"Somewhere between 10 minutes and an hour..."

Hello everyone! Sorry for being incommunicado - it turns out there really aren't many ways to get on a computer in Kenya! We have been having a great time - Africa is amazing! We are a group of 12 - 3 from Germany, 4 from Spain, one from Ireland, one from S.Africa and another American (plus the two of us). Our guides - Timo (our fearless driver) and Debs- have been taking great care of all of us. We've gotten used to camping, but I don't know that I'll ever "get used to" hearing the sounds of hippos, monkeys, and other wild animals around the tent while I sleep! We passed into Uganda yesterday and arrived in the capital today. A beer is about a dollar and a taxi ride to town about the same. The city of Kampala is quite advanced in relation to everywhere else we've been, although crazy just the same. We've seen some wildlife earlier this week - we did a walking safari in Naivasha (Kenya) and got within 5 meters of many giraffe, zebras, gazelle, baboons and other assorted monkeys, and Africa's smallest and fastest antelope, the Dik Dik. Wednesday we did an early morning game drive (up at 5am!) in Nakuru National Park (also in Kenya) and saw some White Rhino, Waterbuck, and many other animals in addition to the above. After narrowly escaping an attack by an angry mama baboon, we headed back to the campsite and hit the road for Uganda. Driving the 8 hours to Kampala yesterday was almost as adventurous! The roads are very rough, if they even exist and border crossing was CRAZY! The money changers (hundreds of them) come right up to the windows of the truck, waving money at you, everyone screaming. Counterfeiting US money is very common here, so there are some specific rules for changing money. NEVER give your bill first. You confirm the rate of exchange (about 1800 Ugandan schillings to $1), tell them how much you want and then they give you the money and you count, use a calculator and count again, and then count a third time. When you are satisfied, you pass your money out the window. No matter what, you never take the bill back, because if you do, they've already changed it for a counterfeit US bill from their pocket. There are a lot of tricks! Tomorrow we cross over the equator into the southern hemisphere and move a little closer to Kisoro, which is where we'll see the mountain gorillas early next week. After staying in Kisoro for 2 nights, we'll come back this way and stop in Jinja for two days. We'll raft the Nile and spend another day touring the town on some quads. Once we get back to Nairobi (~9/25, I think), we'll get a new truck, new guides and only 4 of us on the current tour will continue on to Tanzania. We'll probably pick up some new travellers as well. Our campsites have all been fantastic so far (a little sketchy in the bathrooms and showers, but that's Africa) and the cooking is superb! No danger of starving out here. I'll leave you with a great quote by Timo, our driver, that really summarizes the way of life and the speed with which things move. When someone on our truck asked how much longer until we arrived at the next town, Timo said, "Somewhere between ten minutes and an hour." We have slowed down our pace and are enjoying this fabulous continent! Miss you all.