8-12 October: Uganda and home.

The mission in Uganda was another training course and Keith and I had quite a high workload but the participants were pretty animated which made the week much more fun, and hopefully a better learning experience. The hotel where we worked was only a short distance away from the  place where we stayed, but enough just to give us all a break in the evenings.  Although the food was OK in the Imperial Botanical Gardens K and I took to walking up the road a few hundred metres several evenings to a chinese restaurant on the same road.  The sign at the entrance was intriguing....

...........although the food was excellent and the beer was cheap we never did find out what the movies were!



Peter with a Nile Special...



The high point of each day was our beer overlooking the shores of  Lake Victoria in the hotel gardens as I mentioned. We tried several brands of local beer and they were all very cold and acceptable..



..Moonberg was another drop we tried....



............and Tusker (from Kenya) also went down well!



The gardens also provided some interesting wildlife ...

 A blue kingfisher in full song

A glossy ibis

A brown heron on a nest

A pied kingfisher

Plenty of monkeys too!


...............................and Maribou Storks everywhere.....................

We also went to Kampala, the capital, for a visit as it was only  about 40 Km away. The traffic in the city was horrendous and these poictures barely tell the tale of our  slow progress..40 minutes to do less than 1 km at one point.



But despite the chaos and the noise we did see these 3 Maribou storks nesting in a very small tree in the centre of the road!

Quite amazing.....there are three nests and three storks in this tree!

The last evening we had a bit of a party at the hotel and I was danced and sung onto the car for my trip to the airport. The flights were with Brussels Airlines and the A330 and then an A321 were pretty uneventful. The flight was early out of Entebbe and witha very quick stop in Nairobi we arrived in Brussels early ona cold, dark rainy morning. Sadly the connectionw as not greta and I had four hours to wait (and buy chocolates for the office).  Then a good flight with a nice breakfast back to Vienna arriving at lunchtime on a cool but dry day.Another mission completed. Hoppefully the last for the year.

October 28-30: Lima, Peru

The days of 28 and 29 were spent working on the training seminar with the local participants. I took to eating at the ASwiss restauarant just down the road frm the hotel as it was a good place to sit  and watch the world whilst sipping a pisco sour and eating good fod.
The traffic in Lima is pretty awful and ther are lots of minibusees of varying states of epair - mostly battered and  rather dodgy in appearance- but ther is also a great metro bus service.
On the expresssway through town the centre two lanes are dediciated to special buses which are like a wheeled version of an underground train:

The video shows the bus pulling away from one of the stations which are located in the centre of the road and linked to the  street by lifts stairs and ramps etc. All very neat and looks good when the three lanes each way are grd locked in the rush hours. The buses just keep running.

Saturday morning I went for a walk to the Inca markets  but was not moved to buy anything after all.  The

weather was cool and cloudy but by 1130 a sea fog was drifting in  and by 1230 it was cool and damp - and then suddenly the sun appeared at  1330 to give a sunny aternoon.

I had moved hotels to the San Antonio as the other place was full and they would not let me stay on. The new place was where we had run a course in 2008 so I knew the area OK but we had stayed in the sister hotel across the road whilst using the seminar room here. Turns out all the rooms are suites and quite impressive with a mega spa bath dominating the living area.....

The end of the stay drew close aqnd after another lunch at the "pizza & pub alley"  we set off for the sirport and ours eparate flights home. Mine was a LAN flight to Madrid and then Iberia to Vienna LAN was OK but  an older B767  and a bit tired - the crew too. Iberia provided an Airbus and the crew were in top form. Saturday evening and the end to anothe mission came as we landed on time in Vienna.

7 November: The source of the Nile

The hotel proved to be OK, although a slight musty smell does seem to hang in the air at times and the air-conditioner in my room is  a bit noisy.
I met up with my mate Keith as expected over breakfast where we made a plan to hire a driver and car for the trip to Jinja to see the source of the River Nile. I was very keen  to see the  source of the river that I knew from living at the other end when I was in Egypt  over 30 years ago.   The other plan was to find Keith a fishing  guide. He is a big fisherperson and the idea of catching a Nile Perch in Lake Victoria  was just too good to be true for a real Territory barramundi man!  Another breakfaster turned out to know another guest who had done just that so before too long the telephone numbers had been obtained from the Russian who had been fishing the day before and Keith was on his way to setting up a deal. Sadly it looks like it will be Friday afternoon and I shall not be able to go as my flight home will depart too early that evening to allow a good afternoon's fishing.

The drive to Jinja was with a local tour guide called Aggrey who had a smart new Toyota with air-con and drove with just the right amount of local knowledge and agression for us to make progress in the horrendous traffic without our being white knuckled all the way, we felt safe all the way. The drive included skirting around Kampala in the suburbs and the traffic was pretty bad. It seems Sunday is when parents visit their kids in boarding schools for picnic lunches etc and so there were lots of cars around as trucks and mini-buses everywhere.

A few of the very many minibuses everywhere we went



Tea to the left, sugar to the right - all we need is a cow for the milk!





