PURE JEST FOR LIFE: Christmas at Hairy Lemon

After New Zealand in `99 this was my second hot Christmas without snow. Always a hard decision what to do in the winter-holiday, as I love skiing but paddling in winter with warm air temperature and as now in Uganda even really warm water is just fantastic as well. Such a good feeling to paddle with as little kit on your body as possible. Often it is so warm, that you just wear your PFD, spray-skirt and a boarder-shorts. This is a good cue, as you might notice at the pictures that I sometimes have got on some long sleeve shirt and this is just to give your skin a break from the intense sun exposure on the water all the time. I experienced that I got the most sun and felt it on the skin the day after I paddled Day2 section. Probably caused on the various flat water stretches on that section. So after the white water sections I always wore long sleeve on Nile-Special for 1-2 days to give my skin some recovery time.
Back to Christmas at the Hairy Lemon. It all started with Pete, Vito and Lee (all staff at the lemon at that time) giving out a big basket full of Christmas decoration. After that the girls got all exited and spread the Christmas decoration to get in the right Christmas mood. I have to admit I really got a hard time feeling like Christmas. Nevertheless Jan and me came up with the Idea of decorating an old long boat ,which normally is stuck to the roof of the eating area, as our Christmas tree substitute. Food wise Christmas was the highlight of the stay at the lemon with a special breakfast and the biggest variation of dishes during lunch and dinner we had there.
Before lunch it was time for a kind of secret Santa. The difference was just that the staff had bought all kind of stuff, wrapped it up in Christmas paper and then handed out the parcels to each guest. You could be lucky to get an aerosol of artificial snow, body hygiene products, Barbie dolls... but the real treasures were Pringels, chocolate and anything special to eat what you otherwise have difficulties to get hands on on a remote island ;-)