Rafting on the Nile River

Yesterday Esi, Sara and I all went on an all-day white water rafting trip on the Nile River, near Jinja, Uganda. Though I have been rafting many many times on rivers in Colorado, this experience was hands down the most intense and fun trip I've ever done. The sheer amount of water flowing through the Nile is daunting and there are actually class VI rapids (though we only went through class V). We met up with some medical students from other medical schools in the U.S. and shared a raft with them, which was fun. For the first three rapids all or most of us fell out of the boat just because the rapids were so huge and crazy. On the first dump one guy got a pretty deep gash in his shin on a rock, but I guess if that's going to happen it's better to happen in a boat full of fourth year medical students. So we all patched him up as best we could.

For the fourth rapid the guide neglected to tell us there was a 10 foot drop down a waterfall and we went down it backwards! Miraculously, none of us fell out. Another thing I really loved is that there are long, wide swaths of river in between the rapids, so we had time to jump in and swim. We didn't see any crocodiles or hippos and hoped and prayed that we don't get schistosomiasis.

The guides were amazing and most of them are Ugandan - it's great that the company we went with employs locals. There were five safety kayakers and they were sooooo good. If someone fell out they were there in like 5 seconds. After we finished they transported us to their camp with bandas that is set up on a cliff overlooking the Nile, which was gorgeous.

I've posted some pictures on Facebook of my trip thus far and even if you don't have a Facebook profile you should still be able to view them. Just go to www.facebook.com and type my name into the search box. Let me know if you have troubles and I'll see what I can do about posting them elsewhere.