Tuesday August 31, 2010 – Rwanda to Uganda again
We’re up and organized early. Julius’ housekeeper arrives shortly after 8 and we hand over the keys and load our stuff back into the car for a long driving day back into Uganda to Lake Mburu. We’re becoming pros at finding our way around Kigali, thanks in no end to the gps which keeps us on the straight and narrow. We wind our way out pretty directly and get on the road to the border, a short one hour drive. The road is up and down and back and forth, and Sarah keeps talking about motion sickness but never changes colour so we make it without any barfing. We follow a valley all the way, initially it is marsh and rice paddies, then there are sugar cane fields, then extensive tea plantation, and then grasslands for cattle, many of which are Holsteins or Holstein crosses. And always people on the sides of the road – walking, bicycling, and always carrying something. It’s amazing what people can put on their heads and then carry. Elizabeth actually spots a woman who drops her basket, perhaps blown off by the gusting wind. A pretty unusual occurrence.
The border goes well. There are no buses of people, and although the road is lined with lorries, they don’t seem to have any impact on my visit to customs. The Rwandan exit is straightforward, with a very nice lady giving me a wad of toilet paper to deal with Sarah’s perpetually running nose. There is quite a line up of important documents posted up on the inside of the immigration window – identity papers left behind. We exit Rwanda, cross to the other side of the road to start driving on the left again, and then I visit the customs entry. The man asks if I have papers, I tell him I have many papers but he needs to show me the one he wants. That is apparently quite funny, and her picks what he needs out of the pile and we’re off. Then the immigration, where we pay our 50$ each and hand in our cards and passports. There is a brief moment of panic when the man at the counter tells Elizabeth she has only given him 1 passport, she tells him she gave him two, and he starts looking rather frantically under his newspaper and between the pieces of paper on the desk. The woman next to him points out that the passport is in the passport reading machine, and everyone relaxes and laughs.
And so we are in Uganda, an hour out of Kabale where we make a stop for lunch and groceries. We decide to try another restaurant listed in the guide book, which doesn’t have quite the ambience of the café we ate in previously , but the potato chapattis are fine, and we fill ourselves up on carbs and means for the trip to come. A visit to the Hot Loaf bakery, where we buy a double loaf of “butter bread”, some cookies euphemistically named “Vienna pastries” and a couple of the double decker jam cookies I’ve bought before. Solid and filling and quite edible. A trip to an Indian grocery for some fresh stuff to serve as snacks, and then on our way. I rather like Kabale. The dusty roads are filled with bicycles – I feel like I am in the wild west with herd of bicycles instead of cattle moving down the roads. The main road is lined by colourful shops, and many of the buildings are from the 1950’s and have the names of Indian proprietors over their lintels.
And east we head, about three hours of driving to go. But the road for the next few hours is tar so it passes quickly. We gradually move into more agricultural land, acres and acres of plantain and pineapples for a while until we move back into dry cattle territory. The hills gradually smooth out, and all of a sudden the good road ends just around Mbarara, where they are working on it. So we have a few km of dust and dirt and bypasses where the construction is going on, and then we are onto a brand brand new incredibly smooth road that just calls to me to go more than 60 km per hour. We sneak it up to 70 and sometimes a bit more, but there are traffic police in white uniforms, and regular police in blue camouflage, and other police or army scattered along so staying within the speed limit is probably a good idea.
Just before Katuma we leave the main road and re-enter murram road territory – passing through a number of small villages where most of the local populace is gathered around a central building – turns out it is local elections today. And eventually we come to the park gates and Lake Mburu National Park. Just beyond the gate we see a family of vervet monkeys, which sends Sarah scuttling back into the car. Formalities all go well – the girls’ student cards and my letter from UWA giving us reduced entry rate, and all of a sudden we are game viewing. Zebra, impala, birds, warthogs – grazing along the road or standing in the middle of the road. And the game seems really used to people as they just saunter off when we get close, unless I back up for a different view which activates the “backup beeper” and that seems to get them excited. Rwonyo camp is the headquarters and the site of a few very sad looking bandas. We head down to the lake to check out the campground, which is a large expanse of grass sloping down to the lake, and there is a restaurant with a large open thatched dining area. Hippos, warthogs, and birds abound. We decide that the pretty site does not make up for the lack of amenities, and head back up to the office to check into the platform tents that we have booked.
The office is closed but the appropriate person is found and we drive a km or so into the bush, past the parks employee homes, to a rather dilapidated group of large canvas tents raised up on wooden platforms. Each has two single beds with mosquito nets (actually Elizabeth gets the couple’s tent – two single beds pushed together with one mosquito net) and there are bathroom with running water and sit-on-toilets – much better than the very smelly pit latrines at the campsite, and showers. Patrick starts the fire for hot water so we can shower after dinner, and it all seems good. We unpack a bit, do the daily reorganization, and then just as the sun is setting head to the restaurant for beers and dinner. Beers are good, the ambience is good, but dinner, which we ordered up from a limited menu an hour and a half ago for 7:30, still doesn’t come til 8 and the chips aren’t really cooked and everything tastes a bit odd. Not exactly gourmet dining. It becomes full dark while we are eating, the stars come in a clear sky, and as we drive back to the tents, a few km away, we manage to see a white-tailed mongoose and several groups of hippo walking along the road. The showers are a bit of a disappointment – the water system is a bit odd with me turning on a tap in one shower and soaking Elizabeth who was in the next shower/toilet room, and the water coming out the hand tap seems to be about the colour of the average puddle on the dirt roads after a rain. So we pass on the showers and retire to our tents, thoughtfully provided with a burning kerosene lantern so we can see our way in the dark. Under our mosquito nets, and asleep in a flash.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday August 30, 2010 – Driving to Kigali, driving in circles in Kigali, and the Genocide Memorial
Monday August 30, 2010 – Driving to Kigali, driving in circles in Kigali, and the Genocide Memorial
Time to leave MGVP, with regrets all round. As Elizabeth put it, it’s started to feel like home here – comfort, friends, and dogs. Mid-morning we pack up, unsuccessfully try and find all our bits of laundry in stages of being cleaned, dried and pressed, and head through Musenzi on the roughly two hour drive to Kigali. It’s windy and up and down and scenic – a typical Rwandan road as far as I can tell. The rain last night cleared the air somewhat and we get better vistas across the fields and hills than we’ve had so far. They are working on the roads, it seems a constant process, and there are great stretches and really really slow stretched. There is often a person at the beginning of a narrow or one way section with green and red flags, but I have to admit half the time I can’t figure out which one is being waved at me. Sometimes the person just seems to be waving at flies with them, which confuses me no end. Elizabeth seems to figure it out better, in fact she has been giving me advice on a lot of things related to driving and navigation – I think I’m at the stage where as a parent I’m becoming stupid and incapable. I gather I will get smarter again in a few years. It’s hard to describe driving in Africa, especially Rwanda and I know I’ve tried to do it before – it’s simply the number of people and all sorts of wheeled contraptions that one shares the road with, combined with the state of the roads that makes it quite unique. Combined with the dust and the smells and the sounds. We are driving at school turnover time – there aren’t enough schools for everyone to go at one so there are morning and afternoon sessions – and in mid-day both groups are out on the road in their uniforms – tons and tons of kids walking and running and playing with balls made of banana leaves and twirling tires and hoops with sticks. Big kids walking with little kids and little kids walking with little kids and little tiny kids walking on their own. We would have fits in North America about kids out on their own when they can hardly walk, but here it seems pretty normal. At one point we hit a stretch of really nice tar that isn’t too windy and I crank it up to 75 km per hour – living big – and then promptly get flagged down by traffic police who tell me to slow down because of the farms (and people presumably). Got away with that one, and its back to max speed of 6o again. Sarah manages to make it all the way to Kigali without getting sick, which is amazing, and just about lunchtime we wind down the last big hill and enter the noise and bustle and traffic of Kigali.
We are staying at the office/apartment that belongs to the PREDICT group, and have to meet Julius to figure out where it is and get the key. That involves a lot of texts, but eventually he tells us to meet him at the Nakumat - a South African supermarket mall, and with some assistance from locals we manage to find it, find parking, and find an open café on the second floor to settle in and eat lunch while we wait for Julius. Prices here are upscale – and the place is full of expats with various accents and affluent well dressed Rwandans. We are pretty sloppy and scruffy in comparison I have to say! Eventually we meet up with Julius and Eddy, the MGVP vet from Congo who is here to get visas for a trip to the US – and we follow them out of town towards the airport where the flat is located in an odd building which seems to hold a combination of offices and living quarters. The PREDICT flat is no different – obviously originally an apartment, it has a small office tucked in one corner. The main door to the hall is large and glass, with a metal grill welded across it. There is a large living room with a lounge set, an empty dining room, a small kitchen, a huge bedroom with ensuite with a fluorescent pink flower comforter, and a second bedroom and bathroom. Plus about 4 small balconies. We are rattling around in it, and it seems very empty compared to MGVP central and all the comforts of home.
Once located we head off to the genocide memorial for Elizabeth, I have been there previously. It is a well done museum that tells the story of pro-colonial and colonial life in Rwanda and how the seeds of the Hutu Tutsi conflict (s) were sown, and then goes through the actual time line of the genocide. There is also an exhibit on other genocides throughout the world – the holocaust of course but a number of other really significant and horrible happenings, some of which never reached public awareness in a big way. Graphic enough but not in your face, unlike a memorial further north where they have placed preserved bodies as they were found when a church of people were massacred. That is apparently very startling. Here there is a memorial garden, and a series of large concrete slabs under which the remains, intact bodies or pieces of people, of 30,000 people were placed. They continue to add more as new graves or mass graves are still found. Impossible to understand, and even more impossible to believe that most of the people one sees on the street lived through it. I have never had a Hutu talk to me, perhaps harder to have been on that side, but the few Tutsi stories I have heard are just unbelievable nightmares.
Next stop is a major craft market. We’re actually pretty much trinketted out, but decide we need another stop before heading back for the night. Kigali is a nightmare to drive in because it is all hills and valleys, roads travel along them, and one finds oneself going in the opposite direction to where you think you should be, doing a u-bend, and then arriving on the opposite side of a valley from where you started after a half hour. The gps was invaluable – trying to follow our not very detailed maps was horrendous. However, we did get into rather a bind when a road we needed was closed, and Elizabeth programmed the gpd to drive us in circles – which we did for a while – saying “weren’t we here before” until she realized what she had done and we all got a good laugh about it. Eventually we did find the craft market – where we felt a bit like the fresh meat thrown into a tank of piranhas, but we looked at a fee things, I actually bought a Rwandan “poo-painting “ (wooden African designs on wood made with cattle dung for texture and then painted ) and Sarah got promises of having her hair and nails done if we came back the next day. We escaped otherwise unscathed, made our way back to the apartment, and settled in to very dull macaroni and sauce for dinner. At least Sarah and I did. Elizabeth has been caught by some kind of a tummy bug – possibly the same one I had for a few days. I’m calling it the “I shouldn’t have eaten three helpings of Thanksgiving dinner and then dessert” bug because that’s what your stomach feels like – stretched to bursting even with no food in it. Poor girl.
Time to leave MGVP, with regrets all round. As Elizabeth put it, it’s started to feel like home here – comfort, friends, and dogs. Mid-morning we pack up, unsuccessfully try and find all our bits of laundry in stages of being cleaned, dried and pressed, and head through Musenzi on the roughly two hour drive to Kigali. It’s windy and up and down and scenic – a typical Rwandan road as far as I can tell. The rain last night cleared the air somewhat and we get better vistas across the fields and hills than we’ve had so far. They are working on the roads, it seems a constant process, and there are great stretches and really really slow stretched. There is often a person at the beginning of a narrow or one way section with green and red flags, but I have to admit half the time I can’t figure out which one is being waved at me. Sometimes the person just seems to be waving at flies with them, which confuses me no end. Elizabeth seems to figure it out better, in fact she has been giving me advice on a lot of things related to driving and navigation – I think I’m at the stage where as a parent I’m becoming stupid and incapable. I gather I will get smarter again in a few years. It’s hard to describe driving in Africa, especially Rwanda and I know I’ve tried to do it before – it’s simply the number of people and all sorts of wheeled contraptions that one shares the road with, combined with the state of the roads that makes it quite unique. Combined with the dust and the smells and the sounds. We are driving at school turnover time – there aren’t enough schools for everyone to go at one so there are morning and afternoon sessions – and in mid-day both groups are out on the road in their uniforms – tons and tons of kids walking and running and playing with balls made of banana leaves and twirling tires and hoops with sticks. Big kids walking with little kids and little kids walking with little kids and little tiny kids walking on their own. We would have fits in North America about kids out on their own when they can hardly walk, but here it seems pretty normal. At one point we hit a stretch of really nice tar that isn’t too windy and I crank it up to 75 km per hour – living big – and then promptly get flagged down by traffic police who tell me to slow down because of the farms (and people presumably). Got away with that one, and its back to max speed of 6o again. Sarah manages to make it all the way to Kigali without getting sick, which is amazing, and just about lunchtime we wind down the last big hill and enter the noise and bustle and traffic of Kigali.
