Hello World!!!!
So its time for an update. Last monday I went to a private island on the river nile called the hairy lemon, to relax for a couple of days and surf the nice river wave called Nile Special. I really like that place, a day consists of waking up at around 9, having a breakfast with lots of fresh fruit, going kayaking on the wave for around 3 hours, back for lunch then reading for a while, back to the wave, finishing the day surfing as the sun sets, maybe some poker after dinner then bed by 10 for a nice peaceful sleep. The Nile Special Wave is about 8ft high, and constantly breaking, so if you can manage it, you could stay surfing forever. This wave is different to anything I have surfed before because you have to tow on with a rope. On Tuesday when I was trying to get on the wave I capsized and got caught underwater in the main current with the rope tight around my chest. The rope was too tight to release so I decided to take a swim to free myself. Then while I was swimming I suddenly got pulled deep underwater by the current. I went quite deep for quite a while. Those trying to rescue me said I was gone for about 10 seconds before I surfaced again. I have never had a swim like that before and hope not to again, but I was fine once I got back to shore and was back on the rope the next day.
In other news im back at Bujagali for a couple of days. I got some money stolen on Friday night but everything is now sorted and lessons learned. Lots more pictures are now up on my picasa account: http://picasaweb.google.com/sendittofinn/NewsAndPicsFromMyTravels?authkey=AhNv0uweUcc#

Because of technical difficulties, my photos are currently on: http://picasaweb.google.com/sendittofinn/NewsAndPicsFromMyTravels?authkey=AhNv0uweUcc#

This week was pretty cool. I finished up with softpower on saturday after helping with a fundraising pantomine that they were running in Jinja. On wednesday I got the opportunity to go rafting and although I got pretty badly burned it was well worth it. Elias and Henry were guiding and I was the extra weight at the front. It feels different to raft the rapids than to kayak them. We also did Overtime and The Bad Place which are 2 rapids I hadnt yet done. Theres plenty of videos on youtube to give you an idea of why they call it the bad place.

Have a look at the pictures, ill try to get one of silverback the next time i run it.

A Brief Update

No photos yet as camera is dead :( Everything is pretty cool here. The river is amazing, I ran bujagali a couple of times and have done the silverback run 3 times. Silverback is huge and great fun. No swims so far and I dont plan on swimming. I got a beating in a hole in a rapid called 50/50 this morning but it ended up fine. A superhole session tomorrow should be the perfect hangover cure to the reggae festival were going to go to tonight in Jinja town. I visited some schools during the week and we had the schools festival yesterday with a couple of hundred kids which was cool. Next week I hope to get stuck in with some projects. Ill update again soon, hopefully with photos.

I've arrived

I got to my campsite at 2am and pitched my tent in the dark. The sounds I could hear were a thumping of music which never seemed to end, lots of different types of wildlife and a distant humming of the river, which by the way is HUGE!!!!
I hope to get paddling soon and see what the Nile is like.
Not much to do but get some food and a beer and relax.
I should get some photos up at some point soon.

Planning

24th of August
Almost 3 months of working in Microsoft and the summer feels like its drawing to an end. Its getting closer to the time I had planned to leave. This summer feels like it has passed so quickly.
And what a summer it was :) Record levels of rainfall and flash floods nationwide.
While most people may complain about the rain, it did mean that I got to get some kayaking done. So far over the summer I have kayaking on the Annamoe in nice levels, Clifden hole and quite a lot recently at Sluice on the Liffey.



Sluice at normal levels; for the past 2 weeks its been much bigger and faster. While I cant really do much on it Im happy to be able to survive surfing on it. Its a tricky feature to learn on and isnt very forgiving. 


 
After the heavy rainfall, Sluice was completely washed out, but the weir on the right made a nice wave.

 

A large, brown river liffey Improvised roof rack

Bank holiday trip to Clifden