The travels of Tim and Megan: Africa Safari: Uganda

Day 5: Travel to Kampala, Uganda

On Wednesday morning, we packed up the tents etc, had breakfast (while a couple of dogs mated across the other side of the campsite, continuing the animal mating theme of the previous few days) and departed the camp at about 6.45am. We continued driving west / north-west across Kenya towards Uganda, and crossed the equator shortly after leaving Kisumu. At about 10am we crossed the border into Uganda and a couple of hours later we stopped in Jinja for lunch.

Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa and is known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, which is also shared by Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda gained independence from Britain in 1962, its population is around 34 million, the official languages are English and Swahili, and the capital city is Kampala, which is home to 1.7 million people.

Jinja is situated in south-eastern Uganda on the shores of Lake Victoria and near to the source of the River Nile! Jinja is the largest town in Uganda (it is the second biggest commercial centre in the country behind Kampala, which is Uganda's only city!). We would be staying in Jinja on our way back through Uganda but for now we just had lunch at the campsite (including delicious raspberry fanta) and kept on driving.

Uganda is also at high altitude and it gets a lot of rain, so the countryside was very lush and green. We passed a lot of tea and coffee plantations as we drove through the country. Tea and coffee are amongst the biggest export goods produced in Uganda. We arrived in Kampala at about 4pm. The traffic was horrendous in the city and it took us a long time to drive to a shopping centre for supplies and then on to our camping ground. As we were driving we saw the aftermath of an accident. It looked like a man had been hit by a car and was lying on the road in a huge pool of blood. He was clearly dead.

The camping ground was fairly average and it was very full. We pitched our tents and got our gear sorted and then had a delicious dinner of chicken, veges and rice. We had a few drinks and then went to bed. It rained heavily in the night and our tent leaked. Not impressed.

Day 6: Travel to Lake Bunyonyi

All of our things were wet in the morning thanks to the leaking tent. The camp was also very muddy in the morning, so it was very messy all round. We left the camp at 6am to avoid busy traffic in Kampala. It was another big driving day, as we continued across Uganda to Lake Bunyoni in the south-west of the country, where we would be based for the next four nights.

We stopped in the town close to the camping ground and got some more supplies for the days ahead. Sadly, it was raining when we arrived at the camping ground and the grass where we were supposed to pitch our tents looked very wet. Megan and I (and most of the others in our tour party) opted to upgrade to cabins. As it turned out, we ended up sharing an actual house with Dean and Jeanelle, an Aussie couple on the tour. The house was amazing - it had two bedrooms (fully equipped with beds), a kitchen, a large lounge and a bathroom (with a shower that had hot water!).

We did some washing, dried out some of our wet clothes, charged our electronics and bonded with our new flatmates and then headed to the bar for a few drinks before dinner. It was Neena's birthday, and we had arranged with our chef Mwai to get a birthday cake for her - it was really fun and hopefully she had an awesome birthday in Uganda!

Day 7: Gorilla trekking

Lake Bunyonyi is situated almost 2,000m above sea level, so the nights were very cold, even in the house! Friday, Day 7 of our tour, was a very special day. It was the day we were going gorilla trekking - one of the big highlights of the whole tour. We woke at 4.30am, had breakfast and made a packed lunch at 5am and left the camp in minivans at 5.30am. We drove for nearly two and a half hours over very hilly, winding and generally crappy roads until we reached the Wildlife Authority hut, which was the starting point for our trek. The minvan driver was funny - he played a mixture of Eminem songs and some Whitney Houston power ballads - nice.

When we arrived at the hut, our gorilla guide gave us a talk about the gorillas and their environment, etc. Mountain gorillas are extremely rare - as of 2010 the estimated total number worldwide was 790. They are found only in four national parks in central Africa, two of which are situated in south-west Uganda, one in Rwanda and one in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We were in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, which is close to the border with DR Congo. The gorillas are constantly on the move and often roam across the border into other national parks in DR Congo or Rwanda, which could have been costly in terms of more visa fees if we had had to follow them across the border. But thankfully, our gorillas were in Uganda that day.