We are staying at the office/apartment that belongs to the PREDICT group, and have to meet Julius to figure out where it is and get the key. That involves a lot of texts, but eventually he tells us to meet him at the Nakumat - a South African supermarket mall, and with some assistance from locals we manage to find it, find parking, and find an open café on the second floor to settle in and eat lunch while we wait for Julius. Prices here are upscale – and the place is full of expats with various accents and affluent well dressed Rwandans. We are pretty sloppy and scruffy in comparison I have to say! Eventually we meet up with Julius and Eddy, the MGVP vet from Congo who is here to get visas for a trip to the US – and we follow them out of town towards the airport where the flat is located in an odd building which seems to hold a combination of offices and living quarters. The PREDICT flat is no different – obviously originally an apartment, it has a small office tucked in one corner. The main door to the hall is large and glass, with a metal grill welded across it. There is a large living room with a lounge set, an empty dining room, a small kitchen, a huge bedroom with ensuite with a fluorescent pink flower comforter, and a second bedroom and bathroom. Plus about 4 small balconies. We are rattling around in it, and it seems very empty compared to MGVP central and all the comforts of home.
Once located we head off to the genocide memorial for Elizabeth, I have been there previously. It is a well done museum that tells the story of pro-colonial and colonial life in Rwanda and how the seeds of the Hutu Tutsi conflict (s) were sown, and then goes through the actual time line of the genocide. There is also an exhibit on other genocides throughout the world – the holocaust of course but a number of other really significant and horrible happenings, some of which never reached public awareness in a big way. Graphic enough but not in your face, unlike a memorial further north where they have placed preserved bodies as they were found when a church of people were massacred. That is apparently very startling. Here there is a memorial garden, and a series of large concrete slabs under which the remains, intact bodies or pieces of people, of 30,000 people were placed. They continue to add more as new graves or mass graves are still found. Impossible to understand, and even more impossible to believe that most of the people one sees on the street lived through it. I have never had a Hutu talk to me, perhaps harder to have been on that side, but the few Tutsi stories I have heard are just unbelievable nightmares.
Next stop is a major craft market. We’re actually pretty much trinketted out, but decide we need another stop before heading back for the night. Kigali is a nightmare to drive in because it is all hills and valleys, roads travel along them, and one finds oneself going in the opposite direction to where you think you should be, doing a u-bend, and then arriving on the opposite side of a valley from where you started after a half hour. The gps was invaluable – trying to follow our not very detailed maps was horrendous. However, we did get into rather a bind when a road we needed was closed, and Elizabeth programmed the gpd to drive us in circles – which we did for a while – saying “weren’t we here before” until she realized what she had done and we all got a good laugh about it. Eventually we did find the craft market – where we felt a bit like the fresh meat thrown into a tank of piranhas, but we looked at a fee things, I actually bought a Rwandan “poo-painting “ (wooden African designs on wood made with cattle dung for texture and then painted ) and Sarah got promises of having her hair and nails done if we came back the next day. We escaped otherwise unscathed, made our way back to the apartment, and settled in to very dull macaroni and sauce for dinner. At least Sarah and I did. Elizabeth has been caught by some kind of a tummy bug – possibly the same one I had for a few days. I’m calling it the “I shouldn’t have eaten three helpings of Thanksgiving dinner and then dessert” bug because that’s what your stomach feels like – stretched to bursting even with no food in it. Poor girl.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday August 29, 2010 – Around the house, drinks at the Gorilla Lodge, and the rains have come
Sunday August 29, 2010 – Around the house, drinks at the Gorilla Lodge, and the rains have come
A sleep in day and another catchup day. We do a load of laundry on our own, and I have to say it doesn’t come out nearly as clean as when Leon does it. I finish my histology reports, Sarah gets her nails done again, Elizabeth works her way through another session of Oz. Another two vet students arrive – from Ohio, to be here for two weeks helping with whatever projects they can be involved with. Jan is going to have her hands full keeping everyone in order as well as getting her own stuff done. Late afternoon Mike and James head off on another bike ride and the plan is for us to pick them up after about an hour – and we will all go to Gorilla Lodge for drinks and to admire the sunset. The only problem is the rains, overdue and needed, start and it absolutely pours down on them! So we pick up two very soggy bikes and riders and continue our way to the Lodge – which is a fair bit along a dirt track that skirts the top of a ridge between two deep valleys – with lakes off in two directions. The lodge is spectacular, and it is freezing and cold with the rain pouring down. So much for the views of sunset! But they set a fire for us and we enjoy the wonderful ambience of the place until after darkness falls. The drive back to Musanze in the rain and the dark is not a treat – the roads are filled with people and bicycles and bodas and no one keeps to the side or the correct side. I would definitely not want to do any more night driving here! For our final dinner we go back to the pizza place – where they have no power. But apparently pizzas can still be made, in the wood oven, so we have a candlelit dinner and then head home in the pouring rain, accompanied by thunder and lightening. MGVP has a generator so we can get ready for bed in the comfort of electricity.
A sleep in day and another catchup day. We do a load of laundry on our own, and I have to say it doesn’t come out nearly as clean as when Leon does it. I finish my histology reports, Sarah gets her nails done again, Elizabeth works her way through another session of Oz. Another two vet students arrive – from Ohio, to be here for two weeks helping with whatever projects they can be involved with. Jan is going to have her hands full keeping everyone in order as well as getting her own stuff done. Late afternoon Mike and James head off on another bike ride and the plan is for us to pick them up after about an hour – and we will all go to Gorilla Lodge for drinks and to admire the sunset. The only problem is the rains, overdue and needed, start and it absolutely pours down on them! So we pick up two very soggy bikes and riders and continue our way to the Lodge – which is a fair bit along a dirt track that skirts the top of a ridge between two deep valleys – with lakes off in two directions. The lodge is spectacular, and it is freezing and cold with the rain pouring down. So much for the views of sunset! But they set a fire for us and we enjoy the wonderful ambience of the place until after darkness falls. The drive back to Musanze in the rain and the dark is not a treat – the roads are filled with people and bicycles and bodas and no one keeps to the side or the correct side. I would definitely not want to do any more night driving here! For our final dinner we go back to the pizza place – where they have no power. But apparently pizzas can still be made, in the wood oven, so we have a candlelit dinner and then head home in the pouring rain, accompanied by thunder and lightening. MGVP has a generator so we can get ready for bed in the comfort of electricity.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Saturday August 28, 2010 – The Imbabazi orphanage and a trip to Gisenye
Saturday August 28, 2010 – The Imbabazi orphanage and a trip to Gisenye
Today we decided to take an excursion. After breakfast the girls and I loaded up in the car with James and Jen for a day trip to the Imbabazi orphanage and Gisenye, on Lake Kivu. Imbabazi is about 45 minutes away on the tar, and then 7 slow km on a bumpy murram road. The Rwandan countryside is very much like the in south west Uganda – hilly and solidly cultivated with houses and small village centres along the road. Also lots of police apparently so we stick to the 60 km per hour speed limit, a waste on the good tar road. We drive past our landmarks – a big rock cliff-face that looks like an elephants head, or the map of Africa, an abandoned refugee camp from the genocide – ragged disintegrating tents and broken down sheds, and turn onto the side road by going under one of the arbours that cross over many of the roads here. The land up to the orphanage looks really productive – people are setting out beds for potatoes and spraying onions and cutting eucalyptus – even the small kids are busy carrying water jugs and huge piles of eucalyptus leaves – they look like walking bushes. We are as always surrounded by cries of “muzungu” and “give me money”, as well as “ama chupa” meaning give me your empty water bottle. But more of the adults smile as we go by – it continues to be amazing what an entertainment we are.
Imbabazi is the continuation of an orphanage started by Ros Carr, a larger than life American woman who loved in Rwanda for over 50 years after marrying and British adventurer and moving out here. Once divorced she set up a pyrethrin farm, then when artificial pyrethrins came on the market she re-invented herself as a commercial flower farmer and the orphanage still continues in that business. Ros was a good friend of Dian Fossey and an absolute legend, she appears in many books about Rwanda during this century. She left Rwanda for a few short months in 2005 and when she came back her house had been stripped of everything of value. At age 80+ she started again, and started to collect the traumatized orphans that were wandering the roads aimlessly. Up to 400 children passed through her care, some reunited with families but others settling into the dormitories she built on her property. The Imbabazi trust continues to care for and educate Ros’ orphans as they grow older.
A young American woman named Devon has just started working here as an assistant manager, and gives us and another group of tourists that shows up the tour. The gardens are impressive, especially given the fact there has been no rain for 3 months. In season they would be spectacular. Green lawns, beds of flowers, rocky paths, and trees and plants brought to Ros from all over the world by her friends. The original house is still there (and was used in the movie Gorillas in the Mist), and Ros was buried on the property. We also tour the orphanage – part of which was once the pyrethrin drying sheds and has in fact been re-constructed to it’s original purpose. There are only about 25 orphans here now, most are boarding at secondary schools, but during term holidays there are almost 100 who are based here. They are trying to create income opportunities on the farm, such as the flower sales, and are looking at developing a dairy and bee keeping. Keeping 100 children fed and clothed and in school fees is not cheap!
Then back up the bumpy road, and another 20 minutes or so, mostly downhill to Gisenye. Sarah has been talking about getting car sick on the windy roads, but so far it seems to be simply discussions about the possibility rather than actual nausea. Jen and James are warned to look out for green-ness, but all continues to be well. We turn left and travel along the eastern shore of Lake Kivu where there is the very large Bralira brewery, source of Primus and Mutzig and maybe several other of the local beers. They draw methane from under the lake and use it to power at least part of the factory. According to the guidebook the grain waste is fed to the local fishes, not sure it they could be classified as a local “beer-fed” specialty. Large wooden canoes with what look like outriggers are pulled up on the shoreline, and they are hordes of splashing and screaming kids playing in the water. Our destination is a hotel/restaurant called Paradis, which turns out to be a lovely place with tables out near the lake on a small rocky peninsula. We have lots and lots of time to admire the view and to watch the myriad of herons, kingfishers, sunbirds, and mousebirds that abound. There is a small island offshore, and various boats that proceed out into the lake, either by oar or by power. Unfortunately it is so hazy there isn’t much of a view across the lake, apparently from Gisenyi the glow of the active Nyiramgamo volcano can be seen at night. Lunch is served on wooden trenchers and is excellent – James and I order local Tilapia, which is grilled over charcoal and served as the whole (gutted of course) fish.
Once fed we backtrack to the main road and turn into Gisenye to see the fruit bats that roost in trees along the beachfront. There is a long stretch of sandy beach and pubic waterfront – there is a wedding taking place with awnings and tents and lots of white linen, a party of some sort with a big sound system which has accumulated a large crowd of local people lining the fence and enjoying the music, and lots of kids swimming and enjoying the water. We admire the squeaking bats up in their trees, get swarmed by the craftsellers, who also kindly tell us that I have not left my car in a good place and there are thieves about who might take our baggages, and dip our toes into the water before loading up for the trip back to Musanze. We can now all say we have walked and sat by one of Africa’s limnic, or exploding lakes and survived. The drive back included a stop at a crafts shop, where James is the big buyer purchasing a stick similar to the ones children use to herd cattle (a cattle bopper we name it) and a carved wooden antelope, black in colour with white striping. We decide it must be meant to be an okapi, although some of the statues, especially the ones with young, look rather like hyenas in the company of small pigs. James gets a major ribbing for his purchase on our return.
Elizabeth’s sewing is ready – her purse and pants look great and the fabric choices work well. And they have even made a similar small purse for Sarah, which sends her into second heaven – she is so excited. Now she has a purse to put her purses into. Whatever! Back to MGVP where Jan and Mike have had a quiet and well appreciated day to themselves, and Jan has even baked a superb banana bread for us all.
