Day 228

Sleeping location: Byoona Amagara, Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda
Distance (km today/total): 0 / 14455
Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 113400 
Canoe: too wayward
Day in three words: Strangely peaceful stress

 Sleep was indeed very nice, but the coronavirus situation is increasingly really not. We woke to news of lockdowns, enforced isolation and more cases appearing in East Africa. We had a Serious Chat and decided to divert towards Tanzania to avoid getting stuck in Rwanda. Sadly this will mean missing a couple of eagerly anticipated bits of Uganda, plus obviously the whole of Rwanda. We’ll just have to come back another time. news from the UK is also troubling, with the country seemingly on lockdown and life being put on hold. We are desperate not to be forced to return home to this. On top of this, Rebecca was feeling a bit ill* and my trusty flip flop, a leaving present from work, broke. This was all, if not overwhelming, certainly very whelming. I went for a walk to try and clear my head. The island was small but the path snaked in and out of the woods and revealed a surprising amount of stuff, including a small football pitch and some nice views over the lake. It was a very peaceful place and an odd one to feel so stressed in.

In the afternoon we went down to the lake for a dip (her) and a swim (me). Rebecca then dared me to swim to the other side of the bay and I accepted, forgetting that I hadn’t swam in nine months and that I couldn’t swim crawl or backstroke because of my side wound. 300m of breaststroke ensued, which was by far my largest amount of upper body exercise in a long time. Happily the effort did clear my head quite well. Then we hired a dugout canoe, made from just a hollowed out tree trunk, but it didn’t handle at all like other canoes and we spent a while aimlessly floating around in circles. Oran’s family then efficiently canoed past and he shouted a few bits of advice which allowed us to actually go where we wanted to. The main issue was that we’d been using the paddles the wrong way round.

At dinner the quiz round two was won by me, although I did get “number of different animal penises seen” wrong. I got a Rwandan beer, Primus, from the bar to celebrate the Rwanda that never was. It wasn’t great but was at least really big. As we went to bed there were storms and lots of rain. An ominous end to our relaxation. 

*Turned out she was just hungover

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