Bwindi

The journey to Bwindi was very long and the roads got worse. We drove through pretty little villages with smiling faces from the children who waved at us as we carried on our journey. As we arrived, we drove through the last village which was mainly a village of crafts with lots of goods out on display. Andy tried to cover Steph's eyes, but too late! There would be some shopping at some point!

We arrived at Buhoma Community Lodge, our accommodation for our Gorilla trek. Our room was in a great location with a view straight out into Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, fantastic.

The room itself was a big Army style tent inside a wooden hut type surrounding. The bathroom was out the back. Everything was a little basic, but comfortable and with electricity and hot water, so what more do you need? Andy wasn't sure at first, mainly because the bed was on the short side and he imagined his feet sticking out the end of the bed getting attacked by mosquitoes! Turned out that he just fitted inside the bed and mosquito net.

We went up to the main building where we bumped into our Australian friend, Grant again and an English doctor. The doctor had been on the Gorilla trek that day and described his experience, it sounded brilliant and we were excited for our turn the next day.

Steph was a little worried about which family we would be visiting as everyone was classing the three families into three groups, Easy Trek, Medium Trek and Hard Trek. Easy was 1 hour there 1 hour back, Medium was 2 hours there and 2 hours back and the Hard Trek was anything between 3+ hours there and 3+ hours back.

Steph had suffered a fitness set back just before we came to Uganda. She managed to strain her Achilles tendon 2 weeks before we were due to travel and the doctors were discussing whether to put her in plaster, instead complete rest and immobilisation was agreed.

But before all this, Steph had suffered from a dislocated knee that had caused a lot of time away from exercise. Steph was reassured she would be fine.

You don't get to choose which family you want to visit, there is a chance you can swap with other people if they agree. Hamid came to check on us and we asked which family we would be visiting, he wouldn't tell us, just that it was the best family! We would find out the next day...