Hiking in Uganda

If we were in the North, we would have died! Today, we traveled to Fort Portal, a city full of rich landscape. In order to get a complete experience of the wonders present in the region, we went on a hike. Of course, I wasn't thrilled about this idea because I haven't done any rigorous activity in over a month, but I figured it's be worth it. the guide informed us that the hike would be approximately 3 hours. YIKES! But there'd be crater lakes, a waterfall, and all sorts of wonders on the way. So once again I reminded myself that it was worth it. The first part of the hike went relatively well. I forgot about how I get shin splits very easily and never stretch before a workout. So the series of hills reallygot me good, but it was all worth it once I got to the "top of the world." The view of the crater lakes was breathtaking. Our next trek was to the waterfall. On the path we saw coffee, yams, tea, bananas, and all sorts of crops being grown. The tea was planted on a VERY steep hill and I asked the guide how people managed to plant and harvest on such a steep hill. This was when he kindly informed me that the hill leading us to the waterfall was even steeper. That was when I kindly informed him that I'd be waiting in that spot until they got back.
The group, however, successfully convinced me to continue forging on and I was anxious to see the waterfall. Also, the path this far had been fairly easy and though we had already walked about 7 miles to that point, I felt comfortable and had enough energy to forge on, so I did. When we reached the hill, I immediately regretted my decision. It wasn't even a hill! It was a vertical decline. You could barely see the bottom of the ground as you took each step. The guiden sense my apprehension and had to hold my hand (literally) each step of the way as I side shuffled down (waiting for my impending doom!) Once at the bottom, the worse was clearly yet to come. Uganda is near the equator nad has very sudden and early sunsets. There is no dusk. Brightness turns dark without a warning. As soon as we reached the bottom of the "hill", darkness caught us. We could hear, but still not see the waterfall. To get there, we had to balance and maneuver tree roots. Why? Because underneath them were large gaping holes. Large enough to fit a human body. I was terrified. Somehow, I made it and was pleased that I did. The waterfall was beautiful! However, we didnt have much time to enjoy the scenery because darkness had fallen and we had a 5 mile trek back!
Getting back up that hill was hell. Luckily, one of my groupmates was very supportive and encouraged me each step of the way. We had to grab hold of the stalks of grass to balance with or we could fall backwards. The hill was so steep, even gravity was not on our side! Reaching the top seemed like an unfeatable task, but I did it! Now we had to figure out our way back in the dark, but we had two guides, who took this hike everyday, so we'd be fine right? WRONG!
Three out of the 25 in our group intelligently brought head lamps so we had to distribute that evenly through the group. The paths were very narrow so no one could walk side by side. We were in one long line. As we continued, after a couple miles, I no longer recognized the path we were taking. I knew that it was dark, but I didnt feel any of the things I had felt before. I screamed out to the front of the group and asked if the guide in the front was going the right way. One of our group members informed me that the guide has long gone and he was now our "fearless leader". I was pissed. Though he was Ugandan, he knew NOTHING about these woods, much less the region we were in! He insisted that he knew where we were and kept us treking for about another mile. Then we reached another crossroad and lo and behold, he had NO CLUE where we were! He called the guide following from the rear and he had no clue either. He thought the first guide was taking us another way. We tried to backtrack a bit, but we were lost, in a foreign land, in pitch darkness, in the woods. And if it couldnt get any better than that, it began to rain. I knew there was only one way out of this and told our "fearless leader" to find one of the local boys we had seen while walking. They'd certainly know their way out. So the 2nd guide and our "fearless leader" found some young boys who rescued us. We made it back to the camp at about 10:30pm. We started our hike at 4 and covered over 15 miles. This is why I say, if we were in the rebel bush land of the North, we would have surely been killed.