Dinner tonight at the Muhubura – a local hangout where Dian Fossey apparently ate and stayed. They have a long verandah overlooking the road, and this is a common spot for the gorilla expats to get together, drink beer, and catch up with each other. We’re joined by max and Jacques, who run the Rwnadan cycling team and have the enormous Boerbull dog, and Katie and Glenn from Karisoke Research station. A long wait, a good meal, and lots of interesting conversation. I chat for a while with a Rwandan who is working as a judge in Musanze – he tells us there is discussion about a law that would specify a maximum of three children – he thinks it might eventually happen. Family is important here, but there is no doubt the country is severely stretched by its massive population. Sarah is having a whale of a time with these social evenings – drinking her pop and sneaking other people’s beer, and telling various people they are either funny or she loves them. Mike is in the funny category, and Jan is her best buddy, especially after giving her a gorilla badge (which she carefully tapes onto her shirt every morning) and nail polish this morning. I like the walk home in the dark after dinner – the outline of the monkey puzzle trees against the sky is truly unusual, and there were even stars out tonight. It looks like the rains are not quite ready to come.
Today we decided to take an excursion. After breakfast the girls and I loaded up in the car with James and Jen for a day trip to the Imbabazi orphanage and Gisenye, on Lake Kivu. Imbabazi is about 45 minutes away on the tar, and then 7 slow km on a bumpy murram road. The Rwandan countryside is very much like the in south west Uganda – hilly and solidly cultivated with houses and small village centres along the road. Also lots of police apparently so we stick to the 60 km per hour speed limit, a waste on the good tar road. We drive past our landmarks – a big rock cliff-face that looks like an elephants head, or the map of Africa, an abandoned refugee camp from the genocide – ragged disintegrating tents and broken down sheds, and turn onto the side road by going under one of the arbours that cross over many of the roads here. The land up to the orphanage looks really productive – people are setting out beds for potatoes and spraying onions and cutting eucalyptus – even the small kids are busy carrying water jugs and huge piles of eucalyptus leaves – they look like walking bushes. We are as always surrounded by cries of “muzungu” and “give me money”, as well as “ama chupa” meaning give me your empty water bottle. But more of the adults smile as we go by – it continues to be amazing what an entertainment we are.
Imbabazi is the continuation of an orphanage started by Ros Carr, a larger than life American woman who loved in Rwanda for over 50 years after marrying and British adventurer and moving out here. Once divorced she set up a pyrethrin farm, then when artificial pyrethrins came on the market she re-invented herself as a commercial flower farmer and the orphanage still continues in that business. Ros was a good friend of Dian Fossey and an absolute legend, she appears in many books about Rwanda during this century. She left Rwanda for a few short months in 2005 and when she came back her house had been stripped of everything of value. At age 80+ she started again, and started to collect the traumatized orphans that were wandering the roads aimlessly. Up to 400 children passed through her care, some reunited with families but others settling into the dormitories she built on her property. The Imbabazi trust continues to care for and educate Ros’ orphans as they grow older.
A young American woman named Devon has just started working here as an assistant manager, and gives us and another group of tourists that shows up the tour. The gardens are impressive, especially given the fact there has been no rain for 3 months. In season they would be spectacular. Green lawns, beds of flowers, rocky paths, and trees and plants brought to Ros from all over the world by her friends. The original house is still there (and was used in the movie Gorillas in the Mist), and Ros was buried on the property. We also tour the orphanage – part of which was once the pyrethrin drying sheds and has in fact been re-constructed to it’s original purpose. There are only about 25 orphans here now, most are boarding at secondary schools, but during term holidays there are almost 100 who are based here. They are trying to create income opportunities on the farm, such as the flower sales, and are looking at developing a dairy and bee keeping. Keeping 100 children fed and clothed and in school fees is not cheap!
Then back up the bumpy road, and another 20 minutes or so, mostly downhill to Gisenye. Sarah has been talking about getting car sick on the windy roads, but so far it seems to be simply discussions about the possibility rather than actual nausea. Jen and James are warned to look out for green-ness, but all continues to be well. We turn left and travel along the eastern shore of Lake Kivu where there is the very large Bralira brewery, source of Primus and Mutzig and maybe several other of the local beers. They draw methane from under the lake and use it to power at least part of the factory. According to the guidebook the grain waste is fed to the local fishes, not sure it they could be classified as a local “beer-fed” specialty. Large wooden canoes with what look like outriggers are pulled up on the shoreline, and they are hordes of splashing and screaming kids playing in the water. Our destination is a hotel/restaurant called Paradis, which turns out to be a lovely place with tables out near the lake on a small rocky peninsula. We have lots and lots of time to admire the view and to watch the myriad of herons, kingfishers, sunbirds, and mousebirds that abound. There is a small island offshore, and various boats that proceed out into the lake, either by oar or by power. Unfortunately it is so hazy there isn’t much of a view across the lake, apparently from Gisenyi the glow of the active Nyiramgamo volcano can be seen at night. Lunch is served on wooden trenchers and is excellent – James and I order local Tilapia, which is grilled over charcoal and served as the whole (gutted of course) fish.
Once fed we backtrack to the main road and turn into Gisenye to see the fruit bats that roost in trees along the beachfront. There is a long stretch of sandy beach and pubic waterfront – there is a wedding taking place with awnings and tents and lots of white linen, a party of some sort with a big sound system which has accumulated a large crowd of local people lining the fence and enjoying the music, and lots of kids swimming and enjoying the water. We admire the squeaking bats up in their trees, get swarmed by the craftsellers, who also kindly tell us that I have not left my car in a good place and there are thieves about who might take our baggages, and dip our toes into the water before loading up for the trip back to Musanze. We can now all say we have walked and sat by one of Africa’s limnic, or exploding lakes and survived. The drive back included a stop at a crafts shop, where James is the big buyer purchasing a stick similar to the ones children use to herd cattle (a cattle bopper we name it) and a carved wooden antelope, black in colour with white striping. We decide it must be meant to be an okapi, although some of the statues, especially the ones with young, look rather like hyenas in the company of small pigs. James gets a major ribbing for his purchase on our return.
Elizabeth’s sewing is ready – her purse and pants look great and the fabric choices work well. And they have even made a similar small purse for Sarah, which sends her into second heaven – she is so excited. Now she has a purse to put her purses into. Whatever! Back to MGVP where Jan and Mike have had a quiet and well appreciated day to themselves, and Jan has even baked a superb banana bread for us all.
Dinner tonight at the Muhubura – a local hangout where Dian Fossey apparently ate and stayed. They have a long verandah overlooking the road, and this is a common spot for the gorilla expats to get together, drink beer, and catch up with each other. We’re joined by max and Jacques, who run the Rwnadan cycling team and have the enormous Boerbull dog, and Katie and Glenn from Karisoke Research station. A long wait, a good meal, and lots of interesting conversation. I chat for a while with a Rwandan who is working as a judge in Musanze – he tells us there is discussion about a law that would specify a maximum of three children – he thinks it might eventually happen. Family is important here, but there is no doubt the country is severely stretched by its massive population. Sarah is having a whale of a time with these social evenings – drinking her pop and sneaking other people’s beer, and telling various people they are either funny or she loves them. Mike is in the funny category, and Jan is her best buddy, especially after giving her a gorilla badge (which she carefully tapes onto her shirt every morning) and nail polish this morning. I like the walk home in the dark after dinner – the outline of the monkey puzzle trees against the sky is truly unusual, and there were even stars out tonight. It looks like the rains are not quite ready to come.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Monday August 23, 2010 – Lounging about at Lake Bunyonyi
Monday August 23, 2010 – Lounging about at Lake Bunyonyi
We woke up to the sound of birds all around us – and not until almost 8:00. From the comfort of our beds we can see out through the open front of the geodome to the lake and the opposite shore. Crowned cranes fly past, there is a range of sunbirds, weavers, and a pair of Heuglin’s robins singing their hearts out from our deck. This is an incredibly relaxing place. Breakfast was a dream – cheese omelets in chapatti, fruit crepes, French toast with honey and an open flask of tea all day. There is a young Finnish fellow here that was at the Crater Lake with us, as well as a range of backpacker types of various affluence levels. One young woman from Toronto, who looks like she just went through chemo, brought collapsible hula hoops and a Tibetan prayer bowl with her as talking points with people she meets along the way. Jan and I are making everyone crazy with our bird books and binoculars, but we’re having fun. After breakfast Elizabeth and I put on our bathing suits and went for a swim of the dock. The water is quite still and very pleasant temperature, that is once you are in. There are so few places in Africa where one can go for a swim in a lake, just like at home. Between crocodiles, hippos, and bilharzias there just aren’t too many options, but this is one of them. There are apparently otters here but I wouldn’t expect to see one from where we are splashing about at the swimming dock. The deck on our geodome is also a great place to sit and catch up this diary as well as keep an eye out for new species. The day passes remarkably quickly in major relaxation mode – reading and sunning, interspersed with a fabulous lunch, tea, more swimming, a stroll around the island (about 15 minutes in total circumference) and even a nap for Sarah. Dinner has to be pre-ordered from the fairly extensive menu – 7:00 as the sun goes down we are again eating by candle lantern and chatting with the others. There is a big group of British university students here who have been building schools, so after dessert we retire to the quieter location on our deck to finish our beers and enjoy the moon and the sounds of the frogs, and the African drums in the distance, before turning in for the night. On the subject of dessert, we had rum balls and I have to say they were the best rum balls I have ever had in my life – a totally unexpected treat.
We woke up to the sound of birds all around us – and not until almost 8:00. From the comfort of our beds we can see out through the open front of the geodome to the lake and the opposite shore. Crowned cranes fly past, there is a range of sunbirds, weavers, and a pair of Heuglin’s robins singing their hearts out from our deck. This is an incredibly relaxing place. Breakfast was a dream – cheese omelets in chapatti, fruit crepes, French toast with honey and an open flask of tea all day. There is a young Finnish fellow here that was at the Crater Lake with us, as well as a range of backpacker types of various affluence levels. One young woman from Toronto, who looks like she just went through chemo, brought collapsible hula hoops and a Tibetan prayer bowl with her as talking points with people she meets along the way. Jan and I are making everyone crazy with our bird books and binoculars, but we’re having fun. After breakfast Elizabeth and I put on our bathing suits and went for a swim of the dock. The water is quite still and very pleasant temperature, that is once you are in. There are so few places in Africa where one can go for a swim in a lake, just like at home. Between crocodiles, hippos, and bilharzias there just aren’t too many options, but this is one of them. There are apparently otters here but I wouldn’t expect to see one from where we are splashing about at the swimming dock. The deck on our geodome is also a great place to sit and catch up this diary as well as keep an eye out for new species. The day passes remarkably quickly in major relaxation mode – reading and sunning, interspersed with a fabulous lunch, tea, more swimming, a stroll around the island (about 15 minutes in total circumference) and even a nap for Sarah. Dinner has to be pre-ordered from the fairly extensive menu – 7:00 as the sun goes down we are again eating by candle lantern and chatting with the others. There is a big group of British university students here who have been building schools, so after dessert we retire to the quieter location on our deck to finish our beers and enjoy the moon and the sounds of the frogs, and the African drums in the distance, before turning in for the night. On the subject of dessert, we had rum balls and I have to say they were the best rum balls I have ever had in my life – a totally unexpected treat.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Thursday August 26, 2010 – a slower day at MGVP
Thursday August 26, 2010 – a slower day at MGVP
Today is a slow, working day. I read slides, Sarah hangs out with doggies and chats to everyone, and Elizabeth reads, does some work on the computer, and starts on some HBO series they have here on a series of discs. Oz, a prison saga. Jen, from Davis California and here to work on her PhD project with James arrives and moves into the girls “bunkhouse” with Elizabeth. Mike and James go for a major bike ride – James wearing a motorcycle helmet because none of the nike helmets fit him. Apparently they attracted a huge following on their travels – local racing them and kids trying to hop on the back of the cargo bikes and grab rides. For dinner we ate at another restaurant close by – Sarah’s has a canker bothering her so she’s on a pasta kick, but her soda makes her cheer up. And home to bed early again.
