two 55 American backpackers who had been at Hotel Timton. Just to top off the day we had torrential rain during the night.

Today we had lots of jobs to do. Peter went with one of the guys from the campsite to fill up our gas bottle. We took our first foray onto public transport into Kamapa as we weren't risking taking the truck again! We crammed into the mini bus which is registered for 14 passengers, there were 20 in it which dropped us in the centre of Kampala. We then had to take a ride on the back of 2 motor bike taxis to get where we were going on the other side of the city, Ugandan Wildlife Authority. We wanted permits to view the famous Mountain Gorillas but permits are very hard to come by as only a handfull are issued each day. Visiting the gorillas for me is one of the highlights of the whole journey and I was overjoyed when we found we could get the desired permits for 5 days from now. The situation in Kenya has affected tourism badly and we managed to get two cancellations for the 20th otherwise January was fully booked up. We paid over our US$1000 and got the permits.

We had another torrential downpoor today and everything is sticky and hot so we went for a coffee to shelter and read a week old Daily Mail.

At the camp site there are about 5 overland trucks parked up empty with no passengers as the overland business has been severely hit by the problems in Kenya and travel companies have cancelled their overland tours.

We bought ourselves a small cooking fire from the market in Jinja which the locals all use for cooking their meals and we gave it a try. We didn't have much success and two South Africans told us to stick a candle in the top of the fire and it would help to light it. We took their advice and it worked a treat, a good trip to remember if you just can't light your fire!!!

We filled up with fuel, had our last decent coffee and set of for Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.