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It was only a few years ago that the thought of doing an independent trip for months at a time through sub-Saharan Africa filled me with fear. I think back then it was the fear of the unknown; sub-Sahara Africa was just a place I saw on the news showing wars, famines and droughts. I could not relate to this seemingly strange world. That all changed in 2000 when I embarked on my trip through West Africa and saw the real Africa for the first time, instead of the image portrayed by the western media. Today was Sunday 20 January and I found myself sitting at the railway station waiting for a train to take me to London and Heathrow airport. The wind howled along the platform and the rain lashed down as I waited. I had booked myself on a one-way ticket to Entebbe in Uganda from where I planned to spend the next few months travelling south to Cape Town in South Africa. I was in an anxious mood, I always am before the start of any trip; I reflected on the comforts and easy routine I was leaving behind and the adventures and challenges I was soon to encounter.
I was booked on an Emirates flight that evening which departed Heathrow at 20.00. First stop was in Dubai where we landed just as the sun began to rise over the horizon. Here I changed aircraft for the next leg of the journey taking me to Nairobi and finally Entebbe where I arrived at 14.30 local time on Monday afternoon. Entebbe airport is very small but has an infamous reputation after the hijack of a Lufthansa aircraft in 1976 by Palestinian and German terrorists. After negotiations all non-Israeli hostages were released. In response, and with the help of the German and Kenyan authorities, the Israeli's launched a surprise raid by landing paratroopers at the airport and in a clinical operation, shot dead all the hijackers and freed the remaining hostages.
My arrival was not so dramatic; there was only one other aircraft on the tarmac, a Kenyan Airways 737. My backpack was literally the last one to come out onto the luggage carousel. As it appeared through the hatch the conveyor belt ground to a halt. I really thought that this time my bag had been left on the tarmac at Heathrow or had caught a more exotic flight from Dubai. I was almost the last one to leave the airport, which worked out in my favour, as the remaining taxi drivers knew that some of them would be going home without a fare. This increased my bargaining power and I managed to negotiate a fare of US$20 to the Red Chilli Hideaway in the Bugolobi district of Kampala.
As soon as we left the airport on this warm, hazy afternoon, the anxious feelings that had plagued me for the few days leading up to this trip evaporated. I was overjoyed to be back on this continent and hadn't realised how much I had missed it over the thirteen months since my return from Accra, Ghana in December 2000. The first thing to catch my eye as we drove out of the airport were two maribou storks perched on an archway over the road leading out of the car park. They were huge, ugly birds and at first I thought they were statues until one of them flew away. It took just over an hour to cover the 47 km from Entebbe to the Red Chilli Hideaway in Kampala. A lot of this time was taken up in a traffic jam trying to get through the centre of Kampala; there doesn't appear to be any ring road around the city. I finally arrived and checked into a dormitory room at 16.30, the end of a long journey.
Kampala is built over seven hills at a height of approximately 1,300m. The weather during my stay was very agreeable, despite being almost on the equator, thanks to the altitude of the city. Every thing is very green, with trees covering the suburbs and around the smarter areas of downtown. I didn't do much on my first day in the city; I needed time to recover from my journey to the heart of Africa and to acclimatise to the sudden warm weather I found myself in. The day time temperatures reached about 24'c and the sunshine was hazy, with the odd thunderstorm crashing about the city by the evening. The city is no major cultural centre and there is not much for a tourist to do or see; there is very little tourist infrastructure here and very little tourists. Kampala is very much a city to walk about in, to see the different sights and sounds of everyday African life; and to meet the people who are always friendly and helpful. There is very little hassle associated with the city and I always felt safe and secure as I walked about.
The transport though, is chaotic; but it functions once you begin to work out what is going on. The traffic jams coming into the city from the suburbs can often be bad; sometimes I thought it would be quicker to walk. From the Red Chilli Hideaway I took a matatu (a minibus) to the new taxi park, down the hill from the main street through the city, Kampala Road. This area of town is where all the transport hubs are, both the new and old taxi park and the bus park, which are spread around the Nakivubo stadium. The streets around these parks are just a mass of people, vehicles and traders all competing for the same space of road. I took a matatu from the old park to Entebbe to visit the Botanical Gardens, one of the few tourist attractions in the vicinity. Entebbe is fairly small and quiet when compared to its larger neighbour, Kampala up the road. I didn't have a map of the town or any directions on how to find the gardens; all I knew was that they were down by the lakeshore. I took a motorbike taxi, known here as a boda boda, who obviously didn't know where the gates of the gardens were, as he dropped me off at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel. I asked directions from the hotel staff and finally after asking a few more locals on the way found the gate with a lady sitting on a grass verge selling tickets.
The gardens were laid out in 1898 by the first curator A Whyte and stretch along the shores of Lake Victoria. The gardens are divided up into different sections, including the rainforest section where the locals claim that Johnny Weismuller filmed the original black and white Tarzan films. I spent most of the afternoon strolling around the gardens, sitting on the benches watching the amazing number a birds flying around, including hornbills and the ever ugly maribou storks, as well as black and white colobus monkeys swinging through the trees.
The next day I made an early start to leave the city and to travel to the Ssese Islands, a group of eighty-four islands off the north western shores of Lake Victoria. I took the first bus out of Kampala to Masaka at 06.30, hoping to make a connection in this town to catch the morning ferry to the main island, Buggala. I arrived in Masaka at 08.30 and found that I had missed the ferry; to make matters worse I also found out that the afternoon ferry didn't sail until 16.00. I now had the prospect of spending a long time in this town doing nothing while I waited. I found one of the few shady trees and sat on my pack and waited. The ferry is run free by the government but due to budget restraints and the high cost of fuel it only makes the crossing twice a day. The locals stopped to say hello and to ask where I was going. I explained I was waiting for a bus to go to Kalangala, the main town on the islands; they confirmed for me that I was waiting in the right place and soon some matatus would arrive.
