This morning we had to pack up to leave the mountains. The sun was shining brightly and all the leaves and grass glistened with moisture from the rains the day before. Unfortunately, our clothes that we had hung up overnight to dry were still heavy with moisture as well. The humidity must have been over 90%. Again, this was a rain forest!

We wondered aloud about the people who lived in the local villages. They have no electricity, and many of the houses were open air with openings for windows with no glass. How did they keep all their clothing (and everything else) from simply mildewing? The entire time we were there it was very damp. We couldn't figure it out.

In any event, there were a number of articles we couldn't pack or wear because they were still wet. This included our hiking boots. We had breakfast, then brought our stuff to the camp entrance to be loaded into the Land Cruiser. We figured up an appropriate (hopefully) amount to tip the camp staff based on some guidance Dave Stewart had given us at our briefing in Entebbe four days earlier, and put a large quantity - MANY thousands! - of Ugandan shillings in the "Tip Box." Remember, $1 was worth about 1700 shillings! We really felt like big tippers! The four of us (Les, Linda, Carol, and I) loaded our bags into the vehicle and prepared to set out.

Now, you might think we were disappointed about the very short time we were able to spend viewing the gorillas, but we really didn't feel that way. We spent two long days in their habitat, and we did experience seeing a family of them at fairly close range, even if it was only for a very short time. And we really enjoyed Uganda. This was the equatorial African jungle up close and personal, trekking through rivers and mud and mountains. It was a significant part of the "adventure" of our African trip. The country was lush and beautiful. Overall, we count it as a very positive experience!

Before Denis was quite ready to go, I jogged the roughly 200 yards up the road to take pictures of the sign for the Mantana Camp (shown in Installment 14). While I was getting the sun at the proper angle for lighting, an elderly woman from the village walked by with a younger woman beside her. They were looking at me curiously, so I smiled and said, "Good morning!" The older woman looked at the younger and started cackling. She just laughed and laughed. I don't know if it was my pink legs (I had shorts on), my accent, or what, but I evidently tickled her in some way. I walked back to the vehicle, climbed in, and we headed Northeast.

We were really NOT looking forward to a drive like the one three days before when we had been bounced around in the car so much. But today Denis was not in quite such a big hurry, and he took the bumps a little slower. He was also much more willing to stop, let us take pictures, and answer our questions; PLUS, he took us on some different roads so we would see some new scenery. We had left the camp at about 8:15, and 20 minutes later were driving past a tea plantation. Here's a picture of it.

Lots more tea, some being harvested. A very pretty, bright green crop.

Not much farther down the road we found a combination of coffee trees and bananas. These were not the crops we typically see in the United States.

The red spots are coffee "cherries." The coffee beans are the pits. Really!

The day was fairly clear with puffy "fair weather" clouds, and the hillside scenery was just beautiful. At about 9:20 AM we had Denis stop to snap a picture of a church in the background amid the cultivated fields and bananas.

The leafy looking plants you can see are all bananas. A lush country!

We asked Denis about local religious preferences, and he told us that Uganda is predominantly Christian with various denominations. The national church of Uganda is Anglican. We noted that a number of the people we came in contact with had biblical (or religious) names, such as Moses, Gabriel (one of Mantana's drivers), and Innocent (our attendant at the next Mantana tent camp). How would you like to be named Innocent?

Not long after 10:00 AM we were driving through large hills and valleys, mostly cultivated from top to bottom. Every time we would round a curve, and there were a LOT of curves, we would exclaim about how pretty the scenery was. Naturally we had to take a number of pictures, so this would be a good place to show you the countryside we were traveling through.

No tractors here. All hand-cultivated.

Everywhere you look there are cultivated fields.

Hills and valleys as far as the eye can see.

One other thing we were doing was drying our clothes. Behind the back seat of the Land Cruiser was a luggage area with a metal grill separating it from the passenger compartment so baggage could be piled all the way to the ceiling (which it was). All of the wet garments that we couldn't pack were hung on this grill, and with the windows open and the air blowing through we were able to get things a little dryer. For several hours I sat holding one or both of my boots where the air coming in the window would blow into them. From the next seat forward Linda took some video of us holding items up for the wind to blow through them and dry them. It took quite a while as the relative humidity was still high, but slowly we managed to dry most of our things.

At about 10:30 we were driving up a long valley with cultivated fields above and below us on our side, and covering the hills on the other side of the valley. The road slowly climbed along the steep slope, and ahead we could see the head of the valley with the road crossing from one side to the other. When we arrived at this spot, we realized that this natural land link between the hills was only about 50 feet wide at the top with a steep drop off on either side leading to long valleys that fell away in either direction. We called it a "saddle," and Denis stopped right in the middle of it to let us take pictures. In the first picture below, Les is showing Denis how to operate Les's camera to take our picture. Behind them is the valley on one side of the saddle. The next shows the valley on the other side of the saddle.

"Want to buy a good camera?"

Valley looking down from the "saddle."

Then, Les, Linda, Carol and I lined up at the edge of the road to let Denis take a picture of the four of us. Notice the hat I'm wearing. It's probably the last time you'll see it. I had worn it throughout the entire trip for sun protection, but… No, I'll tell that story later!

Denis took this, and kept saying, "Take about two steps back!"

Nearly an hour later (11:22 AM) we came to a toll gate. We were to cross what Denis called a "floating bridge." We never did understand exactly how it was constructed, but Denis seemed to be saying that the area sometimes flooded and the bridge would remain passable. Maybe it was stabilized to prevent it from washing away. I didn't see any way it could actually "float," but maybe…

The area outlined by yellow oil drums is the "floating bridge." It just looked like a dirt road causeway to me. Note sign at left.

The sign above, enlarged. No, I can't read it either.

Twenty minutes later we came to the town of Kabale, where we were to stop for lunch at a very pretty hotel called the White Horse Inn. It was perched on a hill above the town, and offered an excellent view of the town rooftops below and the hills in the distance. We took the picture below on the way up the hill to the hotel.

Kabale from above. Utility poles with electric wires!

The hotel had a dining table set up for us on a porch overlooking a mowed green lawn. There were birds with black and white markings that looked to me somewhat like magpies, but were identified by Denis as pied crows, walking around on the lawn. When I thought about taking a picture of them, naturally they had all flown off and I never saw another one close enough to try to snap. Never fails!

We ordered lunch from the menu. I remember having a curried chicken and rice dish that was very good, but I can't remember what anyone else ate. Carol remembers having pasta. It was very pleasant sitting in the shade of the porch dining in open air.

We had seen a Post Office in the town, so Linda asked if we could stop there to get some stamps so she could mail some postcards. We drove back down the hill to the main street, and waited while Linda went inside. While we waited we noticed two banks directly across the street that offered foreign exchange, and since we had spent almost all of our Ugandan shillings, I exchanged another $50 there. Below is a look at life on Main Street in Kabale, Uganda on a Monday afternoon.

At far left, Linda walks to the Post Office. Lots of activity in Kabale on a Monday at 1:45 PM.