All the Toilets at the Local Police Station Were Stolen by Gorillas….

The number one thing on our Africa bucket list has been to go and see the Mountain Gorillas. There is only 3 places in the world right now that you can trek to see them and that is in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda. As you recall we went to Rwanda in September but even though we inquired 2 months prior there were no permits available so we ended up seeing the Golden Monkeys instead, which were awesome until one decided to take a wee on my head! Then there is the DRC where I tried to convince Patrick to go but lets face it… It’s the DRC and both of our Mothers would have had a heart attack. So, we decided to pay tribute to our current home country and make the trip out to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, which was a trip indeed! From Kampala it took us about 9 hours to get there on roads that did not allow napping 😦 For any of you out there that are thinking about doing this, my first bit of advice is to hire a driver! The other big thing that was holding us back from getting permits was that it can be quite costly! Rwanda currently charges $750 per person for one hour with the gorillas once you find them. DRC is much cheaper at $400 but you might have better luck finding Guerrillas there than Mountain Gorillas… yelp. Then there is Uganda, normally $600, but if you go in November, April or May it’s discounted to $350! Which brings us to the start of our adventure!

Although the ride there was a rocky one we were able to stop at the Ugandan Equator line! Not something I had expected to do but pretty cool if you think about it… standing on the top of the Equator?

The lodge we stayed at was beautiful and it was so nice to treat ourselves to something! I know Patrick and I have both been working hard lately!

The lodge was even so fancy that they put heated water bottles in your bed! Although I did accidentally wash my hair with lotion since it was right next to the shampoo…..

And then gave new meaning to the “toilet humor”

Now I have read online that trekking can be physically difficult and it is important to be in fairly good physical shape. They didn’t name it Bwindi Impenetrable Forest just for the heck of it either! I’m a little flattered that we were put into the “hard group” which was the Habinyanja Family because we must have looked like we were super fit! or we pissed the guy off at the reception desk and he wanted to make us suffer! Guess we will never know! Many of you might remember the time I took a 15km hike in South Africa back in September when I had my rude awakening of being out of shape because I nearly died! This was probably 10 times more difficult and 70 times more humid! BUT thanks to my cheesy 21 Day Fix and Brazil Butt Lift workout videos I made it through with flying colors and… wait for it…. NO TEARS! woohoo! So… up a mountain then over a big hill with a very narrow (very muddy!) pathway we made it to the forest! Because I am American and expected instant results I thought maybe the Gorillas would just be waiting there for us… nope! We still had 1.5 hours and about 5km to go!

About 45 minutes in!

So into the jungle we go!!

(The fancy lodge provided us with these cool walking sticks!) I also remembered to wear a hat this time after my golden monkey shower!!!

Everytime we asked the guide how much longer he kept saying “I don’t use African time and I am on English time so I am afraid I cannot determine) Where are these dang Gorillas??? Don’t they know I want to see them!!! Just then we got the good news! The Gorillas have been spotted and now it is time to go and find them! And Alas!!!

“Oh it’s those weird looking creatures again with their black boxes….”

“Look Mom! We have visitors!!!”

Patrick tried really hard to get a picture of the Silverback (The Head Honcho Male) named Makara but missed his chance when Makara charged at him making him trip and fall over! He only charged at us 3 times… no big deal… no one wet their pants or anything… we think!

(the traveling scarf is going to need a good wash soon!)

One hour with the Gorillas went by so fast! but it was a little…. if I may say… magical! But truly a once in a lifetime experience!

On the way down I happened to take a little spill myself but I am going with, “I was just trying to make my husband feel better!” 16km later, drenched in sweat and covered in dirt… it was all worth it!

The next day we sadly had to head back home but decided to make a stop at Bunyoni Lake! It was another incredibly beautiful site and reminded me how beautiful this country is outside of crowded, polluted Kampala!

After a relaxing break at the lake we got back on the road and headed back to Kampala and the greatest thing happened! For those of you who know me, nothing gets me more excited than Zebras! and there just standing on the side of the road along with some Impala were 7 of them! Day and trip officially made!!!!

With less than 2 weeks to go for the Kids Club Kampala Christmas Party and less than 3 weeks to go until we come home I just wanted to remind everyone I am still taking donations for the party, new play shoes for the kids and to provide the Kivulu classroom with a new door to stop the flooding. I have received a huge amount of support and am so grateful! Thank you! Thank You! Thank You!

Hakuna Matata to “Nightstand Cheese”

So first off my apologies I have been slacking with the blog but in my defense I feel like my everyday life in Kampala doesn’t compare much to all of our recent adventures!

So what has been going on in our neck of the woods? lots of planning! Lots of exciting things coming up the next few months and I’m getting super excited!