Today is a slow, working day. I read slides, Sarah hangs out with doggies and chats to everyone, and Elizabeth reads, does some work on the computer, and starts on some HBO series they have here on a series of discs. Oz, a prison saga. Jen, from Davis California and here to work on her PhD project with James arrives and moves into the girls “bunkhouse” with Elizabeth. Mike and James go for a major bike ride – James wearing a motorcycle helmet because none of the nike helmets fit him. Apparently they attracted a huge following on their travels – local racing them and kids trying to hop on the back of the cargo bikes and grab rides. For dinner we ate at another restaurant close by – Sarah’s has a canker bothering her so she’s on a pasta kick, but her soda makes her cheer up. And home to bed early again.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Wednesday August 25, 2010 – baby gorillas, a trip to the fabric market, and pizza for dinner
Wednesday August 25, 2010 – baby gorillas, a trip to the fabric market, and pizza for dinner
After Leon’s breakfast – toast, eggs, coffee and tea, we met up with Magda, the regional field veterinarian, and went off to Kinigi to look at the orphans. Sarah’s big chance to see gorillas. Kinigi is about 30 minutes drive up towards the base of the volcanoes and is the trailhead/base for gorilla trekking as well as the site of the orphanage – a walled compound within which live 6 young gorillas, not really babies any more, with their caretakers. The views of the volcanoes are usually spectacular from here, but with the current dust haze they are barely visible across the horizon. There are 2 mountain gorillas, Maisha and Koboko, and 6 eastern lowland gorillas. All originated from Congo but there were no facilities to care for them there so they ended up here under MGVP. For about 6 years now, but the plans are underway for them to go back. But they are here now and one has diarrhea, so Magda dons mask and coveralls and gum-boots and goes off to look at them, and the girls and I climb up onto the roof of Magda’s truck to look over the wall and view the gorillas. They are mostly interested in what she is doing and line up along to far side of the compound, but once she finished her business and comes back to the truck to join us they all come back and start climbing on their play structure and beating their little chests and wrestling with either other. One of the care givers climbs up onto the structure as well and the smallest one climbs into his lap and settles in for a rest. They are cute and fuzzy and turning into big strong gorillas – no one actually goes in with them now except their caregivers as if they decided to go for you it would be nasty. But we enjoy watching them for another half hour or so, and then climb back down to the ground, which is rather a trick for Sarah, and head back to MGVP for a delicious Leon lunch. Mike is awake and is introduced to the girls.
In the afternoon we go to change money and buy fabric. The best rate for Rwandan francs is at the pharmacists, an Indian man who has been in Rwandan for many many years. And apparently its perfectly legal. He makes his money by giving a horrible rate when selling dollars to Rwandans. I have never seen him smile, and he didn’t smile much while we did our transaction. But as Sarah starts to melt down and refuse to leave and say she’s hungry, he gets a big smile on his face, tells me I must be patient and she reminds him of his daughter, and proceeds to get here a plate of cookies and crackers, brings her behind the counter to sit at his desk, and take her time over her snack. He then gives me a little lecture about how I must be patient, and how her problem is caused by a lack of oxygen and she must practice breathing in the morning and the evening. He gives Sarah a little pep talk about breathing as well, and is very sweet to her. You just never know.
Across the road from the pharmacy is the market – a large cement walled compound filled with aisles and isles of little stalls. Those in the front have mostly clothing and shoes, but in the back there are rows and rows of bright patterned African waxed fabrics. We go up and down the rows for a while, and finally choose a morseau for some pants to be made, and another for an over the shoulder purse. We get a bit swarmed by everyone trying to sell us their stuff, in a combination of English and French, but they are all good humoured about it. There are many small children with their mothers and Sarah has a good time talking to them, tickling them, and patting their heads. But one little boy hides his head under his mothers skirt, and then cries when Sarah tries to play peek a boo with him. Apparently some mothers tell their kids the muzungu will get them if they don’t behave. So some of the little ones think we might just be boogey-men. We take the fabric across the road to a tailor shop – a dozen men and women sewing away on treadle machines, and Elizabeth shows the pants she wants copied, gets measured for them by the senior tailor – a novel experience having a strange man measure her hips and inseam, and we tell him to make a purse like Jan has had made, and if there is fabric left over then a little one for Sarah.
Back again to MGVP to sort out odds and ends, look at some slides, and sort some of the beautifully clean and ironed laundry that Leon and Felicien have been working through. The water, which was off this morning and might have been off for several days, has come back on so we are all happy at the prospect of hot showers.
For dinner we walk down the road a bit to the Volcanos - a bar/restaurant with a wood-fired pizza oven and a nice open verandah on the second floor. The pizzas of course take some time, and are delivered two by two as I guess that’ what the oven takes, but it’s a nice evening.
After Leon’s breakfast – toast, eggs, coffee and tea, we met up with Magda, the regional field veterinarian, and went off to Kinigi to look at the orphans. Sarah’s big chance to see gorillas. Kinigi is about 30 minutes drive up towards the base of the volcanoes and is the trailhead/base for gorilla trekking as well as the site of the orphanage – a walled compound within which live 6 young gorillas, not really babies any more, with their caretakers. The views of the volcanoes are usually spectacular from here, but with the current dust haze they are barely visible across the horizon. There are 2 mountain gorillas, Maisha and Koboko, and 6 eastern lowland gorillas. All originated from Congo but there were no facilities to care for them there so they ended up here under MGVP. For about 6 years now, but the plans are underway for them to go back. But they are here now and one has diarrhea, so Magda dons mask and coveralls and gum-boots and goes off to look at them, and the girls and I climb up onto the roof of Magda’s truck to look over the wall and view the gorillas. They are mostly interested in what she is doing and line up along to far side of the compound, but once she finished her business and comes back to the truck to join us they all come back and start climbing on their play structure and beating their little chests and wrestling with either other. One of the care givers climbs up onto the structure as well and the smallest one climbs into his lap and settles in for a rest. They are cute and fuzzy and turning into big strong gorillas – no one actually goes in with them now except their caregivers as if they decided to go for you it would be nasty. But we enjoy watching them for another half hour or so, and then climb back down to the ground, which is rather a trick for Sarah, and head back to MGVP for a delicious Leon lunch. Mike is awake and is introduced to the girls.
In the afternoon we go to change money and buy fabric. The best rate for Rwandan francs is at the pharmacists, an Indian man who has been in Rwandan for many many years. And apparently its perfectly legal. He makes his money by giving a horrible rate when selling dollars to Rwandans. I have never seen him smile, and he didn’t smile much while we did our transaction. But as Sarah starts to melt down and refuse to leave and say she’s hungry, he gets a big smile on his face, tells me I must be patient and she reminds him of his daughter, and proceeds to get here a plate of cookies and crackers, brings her behind the counter to sit at his desk, and take her time over her snack. He then gives me a little lecture about how I must be patient, and how her problem is caused by a lack of oxygen and she must practice breathing in the morning and the evening. He gives Sarah a little pep talk about breathing as well, and is very sweet to her. You just never know.
Across the road from the pharmacy is the market – a large cement walled compound filled with aisles and isles of little stalls. Those in the front have mostly clothing and shoes, but in the back there are rows and rows of bright patterned African waxed fabrics. We go up and down the rows for a while, and finally choose a morseau for some pants to be made, and another for an over the shoulder purse. We get a bit swarmed by everyone trying to sell us their stuff, in a combination of English and French, but they are all good humoured about it. There are many small children with their mothers and Sarah has a good time talking to them, tickling them, and patting their heads. But one little boy hides his head under his mothers skirt, and then cries when Sarah tries to play peek a boo with him. Apparently some mothers tell their kids the muzungu will get them if they don’t behave. So some of the little ones think we might just be boogey-men. We take the fabric across the road to a tailor shop – a dozen men and women sewing away on treadle machines, and Elizabeth shows the pants she wants copied, gets measured for them by the senior tailor – a novel experience having a strange man measure her hips and inseam, and we tell him to make a purse like Jan has had made, and if there is fabric left over then a little one for Sarah.
Back again to MGVP to sort out odds and ends, look at some slides, and sort some of the beautifully clean and ironed laundry that Leon and Felicien have been working through. The water, which was off this morning and might have been off for several days, has come back on so we are all happy at the prospect of hot showers.
For dinner we walk down the road a bit to the Volcanos - a bar/restaurant with a wood-fired pizza oven and a nice open verandah on the second floor. The pizzas of course take some time, and are delivered two by two as I guess that’ what the oven takes, but it’s a nice evening.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Tuesday August 24, 2010 – Crossing to Rwanda and settling into MGVP
Tuesday August 24, 2010 – Crossing to Rwanda and settling into MGVP
Another beautiful morning with the birds singing as the sun comes up. Breakfast is fruit crepes – I can’t believe we are eating better here in deepest darkest African than we do at home, and then we gradually pack up our stuff for the return back to the mainland. Timo is getting a ride with us to Kisoro, and he’s pretty pleased about it. The local buses and taxis are not exactly as comfortable as the back of a private 4x4. Near enough to 11 the boat comes to pick us up and we have a pleasant 15 minute ride back to the dock – admiring the scenery and the birds along the way, and watching the locals paddle their heavy wooden dugout canoes carrying people and goods around the lake. Our vehicle is there safe and sound as we left it, so in we get for the short drive into Kabale where TImo has to check in with a friend, I need a bank, and we decide to do lunch at the local backpackers. They have a dining area up on the rooftop – with a shelter overhead and sofas with cushions in bright colours. It looks like Moroccan or North African. It also has what looks like a boat ladder to get top, so Sarah takes a bit of shoving and encouragement for the climb. We order and then I set off in search of the best exchange rate –I arrive back just in time for the food, and we lunch before starting the next stage of the journey to Kisoro and then the Rwandan border.
We backtrack on the road from Buhoma and most of it is lovely new tar – what a pleasure to drive on. The only trick is to notice the clusters of speed bumps entering and leaving more built up areas as they are brutal at high speed. The area just west of Kabale has flat fields with Holstein cattle and looks a bit like home, except for the crowned cranes sharing the pastures with them. There is a road project from Kabale to Kisoro and for most of the ride we are on brand new tar – winding up and down the increasingly hilly terrain. There are volcanic “pimples” – little conical hills that never grew up to be real volcanoes, and everything is terraced and planted although the dryness is readily apparent and the air is hazy with dust. Just before the Echuya Forest, as reserve of trees and high bamboo, we run out of tar and its back to the bumps and the incredible dust. It’s really evident in the forest, which should be moist and green. The vegetation for a while was totally coated in red dust, making it look like the Canadian forest in autumn. Only in the distance is the green colour visible. We eventually come to Kisoro, the road passing over the landing strip as we enter town. They have gates on either side that they lower if a plane is taking off or landing. Not the busiest airport I would expect. Kisoro has a single long strip of shops, restaurants, bars, craft shops, and small hotels. We stop at one to drop Timo off and rehydrate ourselves before filling up with diesel and the final stretch to the border. We pass Traveller’s Rest Hotel – here for decades and featured in the book about Dian Fossey Elizabeth and I both just read. Pieces of history, and set off down the last bit of bumpy dusty road to the border at Cyanika. It is obvious that we are in volcanic territory here as there are rough, irregular black rocks of lava everywhere. They are used to make formal mortared walls, informal stone piles as dividers, and the foundations of most of the houses. It’s funny to think that they would probably be worth money at home as unique building stone for fireplaces and such. But the fields are strewn with them – digging rocks is likely a daily pastime for anyone trying to build or farm here.
The last stretch of Uganda is a dusty road with shops on either side, and then we are at the border itself. Step 1 – go into a small round hut and show our passports, a man fills in lines in a large ledger book for each of us, and then I do the same for the vehicle at a second desk. We are given small torn pieces of white paper with initials on them that are our passes, and a slightly larger one as the gate pass for the car. Then we go to the immigration office and hand in our exit cards and our pieces of paper to get our passports stamped. Then to the gate, but the soldier there tells me I need to go to another building for police clearance. Off I go, into a fair sized almost empty building where the man watching TV turns out to be the police clearance officer. He checks my papers for the car, fills in more lines in a ledger book, and stamps a bunch of paperwork for me. I make some exclamation about the headlines on his newspaper, that the teachers and the students at Makerere are on strike – the teachers for more pay and the students for lower fees. The term has just started, or should have started. The policeman and I chat a bit, I tell him I am a professor in Canada, and he tells me I don’t look at all like a professor and that is a good thing as they are all – and he makes a scrunched up squinty face. Certainly glad I don’t fit into that category!
