Me and the gel's, scratching....

This is one of the alpha males. Shoving his face, one of the Gelada's favorite past times. They eat the short grass and herbs, roots, and insects. They are great diggers and climbers, as they have the strongest of any primate hands.

Rafting on the Nile was a bit rediculous. There was one rapid that we had to get out on land to walk around the class 6, enter in the middle of the rapid to continue on the class 5. We had to paddle as hard as we could across the rapid to avoid "The Bad Place", a hole. We were told if we didnt make it we would flip in the bad place. Scary. we didnt flip on that one though. We went down a few waterfalls, 2-3 meters. On one I hit my head on the girls helmet in fron of me and really clocked my nose. I thought it was broken, but its straight and didnt bruise much - really lucky. Barret and I both were burnt badly but drank away the pain at night in the bar. The company we rafted with had a really nice camp site. the vast majority of the people there were in their early 20s from all over Europe. The staff of the rafting place was great. They would say things like "this is a class 5 rapid! All you can do is hold on and enjoy the ride. We may flip, we may not, who knows!" One guy smoked alot on the calm parts, chatting it up with us.

We were not able to find chimps at all when Barret was here. As much as that sucked, he got to see more of the reserve. One day we made a hike to the top of the escarpment to view the entire Semliki Basin and Lake Albert. You could see DRCongo, Semliki River, Wasa River, Mugiri, the airstrip for the lodge, our camp, Jogo Jogo swamp, Ntoroko - the fishing village on Lake Albert, and the Rwenzori Mountains. He was able to hike almost all of our trails and a long hike through the savannah with the cold springs. The last night Mark and Kristen invited us for dinner and a nights stay at the lodge. We got to stay in a safari tent on a platform overlooking the forest... not too shabby. In the morning Mark took us on a game drive and we were able to see 3 elephants, lots of buffalo, waterbuck, kob, babboons, vervets, lots of awesome birds and eagles. It was a great end to his trip here, I think.

Our car is broken, we got it to fort portal and having it looked at now. Hopefully we can get it fixed cheaply. Not having a car when you live in the middle of nowhere is more than just an inconvenience. I am in great spirits and ready to get back into the normal swing of things. While Barret was in camp it was just Alimosi, Edson, me and him. A nice change from the 12 people we had earlier. Keep the emails coming!