While I was chatting to some of the many passers by a young girl ran up to me and handed me a note. It read, ' Gentleman be careful. This place is full of con men. All those guys you see standing there is the same trick. From Eddie.' I cut off my conversation with the guys standing next to me and turned around and saw Eddie sitting on a stool outside a shop. I briefly nodded and then picked up my bag and joined him outside his shop. I spent the remaining hours in Masaka chatting to Eddie about everything from music and football, to the weather and immigration policies in the UK. At 14.00 the matatus for Kalangala arrived and an hour later departed along the dirt road to the ferry at Bukakata completely stuffed full of people and luggage. At least once we arrived at the ferry crossing we could again stretch our legs as we waited for the ferry to arrive. In the distance on the northern horizon hung a huge storm cloud over the lake, the lightening striking the lake and the thunder rumbling deeply in the distance. The crossing on the rather battered but still functioning ferry to Liku on Buggala Island took about forty minutes. The road, which was little more than a dirt track, wound its way through the thick forest and small farms that cover the islands to Kalangala, where I finally arrived just after 18.00, twelve hours after leaving Kampala.
There were two other travellers on the matatu, a couple from the Czech Republic. We were dropped off at the Hornbill Camp Site, which saved us a twenty-five minute walk from Kalangala, down the hill to the shores of the lake. This campsite had been recommended to me by many other people staying at the Red Chilli in Kampala and also had a good recommendation in my guidebook. I took a bed in the dormitory banda (a simple wooden hut with a thatched roof) while the Czech couple went off to check out the prices of some other nearby campsites. There were only two other people staying at Hornbill, a couple from France, Françoise and Celion. We joined each other for dinner that evening, locally caught fish with beans, rice and cabbage (with a dash of chilli sauce). Françoise is in Uganda working for the aid agency Medic San Frontiers, as a hospital logistics officer in the north of the country. Celion was just visiting for ten days while Françoise had some time off work.
The Hornbill Camp was very basic. There were three individual bandas and the dormitory banda plus the kitchen and dining shelter. There was no electricity, there were some solar panels but during my stay the solar generator was not working. Water came from the lake and the shower consisted of an old oil drum with a showerhead sticking out of it. I found it great to get completely away from city and town life. I always intended to come to these islands as soon as I arrived in the country just to kick back and unwind after both a long journey and thirteen months of hard work saving up for this trip. The location was perfect, the camp was surrounded by trees and had it's own private beach with white sand and a few palm trees. I didn't swim; even though everyone on the islands says that bilharzia (a water borne disease transmitted by snails which generally live in reed beds and slack water) is not a problem. I walked along the beach, which was covered in thousands of snail shells that made my mind up for me.
There were plenty of chickens wandering around the camp, as well as a couple of ducks. The chickens would go everywhere, but they seemed to spend most of their time jumping in and out of the kitchen, scratching about for any scraps of food that may have landed on the sandy floor. You couldn't leave food unattended in the dining shelter otherwise you would come back and find half a dozen or more chickens pecking away at your plate. The chickens were not the main food thief at the camp; this position was taken by Moaney the monkey. He was an expert at snatching food straight from your plate without you even noticing until a streak of grey passed by your plate; by then it would be too late and Moaney would be off with your chapatti or pancakes. He managed to steal my breakfast on my last day, I never saw him coming. I fought back and grabbed Moaney who then dropped my chapatti on the floor; it was too late my breakfast was covered in sand so Moaney ran off with it. At least I had managed to save my omelette. There was also a small puppy at the camp called, originally, Osama Bin Laden, or just Osama for short. He provided hours of entertainment. When he wasn't playing with us he would chase the chickens or be chased himself by Moaney the monkey.
My first morning I woke at 06.00 to the sound of thunder in the distance; it wasn't long until it reached us. I lay in bed looking out of the door of my banda watching the leaves of the trees dance in the rain and the illuminating flashes of lightening. Finally by 14.00 that afternoon the storm had passed over and I could at last go and explore my surroundings. I spent three nights on the islands; in the afternoons I would walk along the dirt roads through the forest between the villages, stopping to buy some fruit on the way to take back to the campsite to eat that evening. Generally I spent my time doing very little, mostly relaxing and deciding what I would do with the five and a half weeks I have before I have to be in Dar Es-Salaam to meet a friend at the airport.
I had originally planned to go to Rwanda for a week. Unfortunately a couple of days before I left home a volcano in the far east of DR Congo erupted sending a river of lava through the border town of Goma and into Lake Kivu. This natural disaster sent an estimated half a million refugees flooding across the Rwanda border to the town of Gisenyi. Lake Kivu, one of the major attractions in Rwanda, had now been left acidic from the lava flowing into it and the attractive lakeside town of Gisenyi overrun with refugees. I also realised that I really didn't have enough time to do justice to both Uganda and Kenya in the five and a half weeks I had if I spent a week in Rwanda as well. My plans on this trip remain fluid and there is the chance I may go to Rwanda from Tanzania at the end of March, although this will be the rainy season.
The Czech couple I had met on the matatu from Masaka had been gorilla tracking at the Bwindi national park. This is something I wanted to do but the US$250 permit fee had so far dissuaded me; there are also only twelve permits a day issued for Bwindi and these have to be booked through the Uganda Wildlife Authority office in Kampala. The Czech couple only had to wait a week for a permit, I thought it would take a lot longer, but the tourist trade to the Bwindi park is still slow after the massacre of eight tourists by Congolese rebels in 1999. I decided I would return to Kampala to arrange a permit.
Celion was booked on a flight back to Europe at 23.00 on Sunday night from Entebbe airport. The ferry connecting Buggala Island to the mainland doesn't operate on Sundays so Françoise had made arrangements with some local fisherman to hitch a ride on a fishing boat taking fish to market on the mainland. Our original plans were a little complicated; Françoise had worked out he didn't have enough money to pay the fisherman and then travel to the airport to drop off Celion and then take a taxi back to Kampala, after he had settled the bill at the Hornbill camp site. I agreed to loan some money to cover the trip back to Kampala and in return Françoise phoned the Medic San Frontier guesthouse in Kampala and arranged a couple of nights free accommodation for me. On Monday morning we would go to the bank and he would repay me.