And finally through the gate, where I switch from the left to the right side of the road. We visit the immigration office for our stamps, I visit the customs office where some of the details of the car are written in a book, and then off we go.
And so we are in Rwanda. Back on paved roads, with people everywhere – walking along the road edges, walking on the road, bicycles, boda bodas (the drivers wear green numbered vests and have to wear helmets, and trucks and lorries. I use my horn regularly to clear a path wide enough to comfortably drive through (Sarah is in stitches over this as the horn goes Beep, beep beep beep beep in a descending tone every time I hit it – do it again mommy, do it again mommy). After about 20 minutes we pull into Ruhengeri, or Musenzi as is it now know, and then we are back at the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program compound, home to Jan and beginning to feel like home away from home to me.
The compound is quite large with nice gardens, as small house out back where Jan lives, and a Ushaped building with a central covered verandah area and a garden in the middle. There is a lab, several offices, a library/boardroom, and the main living quarters with kitchen, dining area, lounge, bedrooms, and bathroom. Plus dogs – Jan’s Amah and Molly’s Boots (both puppies), Dan who is crippled and has a wheelchair to get around in, Chewie a somewhat unreliable Rottweiler type cross who is known to bite and guards to front of the compound, and Foxie who will fight to the death with Chewie and hence guards the back area of the compound, with a fence in between. We greet the guards, Leon the house manager, and the lab staff and veterinarians who are here. James, a British veterinary student is staying here working on cryptosporidia, a protozoal intestinal parasite of people, cattle, and gorillas. We unload, shower and bathe, fill the laundry basket with an obscene amount of incredibly dusty and filthy laundry, and relax and chat until dinner time – grilled cheese sandwiches, gin and tonic, and early to bed for everyone tonight. Mike Cranfield flies in from the US but arrives late – we’ll see him tomorrow.
Another beautiful morning with the birds singing as the sun comes up. Breakfast is fruit crepes – I can’t believe we are eating better here in deepest darkest African than we do at home, and then we gradually pack up our stuff for the return back to the mainland. Timo is getting a ride with us to Kisoro, and he’s pretty pleased about it. The local buses and taxis are not exactly as comfortable as the back of a private 4x4. Near enough to 11 the boat comes to pick us up and we have a pleasant 15 minute ride back to the dock – admiring the scenery and the birds along the way, and watching the locals paddle their heavy wooden dugout canoes carrying people and goods around the lake. Our vehicle is there safe and sound as we left it, so in we get for the short drive into Kabale where TImo has to check in with a friend, I need a bank, and we decide to do lunch at the local backpackers. They have a dining area up on the rooftop – with a shelter overhead and sofas with cushions in bright colours. It looks like Moroccan or North African. It also has what looks like a boat ladder to get top, so Sarah takes a bit of shoving and encouragement for the climb. We order and then I set off in search of the best exchange rate –I arrive back just in time for the food, and we lunch before starting the next stage of the journey to Kisoro and then the Rwandan border.
We backtrack on the road from Buhoma and most of it is lovely new tar – what a pleasure to drive on. The only trick is to notice the clusters of speed bumps entering and leaving more built up areas as they are brutal at high speed. The area just west of Kabale has flat fields with Holstein cattle and looks a bit like home, except for the crowned cranes sharing the pastures with them. There is a road project from Kabale to Kisoro and for most of the ride we are on brand new tar – winding up and down the increasingly hilly terrain. There are volcanic “pimples” – little conical hills that never grew up to be real volcanoes, and everything is terraced and planted although the dryness is readily apparent and the air is hazy with dust. Just before the Echuya Forest, as reserve of trees and high bamboo, we run out of tar and its back to the bumps and the incredible dust. It’s really evident in the forest, which should be moist and green. The vegetation for a while was totally coated in red dust, making it look like the Canadian forest in autumn. Only in the distance is the green colour visible. We eventually come to Kisoro, the road passing over the landing strip as we enter town. They have gates on either side that they lower if a plane is taking off or landing. Not the busiest airport I would expect. Kisoro has a single long strip of shops, restaurants, bars, craft shops, and small hotels. We stop at one to drop Timo off and rehydrate ourselves before filling up with diesel and the final stretch to the border. We pass Traveller’s Rest Hotel – here for decades and featured in the book about Dian Fossey Elizabeth and I both just read. Pieces of history, and set off down the last bit of bumpy dusty road to the border at Cyanika. It is obvious that we are in volcanic territory here as there are rough, irregular black rocks of lava everywhere. They are used to make formal mortared walls, informal stone piles as dividers, and the foundations of most of the houses. It’s funny to think that they would probably be worth money at home as unique building stone for fireplaces and such. But the fields are strewn with them – digging rocks is likely a daily pastime for anyone trying to build or farm here.
The last stretch of Uganda is a dusty road with shops on either side, and then we are at the border itself. Step 1 – go into a small round hut and show our passports, a man fills in lines in a large ledger book for each of us, and then I do the same for the vehicle at a second desk. We are given small torn pieces of white paper with initials on them that are our passes, and a slightly larger one as the gate pass for the car. Then we go to the immigration office and hand in our exit cards and our pieces of paper to get our passports stamped. Then to the gate, but the soldier there tells me I need to go to another building for police clearance. Off I go, into a fair sized almost empty building where the man watching TV turns out to be the police clearance officer. He checks my papers for the car, fills in more lines in a ledger book, and stamps a bunch of paperwork for me. I make some exclamation about the headlines on his newspaper, that the teachers and the students at Makerere are on strike – the teachers for more pay and the students for lower fees. The term has just started, or should have started. The policeman and I chat a bit, I tell him I am a professor in Canada, and he tells me I don’t look at all like a professor and that is a good thing as they are all – and he makes a scrunched up squinty face. Certainly glad I don’t fit into that category!
And finally through the gate, where I switch from the left to the right side of the road. We visit the immigration office for our stamps, I visit the customs office where some of the details of the car are written in a book, and then off we go.
And so we are in Rwanda. Back on paved roads, with people everywhere – walking along the road edges, walking on the road, bicycles, boda bodas (the drivers wear green numbered vests and have to wear helmets, and trucks and lorries. I use my horn regularly to clear a path wide enough to comfortably drive through (Sarah is in stitches over this as the horn goes Beep, beep beep beep beep in a descending tone every time I hit it – do it again mommy, do it again mommy). After about 20 minutes we pull into Ruhengeri, or Musenzi as is it now know, and then we are back at the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program compound, home to Jan and beginning to feel like home away from home to me.
The compound is quite large with nice gardens, as small house out back where Jan lives, and a Ushaped building with a central covered verandah area and a garden in the middle. There is a lab, several offices, a library/boardroom, and the main living quarters with kitchen, dining area, lounge, bedrooms, and bathroom. Plus dogs – Jan’s Amah and Molly’s Boots (both puppies), Dan who is crippled and has a wheelchair to get around in, Chewie a somewhat unreliable Rottweiler type cross who is known to bite and guards to front of the compound, and Foxie who will fight to the death with Chewie and hence guards the back area of the compound, with a fence in between. We greet the guards, Leon the house manager, and the lab staff and veterinarians who are here. James, a British veterinary student is staying here working on cryptosporidia, a protozoal intestinal parasite of people, cattle, and gorillas. We unload, shower and bathe, fill the laundry basket with an obscene amount of incredibly dusty and filthy laundry, and relax and chat until dinner time – grilled cheese sandwiches, gin and tonic, and early to bed for everyone tonight. Mike Cranfield flies in from the US but arrives late – we’ll see him tomorrow.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Monday August 23, 2010 – Lounging about at Lake Bunyonyi
Monday August 23, 2010 – Lounging about at Lake Bunyonyi
We woke up to the sound of birds all around us – and not until almost 8:00. From the comfort of our beds we can see out through the open front of the geodome to the lake and the opposite shore. Crowned cranes fly past, there is a range of sunbirds, weavers, and a pair of Heuglin’s robins singing their hearts out from our deck. This is an incredibly relaxing place. Breakfast was a dream – cheese omelets in chapatti, fruit crepes, French toast with honey and an open flask of tea all day. There is a young Finnish fellow here that was at the Crater Lake with us, as well as a range of backpacker types of various affluence levels. One young woman from Toronto, who looks like she just went through chemo, brought collapsible hula hoops and a Tibetan prayer bowl with her as talking points with people she meets along the way. Jan and I are making everyone crazy with our bird books and binoculars, but we’re having fun. After breakfast Elizabeth and I put on our bathing suits and went for a swim of the dock. The water is quite still and very pleasant temperature, that is once you are in. There are so few places in Africa where one can go for a swim in a lake, just like at home. Between crocodiles, hippos, and bilharzias there just aren’t too many options, but this is one of them. There are apparently otters here but I wouldn’t expect to see one from where we are splashing about at the swimming dock. The deck on our geodome is also a great place to sit and catch up this diary as well as keep an eye out for new species. The day passes remarkably quickly in major relaxation mode – reading and sunning, interspersed with a fabulous lunch, tea, more swimming, a stroll around the island (about 15 minutes in total circumference) and even a nap for Sarah. Dinner has to be pre-ordered from the fairly extensive menu – 7:00 as the sun goes down we are again eating by candle lantern and chatting with the others. There is a big group of British university students here who have been building schools, so after dessert we retire to the quieter location on our deck to finish our beers and enjoy the moon and the sounds of the frogs, and the African drums in the distance, before turning in for the night. On the subject of dessert, we had rum balls and I have to say they were the best rum balls I have ever had in my life – a totally unexpected treat.
We woke up to the sound of birds all around us – and not until almost 8:00. From the comfort of our beds we can see out through the open front of the geodome to the lake and the opposite shore. Crowned cranes fly past, there is a range of sunbirds, weavers, and a pair of Heuglin’s robins singing their hearts out from our deck. This is an incredibly relaxing place. Breakfast was a dream – cheese omelets in chapatti, fruit crepes, French toast with honey and an open flask of tea all day. There is a young Finnish fellow here that was at the Crater Lake with us, as well as a range of backpacker types of various affluence levels. One young woman from Toronto, who looks like she just went through chemo, brought collapsible hula hoops and a Tibetan prayer bowl with her as talking points with people she meets along the way. Jan and I are making everyone crazy with our bird books and binoculars, but we’re having fun. After breakfast Elizabeth and I put on our bathing suits and went for a swim of the dock. The water is quite still and very pleasant temperature, that is once you are in. There are so few places in Africa where one can go for a swim in a lake, just like at home. Between crocodiles, hippos, and bilharzias there just aren’t too many options, but this is one of them. There are apparently otters here but I wouldn’t expect to see one from where we are splashing about at the swimming dock. The deck on our geodome is also a great place to sit and catch up this diary as well as keep an eye out for new species. The day passes remarkably quickly in major relaxation mode – reading and sunning, interspersed with a fabulous lunch, tea, more swimming, a stroll around the island (about 15 minutes in total circumference) and even a nap for Sarah. Dinner has to be pre-ordered from the fairly extensive menu – 7:00 as the sun goes down we are again eating by candle lantern and chatting with the others. There is a big group of British university students here who have been building schools, so after dessert we retire to the quieter location on our deck to finish our beers and enjoy the moon and the sounds of the frogs, and the African drums in the distance, before turning in for the night. On the subject of dessert, we had rum balls and I have to say they were the best rum balls I have ever had in my life – a totally unexpected treat.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sunday August 22, 2010 – Goodbye to Bwindi, lunch up high in the Mountains, and a boat ride to Byoona Amagara
Sunday August 22, 2010 – Goodbye to Bwindi, lunch up high in the Mountains, and a boat ride to Byoona Amagara
Fred’s instructions to Isaac seemed to work and there was thankfully no “hodi” at the door first thing in the morning. Once organized we all traipsed across the road and had breakfast at the Community Bandas, where we are now accepted regulars. The flush toilets and the food make an irresistible combination. John, Dorothy and Saul were just heading off on the next leg of their birding odyssey – John has a totally serious excel spread sheet of birds that might be found – with colour coding as well. Jan and I are most impressed, this is serious birding. After breakfast the girls load up the vehicle with our stuff and Jan’s bags – Isaac has washed the outside of it and it looks great – hardly recognizable as the same dust and mud-covered 4x4 we drove in on. Jan, Fred and I pay our respects to the Park Warden, who chats for a bit about changes in head office and how they may affect the working of the park. Business as usual for now but there are certainly concerns for the future. Isaac seems convinced I am going to help support his children’s school education, at least according to what he told Elizabeth. Fred would be horrified if he knew Issac had been asking his guests for money. It’s a classic story – Isaac recognizes the public school system is not giving his child the heads up a private school would, is having trouble paying the regular school costs and has no money for private schools, but still intends to have at least 5 children. None of whom will probably receive the education he would like them to get.
