As I drank my fifth cup of tea for the day, I realized it was only just after noon. I had slept in til nearly 8am, a result of the one hour later sunrise in Uganda, the pouring rain and the cold. The need to use the bathroom had gotten me up in a brief break of the rain and it seemed like too much effort to crawl back in my tent. Plus, strong coffee and bottomless tea were on offer at the sitting area overlooking the lake.

The day before the sun hot shone most of the day, and we had taken advantage of the weather to lay on the dock reading and swimming. And, nearly all of my things had dried. I had spent the last two days trying to finally eradicate the bed bugs that had infested my sleeping bag and had been feasting on me for the previous two weeks. I had got them up in Kigali for the fourth time in my life, but with only a few bites and no one else experiencing them (including my bunkmate), I had been lax about washing all of my clothes and didn’t realize they had spread until a red rash along my waist indicating their continuing presence.

I had hoped paying for everything, including my sleeping bag, to be drycleaned would solved the issue, but new bites cropped up, and I knew I had to take action. The staff at Byoona Amagara guesthouse on Lake Bunyoni heated up piping hot water for me every day, as I soaked everything I owned to kill the bugs. This also lead to one of my fabric wallets running purple dye onto one of my shirts, but it seemed a small price to pay for a bug-free life. A few more days would indicate whether my efforts were successful.

In the meantime, Embla, Kersten and I made use of the library at the guesthouse, ate our way through the extensive menu, completed two jigsaw puzzles that had a combined 200 pieces missing (the gaps in the floorboards indicated where they all had gone to), and drank countless cups of tea. 

After a very muddy hike in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, Kersten (whom I had met in Kibuye) and I crossed the border into Uganda to the town of Kisoro, where Embla (whom had been on my overland tour from Capetown to Victoria Falls) had been volunteering for 5 weeks. We spent the night camping in her apartment compound before catching a shared taxi, motorbike and finally canoe to the guesthouse on Lake Bunyoni. It was a beautiful place, particularly when not raining. The rainy season might have scared most of the tourists off, as at any given time there were about 6 guests, including ourselves. Hard to believe that Uganda is one of the more popular backpacker destinations in East Africa!