So we've come to the end of my east african nomad adventures....

Tomorrow I'll be on the way to Nairobi. I'm spending one day there, before leaving for my 5 day safari on the Maasai Mara organised by AV. And that wont be very adventurous to be honest....

I'm writing to you from Kampala, Uganda. I spent the weekend white-water rafting on the Nile....AMAZING! I don't think I've ever been so terrified/excited in my whole life. Where we went has some of the best rapids in the world and I loved every minute of it! As luck would have it we had a particularly pessimistic guide who chose to spend the 5 minutes before each rapid talking about our chances of survival, terrible accidents he'd seen in the past, how long we'd be without air if we got sucked down into a whirlpool etc etc....Each rapid was unbelievably chaotic and powerful but without doubt the funniest one was when we emerged into calm water, got up to take stock of the situation, (who'd lost their paddles etc) and realised the guide had been knocked overboard in the mayhem and he hadn't floated to the surface yet. We found him eventually (he'd been knocked over by one of our paddles, but he forgave his attacker as it was her birthday). At the end of the first day we went into a Class 5 rapid (i.e. uber-scary) called The Bad Place (not kidding). There are two routes through it, one called '50-50' (50% chance of the raft flipping, but if it does you won't be sucked under for long) and one called 'Main Line' (big, bad, almost certainly going to flip unless you're really skilled, and if you do flip you're sucked under for a long long time, then you pop up only to be sucked under again....). Our guide decided the water was too shallow that day to do Main Line, as we'd be dragging along the riverbed, your foot gets caught between rocks....instant broken leg basically.

So we entered The Bad Place, heading for 50-50 when the currents proved too strong. The raft tipped down down down into this MASSIVE whirlpool, I turned around to see half of our team had fallen out of the raft, very very scary! It was only me and two of the other volunteers left in the boat with the guide when the raft started riding up again, coasting on a massive wave. Then an absolutely ridiculous wall of water just surged up in front of us and the raft hit it full on. 'f***!' was the last thing I heard from the guide before the remaining few of us got smashed out of the raft. Being sucked under in such fast moving water is truly bizarre. The water wasnt that deep that day, so it was quite light with thousands of little bubbles streaming around. You are just dragged along incredibly fast, with the roar of the water drowning out any noise you might make. There is no resistance. I popped up, only to be sucked back under, just as predicted. I didnt really panic, even though I was running out of air pretty quickly. It was too surreal to really understand it. Then I emerged for the last time, maybe 100ft from where the raft had flipped. One of the safety-kayakers was there in seconds, and towed me to safety. Incredible. It was a bit of a miracle that everyone survived actually, the worst injuries were our guide, who'd been dragged on the riverbed for quite some way and damaged the right-hand side of his body, and Andy, one of the volunteers, who'd been knocked out by a paddle as the boat flipped. He was a bit shaken, but everyone was okay.

It was only at the camp that night that we all realised just how bad the outcome could have been. But surviving it has given me a bigger adrenaline high than I would've thought possible. The next day's rafting was pretty uneventful to be honest, but definitely a lot of fun. We finished with some body-boarding along the waves at Malalu rapid, (in the local language it literally means 'insane') which was hilarious. Then back to the base camp for celebratory drinks. Me and one of the other volunteers Flo, decided to go a bit further with our celebrations and do a 145ft bungee over the nile together in the dark. It was absolutely fantastic, and we had a whole bar-ful of people opposite the drop cheering us on. All in all a pretty action-packed few days.

We had one day in Kampala before the rafting and decided to check out the city's famous gambling scene. During the day we went to a local clothes market and bartered hard for some second hand outfits. We emerged with the cheapest black-tie outfits on the planet. I got an amazing floor-length gown for about 3 quid. The guys got Hugo Boss suits for about 10 quid. The evening was fantastic, we hit Casino Simba for their slot machines and Roulette (the only casino games we understand how to play). To our delight they offered free food and drinks to all gamblers. We abused this system heavily, often sauntering up to the bar for yet another plate of samosas with nothing but a 5000 Ugandan shilling chip in hand, (the minimum bet for nearly everything was 10,000 Ush). All in all it was a really great night, and I ended up netting 35,000 Ush (basically nothing but still ended up being a free night out).

So, I'm off now for some dinner (all this talk of free samosas is getting to me) and it's probably an early night as our bus leaves at 6AM tomorrow, but I guess this is probably the last post on my blog so I'll see you all when I get home in 9 days! I miss everyone so much, can't wait to see you!

- Ruby xxxx

p.s: if my dad is reading this, you are an absolute hero for playing travel agent this morning. expect lovely presents when I get home :-)