On Sunday morning we all settled our bills and waited on the beach for a fishing boat to pick us up at 08.00. Someone had made a miscalculation with the bill and Françoise found he still had USH70,000 in his pocket, enough money to cover the transport back to Kampala. We waited by the beach for an hour or more and no boat arrived. It turned out the fisherman had all got drunk the night before and were still sleeping; it had been a national holiday the previous day, NRM Anniversary day. We quickly came up with plan B and phoned for three boda bodas to take us to the other side of the island from where hopefully we would pick up another boat to connect with the large boat going to market. When the motorbikes arrived we jumped on the pillion seat, our backpacks on our backs and sped off to Kalangala. It wasn't long until we reached the hill going up to Kalangala and eventually the motorbikes didn't have enough power to get us up, so we hopped off and walked until we reached more level ground. Once through Kalangala it was down hill along a narrow, rutted track that lead through the forest and eventually to a small fishing village on a beach.
We weren't sure whether we were either at the correct beach or whether we had missed the boat completely as it was now 10.30. After a while a couple of other villagers came down to the beach who were also waiting for the boat. At least we knew we were in the right place at the right time. Soon in the distance we saw a fishing boat approach around the island and within about a quarter of an hour it had arrived at our beach. We waited for the fish to be loaded before wading out to the boat ourselves and climbing aboard. My immediate concern was the amount of water in the bottom of the boat; then I began to notice the leaks along the sides. The wooden planks were quite rotten in places and the water poured in. This had to be the leakiest boat I had ever seen or ever sailed in. I began to have visions of my pack lying on the bottom of the lake while I swam for my life to a deserted island. Luckily we didn't have to go far in this boat and we had a big Mama sitting in the middle who did a fantastic job of bailing out the water with a bucket while in between reading a newspaper.
Just along the coast we stopped at another beach where we waited for the big boat to arrive. It pulled up alongside us and we all went to work transferring our luggage and fish cargo into this larger, watertight boat. There were about eight passengers on this boat as well as the fisherman and their fish. We made ourselves comfortable in the bows of the boat for our long sailing to the mainland. It was about midday when we left this beach and sailed to another island. We stopped at another three islands, each time picking up more fish to take to market. The crew on our boat would jump off when we beached, greet the other fisherman, and weigh their fish before paying them and loading it aboard. Finally at the last island we stopped at we picked up a can of fuel and then set a course for the mainland and the small town of Kasenyi just along the shore from Entebbe.
The weather was good and the lake calm. I was concerned when I woke this morning as there was a thunderstorm rumbling away in the distance and the dawn light was occasionally lit up by a strike of lightening. This storm had quickly evaporated and the islands were now only covered with some patchy cloud. Once we had left the islands behind we found ourselves sailing under a clear blue sky with only the very occasional small cloud providing a short respite from the intense power of the sun. The voyage took about five hours in total to cover the approximately 30km to the mainland. It was a very relaxing way to travel; I had heard horror stories about these fishing boats running into storms on the lake and almost sinking as the waves broke over the bows. My only concern was the power of the sun and the total lack of shade on the boat. I did my best to protect myself from the sun but despite my best efforts still managed to get burnt in places.
By early evening, just after 17.00, we arrived at Kasenyi. As we pulled up by the beach we were surrounded by porters wading out to the boat to carry both the passengers and the cargo on to the beach. We negotiated with two porters to carry three people and three luggage. It was a chaotic scene, men running and splashing through the water to unload the boat; I found it difficult to keep track of the men we negotiated with as they off loaded our backpacks and then carried us through the water and on to the beach. From Kasenyi we took a matatu to the main road and then changed to get to Entebbe where we stopped for dinner and a beer before going to the airport to see off Celion.
Françoise and I finally got back to Kampala and the Medic San Frontier guesthouse in the Kalabagala district of the city by 23.30. The guesthouse was a smart block of flats where the workers stay on their way in and out of the country and while they are working at their offices in the city. We met the regional logistics director when we arrived, who had just cooked up some fish and pasta and invited us to help ourselves.
It was Monday morning; I had a busy day ahead of me in the city. My number one priority was to go to the Uganda Wildlife Authority office to book a permit to track the mountain gorillas at Bwindi National Park. In addition, I planned to visit Barclays Bank to cash some travellers cheques and drop my passport off at the Kenyan embassy to arrange a visa. Françoise had to go to the Medic San Frontier office to work today, so he gave me directions to find transport into the city centre and how to find my way back. The office was just up the road from the guesthouse; this whole area of town was home to the various western aid agencies that were operating in the country. It was an affluent area; all the houses were large with well-maintained gardens, the streets quiet and peaceful with very little traffic. Security was very high profile with barbed and razor wire adorning garden walls; signs on the gates warned any potential intruder that the property was electronically protected by an alarm system.
I walked through this tranquil neighbourhood to Kalabagala, the local commercial centre from where I took a matatu to the old taxi park below Kampala Road in the city. The Uganda Wildlife Authority office (UWA) is located behind the Sheraton hotel in Jubilee Park. They told me that the next permit they had available was on February 5th and would cost US$250. There are only twelve permits a day issued for the Bwindi NP and six for the Mgahinga NP. These can be booked up to two years in advance and often the tour companies make block bookings of days at a time. I asked them to reserve that place for an hour while I went to the bank to withdraw some money. I left the UWA office and sped off to Kampala road on a boda boda and was dropped outside Barclays Bank. The queue at the forex counter was horrendous; there was only the one cashier and about twenty customers waiting. I abandoned that plan as I guessed I would be waiting there for at least an hour and a half.
I walked back up the hill to the UWA office and decided to pay with the US dollars I had with me and would return to Barclays later as I saw while I stood in the queue that I could purchase US dollars with my credit card. While I had been away, only about 30 - 40 minutes, a cancellation had come in for that Thursday. I handed over my dollars and in return received my permit; I now had two days to get to Bwindi NP in the far south west of the country by the border with DR Congo. I ditched my plans to go to the Kenyan embassy, as it was now too late to get a visa processed the same day, as I would have to leave Kampala early the next morning.
