It’s 6500 km long, it’s full of Crocs and it’s mad enough to go through Sudan; from two directions technically. It’s also bristling with some significant white water rapids. I’m talking about the big daddy of rivers, the Nile. It “rises”, though given the number of serious drops that fuel the rapids I’d say “falls” is a more appropriate term, right here in Jinja, Uganda.

As you know, I’m as smart as a sausage salesman at the wailing wall and Heide is, and always has been, a water baby (though to the best of my knowledge is wasn’t actually born in water, lets face it she’s from Seattle, not one of your more “quirky” places like, say, California) consequently such a proposition as the Nile and an inflatable raft is utterly irresistible. We made it to Jinja from Kampala without incident from bandits (the drivers on the way out clearly weren’t Ugandan) and signed up for a day messing about on the water. After an in depth safety and instruction session regarding the river and rafting, which included such gems as: “this is a paddle, not an oar. An “oar” is someone who hangs around on street corners after dark” and “you should wear one of these life jackets because it says “Nile River Explorers” on it. This way if you should get swept away and washed up somewhere you don’t know the locals will be able to get you home” we were ready to raft. Or get violently tossed about and very wet anyway.

From its very source we rafted the Nile. Well, ok, not actually the whole thing but the first 30 km anyway. It was fabulous fun. We shared a raft with Christian, a student from Berlin who was more worried about his ciggies getting wet than actually being washed away himself and Matt, a fellah from Springfield, Missouri (Brits – I hate to disappoint but the US has about 300 different Springfields so I am unable to confirm that this is the one The Simpsons call home) who had just spent a couple of years in Benin with the Peace Corps. We were all under the watchful eye and powerful paddling shoulders of Paulo Bibia our guide, who is a good enough white water kayaker to have represented Uganda at the World Championships. The 30 km we rafted covers 17 navigable rapids (and a few that are considered un-navigable / certain suicide) which range in strength from: “gosh, you go through there fast” to “I’m more likely to fly to the moon than get past this in one piece”.

Naturally, as a bunch of tourists, we are without doubt dumber than a sack full of mute lemmings at the top of a cliff and so were deeply eager to “enjoy” a wipe out or two. Or three. Or more. Poor old Paulo; he turns up for work every day to help people raft the Nile and what does he get? A collection of hungover backpackers all desperately keen to fall from the perfectly buoyant vessel he’s provided. Still it’s all about the battering, the crashing through waves and the adrenaline. That’s what puts bums on inflatable seats! Our team, small as it was, happened to coalesce in to the finest river borne crew since Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsett split up .Ok, that’s a slight, well no, bloody huge exaggeration. We had worse timing than a cheap Taiwanese watch, less rhythm than 80’s “supergroup” Kajagoogoo (who’s now humming “Too Shy”?) and the lungs of our “stroke man”, Christian, were aching for a fresh fill of smoke so badly that he was trying to toke on the paddle. Well he couldn’t get his Super Safari Cigarettes wet! In short, we were about as likely to go in a straight line as a lush who has just stepped off a fairground ride.

Still, by some miracle, while all around us were being flipped like pancakes and tossed like salads we actually rode the first eleven sets of rapids. Damn! Then came “Retrospect” (by law, set by the Adrenaline Junkies Association, all rapids must have a marketable or memorable name) here we were collectively “snotted”. We were spewed from the raft like corn from the guts of a projectile vomiter. It was superb! We went under, we bobbed back up, we went under again. We were turned this way and that like some crazy aquatic waltz meeting a drunken “Hokey Cokey” (Hokey-Pokey for the US readers) dance. Breathing was a particularly pressing issue; though not as pressing as the vast volumes of churning, foaming, eddying water that held us with a vice like grip as it propelled us, subsurface, down the river. By the time the rapid petered out enough to allow us to gasp for air, and maybe, just maybe, even catch a glimpse of the life raft we were all utterly exhilarated and just as thoroughly exhausted. Clambering back in to the raft was bloody hard work! Naturally we just had to do that again!

Paulo just knowingly acknowledged that yes, sometimes tumbles can be fun and yes, we’d probably all be forced to bail out again at some point before we’d finished. This point came just a few rapids later at (and you just can’t say the name to this rapid without first adopting a Hollywood movie preview voice over cadence) “The Bad Place”. Getting to “The Bad Place” was bad enough; it was through driving wind (head wind, obviously!) and a piercing downpour but when we made it, well it was all well worthwhile. They take you out of the raft and up a hill so that you can gawp in awe at the stretch of rapids that will, in a few moments hence, chew you up and spit you out as swiftly as an 8 year old red neck kid with his first mouthful of “Red Man” It’s an awesome sight. A hundred odd metres of hubble, bubble, toil and very big trouble. Really, it’s quite gorgeous. Lets doooooooo – it!

At the first, absolutely huge, wall of water Paulo took his leave. He exited backwards, side wards, upside down and all in all, exceptionally gracefully. However we now had a case of the skipper deserting a not yet sinking ship. This bodes ill. Very, very ill. Moments later we saw the wisdom in Paulo’s escape. It came in the form of a monumental drop, followed by a spin cycle more vicious than the bugger that ruined our passports back in Bangkok (See: June 21, 2004) and then, oh wow, a wave, the likes of which haven’t been seen since Noah was a shipwright. It loomed over us as dark and deadly as a guillotine to a royal French neck. Fan-Bloody-Tastic! Endgame. The river won. Easily. I was pulled under and lost contact with everything. Except my paddle. Which, quite frankly, I had as much desire for as I did for an “oar”! So I hurled the bloody thing away and swam for my life. I knew I’d be ok; I’m bullet proof, I’m indestructible, I’ll only bite it in a moment of utter stupidity like walking through the Bronx showing the world my bared ass with the words “Yankees Suck!” tattooed across it (this actually sounds like quite a fun adventure really) but I was worried about Heide. I’d completely lost sight of her and despite her great swimming strengths I honestly didn’t know if she was ok. This was bad. Even minutes later, after I’d swum ashore, I couldn’t see her. Eventually she reappeared, in the emergency boat! She had apparently been spotted and finally caught up with just south of Khartoum. The relief was great. So was the subsequent BBQ and beer fest! It really was a fantastic day on and indeed, under, the water!

But that's not all, while we were in Jinja we also had the opportunity to spend a day volunteering our time with an organization called Soft Power Education. With a group of other travelers, we spent a day on a construction site helping to build a school for around 1,000 rural Ugandan kids who currently are attending school in a mud brick "building" that is falling apart, has no running water or latrines of any kind. Although it was just one day of labor and a $40 cash donation, we came away from the experience feeling that it was one of the most rewarding experiences of our trip to date, and we also knew more than we ever thought we'd learn about cross beam construction and brick moving!