The bird gallery at the source of the Nile



The downstream view of the White Nile from the riverside at Jinja

An egret on take-off

Keith witha Nile beer in front of the Nile River

Picnic day at a high school on Sunday

Me with my Nile beer and Lake Victoria behind me - hotel gardens

A Pied Hornbill at sunset in the hotel gardens 

The drive went through lots of agricultural land with acres of tea plantations and sugar cane as well as some rain forest.

 Eventually we saw the lake again and drove over the Owen Stanley hydroelectric dam to reach Jinja and the road down to the official source of the Nile. We parked up and walked to the monument and  then down the the water's edge to see the start of Africa's longest river.

The monument at the source of the Nile

There were plenty of birds to watch with pelicans, egrets, cormorants, and kingfishers on the water side and even Maribou Storks circling lazily overhead. Also there were plenty of souvenir stalls....

Keith negotiating the alley of souvenir stalls

 After not buying T shirts or taking a boast ride we sat down to a lunch at the water side drinking Nile Special Beer (what else) and Keith had fish and chips with tilapia the local major fish.  Then it was time for the drive back, the traffic had got worse which seemed impossible but it took 3 hours to get back to Entebbe. Again we saw a lot of interesting birds including more Maribou Storks and even a few Black Kites just the same as you see in Darwin!  We met up with the counterpart to sort out some work details and then had a sunset beer (Nile again) watching the monkeys and hornbills in the hotel garden as we stared out across Lake Victoria and discussed our work programme for the next 5 days.  There are many interesting birds around but I was not having a lot of luck with my camera. Hopefully I will do better tomorrow.

Traffic on the road to Jinja

Lorry park - Uganda style

6 November: Uganda calling

Another 0530 taxi call and I was off to Africa for the last time this year and what should hopefully the last business trip before Christmas. This time it was an Austrian Airbus 319 to Brussels and then on to Entebbe with SN Brussels airlines. The mission is another one week training course in Uganda. My first time to that country and "another pin in the map".
The flights were fine  and included a short stop in Kigali, Ruaanda to re-fuel and drop off passengers, a "tech stop" style  which was very quick and we did not get off the plane.  The short hop of 350km to Entebbe followed and although I arrived at 2300 local in Entebbe the visa purchase on arrival was very smooth and the hotel car was there to take me to the Imperial Botanical Beach Resort Hotel on the shores of Lake Victoria.

The hotel is vast and an old grand style-famous for the fact that the Clinton's stayed here at some time in the past . The gardens are lush and have a population of monkeys and hornbills amongst other wildlife.

There must be other wildlife too as we saw armed guards arriving evry evening at sunset to patrol the grounds!

The colleague assisting me for this training event had already arrived from Australia but at 0100 I decided we would leave the reunion until breakfast !

1 and 2 November: London airport again

Another 0530 start and I was on my way to UK to see family and friends for a brief break bewteen trips. This time it was an Austrian airbus flight to London Heathrow Terminal 1.  An early morning with breakfast in the lounge in Vienna before getting into the  A320 to make the trip. By 0930 I was out of the airport and in my Hertz car and away to see my father and my sister and her husband.
It was a very pleasant drive with not too much traffic after the M25 had been negotiated- that is always a gamble. The trip went well and Daddy was in good form fora 96 year old. AFter a snack lunch  woith him I headed off to my hotel for the night .
The next day an early start saw me back at my sister's place to help Daddy do the crosswords in The Times and The Daily Telegraph ( I do the writing he does the answers!) before heading off  back to return the car and meet Clare for lunch. A good leisurely pub lunch and then off  to terminal 1 for the last flight back to Vienna. The car was waiting as this flight means  that you run the risk of missing the last traini if there are any delays. To my amazement we found ourselves on the autobahn at 2400 hors ina 3 lane solid grid lock; road works menat that for 2-3 Km only one lane was open and it was astounding to see how much traffic was being held up. Still I got back to the flat OK and another trip was over - great to see Daddy, Al, Tim and Clare ( and do a bit of shopping at Tescos)

30-31 October: Homeward bound

Time to go home again. So, Saturday dawned coolish but hright and I had a leisurely breakfast  before taking a walk to the Inca markets area - now about a 15minute stroll away from  where I had moved to at the San Antonio. Plenty of shops but not really a great range of goods apart from  llama  or alpaca wool scarves, cardigans etc and silverware. I didn;t do a lot of shopping after all and made my way back to the hotel as the sea mist had crept in and the temperature fell markedly. Back at the hotel I met up with another consultant and we headed off to the "pizza and  pub alley" to grab lunch. By the time we had finished  the meal and the  football game  had ended  it was time to get back to the hotel for the airport taxi .
Lima traffic was the usual mayhem but we found ourselves back at the airport and had no problems  getting checked in.  Soon I was in the lounge with a Bloody Mary in hand and  recent newspapers to read. Then it was of top the plane and a good overnight flight to Europe. LAN service on the  Boeing 767 was OK but the plane was very old with new seats! The entertainment system was not very reliable but  I tried to sleep. The transfer in Madrid was painless  and the Iberia Airbus for Vienna left on time; and by  about 6 pm local  time I was back in Vienna , another mission completed.