As birthdays go, this one was pretty special. No, in fact, it was outstanding! How often do you get to spend time with your very extended family in their natural surroundings? Generally, everybody is relaxed and their might be nothing but the odd familial squabble. Easily ended, just as easily forgotten. Here was a place we could all get together for the weekend! Under African skies, on a Ugandan island far out in Lkae Victoria, what a better to re-connect with...

Uganda It is completely random We think that there is usually one word that could describe one's perception of a country. It sums up all the little cameos that only you witness; the little plays that occur far from other's eyes. All these things add up into that single word. That when you hear it again, weeks, days, even years later, it brings back all the memories associated with it.We thought that RANDOM did it for us in Uganda. So many random, out of place, ...

Jacci was a star. We thought that the three of us would have to brave the buses again to get to "the Switzerland of Uganda". She had a few days before she went off to see the gorillas, and we knew it sounded like a pretty good place to be. And after three years of managing the area for Explore, I thought that it was high time I actually did go and see it! After an enlightening trip into Murchison Falls National Park, and braving the chaos in Kampala o...

"Don't move!" "What is it?" "I can see him. This might hurt a little." "Wha……." Thwack! I got the tsetse! You have to take him between your fingers and actually crash it to death. A simply slap will do nothing to this menace, and scourge, of bush travelers anywhere. "Thanks, but that hurt!" "Better that than if he bit you!" Tsetse flies have a bite that feels like you have been pricked by a...

To catch the ferry to the Ssesse Islands from Jinja, you have to take a matatu (and your chances) from Jinja to Kampala; another matatu (thankfully we survived the first part intact) toward Entebbe and get off at the "ferry junction"; from there take a boda-boda down to the ferry. And the ferry looked a landing craft from WWII. Just a whole lot newer. Sounds simple. But….Every matatu has a conductor. His job is to collect the money from all the othe...