And off we go to final destination Lake Bunyonyi – but the road is by no means direct, and again is pretty bumpy and tortuous. Fred is driving into Kisoro for errands (only 5 hours of so) so we follow him for the first part, he was very intent on making sure we didn’t miss any of the tricky points although the road is pretty well marked. We exit the park, wave to the strip of souvenir shops, and then it’s a combination of community land and travelling in and along the the edge of Bwindi. It’s all steep hills and switchbacks, with terraced fields in the community sections and incredible forest in the park. Superficially it looks like tropical rain forest in Central America, but on closer inspection the trees and the animals would be all wrong. At one point we stop as there is a troop of colobus in the trees above the road, only to see a second group of blue monkeys off to the side as well. There is something in the soil here that changes to an incredibly fine powder so as we travel along the road there is an incredible dist plume behind us, which occasionally catches up and envelops us if we have to slow for a particularly awkward bit of road. Fortunately the smell of rat has pretty much leached out of the ventilation system so we can put up the windows and turn on the A/C when the dust gets too much for us. About 3 hours later, and maybe 40 km, we stop in Ruhija for lunch at the Volcanos Lodge – way up on a hill overlooking a broad valley. The view is quite spectacular. Lunch is served in style, and quite promptly, giving us a nice break from the bumping and the dust.
The final stage is about 40 odd km again – the last 23 of which are on tar. But it takes us a good few hours to get there, passing through the park again for a stretch before dropping out of the hills and into the flatter lowlands. Being on tar is great – but 60 km and hour seems like excessive speed after all the hours (days) driving on the unpaved or murram roads. We’re happy to get there – Sarah has been having her first really bad day of the trip so far – upset tummy, sleep deprived, and kind of upset over the fact that we have an extra person in the car and that Elizabeth is sharing her backseat domain. I guess we are lucky that she has been so good for so long.
At the lakeside there is a sign for Byoona Amagara parking where we unload our stuff, place the car in the shade, and then load into a small open motorboat for the 15 min trip to the island where the resort is located. We could have travelled for 50 minutes in a dugout canoe instead, and saved a grand total of 15,000 shillings ($7.50) but no one is in the mood for that. Crayfish are a local delicacy, although the guy on the dock totally puts us off by demonstrating what a live crayfish looks like, and then twisting its tail off and peeling it to show the meat while the rest of the crayfish lies twitching on the dock. Not appreciated by this audience! The boat trip is smooth and easy, along the very convoluted shoreline where there are scattered resorts and villages. Kingfishers and cormorants abound, and there are crowned cranes grazing on the sloping shorelines.
The resort is interesting – a series of flagstone paths leads up from the dock and the shoreline to the open air reception and restaurant, and then up and around to the dorms, bathrooms, and the geodomes. We are booked in a regular and a “deluxe” geodome according to availability. Jan has the regular geodome, with two single beds, and we have the deluxe which actually comes with a double and a single bed and its own little compound with a large deck looking over the water, and our own bathroom and shower area, complete with solar heated water. The geodomes are made of reed and have open fronts facing the lake – they are quite clever in design and very attractive and spacious. The toilets here are of the composting ones, modified long-drops but with a proper seat which makes it so much easier for Sarah to handle. All surrounded by trees and filled with chirping and singing birds. Pretty lovely.
We decide it’s half-beer o’clock and wet our whistles while perusing the menu – which has an amazing variety of really good looking food. There is a small craft sale area, and a variety of activities that one can take part in – including canoe rides, community tours, and trips around the lake. We are happy to plant and relax for the two night we will be here. Sarah has a pain in her thigh, for which we can see no actual lesion, and has decided that surgery will probably be necessary. She asks if Elizabeth can help give her the injections. We have a great dinner by candlelit lanterns, and then put Sarah to bed and retire to our deck with glasses of amarula to admire the full moon and listen to the drums from an adjacent village. A perfect end to a long and not quite so perfect day.
Fred’s instructions to Isaac seemed to work and there was thankfully no “hodi” at the door first thing in the morning. Once organized we all traipsed across the road and had breakfast at the Community Bandas, where we are now accepted regulars. The flush toilets and the food make an irresistible combination. John, Dorothy and Saul were just heading off on the next leg of their birding odyssey – John has a totally serious excel spread sheet of birds that might be found – with colour coding as well. Jan and I are most impressed, this is serious birding. After breakfast the girls load up the vehicle with our stuff and Jan’s bags – Isaac has washed the outside of it and it looks great – hardly recognizable as the same dust and mud-covered 4x4 we drove in on. Jan, Fred and I pay our respects to the Park Warden, who chats for a bit about changes in head office and how they may affect the working of the park. Business as usual for now but there are certainly concerns for the future. Isaac seems convinced I am going to help support his children’s school education, at least according to what he told Elizabeth. Fred would be horrified if he knew Issac had been asking his guests for money. It’s a classic story – Isaac recognizes the public school system is not giving his child the heads up a private school would, is having trouble paying the regular school costs and has no money for private schools, but still intends to have at least 5 children. None of whom will probably receive the education he would like them to get.
And off we go to final destination Lake Bunyonyi – but the road is by no means direct, and again is pretty bumpy and tortuous. Fred is driving into Kisoro for errands (only 5 hours of so) so we follow him for the first part, he was very intent on making sure we didn’t miss any of the tricky points although the road is pretty well marked. We exit the park, wave to the strip of souvenir shops, and then it’s a combination of community land and travelling in and along the the edge of Bwindi. It’s all steep hills and switchbacks, with terraced fields in the community sections and incredible forest in the park. Superficially it looks like tropical rain forest in Central America, but on closer inspection the trees and the animals would be all wrong. At one point we stop as there is a troop of colobus in the trees above the road, only to see a second group of blue monkeys off to the side as well. There is something in the soil here that changes to an incredibly fine powder so as we travel along the road there is an incredible dist plume behind us, which occasionally catches up and envelops us if we have to slow for a particularly awkward bit of road. Fortunately the smell of rat has pretty much leached out of the ventilation system so we can put up the windows and turn on the A/C when the dust gets too much for us. About 3 hours later, and maybe 40 km, we stop in Ruhija for lunch at the Volcanos Lodge – way up on a hill overlooking a broad valley. The view is quite spectacular. Lunch is served in style, and quite promptly, giving us a nice break from the bumping and the dust.
The final stage is about 40 odd km again – the last 23 of which are on tar. But it takes us a good few hours to get there, passing through the park again for a stretch before dropping out of the hills and into the flatter lowlands. Being on tar is great – but 60 km and hour seems like excessive speed after all the hours (days) driving on the unpaved or murram roads. We’re happy to get there – Sarah has been having her first really bad day of the trip so far – upset tummy, sleep deprived, and kind of upset over the fact that we have an extra person in the car and that Elizabeth is sharing her backseat domain. I guess we are lucky that she has been so good for so long.
At the lakeside there is a sign for Byoona Amagara parking where we unload our stuff, place the car in the shade, and then load into a small open motorboat for the 15 min trip to the island where the resort is located. We could have travelled for 50 minutes in a dugout canoe instead, and saved a grand total of 15,000 shillings ($7.50) but no one is in the mood for that. Crayfish are a local delicacy, although the guy on the dock totally puts us off by demonstrating what a live crayfish looks like, and then twisting its tail off and peeling it to show the meat while the rest of the crayfish lies twitching on the dock. Not appreciated by this audience! The boat trip is smooth and easy, along the very convoluted shoreline where there are scattered resorts and villages. Kingfishers and cormorants abound, and there are crowned cranes grazing on the sloping shorelines.
The resort is interesting – a series of flagstone paths leads up from the dock and the shoreline to the open air reception and restaurant, and then up and around to the dorms, bathrooms, and the geodomes. We are booked in a regular and a “deluxe” geodome according to availability. Jan has the regular geodome, with two single beds, and we have the deluxe which actually comes with a double and a single bed and its own little compound with a large deck looking over the water, and our own bathroom and shower area, complete with solar heated water. The geodomes are made of reed and have open fronts facing the lake – they are quite clever in design and very attractive and spacious. The toilets here are of the composting ones, modified long-drops but with a proper seat which makes it so much easier for Sarah to handle. All surrounded by trees and filled with chirping and singing birds. Pretty lovely.
We decide it’s half-beer o’clock and wet our whistles while perusing the menu – which has an amazing variety of really good looking food. There is a small craft sale area, and a variety of activities that one can take part in – including canoe rides, community tours, and trips around the lake. We are happy to plant and relax for the two night we will be here. Sarah has a pain in her thigh, for which we can see no actual lesion, and has decided that surgery will probably be necessary. She asks if Elizabeth can help give her the injections. We have a great dinner by candlelit lanterns, and then put Sarah to bed and retire to our deck with glasses of amarula to admire the full moon and listen to the drums from an adjacent village. A perfect end to a long and not quite so perfect day.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Saturday August 21, 2010 – a day in Buhoma and a lot of eating out
Saturday August 21, 2010 – a day in Buhoma and a lot of eating out
6:45 AM. There are noises all around. Birds, vehicles, cattle, Africans calling to each other. The generator at the hostel next door. The girls are still fast asleep. And a voice near by calling “hodi, hodi”. Then a knock at the door. It dawns upon me that the voice is Isaac’s and “hodi” is the polite way to call someone in their hut in Swahili. He is bringing us hot water for the day. So kind and so not wanted at this point. So we are all up and awake much earlier than we need to be. We get ourselves organized and get ready to head across the road but Isaac has very kindly made us tea, and set it all up at the table in the office– hot water, teabags, coffee, sugar, and milk powder. Plus a pile of bread and a big tub of Blue Band (margarine). “Oh Isaac,” we say, “we are meeting friends for breakfast”. “This isn’t breakfast” he tells us, “just a small something”. So Elizabeth and I have tea and coffee (apparently Ugandan coffee is nothing to write home about) and Sarah piles into the bread and Blue Band, making a large dent in it which means Elizabeth and I don’t have to have any. Honour upheld, we thank Isaac profusely and then head across the street for juice, toast, and Spanish omelettes. We feel like we are sneaking around behind his back!
After breakfast we stroll back through the village, checking out the shops we didn’t get into yesterday. Isaac joins us, making sure we are well looked after and enjoying ourselves. He takes his role as our host very seriously. The new ones have t-shirts at 15$ so we go back and buy Sarah a pink one for $10 – it has Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest and a picture of a gorilla on the front, and a big gorilla on the back with the logo “muzungu in the mist”. She is thrilled. After we pay for it Isaac tells us it would have cost him 10,000 shillings, half of what we paid. Oh well. We check out the tea bushes on the side of the road, there are people picking leaves, and then decide to go to the internet café at the local hospital, a few km down the road, as Jan and Fred won’t likely be back until lunch-time – they have a 5+ hour drive. Isaac comes along as well for the ride, and then hangs out and watches us surf for a few hours. Likely more interesting than sitting waiting at the house.
Jan and Fred arrive about 1:15 –they are starving and so are we, so we walk down the road to Volcanoes Lodge, a lovely spot built on a hillside overlooking the forest. Owned by a fellow Jan knows who also has lodges in Rwanda and several other primate locations here. We sit in the lounge and have a drink (our beer consumption is seriously increased on this trip) and wait for our three course lunch to be served in the beautifully decorated dining room. Hot bread rolls, soup, main course, and desert. We’re stuffed and happy. We stroll back through the village, visit the parks office, spot some birds, and go back to the house for Jan and Fred to properly unpack. Sarah and Elizabeth flop behind, and Jan and I go for a walk along the river. The “self-guided trail”. Apparently sometimes the gorillas actually come down and wander the self-guided trail themselves, in which case tourists are advised not to walk it. Elizabeth comments, and I agree, that that would be the best time to be there. Anyway no gorillas anywhere near here today, but Jan and I have a lovely walk through the forest alongside what could legitimately be called a babbling brook. It would be a perfect spot to lounge about the water on a hot day. I even catch sight of the russet rump of a duiker as it bounds across the path in front of us. The forest rises up steeply on either side, lush and green with tall trees and intertwining vines. It must be tough going to climb through it gorilla tracking.