I wasn't too sure how I would get to Bwindi, it is in the middle of nowhere. At first I planned to get a bus to Kabale or Kisoro and from there try to hitch or find a matatu to Butogota, the nearest village only 17km from the park. I checked at the post office in Kampala to see if there was a post bus going in that direction, but they too only went as far as Kabale. After a long hot day running about the city I returned to the guesthouse. During the evening I read my guidebook and to my surprise saw that there was a daily bus from Kampala direct to Butogota. It was supposed to leave sometime after 06.00 at the bus park, so I arranged for a taxi to pick me up at 05.30 the following morning.
Thanks to the anti-malarial drugs I'm taking I'm usually awake by five in the morning, so this mornings early start was not a problem. Françoise was making an early start as well; he had to fly back up to the hospital in the north of the country. The taxi arrived on time and got me to the bus park just before six. There was the usual chaos at the bus park gates with all the touts trying to get me onto their bus. We found the Silverline bus and I bought my ticket for USH15,000. I sat there for an hour until 07.00, then another hour and another until we finally departed just after 09.00, the bus bursting at the seams with people and luggage. It was your typical African bus journey where you could not move and the only thing you could do to keep your circulation going in your legs was to wiggle your toes. I just hoped that no one would stand on my feet!
We travelled along a good-tarred road southwest over the equator and through the towns of Masaka and Mbarara. Somewhere between Mbarara and Kabale we turned right onto a dirt road and from there on I was off my map. The nearer we came to Bwindi the more dramatic the scenery became. The road soon became nothing more than a dirt track as we drove around thickly forested mountains and cultivated valleys. Everywhere was very green and the views stunning. As the bus passed through village after village the children would wave and shout as the bus went past leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Finally, ten hours after leaving Kampala we arrived at Butogota, the time about 19.00. There were eight other travellers on the bus, all of us going to Bwindi NP. We negotiated with a man in the village who had a pick up truck who agreed to take us the 17km to the park headquarters for USH25,000, which split between nine was about USH3,000 each.
It was dusk as we sped off down a dirt track to the park HQ. We hung on in the back of the pick up as we flew over the potholes and around the corners as the track twisted its way through the forest and up the mountains. We arrived in the dark and we all checked into the Buhoma Community Camp Site. They had individual bandas as well as a couple of dormitory bandas, I took a bed in a dormitory banda for USH15,000 a night. The campsite was on the side of a valley surrounded by forest. The bandas were spread out down the slope towards the river with a wonderful view across the valley of the forest.
Bwindi is Uganda's most recent national park and was formerly known as the Impenetrable Forest. It covers an area of 331 sq km and is home to half of the surviving mountain gorillas in the world. Gorillas used to inhabit a large section of Central Africa until the ice age diminished the forests and left the gorillas divided into three groups, the eastern lowland gorilla, the western lowland gorilla and the mountain gorilla. There are now only two populations of about 300 individuals surviving in the Bwindi forest and on the slopes of the Virunga volcanoes, in an area where the Ugandan, Rwandan and DR Congo borders meet.
The species was first discovered in 1902 when the German officer, Oscar von Beringe, shot two of them on the slopes of Mt Sabinyo and then gave his name to them, gorilla beringei. Hunting these creatures became a popular pastime until 1925 when the Belgian government created Africa's first protected area, the Albert National Park. Poaching and agricultural encroachment was still a problem and it was not until 1959 that George Schaller undertook the first scientific study of these creatures. Dian Fossey continued his work in 1967 until she was murdered in 1985 by suspected poachers. Her work was made into the famous film, Gorillas in the Mist. Gorilla tracking has proved to be very popular with tourists firstly in the Congo in the 1970's, then Rwanda in the 1980's and Uganda in the 1990's. Due to the political instabilities in Uganda's neighbouring countries, Uganda is now the most popular destination to go tracking. These instabilities crossed the DR Congo border in March 1999 when rebels crossed the border into the Bwindi NP, kidnapped and subsequently murdered eight tourists. Gorilla tourism nose-dived and nowhere was any longer thought as safe to go tracking. It is only now, nearly three years later that tourism is once again returning with the reassurance of a large military presence in the park and at tourist campgrounds.
I was booked to track the Habinsanja gorilla family, or H family for short. There are two families in the park that have been habituated to human contact and six people visit each family each day; the H family has been habituated since 1993. The other family is found very close to the park headquarters and is known as the headquarters group; they can be found within about twenty minutes and live on the slopes on the opposite side of the valley from the Community campground. The H family live much further out in the forest and the previous day it took almost four hours to track them down. To speed things up today, trackers had been sent out at first light to find the family and to radio back their position to the park HQ. We set off just after 08.30, four Americans, one British student and myself plus two trackers, four porters for the Americans and four soldiers to provide security. We walked along the main trail into the park for about an hour and a half until we turned off and climbed up a slope and into the jungle. We had only climbed a few hundred metres up the slope when we stopped and the trackers whispered to us to get our cameras ready. The porters and soldiers stayed put and the six of us and the two trackers continued up the slope. Suddenly there in the trees was the gorilla family. We kept in a group and slowly walked up the slope until we were surrounded by gorillas, the adults lying about in the undergrowth chewing on leaves and twigs, while the younger gorillas played about and climbed trees.
We were not allowed to get closer than five metres to prevent passing on any human infections. The gorillas seemed oblivious to our presence and just carried on what they were doing. They would look at us from time to time with very much the same expression as us. There are two silverbacks in this group but we only saw one of them, the group was spread out over quite a wide area of the jungle. It is difficult to describe what it is like to see these rare and threatened creatures face to face. To look into a gorilla's eye is to look in a mirror. I think George Schaller summed it up best when he wrote: 'No one looks into a gorilla's eyes - intelligent, gentle, vulnerable - can remain unchanged, for the gap between ape and human vanishes, we know that the gorilla still lives within us.' We were allowed an hour with the gorillas before we had to go; visits are limited to an hour so as not to create too much stress for them. The trackers signalled to us that it was time to go, I looked into a gorilla's eyes for the last time before turning and retreating down the slope. As we walked in silence back to the main trail I just hoped that the local people and the world community would work together to protect this precious animal for future generations. I world without the mountain gorillas would surely be a poorer world.
