Sunday 26th October

Today we left the guest house at 6.30am as the sun was rising and headed north. We arrived at Gulu at 1.30pm after a 7 hour journey with 2 toilet stops and some interesting sights along the way.

We came over 2 strategic bridges, 1 of which used to divide the North from the South in the civil war and it would not have been safe to have gone north without protection from the army. This bridge had army personnel around and Paul informed us there may well be guns in the trees too to protect this important asset. The bridge went over the River Nile and was the only road North making it such an important strategic point- beneath us were some amazing rapids and we watched as gallons of water rushed over them making patterns with the rocks. Just over this bridge we came to some baboons and the group took some photos as we waited for them to move from the middle of the road.

We had been warned the road would be bad but after the first 2.5hrs we wondered what they were on about. However it soon hit us- the road turned from a 2-way tarmac road; to a 2-way gravel road where work had started on improvements; to a 2-way earthen track with a single ribbon of pot-holed tarmac running down its centre which trucks and huge buses would come rolling down leaving us to move out of the way onto the surrounding earth.

Godfrey our driver once again did a fantastic job of getting us here safely and in 1 piece!

Today we saw being transported- a stack of approx 25 blue plastic chairs on the back of a bike. The balance of the driver was second to none!

We were supposed to be having lunch at the children’s village but after a miss communication they weren't expecting us today and so went to a hotel in the town where we had lunch in their ‘restaurant’. We then went to our guest house to rest after the long journey- several of the group slept before dinner and after dinner we had our evaluation session before chilling out together in the lounge area.