We bathe in warm water provided again by Isaac, which has the strongest imaginable smell of smoke. It must be heated in a large barrel over a wood fire. Fred is prevailed upon to have dinner with us so we all cross the road and meet John and Dorothy for a culinarily adequate and socially very pleasant dinner on the raised deck looking across at the darkened forest.
6:45 AM. There are noises all around. Birds, vehicles, cattle, Africans calling to each other. The generator at the hostel next door. The girls are still fast asleep. And a voice near by calling “hodi, hodi”. Then a knock at the door. It dawns upon me that the voice is Isaac’s and “hodi” is the polite way to call someone in their hut in Swahili. He is bringing us hot water for the day. So kind and so not wanted at this point. So we are all up and awake much earlier than we need to be. We get ourselves organized and get ready to head across the road but Isaac has very kindly made us tea, and set it all up at the table in the office– hot water, teabags, coffee, sugar, and milk powder. Plus a pile of bread and a big tub of Blue Band (margarine). “Oh Isaac,” we say, “we are meeting friends for breakfast”. “This isn’t breakfast” he tells us, “just a small something”. So Elizabeth and I have tea and coffee (apparently Ugandan coffee is nothing to write home about) and Sarah piles into the bread and Blue Band, making a large dent in it which means Elizabeth and I don’t have to have any. Honour upheld, we thank Isaac profusely and then head across the street for juice, toast, and Spanish omelettes. We feel like we are sneaking around behind his back!
After breakfast we stroll back through the village, checking out the shops we didn’t get into yesterday. Isaac joins us, making sure we are well looked after and enjoying ourselves. He takes his role as our host very seriously. The new ones have t-shirts at 15$ so we go back and buy Sarah a pink one for $10 – it has Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest and a picture of a gorilla on the front, and a big gorilla on the back with the logo “muzungu in the mist”. She is thrilled. After we pay for it Isaac tells us it would have cost him 10,000 shillings, half of what we paid. Oh well. We check out the tea bushes on the side of the road, there are people picking leaves, and then decide to go to the internet café at the local hospital, a few km down the road, as Jan and Fred won’t likely be back until lunch-time – they have a 5+ hour drive. Isaac comes along as well for the ride, and then hangs out and watches us surf for a few hours. Likely more interesting than sitting waiting at the house.
Jan and Fred arrive about 1:15 –they are starving and so are we, so we walk down the road to Volcanoes Lodge, a lovely spot built on a hillside overlooking the forest. Owned by a fellow Jan knows who also has lodges in Rwanda and several other primate locations here. We sit in the lounge and have a drink (our beer consumption is seriously increased on this trip) and wait for our three course lunch to be served in the beautifully decorated dining room. Hot bread rolls, soup, main course, and desert. We’re stuffed and happy. We stroll back through the village, visit the parks office, spot some birds, and go back to the house for Jan and Fred to properly unpack. Sarah and Elizabeth flop behind, and Jan and I go for a walk along the river. The “self-guided trail”. Apparently sometimes the gorillas actually come down and wander the self-guided trail themselves, in which case tourists are advised not to walk it. Elizabeth comments, and I agree, that that would be the best time to be there. Anyway no gorillas anywhere near here today, but Jan and I have a lovely walk through the forest alongside what could legitimately be called a babbling brook. It would be a perfect spot to lounge about the water on a hot day. I even catch sight of the russet rump of a duiker as it bounds across the path in front of us. The forest rises up steeply on either side, lush and green with tall trees and intertwining vines. It must be tough going to climb through it gorilla tracking.
We bathe in warm water provided again by Isaac, which has the strongest imaginable smell of smoke. It must be heated in a large barrel over a wood fire. Fred is prevailed upon to have dinner with us so we all cross the road and meet John and Dorothy for a culinarily adequate and socially very pleasant dinner on the raised deck looking across at the darkened forest.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday August 20, 2003 – A lion in a tree, a new phone, and a night in Bwindi
Friday August 20, 2003 – A lion in a tree, a new phone, and a night in Bwindi
It was a noisy night – there was a hippo making the standard range of hippo grunts and calls, as well as the oddest range of squeaks and squeals like I have never heard. It was so close I thought I should be able to see it from the window of the banda, but no such luck. But the noises really were strange. As well there were lions at quite a distance, and hyena whooping periodically from a bit closer. We packed up the car with all our stuff, I paid a small amount to the ‘volunteer” for setting up our fire, and then we headed off for a morning game drive. It was not a total success – so much of Ishasha is burnt and awaiting the rains that there is nothing but black earth and dried earth in the unburnt areas. There may be more game in the park than we saw, but they must be deep in the bush near the river. We tried to get down to the Prince Edwards flats, which are supposed to be a good game area, but only a few km from the lakefront marshes the road, we reached the end of the recently graded road and it became virtually impassible with the ruts and I chickened out on going any further. So we backtracked, seeing a large herd of buffalo, some elephant, and a lot of topi, the first place we’ve seen them. The males stood by the road and stared at us for almost as long as we stared at them. Our plan was to get tea and maybe breakfast at the Ishasha Wilderness lodge, ¾ of the way around the morning circuit but for the first time here we were turned away as we were not ‘registered guests”. Oops, must be really up-market or else just short on food. So back to the bandas for oatmeal and noodle soup.
Game drive number 2 was our attempt to see the famous tree-climbing lions of Ishasha. There are large fig trees to the east of where we were staying, and apparently the lions like to climb up in their branches and spend the heat of the day in the shade up where there is a breeze. So we drove round in a fair number of circles, dutifully inspecting the fig trees for lion-shaped masses, without any success. Given the fact that the terrain was dreadfully dry and there was virtually no game we eventually gave up in disgust, hypothesizing that it was unlikely that the lions would be hanging out there without much in the way of food in the larder. So what do we see on the way out to the main road – a lion up in a tree snoozing, tail and paws dangling down in the air on either side of a large branch. It was quite funny as we had so totally given up on the possibility of seeing one.
Lion ticked off the list, we rejoined the road heading south and went along our way towards Kihihi, the next “major” point on the map, almost missing the turn. A trip to the Congo border would have been quite inconvenient! Kihihi was eventually reached, I’m sure our speed is about 20 km per hour average, and we spotted the electronics outlet Wayne told me about. Outlet might be an overstatement, but they had an excellent collection of phones, as well as an enormous bank of phones and other gear being charged. Providing charging services for electronic equipment is a good business. I found the same phone as mine, with an asking price of 100,000 shillings. When I exclaimed that I paid 85,000 in Kampala for the same thing the price became 90,000. Better. Plus I got a charger with a different plug type so now my phone is electrically bilingual. Plus a gas fill-up, and we were ready for the final run to Buhoma. It amazes me that the roads we are travelling are the main routes for the tourist ‘circle”, and they are all terrible. A number of Ugandans have asked me why the large East African parks get more tourism traffic than the Ugandan ones, and I would bet the roads and infrastructure (or lack thereof in many areas) have a big part in it.
It’s getting late and we’re getting hungry and Buhoma may take a while to reach so we stop for “local food” in a local spot. I don’t know they have ever had a muzungu here. It wasn’t a big success! Sarah and I had rice and matoke and a beef stew, with more gristle than beef. And to top it off she had to use the bathroom, which was the most rickety latrine I’ve ever seen, off behind the restaurant in the village area. The girl from the restaurant brought a key to open the small padlock – I guess there are private latrines here. I don’t think they could believe that we wanted to use it, but use it we did. Elizabeth passed on the whole exercise and read her book in the car – I think she was the smarter one in the end.
Following Fred’s instructions, we reached Buhoma, passing through a serious stretch of curio shops immediately before the park gates. We were signed through no problem thanks to Fred’s arrangements, and found the MGVP house without much problem. A rectangular one story building with a series of doors around the outside, and a steep back yard with a charming but decrepit and unusable raised bungalow and a pit latrine up on top. We holler a bit for Isaac, who appears and greets us and shows us to our room – a double bed and a single mattress, with an ‘ensuite”, that is a small concrete chamber with a drain on the floor. We’ve got our sleeping bags and we’re set. Isaac is dead keen to be as hospitable as he can, under pretty direct orders from Fred, but his English is a bit so-so leading to some rather complicated exchanges. We unload and go for a stroll – checking out the community accommodation across the road – bandas, flush toilets, and a restaurant. It is definitely beer-o’clock so we have a beer, enjoy the beautiful view out over the heavily forested mountains of Bwindi and plan to have dinner here. To our surprise we bump into John, the Canadian birder from Red Chili. He is here with his wife on their quest for birds. And apparently gorillas.
After a little rest we are ready to tour the craft shops. Both sides of the road are lined by small kiosks with hideous carved gorillas outside selling woven baskets, small carved gorillas, and lots and lots of Congolese masks. Plus gorilla-themed t-shirts. Sarah is totally excited about a gorilla shirt so we dutifully compare prices and styles in all the shops, check out the Congo masks which tempt me, but not enough. Our best stop is in the Batwa support program shop. The Batwa are the original indigenous people of the area, a tribe of pygmies. They have not fared well at the hands of the subsequent Bantu tribes and live a pretty marginal life. So their shop sells very nice baskets to support social programs, and they have a small bar with tea and coffee and cinnamon bread. By this point Sarah is dying of starvation so we get her some cinnamon bread, and the nice man behind the counter throws in an extra slice for Elizabeth and I to try. Client loyalty instantly assured! Out behind there is a stage with a group of orphans doing a local song and dance routine. We later find out from Fred that they aren’t all orphans, but it makes a better selling point for the tourists to say they are.
Back to MGVP -, where Isaac tells us he has tea ready for us, and pulls a set of chairs out for us to sit in. we sit, he sits, we chat. Eventually Elizabeth asks about the tea and he says it is ready. More time goes by and eventually I ask where the tea is and it turns out the tea things are laid out on the counter in the pantry, whose door is closed and whose existence we were not aware of. Miscommunication number one. Isaac, who is 26, tells us about his 2 young children who live with his wife in the home area, about ½ an hour away by boda boda. He has a man he hires to look after his matoke and his tea bushes, so I guess there is a whole hierarchy of who works for who. He is surprised I was happy to stop after 2 children, especially with both being girls. He intends to have at least 5. He is surprised Elizabeth and Sarah are as old as they are, we are surprised he is as old as he is. We manage to get Jan on the phone and it turns out they will not be back in time for supper, so we are on our own. Isaac tells us with great pride that he has made dinner for us, which kind of blows our plans for eating across the road. Isaac turns the generator on so we have electricity to see by, and we clean up with a jerry can of lovely warm water that smells incredibly strongly of woodsmoke, and we are seated in the office come storeroom come medicine dispensary. Isaac has set the table and serves us a dinner of spaghetti (in chunks) and matoke with g-nut sauce and meat stew. Meat stew here in Uganda isn’t really what we think of as stew at home – it means boiled meat and the water has enough colour and taste to act as a gravy. Pretty basic fare, even for local food. Tea and coffee, and the rest of our pineapple carefully chopped.
Before bed we have a long and we thought clear conversation about tomorrow morning. We do not need breakfast, we are eating with friends across the road. We will probably get up at about 7 or 7:30. Seems all clear. Or so we think!
It was a noisy night – there was a hippo making the standard range of hippo grunts and calls, as well as the oddest range of squeaks and squeals like I have never heard. It was so close I thought I should be able to see it from the window of the banda, but no such luck. But the noises really were strange. As well there were lions at quite a distance, and hyena whooping periodically from a bit closer. We packed up the car with all our stuff, I paid a small amount to the ‘volunteer” for setting up our fire, and then we headed off for a morning game drive. It was not a total success – so much of Ishasha is burnt and awaiting the rains that there is nothing but black earth and dried earth in the unburnt areas. There may be more game in the park than we saw, but they must be deep in the bush near the river. We tried to get down to the Prince Edwards flats, which are supposed to be a good game area, but only a few km from the lakefront marshes the road, we reached the end of the recently graded road and it became virtually impassible with the ruts and I chickened out on going any further. So we backtracked, seeing a large herd of buffalo, some elephant, and a lot of topi, the first place we’ve seen them. The males stood by the road and stared at us for almost as long as we stared at them. Our plan was to get tea and maybe breakfast at the Ishasha Wilderness lodge, ¾ of the way around the morning circuit but for the first time here we were turned away as we were not ‘registered guests”. Oops, must be really up-market or else just short on food. So back to the bandas for oatmeal and noodle soup.