I spent three nights at Bwindi NP. I also went hiking along a couple of other trails through the forest. I did the Muzabijiro Loop trail by myself; when I say I did the trail by myself I mean I was the only tourist. It was more like being on a military jungle exercise. Leading the way was a soldier, followed by a guide, myself and bringing up the rear, another soldier. The trail lead steeply up the mountains to the west and from the top a clearing had been cut allowing views across the forest below and the mountains disappearing into the haze in the distance. From here it is possible to see the Virunga volcanoes but they remained hidden from my view in the haze. In the afternoon, after tracking the gorillas, four of us got together to hike the Waterfall trail; there were two British students who were teaching at a school in Kampala for a few months during their gap year, Matt and Craig, and an American, Lorant who was a national park ranger. Together with a guide and obligatory military escort we hiked to the waterfalls. There are three falls along the Munyaga River deep inside the park. The top falls are 33m high; below the middle falls is a deep plunge pool, which made an ideal spot to take a refreshing dip in the cold, fresh water.
The evenings at the campground were spent sitting around a campfire which Warren, one of the staff, was an expert at making. He would also entertain us playing a traditional, local instrument and singing. The evenings were very pleasant, at the altitude we were at mosquitoes were not a problem and the evening temperature just right with the fire providing a bit of background heat. It was also good to meet the other guests staying at the camp. Matt and Craig, the two British gap year students, had hired a minibus and driver to take them on a quick tour of both Bwindi and Queen Elizabeth NPs; they planned to leave the following day to visit Queen Elizabeth NP. My plans were to go to Fort Portal and visit Kibale NP; Matt and Craig's route would take me to the main road between Mbarara and Fort Portal from where I would be able to hitch a ride. They agreed to give me a lift and also let Lorant and his wife Linda hitch a ride with them back to Kampala.
There was seven of us in the minibus when we left Bwindi NP at 06.30 on Friday morning; Sam, the driver; Matt and Craig, the two British gap year students; Paul, a Ugandan who worked at the school in Kampala where Matt and Craig were teaching; Lorant and Linda, an American couple who both were national park rangers back home in the States and myself. From Bwindi we drove along dirt roads to Ishasha in the southern sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP). The park covers approximately 2,000 sq km bordered to the west by Lake Edward and DR Congo and to the east Lake George. The park surrounds both the northern and southern shores of the Kazinga Channel, which links these two lakes together.
QENP used to be a great place to visit and was famous for it's large herds of buffalo, elephant, hippo, kob and waterbuck. Unfortunately during the civil war in the late 1970's and 80's retreating troops loyal to both Amin and Okello, as well as invading forces from Tanzania, did their best in decimating the herds, especially the elephants for their ivory. Today the wildlife is recovering, but is still not as good or numerous as the parks found in both Kenya and Tanzania. The most obvious legacy of this senseless slaughter is the very much-reduced numbers of elephant; there are now no longer any long tusked elephants in the park.
The section of park around Ishasha is famous for it's tree-climbing lions. The vegetation is very different from that around Bwindi, the park is grassland savannah dotted with both acacia and fig trees. It was the dry season when we visited and the grass was very dry with numerous grass fires burning or the ground scorched black by previous fires. Matt and Craig had arranged a game drive at Ishasha to look for the tree-climbing lions and picked up a park ranger at the Ishasha gate to accompany us. The lions only climb the fig trees in the park, so our game drive took us out in the park on a loop around some of these trees. On our way to the Ishasha gate we saw many herds of Uganda kob, one of the most abundant species in the park; we saw many more herds of kob on our search for lions as well as a large troop of baboons, smaller herds of waterbuck and a few buffalo. In our two-hour drive we did spot two lions, but they were lying in the grass rather than up a fig tree. These were the first lions I had seen and I was thrilled to see them lying in the grass just about 15m from our minibus.
We returned to the Ishasha Camp and drove down to the nearby Ishasha River, which forms the border between Uganda and DR Congo. In the river are three schools of hippos, numbering between ten and twenty in each school. The area around the river is forested in contrast to the surrounding grassy plains. We walked along a trail along the river to view all three schools of hippo. We managed to get closest to the school furthest up stream. We were able to observe these huge animals from the banks of the river as they wallowed on the opposite banks.
After stopping for a basic lunch at the Ishasha Camp we dropped off our park ranger and continued to drive to the Mweya peninsular between the Kazinga Channel and Lake Edward where we planned to spend the night. It was a long drive along a badly rutted and potholed dirt track to reach the main road, which crosses the Kazinga Channel at the village of Katunguru. This dirt road was used by hundreds of aid convoys taking supplies to DR Congo, which explained its present bad condition. The landscape became monotonous and the plains appeared endless, the monotony broken every now and then by a grassfire. It was hot and dusty and at one point we all fell asleep during the heat of the day, all of us except Sam the driver who had his work cut out dodging potholes in the road. We crossed the bridge over the Kazinga Channel and turned left at Katunguru and followed the track along the shores of the channel to the Mweya peninsular.
I had originally planned to be dropped off at this junction on the main road, but it was getting late in the afternoon and the chances of finding transport to Fort Portal, let alone Kibale NP, was getting slimmer as each minute of the afternoon ticked away. We were having fun though, so I decided to stick with this group in the minibus and spend the night out at the Mweya peninsular. This section of the park appeared much drier than the Ishasha section; there were no longer any fig trees. The savannah grassland was now covered with the large cactus like tree the Euphorbia, or more commonly known as the Candelabra Tree, as well as the thorny, flat-topped Acacia trees. On our way we spotted our first elephants and also saw an abundance of bird life, especially African fish eagles and other large vultures. We reached the Mweya peninsular just after 16.00 and checked into the Ecology Institute who had double rooms for USH30,000 a night. Matt and Craig were booked on the launch trip at 17.00 that sails along the Kazinga Channel for two hours. Lorant, Linda and myself decided to conserve our money and opted to go to the Tembo Canteen to order dinner and drink a few cold beers instead.
