The exhaustion of the eventful day took away the opportunity to listen to the voices of nature at the paradisiacal Bunyonyi Lake yesterday before falling asleep. As soon as I closed the mosquito net and turned off the light, I was already in a deep sleep, from which I woke up just after sunrise this morning. The Bunyonyi Overland Resort, where we spent the night, has an amazing breakfast, considering its remoteness, after which we were able to start the seventh section of the tour over 200 kilometers into the Mburo National Park. The serpentine road, riddled with erosion grooves, didn't give us an opportunity to warm up, so our field of drivers tore wide apart. Dan and I drove a little ahead because there weren't any turnoffs to take a wrong turn anyway. So we took the time to stop at a quarry where the backbreaking work was done in a primeval way. The region that we drove through here is also notorious for its exploitative and inhumane mining. While there was no sign of proper safety gear or tools, this one didn't live up to the most dreadful descriptions of the area's mines.
The asphalt road that started soon after gave us a few fast corners, which I used to learn as much as possible from Dan's agile methodology in the saddle. Already on the last tour in Colombia I benefited a lot from Sean's tips and well-meaning criticism and multiplied my cornering technique in just a few days. Yesterday I had then clearly "experienced" how mud and puddle passages can be mastered as controlled as possible. You choose what is believed to be the deepest point of the water hole, which means that the motorcycle and its riders get much wetter and dirtier, but the rear tire cannot slide any deeper at the deepest point of the rut and is therefore more likely to stay on track.
Now we no longer drove through mountain forests, but through bush land under a wide sky. Finally we reached the junction to Mburo National Park. The last few kilometers were another obstacle course that contained a few subtleties that we discussed in advance. The water-filled potholes ahead would be too deep to drive through. But because they completely blocked the path in some places, we literally had to drive through the bushes with our heads ducked. Loose sand fields also caused tension at times. In the end we didn't drive on a path at all, but cross-country through the bush over the grass trimmed short by longhorn cattle grazing around. The Leopard Rest Camp consisted of a two-storey wooden building with numerous artistically designed places to sit, lounge and chill out. Spread out in the bush were spacious tents, over which hut roofs had been erected. The “glamping” rooms even had their own bathroom. However, the toilet bowl, sink and shower were outdoors. Embedded in the extensive and at the same time confusing bush landscape, countless birds and insects provided safari sound. That evening, too, I was only able to listen to a few verses of the concert through the tent walls and, after another adventurous day, I fell into an exhausted sleep.