A dedicated team of gorilla trackers/guides has been working in this area for years, learning about the gorillas' habits and movements and getting them used to human interaction. Less than half of the gorilla families in Bwindi have been "trained" for human contact, so these are the only families that are visited by tourists. The "training" sounds intense. The guides visit a new gorilla family every day for months and months until the gorillas are used to having humans around, which then makes it safe for tourists to visit them. Apparently the guides know when the gorillas are ready for tourists when they stop charging the guides!

The Wildlife Authority takes the protection and conservation of the gorillas extremely seriously. As gorillas share much of our DNA, anyone with the slightest cold or transferable illness is not allowed to go trekking. There is also a strict limit to the amont of people visiting the gorillas - there is a maximum of eight tourists per group and only one group will visit a particular gorilla family each day. On top of that, so that the gorillas do not get too used to the presence of humans, the maximum time a group can spend with a gorilla family is one hour. As the gorillas are constantly on the move, there is no guarantee you will even see them at all - so the US$500 gorilla permit fee per person and the potential for an eight-hour trek is a bit of a gamble! It should be noted that the gorilla permit fee is used exclusively for the conservation of the gorillas.

After learning more about the gorillas and getting a safety briefing, we set off with our gorilla guides, hiking through the dense rainforest of Bwindi. The name Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is appropriate - the trek was very tough. The terrain was very hilly and there was thick bush often full of thorns that we had to navigate through. We had to wear gloves to protect our hands as well as long pants and long sleeves to protect against the thorns and insect bites, so we ended up getting very hot and sweaty, which was quite uncomfortable. On top of that, the recent rain had meant that the track was very slippery and parts of the forest were very muddy and boggy - we often sunk ankle deep into a pool of mud! Then there were a lot of strange insects around, including processions of red ants, that we had to avoid stepping on, or they would crawl up our legs and bite! We even tucked our pants into our socks to keep them at bay! The forest was incredibly wild and harsh.

We trekked for about two hours to get to the gorillas and when we found them, they were hanging out on a very steep bank, which made following them through the bush and trying to take photos of them rather difficult. Our gorilla family had 23 members, which included four silverbacks (adult males), a few blackbacks (younger males), some females and a few babies. At first the gorillas were well hidden in the thick bush, but eventually we saw quite a few of them out in the open, so we took some good photos - we got scarily close to a few of them! Some of them moved past us, just a few metres away at times. The gorillas made some interesting grunting noises, but they seemed to be very relaxed and comfortable about us being there.

They are huge animals and incredibly powerful. The silverbacks can weigh up to 200kg and their strength and power is amazing. The gorillas did smell quite bad and they had a lot of flies hanging around them. We also had to take care to avoid stepping on a massive gorilla shit at one point. That would have been particularly messy and would have made for an uncomfortable ride back to camp in the minivan.

It was an incredible experience to see these animals in their natural environment and to be so close to them. We were all buzzing after the seeing the gorillas - a real highlight of the trip and something we will all remember forever. Fingers crossed that the numbers of gorillas can bounce back, as it would be a sad day if these beautiful and fascinating creatures were to become extinct.

Once our hour with the gorillas was up, we had a two hour trek back to the hut, during which we stopped and ate our lunch and also got soaked by a torrential downpour. The rain was actually quite nice, as it cooled us down. By the time we got back to the minivan, we stunk of sweat, were soaked, covered in mud and pretty knackered. We then had another two hour drive back to camp to round off a massive day. Needless to say, there was much washing and showering back at camp - we were really thankful that we had upgraded!

Everyone was shattered after dinner - we had one drink and then went to bed early. A few of the tour group, including Neena, were feeling unwell - a combination of early starts, cold temperatures at night, getting soaked in the rain and a massive few days had taken its toll. We all slept like babies.

Day 8: Rwanda

See separate blog entry for Rwanda after this entry.