The Tembo Canteen was in a prime position in this dusty little village overlooking the channel. We were absolutely starving and we had a cunning plan to have dinner while Matt and Craig were out on the boat and then have a second dinner when they returned in a couple of hours. We pulled up some chairs on the dry lawn outside and sat down with a cold beer to wait for our dinner while watching the wildlife on the opposite shores. It was dry season and at this time of day herds of elephant come down to the waters edge to drink. It was a stunning view to watch these majestic animals stroll through the bush and congregate by the channel where also a school of hippos wallowed. We watched this natural spectacle while we drunk our cold beer and waited for our dinner; we waited and waited and after over an hour began to get concerned. We made enquiries and found that they had not even started to cook our dinner. When we asked why they said that dinner isn't served until 19.00. We begged and suddenly realising that our chances of having two dinners had passed, I also begged for an extra plate of chips. We placed an order for Matt and Craig as well as no doubt they too would be starving by now and probably wouldn't appreciate waiting an hour or so for their dinner.
The next morning we set off at 06.30 on an early morning game drive; this is usually a good time see predators eating their kills. It was still dark when we picked up our guide and set off down the track heading east towards Lake George. As dawn began to break and our eyes adjusted to the low light we slowly began to see the various herds of animals standing in the bush watching us drive by. In all we drove about 80km in an easterly loop through the park. The highlights of the drive had to be very early on, just as the sun was rising, we came across six hyenas ripping to pieces a buffalo; you could hear the hyenas breaking the ribs and all we could see of the buffalo was a huge rack of ribs sticking up out of the grass. During the rest of the drive it was becoming rather disappointing and at times some of us dozed off to sleep as we drove through the never-ending grassy plains. Just as we thought it was all over and we were approaching the Mweya peninsular we saw another couple of vehicles off the road; they must have spotted something so we drove out to join them. There before us were a couple of lions, a male and female. I was surprised at how close we could drive up to them; they completely ignored us as though we weren't there. I suppose they must be quite used to being chased by vehicles. Just as we were about to leave the female strolled over to the male and they began mating. I guess that this was the highlight of our visit to QENP and we returned to the Mweya peninsular happy after what was beginning to be a rather disappointing game drive.
After a late breakfast back at the Tembo canteen it was time to head off out of the park. Matt and Craig were returning to Kampala; Lorant and Linda stayed aboard for a lift. I was dropped at the park gates on the main road at the village of Katunguru and after the past few days suddenly found myself travelling alone again. Katunguru can hardly justify being called a village, it is nothing more than a collection of ramshackle buildings lining the main road, the traffic and the wind covering everything in dust. I stood under the one shady tree and waited for a northbound vehicle. Traffic is very light on all roads outside the main cities and this road was no exception. Every few minutes a heavily overloaded vehicle would rumble past, no chance for a lift unless I wanted to risk my life and climb on top of the cargo with the dozen or so other passengers who had no other choice.
It was not long though until a saloon car pulled up and offered be a lift the 30km north to Kasese from where I would be able to pick up a matatu to Fort Portal. I squeezed into the car with the other seven passengers, plus the driver for the short trip to Kasese. The driver dropped me by the lay-by where the matatus for Fort Portal depart from; it was a case of jumping out of one overloaded vehicle and straight into another even more overloaded minibus for the next leg of my journey, 75km to Fort Portal. As we drove the landscape became more mountainous as we left the grassy plains of QENP behind us and were soon back in the green lush vegetation that I had found elsewhere on my trip through Uganda. I dozed on the way and awoke as we pulled into Fort Portal. I quickly consulted my map of the town to see where we would finish this journey and where I could find matatus heading towards the Kibale NP headquarters.
Of course the next taxi park I needed was at the opposite side of town, but Fort Portal is not a large place and it only took about ten minutes to walk between the taxi parks. On the next ride I was squeezed into the back of the matatu and once none of us passengers could hardly move, let alone breathe, we drove off along the small dirt road the 25km or so to the Kibale NP. The road wound it's way around the mountains, which were carpeted in thick green tea bushes; all over the south west of the country in the mountainous areas, tea plantations seemed to dominate the landscape. I dozed off during the drive and soon awoke as the matatu drove through the forest, baboons sitting on the side of the road watching us going past. The only way to get out of the matatu at the forest visitors centre was to climb out the back door.
The park covers an area of 560 sq km, of mostly forest at an altitude of 1,200m. It is joined by a corridor to the northeastern point of Queen Elizabeth NP. It is only in recent years that the park had been upgraded from a forest reserve to a national park, with the extra protection it now gives this habitat and its animals. The corridor was created to allow animals to move freely from QENP to Kibale NP to help re-establish animals in the forest that had been poached during the civil war years. The park is most famous for its population of about 600 chimpanzees, a family of which, numbering about 80 individuals, has been habituated to human contact since 1991. There are a lot of other primates living in the forest including; baboons, red tailed colobus and black and white colobus. A small herd of elephants also live in the forest but they are best avoided for two reasons: There is a fruit in the forest that they swallow whole which then ferments in their stomach causing them to get drunk. In addition, they have a long memory and they still associate humans as poachers and tend to charge at anyone they come across in the forest.
There are about six stone bandas to rent at the visitors centre for USH10,000 a night; they have to be the nicest bandas anywhere in Uganda. I rented the chimpanzee banda which was secluded in the woods with its own little garden and lawn out the front and a small porch to sit on to watch the wildlife swing or fly past. Once I had checked in I just sat on my porch of my little stone cottage in the forest looking out across my garden with a huge grin on my face; I could not believe that I had arrived in such a beautiful and peaceful location. I immediately planned to stay here a few nights and my first priority would be to spend a day doing absolutely nothing.
Just down the hill from the bandas was a small restaurant run by villagers from the local village, Bigodi. The menu was not extensive but the food was great and always served with a smile from the very friendly staff. I would eat dinner at about 19.00 and each evening as I walked down the hill the sun would be just setting, a huge globe of orange, just hanging in the sky above the forest. It was a beautiful sight and was the perfect way to end each day.
