Mutatu ablaze?! Must be the Mt. Sabinyo Trip

Holy holy, I just had an awesome trip down to the southwest of Uganda! We climbed Mt Sabinyo which is around 12,000 something ft which took us about 11 hours. I was the first girl to get to the top and lead everyone back home. After I mentally blocked the heights and the threats of dying I loved it!

But I have a car ride that almost topped a trip in Honduras when I was positive we were going to die! We were riding 14 deep in a mutatu (a Japanese taxi) down a mud mountain road... Which are poorly constructed and super muddy when raining, which it had the day before and that morning. Well our mutatu had really shitty breaks to start with, we had to stop in a town prior to the mountain road to get them fixed. (Should have been our first warning, but we proceeded). So the dudebra was riding the breaks the whole way down the mountain and fish-tailing, this is where I started to hyperventilate again (the edge was straight down the cliff), then all of sudden our car started to smoke. We had to stop on the side of the mountain and jump out because our mutatu had caught on fire! AWESOME! I seriously have the worst luck with transport here! I have jinxed every trip I ever take. But part of what makes Uganda the most interesting country! It is all good laughs now!

So we finally made it safely down the mountain and to the hostile that hosts different hiking trips up the old volcano that sits on three borders (Southwest Uganda, Northern Rwanda and Eastern Congo.) We of course were late the first night, so we mostly just ate dinner and went to bed to get up at 6 the next morning to start our hike.

We had to a guide and two guards with massive guns to travel with us the mountain. The guns were for any random animal that might come and charge us because we were really close to the Mgahinga National Park of gorillas. This mountain is one of three that is near Kisoro in Southwest Uganda. We decided to climb the second highest mountain peak, Sabinyo,  because it was the most challenging and exciting of the hikes. This particular mountain had 3-4 (depending on how you look at it) peaks.

That morning it started to rain and was overcast the rest of the day. (All the pictures were on the side or top of the mountain, I promise!) It made the day chilly but with all that exercise it was nice. We had a group of 19 and everyone but 4 made it to the highest of the peaks of Mt. Sabinyo. I only cried on the first two peaks and by the third peak I had enough adrenaline running that I was able to do the most difficult peak with no problem. It was great fun at the top, but with being so overcast it was a little bummer that we couldn’t visually see the land of all three countries that surrounded us. It started to rain on the hike down which made it a long and difficult descent but eventually we made it back cold and wet.

A lot of us look back and get excited that we actually did the hike due to the heights and the rickety ladders that we had to climb. My quote was that I didn’t conquer my fear of heights, I just misguided them for the time being to accomplish the hike! The theme song going through my head the whole time was one by the Beatles, “With a little help of my friends” because I really accomplished all of that with the help of my friends!

I hope you enjoy the snaps!

Making Memory Moments! 

Bamboo Forest (Virgin Forest)

Atop of Peak 1

Girls atop the 2nd Peak!

Made it to the last and tallest peak!

After the trip we headed back to Kampala for our In Service Training, but first stopped at Josh's for some good dinner, guitar and a night's rest. But before we got there we had some more awesome experiences with public transport!

Fajitas! Dericious!