Jared and Dianne

It was dark when we arrived in Mbale but the streets were swarming with people. All sorts of makeshift shops and restaurants lined the pavement. Coming from sleepy Bujigali it was like entering Vegas. The town itself was not very big but it had a lively atmosphere for the time of night. We found a nice hotel and ate at the Indian restaurant downstairs.

The next morning we tried to get some money out from the ATM but it wasn't accepting any of our four cards. We had been successfully using the same bank throughout Uganda so we assumed that the international lines were down. With most of our remaining money we decided on a short trip out to Sipi Falls to allow the system to recover.

We caught a matatu out to the two bit town called Sipi. There were at least two cheap campsites to chose from. Each offered the most fantastic view of the gorge and the main drop. The falls are made up of three distinct sections but the last is what you come to see. A stream of water plunges 100m to the depths of the gorge below. With ocher coloured rock as the background and a gaping cave running behind the waterfall it looks like a scene from an Enid Blyton book. The gorge is a mixture of red cliffs and green pastures.

The sky was as black as soot when we were setting up our tent. We decided to delay our walk to the bottom of the falls until the next day. We organised lunch at the hotel's restaurant. I specifically asked what the quickest meal would be, the answer was categorically spaghetti. Not my ideal choice but we knew that these places could be slow to deliver. We played cards on the deck whilst we waited for the spaghetti to cook. The eccentric German come Ugandan manager sparked up a conversation with us, his mannerisms were frustrating and the topics even worse. His personality grew on us by the end of our stay but he was undeniably different. We had been waiting for two hours for our food to arrive when we saw someone walking up the road with a packet of pasta. They had only just bought the ingredients.

For something to do in the afternoon we trotted off in the opposite direction of the falls, towards a small hill that sat just behind our campsite. Along the way we passed a local communal area, by the time we had passed through we had a dozen or so children in tow. We had planned to go to the top of the hill to watch the sunset but the children led us to a series of caves pocketed into the side of the hill. The view was fine but any chance of seeing a sunset was thwarted by the arrival of rain. We explored the caves as an alternative. Like most cave systems they were far bigger than the entrance suggested. I would have loved to explore more than we did but the fading batteries in my head torch meant that spelunking would be too risky. On the way out I bumped my head on the ceiling, it send a reverberating thud around the cave. Instinctively my hand felt for the spot I had hit, a bump had already began to form and a small spot of blood transferred to my finger.

We waited for the rain to settle under the canopy of the cave. We sat on a rock looking out over the ever fading landscape. The kids all wanted to climb up and sit with us, we took a few photos their satisfaction. When it came time to leave the smaller children were stranded on the rock so I assisted them down. Jealousy amongst the bigger kids meant that I had to carry them as well. Some of the more eager ones climbed back up the rock so they could have two turns.

We had dinner by kerosene lamp in our neighboring camp. It had been burnt down a few months prior so the restaurant which was probably used to catering for tourist had become a locals' eatery.

The next day we decided to walk down to the falls unguided. We had very little cash left, actually we had exactly what we needed for entrance ($1 each), a matatu to town and the equivalent of 50 cents left over. The path was made up of slippery mud sections and even slipperier ladders. The path veered away from the falls but we assumed it would switch back. A local farmer approached us and said that we must be lost, news to us. Without asking he assumed the role of guide. We told him that we had only enough money for entry but he seemed undeterred. After negotiating on the entrance fees we continued to the base of the falls. Fog had rolled into the valley over the duration of the walk. By the time we reached the falls we couldn't really see anything. Regardless of the conditions I played around on the rocks that stood in the terminal pool. The wind carried the spray from the falls for over twenty metres, slowly soaking everything in range. It was the cause of lush vegetation but meant that I needed to move on for the well being of my camera and phone. Our guide took us back to the top and we gave him the last of our local currency.

We were forced to pay the hotel in US which resulted in a poor exchange rate but we had anticipated this from the start. We didn't have to wait long for a matatu because it was the local market day. To make things faster we caught a matatu towards the market and then a second matatu into Mbale. When it came time for the change over the driver of the second van opened the back for us to put our bags in. Wedged in between the door, the seats, boxes and bags was a passenger. He looked like a tetras piece just filling in his part of the puzzle. I thought his legs might disappear if someone completed the bottom line. I had seen many crazy things in Africa but the smile on the guys face when the door was opened kept me laughing all the way into town.

We went back to the ATM but it would still not accept our cards. The locals' cards were working so we knew that it wasn't the ATM specifically. We changed $30 odd dollars into Ugandan Shillings, saving $100 for Kenyan visas. The first thing we did was call the Commonwealth bank. The lines kept cutting us short but they were less than helpful. They couldn't fix the problem or call us back. A little desperate we decided to send ourselves a Western Union money transfer. Just as we were looking it up online the power cut out. We had no more Internet that day. Di organised a credit arrangement at the hotel and the restaurant downstairs until Monday. Due to the close of banks (it was Saturday afternoon) we couldn't even change the last of our money over.

I wasn't too concerned about wasting a day in Mbale because I could work on some online job applications but power outages all day meant that we got no more than 30 minutes on the computer. I used this precious time to try and organise a money transfer. We needed a reliable local contact number for confirmation. We couldn't provide it so we abandoned that idea until we had exhausted our other options.