Saturday, was the Marine Corps Ball which I have been looking forward to for ages! My Mom and I went shopping in June for evening gowns and I feel like we might have tried on every dress in Dillards before I made a decision on 2 of them, in fact I tried on more evening gowns than I did wedding gowns! pathetic I know and it was a big change for my Mom considering 10 years ago I refused to shop more than an hour before I got bored and wanted to go home! But I found it, my beautiful sparkly evening gown and I started my countdown to when I would be able to wear it!

Thursday comes along, feeling great went out for mani/pedis with my new friend Amanda (which surprisingly I was the only one here named Amanda till she showed up, but thankfully for her she’s awesome and I don’t mind sharing my name with her! but if she would have been a horrible person we might have had a problem!) Anyway, I was ready! come on Saturday! fast forward to Saturday morning…. woke up around 7:30 so Patrick and I could work out together, but what is this weird feeling of nausea and discomfort??? is it nerves?? ok ok maybe I didn’t get enough sleep… let me lay back down and I’ll try this again in 20 minutes… So I snoozed (bad habit I know) but I didn’t even make it through my 20 minutes before I realized it wasn’t nerves and I got up and ran to the…. I’m sure you can use your imaginations and I don’t have to finish that statement and I’ll spare you all the gory details 😦 WHYYYYY?????? WHYYYYYY TODAY GOD???? I think maybe it was just something weird I ate the day before and if I lay back down it will go away…. wishful thoughts this one had and my day continued on this way for its entirety. I really didn’t think I was going to make it, I checked my temperature, no fever we can rule out Malaria. Then I started to rethink my nightstand cheese incident the day before (long story short, I bought cheese at the store and accidentally left it on my nightstand when I got home instead of putting it away before Patrick found it an hour later and had to ask me the awkward question of “Amanda, were you planning on eating this block of cheese on the night stand?”) I’ve developed some bad African habits over the years of eating and doing things I know I shouldn’t and that I would normally never do in America, I’ll work on that…. maybe… probably not lol. It was getting down to it, to the point where I was almost in tears about the thought of me not getting to wear my dress and having to put it away in the closet until next years ball, meanwhile Patrick is saying “You’ll be fine, we spent $85 on those tickets….” So, I pulled it together, purposely styled my hair to one side of my head so I could lay down until the last possible moment, packed every bit of makeup I was wearing into my purse (just in case, yes it was that bad) and got in the car to go.

This was my “pull it together Amanda” face

Although I was making toasts with soda water instead of champagne and could only eat the bread rolls (Patrick finally realized how bad off I was when I refused my ice cream desert and anyone and everyone who knows me even a little bit knows I NEVER turn down ice cream, I live for ice cream!) but all in all I got to wear my dress even though I was miserable but am hoping for a better ball day next year!

Unfortunately, it turns out it was a virus and I threw away perfectly good cheese and that makes me a little sad 😦

So what have I been busy planning??? First up is Gorilla Trekking! Third time is a charm and I feel like the chimps and golden monkeys happened because they were preparing us for this once in a lifetime experience! So, the Saturday after Thanksgiving its finally happening!

Then December 21st we are officially coming home! We are going to be dividing our time between Woodbridge and Newport News and will be around util January 8th. I was also told that if I found something and stuck with it that I could get a new tattoo for Christmas! So I found an activity, committed to it and am finally going to be rewarded for it! I am booked for January 2nd and couldn’t be more excited! (Mom, you can’t be upset about this one because I am telling you about it! Ha!) Now for other exciting news…. Some of you may recall how upset I was when our departure date was moved up a week when we were moving here and I had to sell my Lion King tickets. To the point where I asked if I could come join him a week later in Uganda.  Patrick’s response “Why are you upset about missing the Lion King? We are moving to the Lion King!” “Why am I upset??? I LOVE Broadway! I’ve been knocking shows off my list for years now and this is the one I wanted to see more than any other one ever!!!” realizing that there was no way of consoling me he bursted out with “I’ll take you to see Lion King in London” “Oh what was that? did you say Lion King and London in the same sentence???, ok thats fine we can move to Uganda now!” So of course I wasn’t going to forget that promise and so on January 11th 2015 all my Broadway dreams will come true! 

After all that excitement what else could I possibly have planned to top it off??? A girls trip to Istanbul and Athens in February!!!!! And the fact that the hotel we are staying at in Istanbul has something called an “Adventure Shower” in their spa package and I quote

“The adventure shower, is another option for our guests. You will take your shower in an atmosphere enriched by exotic sounds, lights and smells and you will be carried to the gates of heaven.”

However I have been making the joke that I take adventure showers everyday in Africa because you never know what is going to happen! Funny… but true!

