Donnerstag, 17. Februar 2011

Uganda 2011

This winter I also went again to the Freestyle Kayaker's paradise. Uganda is one of the best places in the world for the freestyle paddler to go during the rough European winter. After paying the flight you can get all-inclusive camping pretty cheap at the “Hairy Lemon Camping Island“ , that is a true paradise island... What's new there is that they have flowing water that is transported by a water wheel installed beside the island. It's feeding the showers and new flushing toilets. On the ruth of the main house are solar panels that offer the charging of laptop, camera, mobile phone and so on. It is also unlikely to miss the “Hairy Lemon Red Tail Monkey Family”, a group of around 10 -15 animals making their daily rounds on the island. Sometimes you might also see snakes, spiders, frogs, lots of beautiful birds - not the chicken :) - and last but not least the busy ants and termites … and the “beautiful”island dog Elsa!

This year my decision was – despite my family was not very happy with it – to go for one month over Christmas and New Years. Unfortunately, there were a couple of unlucky coincidences influencing my trip and cutting it down from four weeks to “just” three: first of all my flight there had a delay of 5 days (thanks to very christmas likely winter conditions at the airports in Europe), and also 7 paddle days less because I had sickness such as flu and puking (I am happy it wasn't malaria because some others had - also ear infections were very common on the island)
Well, the White Nile and his awesome waves pay compensation and it was a great trip! Most of the time I spent with my Czech and Slovak friends around Nina Halasova and Peter Csonka, but I met also a lot of other very nice people. Jason Fox and I repaired Chagga's broken paddle (one of the best local paddlers there). Now his paddle is made out of pieces of four different ones. Of course we gave it also an awesome blade design made out of tape, writing Chagga and our names on it and at the end put one Epoxy layer over it. We hat lots of fun making the design...

Most of the time there were about 40 people on the island but on Christmas Eve and New Years it was more quiet because a lot of people went up to the Nile Rivers Explorers Camp at Day 1 Section to celebrate (better known as Partycamp). I also planed to go there for some whitewater downriver paddling but since I already had lost so much time I couldn't get myself away from Nile Special and Club Wave. That's why I only came off the island two times in all three weeks, first time for going to the city (Jinja) and the second time for my one and only downriver trip at day 2 this time. The rest of it I just went for awesome big wave surfing...

At the end I want to tell you the lived and tested routine of the day of my dreams:
Weak up, breakfast, Club Wave session, chill-out that contains read, study, sleep, chess (yes I know the order was slightly different … ok ok it was rather like: sleep, chess, read and at last when my bad conscience was really pursuiting me , also studying), lunch, chill-out, Nile Special Wave session, dinner, social sitting together (play cards and so on), and again sleep...

Summarized it was a really sick trip and I can hardly expect more the next time!
A small video clip will follow soon...
Thanks to my sponsors Vajda, Sandiline and Blue and White!
Well, so: Jambo and see you in Uganda! :)

Marcel Bloder

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