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“RROOWW!” “HARRD” “HARRDERR!”

Panic sinking in, nine oars thrusting into the foamy, white, roaring water, we row for our lives right into the thick of a Grade 5 rapid, and the impending doom that I somehow seemed to get a front-seat view of, stupidly volunteering to go up front. It’s fair to say I’m well and truly bricking it!

Death's door at The Nile's source

Simon Wadsworth
2006-09-04 10:59:52

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vest and wait, as I got churned about, tumbling, spinning, praying for air, and eventually, spat out the other end. I’M ALIVE! I survived, oh my, I’m ok. The waves, only 1m high now, I spin downstream and look around for the others - one, two, ..five, everyone’s ok! With huge relief, I “whoop!” into the air, swim to the raft, climb in, help the others in, then collapse in nervous exhilarating exhaustion.

We just went into the middle of, and came out alive from the largest commercially rafted hole in the world. And the weekend had only just begun.

Apologies. Another long blog, but then it has been two weeks. I didn't take my camera for obvious reasons (tho I did risk a disposable), but have bought the CD which has some awesome photos on it! There's a couple of other really great photos of some kids I wanted to add but this computer isn't reading my chip, so there will just have to be more photos in the next blog which will only be a few days away this time and a little shorter. Aaaanyways...

Since my last blog, I’ve nearly died twice. This second time I even paid good money for the privilege. Just over the border into Uganda, north of Lake Victoria is a town called Jinja, which really wouldn’t be on the tourist trail if it wasn’t for one little peculiarity - it’s regarded as the source of the mighty White Nile, the longest river in the world, stretching from Lake Victoria 4000miles to the Mediterranean. This place is also rightly on the tourist trail as home to some of the most spectacular (and scariest) rapids in the world, and being the adrenaline junky that I am, pretty much the main reason for venturing into Uganda.

Afsan and I organized meeting up again and along with two other friends Caroline and Laura, we decided to go one crazier than most and spend two days killing ourselves instead of the usual one. So, it was with much ignorance and expectation that we fund ourselves ...