Well, unfortunately that is all I have for you today but there will surely be more to come soon!

Some Kind of Rwandaful!

This is the story of my trip to Rwanda and the last leg of my 3 week vacation…. It is also the story of the first…. and hopefully last time I get peed on by a monkey. If that didn’t grab your attention and entice you to keep reading I’m not sure what will!

After my Drakensberg experience we headed back to Joburg to catch my flight early Thursday morning to Rwanda to meet up with Patrick. Being picked up at the airport was like a scene out of Rags to Riches… I was traveling with my backpack and wearing jeans and a t-shirt and the driver from the Serena gave me a double take and asked “You’re Mrs. Scoville?” “Yep, that’s me!”

Rwanda, 20 years ago was not somewhere you would have thought to go and unfortunately I feel some people still fear this beautiful country. The things that happened there 20 years ago are terrifying and heartbreaking and one of the worst genocides in World History to date. But if you visited Rwanda today, other than the memorials and personal testimonies you would see no trace of this world tragedy. It is absolutely stunning! “The Land of 1,000 Hills” is what they refer to it as, filled with palm trees and green mountains everywhere you look. What won’t you see in Rwanda?? Plastic bags! They banned them from the whole country and the result? An immaculate clean and beautiful country with hardly a bit of trash to be seen!! The people are friendly (even outside of the Serena Hotel where I was asked how my day was going at least 25 times!) But out of the 6 African countries I have now visited I have to say Rwanda is definitely in my top 2! Swaziland will always be my happy place though….

So I arrive at the Serena in Kigali to find that Patrick was still at work but because he is the best husband in the world he booked me an afternoon massage until he returned! After my last post about my 14km hike from H-E- double hockey sticks this was basically the best thing that could have ever happened to me…. ever! So after my massage and a nice lunch and a drink at the bar Patrick finally returned! We went out to dinner at the real Hotel Rwanda and had a nice quiet evening. The next morning I spent some time at the pool while Patrick finished up work and we headed off to Volcanoes National Park. Once again we dropped the ball on Gorilla permits and instead settled for Golden Monkey Trekking!

So we set off early Saturday morning and headed into the Volcanoes which actually compared to chimp trekking last month was exceptionally easy! a short 20 minute walk and there they were! Like always Patrick took some amazing photos!

Funny looking buggers aren’t they???

You mean to tell me all these funny looking creatures paid money to see us?? Where’s our cut???

So all is good and fun in the world, Patrick is off taking pictures and as usual I’m wandering off like a space cadet looking at all the monkeys running all around me until it started to rain…. but as I am looking across me at one of the rangers I realize it was not raining over her head… and then I made the mistake of looking up… and then back down in horror and then across to the ranger again who is now giggling and it hit me…. I just received a golden shower from a golden monkey… And then followed all the comments…. “It means you are lucky!” “You have been blessed by the monkeys…” yea yea yea a.k.a “Glad it peed on you and not me!”

Num Num Num 

Whatever you do…. DON’T LOOK UP!!! 

Baby monkey!! Afterwards we headed back up to our meeting point where Patrick kept going on and on about how cool the monkeys were but wished it was more of a challenge to find them blah blah blah “Amanda, whats wrong with you?”

“I don’t know… maybe you didn’t hear me when I said I just got wee’d on by a monkey!!!”

After the “extra golden” monkey experience we knew we had some time to kill for the rest of the day so we decided to go explore some caves that were advertised. Now I did have a caving experience a couple years back in in Swaziland so I imagined it being similar and for some parts it was….

So I recall the helmet with the head torch….

But I surely do not remember the need for a hair net, the mask, latex gloves and armed guards! What the heck did we get ourselves into?????

All in all it was a pretty cool experience and thankfully didn’t need to make use of the guards…

Sunday morning we woke up and while I was eating breakfast and Patrick had gone to pack the car I saw something really big fly by! Now I have started to have a weird interest in birds lately mainly because I’ve turned it into a game and I have realized there are a lot of interesting birds in this part of the world and the really nerdy part of me got really excited whenI looked out the window and this is what I saw….

The Crested Crane! Uganda’s national bird!!! So pretty!! I was running around the breakfast room frantically because I was so excited and Patrick wasn’t there and he was the one that had the camera and I thought “No one is going to believe me if I don’t have proof!!!!” and then Patrick comes walking back in to save the day! Thankfully, his nerdiness got the best of him too and he was also a little excited! What a great way to start our day!

We spent our last afternoon in Rwanda going to the Genocide Memorial which was very nicely set up but not for the weak hearted.  I do think it is a must see if you are visiting to pay tribute to lives lost back in 1994.

All in all I would say Rwanda was a wonderful place to visit and would definitely go again!!!