Day 9: Lake Bunyonyi

After gorilla trekking on Friday and a day trip to Rwanda on Saturday, we were ready for a cruisy day on Sunday and that's exactly what we got. We slept in until 7.45am (huge sleep in) before having breakfast and then getting settled in the bar. It was a very exciting day - Rugby World Cup semi-final day. All Blacks v Australia. There was huge excitement in the camp, as we had three Kiwis and around 10 Aussies in our tour. We were nervous, as we had obviously cocked it up several times before (usually at the semi-final stage, and twice to Australia at the semi-final stage).

We got to watch the game live on TV in the bar and it was an exciting match. New Zealand played well and deserved to win. We were very excited and relieved to win. We tried not to give the Aussies too much crap, as we were outnumbered and we still had a final to go...against the other team renowned for wrecking our World Cups. We had quite a few beers and it got a little messy as the afternoon wore on. After the rugby we were treated to watching our other favourite team, the Arsenal, win 2-1 against Sunderland, to continue their revival after a horror start to the season.

We also did some more washing and packed up our things, ready to move on again tomorrow. It was nice having a relaxing day after a few full on days. Sadly, the camping ground tried to rip us off when we went to pay our bar tab - a trick they tried with several of our tour group. They had added a lot of drinks to our tab, claiming that Tim had drunk about 25 (500ml) beers on Sunday alone. Whilst it had been a rather drunken day, this was ridiculous. We refused to pay for all of them and eventually settled on what was probably a few more than what we had actually drunk, but well short of what they originally claimed. Not cool.

Day 10: Travel to Jinja

Monday was another huge travel day. We woke at 4.45am and departed the camping ground just before 6am. It was a massive drive from west to east across Uganda, to Jinja. We stopped for lunch at a little village that sits on the equator. We got the obligatory photos by the monument marking the equator and we even found a Uganda magnet for the magnet collection at one of the souvenir shops. After lunch, we carried on in the truck.

We stopped in Kampala briefly to get some more Ugandan shillings and some supplies at a supermarket. We then carried on to Jinja, arriving at 5.45pm. Our tent was still wet from the last time we had used it (five days earlier) and it smelled a bit. Not cool. We made sure we put the rain cover on, as the sky looked a little ominous. Dinner was chilli con carne - delicious. We then had a couple of raspberry fantas in the bar. Raspberry fanta really is the best thing in the world. Sadly, Jinja was the only place we ever found it.

It was a fairly early night, but before bedtime, Australian prankster Max rounded up Dean, Troy and Tim and they snuck out of the bar to move Mike's tent further up the hill and behind a big tree. Mike was the sole South African in our tour party and he copped a lot of good-natured flak from the Aussies and Kiwis, but he took it well and gave a fair bit back too! About an hour later, when Mike was ready for bed, he wandered around and around the camping ground looking for his tent, getting gradually more and more annoyed. He claimed that it was not funny, but the rest of us found it hilarious.

Day 11: Jinja

It rained heavily in the night and our tent leaked a bit, despite the rain cover. Thankfully it was fine by the morning. Today was a day of optional activities - some of our tour opted to go white water rafting in the River Nile, while others did some painting at a school as part of a community project. Megan and Tim and a couple of others decided to chill out at the camping ground instead.

We got up just before 8am and were treated to fried eggs and spaghetti on toast for breakfast. After showering we headed to the bar, where there was free WIFI. We sent a few emails, saved our photos to our memory stick and sorted out a few admin jobs. The bar at the camping ground was really nice and it looked out to the River Nile. It was a scorching hot day - we took advantage of the washing service at the camping ground, which was quite cheap, and got all of our clothes clean.

There was a big thunder storm in the afternoon, so we sheltered in the bar while it poured with rain. There was much raspberry fanta consumed. Dinner was fish, potatoes and mixed veges. It rained again in the evening - at that stage we were looking forward to leaving Uganda and getting back to some dry weather! Despite the leaky tent, we had a pretty good sleep. It was another early start coming up and then back into Kenya!