We began our travels in Uganda by flying into its main international gateway, Entebbe International Airport. It's located about 20 miles from the city Kampala in the lakeside town of Entebbe. It's most famous for the 1976 incident when a Lufthansa plane was hijacked by terrorists and forced to land in Entebbe. There was a long standoff which ended in a surprise raid and all the hijackers being killed.

When we landed, it was pouring rain but it only lasted a couple hours. Read the COUNTRYSIDE link to get our impressions on how different this country is from Kenya. Our tour guide, Germina, and driver, Bonny, were promptly waiting for us after we got through customs and then retrieved our luggage. This was such a relief because when we landed in Kenya, no one was there to greet us.

We loaded up our bags and headed for our hotel in Kampala. During this drive, we were given our Ugandan itinerary and we went over it in detail to make sure there was a complete understanding. We told Germina we needed to exchange money, so she first took us to her travel office which had an Exchange Bureau located in the same building. We also went into her office, and we were able to meet all the staff of the travel agency we had been dealing with. Everyone seemed very nice!

We were staying at Hotel Africana (which we don't recommend -- e-mail me for details), so we headed there next. Now Kampala is nicknamed "the green city in the sun." It's the capital city of Uganda, and it's spread out over ten hills. There are over one million people who live in Kampala which comprises 47% of Uganda's population.

Unfortunately, we saw very little of Kampala. This wasn't the plan as we were to sightsee the city at the end of our time in Uganda. But by that point we were both so extremely sick that we chose sleeping and resting in our hotel over sightseeing this great city. This really disappoints me, as it has so much to offer!

After checking in, we left for Jinja which is located about 45 miles east from Kampala (about one hour). We stopped first at the Namugongo Martyr's Shrine since it's on the way. After sightseeing here, we were starving so we drove on to Jinja where we had a superb buffet lunch with Germina at the Jinja Nile Resort. This is a very nice hotel located on the Nile River, and I would love to stay here if the opportunity ever came up! Check out their web site at: Jinja Nile Resort.

We then did the rest of our sightseeing in and around Jinja. Make sure to check out the four links under JINJA to see what all we toured. The next day we drove to Queen Elizabeth Park with just Bonny, and you can look at all the things we did with the rest of our time in Uganda under the UGANDA links above.


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