Most people come to the forest to track the chimpanzees and guided walks set off at 08.00 and 15.00 each day in search of them. Groups are limited to six but any number of groups can set off, each in a different direction looking for the chimps. If a group finds them they radio the position back to the other groups so that everyone gets a chance to see these animals up close in their natural habitat. I went tracking at 08.00 on my second day in the forest, usually the best time to see the chimps. We were lucky and the chimps were being very noisy and we managed to track them through the forest by listening out for their cries and calls.
It took a lot longer to track them down than the gorillas at Bwindi NP, I think the chimps tend to move about a lot more. The forest was very thick and it was difficult to see anything once we were off the main trails and bashing through the undergrowth. We were rewarded by one of the most active displays the chimps had put on for days. There must have been about fifty chimps around us, both swinging about in the trees and also on the forest floor. The more we looked in the branches and the undergrowth the more chimps we began to see. They were very lively climbing up and down trees and swinging about. The dominant male was in the thick of it kicking the younger males who were trying to mate, which seemed to be the cause of all the noise that lead us to them in the first place. Unlike tracking the gorillas we did not have a set time limit to stay with the chimps and each group broke off and followed part of the family until most of the chimps were settled high in the trees eating young leaves and making nests to rest in for the afternoon. The chimps make two nests a day up in the branches, one for the afternoon once they have finished eating for the morning and another in the evening to sleep in for the night. They never use the same nest twice, chimps appear to fussy and like fresh bed linen each day.
Once we left the chimps it was a long and pleasant walk through the forest back to the visitors centre. Along the way our guide stopped to point out various trees and their uses. One tree the bark is used for medicine, for clearing blocked noses and colds. We tasted a piece of the bark, which was very hot and fiery; I think it would definitely shift a blocked nose. The chimps are also wise to this tree and chew on the bark when they are feeling unwell. On our way through the forest we passed by a few glades, small sun filled natural clearings in the forest, which were a haven for butterflies and birds.
I found it difficult to uproot myself from the forest but unfortunately the first six weeks of this trip I had a deadline to stick to, of being in Dar Es-Salaam on the 2nd March to meet up with a friend who was flying in from London. I therefore reluctantly packed my bags to return to Kampala and made my way east to the Kenyan frontier.
I settled my bill at the Kibale NP and walked back onto the road to make an early start to get back to Kampala; I had been told that there was a direct bus that left Fort Portal at 10.00. It was 08.30 and there was a matatu waiting outside the park gates, dropping off some workers; it was a tight squeeze to get on but with matatus travelling through rural areas, there is always room for one more. Once my backpack had been securely tied to the roof we set off and lurched over the bumps in the road as we made our way back out of the forest and to civilisation. The matatu was heavily overloaded and did not have the power to get up some of the steeper hills, so we all had to get out and walk, slowly following the matatu as it belched black smoke and the engine wined, obviously not happy at the sudden exertion needed to get up this hill. The driver waited patiently at the top while one by one we caught up and climbed back in trying to reclaim our tiny piece of personal space.
I kept an eye on my watch, which is generally not a good idea while travelling on local transport in Africa, I still had 45 minutes to reach the bus park in Fort Portal. Seconds later we hit a large pothole and the matatu bottomed out scraping along the dirt. We continued for a few hundred metres, a horrible rattling noise now coming from underneath us; the driver stopped and turned off the engine. My chances of catching the Kampala bus were slipping away while the driver fiddled about under the chassis with some spanners trying to tighten up what the last pothole managed to almost rip off. We were very close to Fort Portal, now stuck by the side of the road in a small village, the journey becoming frustrating. The occasional vehicle that passed us seemed to mock us by covering us in a cloud of dust while we stood around watching anxiously as the driver clanked about under the matatu with the spanners. The majority of traffic passing along the road was either bicycles or pedestrians; I just hoped that we wouldn't end up as pedestrians.
Eventually the driver was satisfied that he had managed to fix what ever had come loose and once again we all squeezed into the matatu and slowly made our way along the road, reaching Fort Portal without any further incident. I untied my backpack from the roof as quickly as I could while negotiating with a boda boda to take me to the bus park. As soon as my pack was off the roof I was on the back of the moped heading up the hill as fast as we could go, a bit faster than walking speed, in a desperate attempt to catch the once daily bus to the capital. The driver shouted to me, 'Are you going to Kampala?' my bus was coming down the opposite side of the road at full speed. We both waved frantically at the bus to get the driver to stop; he did and I ran off down the road to climb aboard. I now no longer needed to worry; by the afternoon I would be back in Kampala where I intended to spend a couple of days sorting out visas for my onward journey through East Africa.
The road between Fort Portal and Kampala was in the process of being upgraded, but this didn't seem to impede our progress as the driver raced along the diversions and the old dirt road, criss-crossing the new road being graded out of the dirt. We almost flew over the bumps in the roads, speeding past colobus monkeys sitting in the trees beside the road, who watched us disappear in a blur of metal and dust. The speed became even worse is we neared our destination and were now travelling along the new smooth, paved road. There is something to be said about potholes in the road, at least they do slow the traffic down although sometimes they have the alarming habit of sending all the traffic to the same side of the road, a problem along the busier roads.
By early afternoon we had reached the western suburbs of Kampala and our journey slowed considerably as we made our way through the traffic to the city centre and the bus park. I knew the routine in Kampala now, this was my third visit, and walked to the old taxi park to take a matatu to Bugolobi and the Red Chilli Hideaway. The next two days I considered being work. Firstly I paid another visit to the bank before walking to the Kenyan embassy to fill out a visa application and leaving my passport with them for the day to process. I passed the time waiting at an internet cafe back in Bugolobi where I also stopped for lunch before returning in the afternoon to collect my passport. From the Kenyan embassy I walked to the Tanzanian embassy and repeated the same routine there and by the end of the day found that I had spent US$100 on visa fees. The following day I collected my passport again and was now ready to travel east to the Kenyan frontier.
