My trip to Sipi Falls started badly and got worse. Not the falls themselves but the journey. The driver was an hour late. That wouldn’t normally surprise me, it’s African Time. But I had been told 7am sharp. Not far into our journey he then overtook a lorry in front of a police roadblock. The police don’t tend to like that and pulled us over. He then didn’t have the right documentation on him so we drove back to the police station in the nearest town. Another hour and a half wasted. Then to top it off he forgot to turn at a junction, crashing into a traffic island, clipping the car that was parked there and forcing a man to jump for his life. “I was distracted by my phone ringing” he said. No kidding. Thankfully no-one was injured but a lesson to us all about using our phones whilst driving. The rest of the journey was conducted in silence whilst I watched the road for every turn he made.
By the time we got to Sipi we were 5 hours late. No time for the nice long walk from waterfall to waterfall which is the highlight of the area. Probably no bad thing as it was again very steep. But really not the point. I had paid for a day walking round Sipi Falls and ended up with a couple of hours driving.
Sipi Falls is made up of three waterfalls – 80m, 40m and 100m high. Reportedly one of the most beautiful sights in Uganda. It was lovely but I probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind to fully enjoy its beauty and peace. There is something mesmerising about watching a waterfall though. A bit like watching a fire burn, the patterns of the water just seem to pull your eyes in. My banda (a round grass-roofed bungalow) sat overlooking the top of the final waterfall and the plains below, not a bad view!
Sipi is the main coffee-growing area of Uganda and I visited a small home to see the production process. Not like any other coffee farm I had visited, this was very small scale. From a few coffee trees in the garden, I dehusked, sieved (I don’t know the word for shaking and blowing!), roasted, ground and finally brewed the beans. Quite a novelty having to actually make it instead of just boiling the kettle!
Grinding coffee
The next day we drove (incident free!) to Nyero rock paintings. Three caves sit amidst a huge boulder with Pygmy paintings from 1000-5000 years ago. Many suns, a couple of canoes, some ladders and hand prints are the more obvious designs. More subjective depictions include a long line symbolising the Pygmies’ journey from Cameroon whilst little dots show their counting system. In the final cave, a sun and a moon are painted on the low ceiling, representing a lunar eclipse. Although I must admit a circle of the sun and a circle of the moon looked indistinguishable to me.
After visiting a couple of very good petroglyph sites in the past year or so, I was worried I might be disappointed. But scrambling through the rocks to find brightly coloured primitive designs felt like a real adventure. And recent interpretation by archaeologists brings the story to life. Certainly not a let down. Even if the driving was.