On my way to Kenya I planned to stop at one more town in Uganda, Jinja, famous for being the source of the Nile, as well as being the source of Nile Special, one of Uganda's most popular beers. It is not far from Kampala to Jinja, only about 80km or just over an hour on a local bus. The clock on this trip was ticking and my March 1st deadline looming ever closer as each day slipped by. I wanted to cross the border into Kenya this weekend; today was Friday, so that I could spend almost three weeks in each country. That really only gave me a day to see the two most important sights in Jinja, the source of the Nile (the river, not the beer) and Bujagali falls, downstream on the Nile.
Just at the outskirts of Jinja the bus crossed over the Nile at the Owens Falls dam. This dam was built in the 1950's as a hydroelectric project and is still today the main source of power for Uganda. A replacement dam is being built as the Owens Falls dam is now structurally unsafe and is destined to be mass filled with concrete. It must be somewhat of a worry for people living downstream as this dam is now the only thing holding back the waters of Lake Victoria. The natural rock shelf of Ripon Falls was blasted away during the construction of the dam. I arrived in Jinja at almost midday and the bus dropped me in the centre of town. I planned to stay at the Explorers Backpackers to the north of the town and quickly jumped on a boda boda and backtracked up the road. I checked in, dropped off my luggage and immediately left to head for Bujagali Falls, a series of rapids rather than waterfalls, 9km downstream from Jinja.
I walked north along the road out of town from where I jumped on a boda boda, which got me as far as the turn off for the falls, when we picked up a puncture. It was only another kilometre from the main road to the falls, so rather than wait for the puncture to be fixed, I walked instead. It was a pleasant walk along the track past small huts and fields, mostly of bananas to the river. The Explorers Backpackers have their rafting base up here as well as another rafting company. The Explorers was set on the steep banks leading down to the Nile, with terraces for camping on and small bandas for rent. I stopped for lunch and a drink before walking down to the falls. There is an entrance fee of USH2,000, but I told the gatekeeper that I was camping at Explorers and they let me in for free.
I have to admit that the Bujagali falls are not really that exciting, and to call them a waterfall is being very poetic with the English language because they are only a series of rapids; grade five rapids according to the rafting companies, but you could still get down them on a raft, which you couldn't if they were a waterfall. The surroundings were very picturesque and it was something to stand on the banks of the river by one of the rapids and see the sheer power of the water flowing downstream on it's three month, 6,400km journey through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt to eventually discharge into the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately the Bujagali falls will soon be submerged with the construction of a new dam to provide more hydroelectric power for Uganda. This will also put the two rafting companies out of business and submerge what is billed as one of the best stretches of white water rafting in Africa.
After spending some time relaxing by the river I picked myself up and walked back to the road; I still had to find the source of the Nile before nightfall. Time, as it always does in Africa, was slipping by me almost unnoticed; I was again on a mission. Walking back along the road it was not long until a boda boda pulled up alongside me and offered me a lift back into Jinja; he dropped me off back at the Explorers Backpackers. From there I walked along Kiira Road and turned on to Bridge Street until I saw a sign saying, 'The Source of the Nile', pointing down along a small dirt road. The road led down past Coronation Park and the golf course to the river. I expected by now to have picked up a crowd of potential guides offering to show me what was clearly signposted, or at least a gaggle of kids following me, but I was by myself. No one took any notice of me as I made my way to the biggest potential tourist trap in town. It made a welcome change from other countries I had visited not to be hassled; I had prepared myself for a battle against hustlers and touts but reached the gates to the park around the source of the Nile alone; the entrance fee was USH2,000.
I walked down to the banks of the Nile where there is a plaque telling you that you have reached the right place. There were a few souvenir stalls dotted around, but the vendors seemed more interested in lying in the grass under the shady trees than trying to sell me anything. One vendor did approach me and stopped for a chat and showed me around. He was easy going and he wasn't a problem; in fact it was nice to chat and find out some more about the place as I was the only tourist there. On the opposite bank is an obelisk marking the spot where John Speke stood and observed the source of the Nile, where the water starts flowing out of Lake Victoria and downstream to the Mediterranean. This was the site of Ripon Falls, which were subsequently submerged with the building of the Owen Falls dam in the 1950's. I think that it would have been easier before the construction of the dam to appreciate the source of the Nile, as the water pouring from the lake must have been far more dramatic than it is today.
Something of a surprise is to also find a small shrine commemorating Mahatma Gandhi at the source of the Nile. Apparently after Gandhi's death in 1948 his ashes were divided up and sent to different parts of the world. Some were scattered here into the river Nile and the Indian government donated a bronze bust of Gandhi, which now forms the centrepiece to this little memorial garden. The shrine appears to have undergone a recent improvement in 1997 and the sponsors don't shy away from letting you know that they either constructed the new memorial or maintain it. On the trees surrounding the garden is a corporate message from one of Uganda's banks. In fact the whole 'source of the Nile' has been taken over by corporate sponsorship by one of Uganda's leading beers, which according to the logo gives you, 'a good night and a good morning'; this was also my favourite beer in Uganda.
I returned to Explorers just as the sun was going down, my mission of seeing the sights of Jinja completed in one busy afternoon. There was only one other guest staying there that night, a girl from Denmark plus the barman and the manager who turned out to be an ex-overland truck driver. She had spent just over nine years working for Dragoman and that evening we listened to stories of her career driving to all points of the planet. The psychology of doing an overland truck trip has always fascinated me and that evening we managed to gain an extraordinary insight into what can go wrong with group dynamics during a long road trip.
The next morning, Saturday, I packed my bags and headed to the border town of Busia. It was time to leave Uganda behind and start a new adventure through Kenya. The matatu from Jinja dropped me off at the taxi park in Busia from where I took a bicycle taxi the approximately 1km to the border gate. The bicycle taxi is the African equivalent of the rickshaw, except a lot more basic; it is simply just a bicycle and the passenger sits on the rear luggage carrier while a poor bloke nearly kills himself trying to pedal you through town. This seemed a fitting way to leave Uganda as we slowly pedalled along the main road to the border winding through the crowds of people and the traffic. I hopped off the back of the bike at the gate and walked into Kenya.
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