Game drive number 2 was our attempt to see the famous tree-climbing lions of Ishasha. There are large fig trees to the east of where we were staying, and apparently the lions like to climb up in their branches and spend the heat of the day in the shade up where there is a breeze. So we drove round in a fair number of circles, dutifully inspecting the fig trees for lion-shaped masses, without any success. Given the fact that the terrain was dreadfully dry and there was virtually no game we eventually gave up in disgust, hypothesizing that it was unlikely that the lions would be hanging out there without much in the way of food in the larder. So what do we see on the way out to the main road – a lion up in a tree snoozing, tail and paws dangling down in the air on either side of a large branch. It was quite funny as we had so totally given up on the possibility of seeing one.
Lion ticked off the list, we rejoined the road heading south and went along our way towards Kihihi, the next “major” point on the map, almost missing the turn. A trip to the Congo border would have been quite inconvenient! Kihihi was eventually reached, I’m sure our speed is about 20 km per hour average, and we spotted the electronics outlet Wayne told me about. Outlet might be an overstatement, but they had an excellent collection of phones, as well as an enormous bank of phones and other gear being charged. Providing charging services for electronic equipment is a good business. I found the same phone as mine, with an asking price of 100,000 shillings. When I exclaimed that I paid 85,000 in Kampala for the same thing the price became 90,000. Better. Plus I got a charger with a different plug type so now my phone is electrically bilingual. Plus a gas fill-up, and we were ready for the final run to Buhoma. It amazes me that the roads we are travelling are the main routes for the tourist ‘circle”, and they are all terrible. A number of Ugandans have asked me why the large East African parks get more tourism traffic than the Ugandan ones, and I would bet the roads and infrastructure (or lack thereof in many areas) have a big part in it.
It’s getting late and we’re getting hungry and Buhoma may take a while to reach so we stop for “local food” in a local spot. I don’t know they have ever had a muzungu here. It wasn’t a big success! Sarah and I had rice and matoke and a beef stew, with more gristle than beef. And to top it off she had to use the bathroom, which was the most rickety latrine I’ve ever seen, off behind the restaurant in the village area. The girl from the restaurant brought a key to open the small padlock – I guess there are private latrines here. I don’t think they could believe that we wanted to use it, but use it we did. Elizabeth passed on the whole exercise and read her book in the car – I think she was the smarter one in the end.
Following Fred’s instructions, we reached Buhoma, passing through a serious stretch of curio shops immediately before the park gates. We were signed through no problem thanks to Fred’s arrangements, and found the MGVP house without much problem. A rectangular one story building with a series of doors around the outside, and a steep back yard with a charming but decrepit and unusable raised bungalow and a pit latrine up on top. We holler a bit for Isaac, who appears and greets us and shows us to our room – a double bed and a single mattress, with an ‘ensuite”, that is a small concrete chamber with a drain on the floor. We’ve got our sleeping bags and we’re set. Isaac is dead keen to be as hospitable as he can, under pretty direct orders from Fred, but his English is a bit so-so leading to some rather complicated exchanges. We unload and go for a stroll – checking out the community accommodation across the road – bandas, flush toilets, and a restaurant. It is definitely beer-o’clock so we have a beer, enjoy the beautiful view out over the heavily forested mountains of Bwindi and plan to have dinner here. To our surprise we bump into John, the Canadian birder from Red Chili. He is here with his wife on their quest for birds. And apparently gorillas.
After a little rest we are ready to tour the craft shops. Both sides of the road are lined by small kiosks with hideous carved gorillas outside selling woven baskets, small carved gorillas, and lots and lots of Congolese masks. Plus gorilla-themed t-shirts. Sarah is totally excited about a gorilla shirt so we dutifully compare prices and styles in all the shops, check out the Congo masks which tempt me, but not enough. Our best stop is in the Batwa support program shop. The Batwa are the original indigenous people of the area, a tribe of pygmies. They have not fared well at the hands of the subsequent Bantu tribes and live a pretty marginal life. So their shop sells very nice baskets to support social programs, and they have a small bar with tea and coffee and cinnamon bread. By this point Sarah is dying of starvation so we get her some cinnamon bread, and the nice man behind the counter throws in an extra slice for Elizabeth and I to try. Client loyalty instantly assured! Out behind there is a stage with a group of orphans doing a local song and dance routine. We later find out from Fred that they aren’t all orphans, but it makes a better selling point for the tourists to say they are.
Back to MGVP -, where Isaac tells us he has tea ready for us, and pulls a set of chairs out for us to sit in. we sit, he sits, we chat. Eventually Elizabeth asks about the tea and he says it is ready. More time goes by and eventually I ask where the tea is and it turns out the tea things are laid out on the counter in the pantry, whose door is closed and whose existence we were not aware of. Miscommunication number one. Isaac, who is 26, tells us about his 2 young children who live with his wife in the home area, about ½ an hour away by boda boda. He has a man he hires to look after his matoke and his tea bushes, so I guess there is a whole hierarchy of who works for who. He is surprised I was happy to stop after 2 children, especially with both being girls. He intends to have at least 5. He is surprised Elizabeth and Sarah are as old as they are, we are surprised he is as old as he is. We manage to get Jan on the phone and it turns out they will not be back in time for supper, so we are on our own. Isaac tells us with great pride that he has made dinner for us, which kind of blows our plans for eating across the road. Isaac turns the generator on so we have electricity to see by, and we clean up with a jerry can of lovely warm water that smells incredibly strongly of woodsmoke, and we are seated in the office come storeroom come medicine dispensary. Isaac has set the table and serves us a dinner of spaghetti (in chunks) and matoke with g-nut sauce and meat stew. Meat stew here in Uganda isn’t really what we think of as stew at home – it means boiled meat and the water has enough colour and taste to act as a gravy. Pretty basic fare, even for local food. Tea and coffee, and the rest of our pineapple carefully chopped.
Before bed we have a long and we thought clear conversation about tomorrow morning. We do not need breakfast, we are eating with friends across the road. We will probably get up at about 7 or 7:30. Seems all clear. Or so we think!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Thursday August 19, 2010 – Mweya to Ishasha – tea on the lake and some dusty game drives
Thursday August 19, 2010 – Mweya to Ishasha – tea on the lake and some dusty game drives
Travel day again. We had our standard breakfast, accompanied by weavers and bulbuls who actually came up on our table to steal toast crumbs, flying away if we moved too fast. One of the things I look forward to back home is hot toast – that doesn’t seem to be the concept here. Goodbyes said – Sarah creates a host of new “friends” everywhere we go, we set off for a game drive out of the Mweya portion of the park heading back to the main southerly (paved) road. After too few km we pass over the Kazinga channel bridge and then a few km later take a fork to the right – back on the murram into the park, and to the Jacana Lodge in Maragambo Forest. The road skirts the edge of cultivated areas, with terracing right up on the hills on either side. There is a great vista to the west across to the plains of Queen Elizabeth park. We pass through a gate, and we’re back into rich forest. The parks ranger is very disappointed we aren’t going for a forest walk, I wonder how many people venture down this way who aren’t staying at the lodge. But we’ve done enough forest walks for a while, and there has to be a pretty good carrot involved to keep Sarah going. Instead we are on a tea and samoosa hunt, with pretty much a guarantee of catching our prey. At the end of the road we enter lodge land again – this time perched on the shore of a volcanic crater lake. The water is the strangest green with algae on the surface that make it look like a piece of malachite. Fisherman paddle their wooden boats in the water, fish eagles cry overhead, and there is a group of black and white colobus monkeys in the trees. A pretty special place. We settle into the comfy chairs overlooking the water and have our elevenses – tea, coffee, and vegetable pies.
Once restored we backtrack to the main road and make another detour to Fig Tree Camp at Kyamboura Gorge, one of the chimp trekking locations. It consists of a couple of huts for the ranger’s station, a rondavel for shade for waiting tourists, and a viewing platform that looks across the gorge running north and south. It is definitely a geographic anomaly - a huge steep sided ravine filled with riverine forest and greenery from which the sounds of birds emanates. A marked contrast to the incredibly dry and dusty country up where we are. Chimp trekking involves hiking down into the gorge to find them, and then hiking up again at the end. It may be lovely in the forest but I’m glad we didn’t opt for this location to trek. A great place for someone to build a lodge, and in fact we hear later that there is a plan for one.
Next stop is Ishasha – the campsite in the southern part of the park. It’s a long hot dusty drive of about 70 km. The road isn’t too bad, but there are big lorries coming the other way and they don’t seem to believe in giving way. Or maybe I’m just too chicken to test them. We pass from grasslands to forest to grasslands again, spotting colobus in the trees in the forest and long-crested eagles in the grasslands. Not much game again, we are a long way from the water here. Once we pass through the main gate to the southern part of the park we start seeing animals – topi, a big herd of buffalo, scattered Uganda kob. A bit more like a game park at least. Ishasha River Camp is pretty basic – perched up fairly high and a bit of a distance away from the river, there are two rondavels of ehich we have booked one, tents scattered about here and there, several fire pits, pit toilets, and the semi-walled showers with a large water tub up on top which we have seen in so many places. The rondavel has three beds with nets, big towels, and the totally essential rubber bath sandals. Plus a kerosene lantern for night time as there is definitely no electricity here. There is a canteen, but so rudimentary that we decide to break out the stove and become independent travelers again.
We settle down for the heat of the day reading in the shade, when a man comes by to ask us if we would like a fire that evening and if we want water put in the top tank for showers. He tells us he is very lucky as he was sitting at home in the village with nothing to do and UWA (the wildlife authority) offered him the opportunity to volunteer here to make fires and carry wood for the tourists, the assumption being that we tip him and thus he makes a living. Not sure if this is a clever ploy on the side of the paid camp attendants who don’t have to do the required work, or whether they don’t have people to do those jobs which seems a bit unlikely. Anyway, we book fire and water, and he suggests we go to the campsite by the river as it is cooler. We thought this was the campsite, but apparently a few km down the road there is a nicer one so we up chairs and head there. It is prettier, in an open treed area next to a stream, which seems to be one channel of the river. We can hear hippos on the other side of a small island. A bit of a breeze but tsetses, so I’m not sure it is a better bet for hanging out. But we do for a while, the go for a short game drive, and then head back for dinner. In the mean time a big overland truck has arrived and is setting up – turns out I met the leader Wayne in Jinja last fall and he is from Zimbabwe so we had a good chat then. As well there is a girl who is volunteering at Ziwa rhino ranch and recognizes us. Small world. Sarah gloms onto the girl from Ziwa and Wayne lends me his phone - I can put the sim card from my phone in it, get access to my address book, and text both Jan and Fred to make plans for our trip to Buhoma. Amazingly I get both of them – they are meeting at the Uganda border to necropsy a dead chimp, and then will meet us in Buhoma either tomorrow night or Saturday as originally planned. If they are not there Fred’s ‘boy” will sort us out.
In the mean time a group of Italians has come back from their game drive and are walking about in their bathrobes. The bathrobe seems to be an essential part of the Italian safari kit based on our observations in several locations. Our camp guide has a roaring fire going even though its an hour from sunset, but eventually we eat dinner, it gets dark, and we pick up warm beers and soda and settle into our chairs in front of the fire to listen to the hyena in the distance. We end up chatting with the Italians, several of whom are veterinarians and one of whom has worked with one of my colleagues at Guelph. Coincidences everywhere today! BY 9 o’clock the girls are done and head to bed by lantern light while I go and chat with the overland crew for a bit to get some hints on game drives. Also find out that the river campsites have been closed for the past few years as the river is actually the border with Congo (my map-reading skills didn’t quite take that in) and they were not considered secure. The overland group wanted to camp there but the recommendation was to have 4 armed guards and there weren’t enough around so they had to stay up with the bandas. Not sure whether our helpful guide should have been sending us down there to spend the afternoon I guess!
Travel day again. We had our standard breakfast, accompanied by weavers and bulbuls who actually came up on our table to steal toast crumbs, flying away if we moved too fast. One of the things I look forward to back home is hot toast – that doesn’t seem to be the concept here. Goodbyes said – Sarah creates a host of new “friends” everywhere we go, we set off for a game drive out of the Mweya portion of the park heading back to the main southerly (paved) road. After too few km we pass over the Kazinga channel bridge and then a few km later take a fork to the right – back on the murram into the park, and to the Jacana Lodge in Maragambo Forest. The road skirts the edge of cultivated areas, with terracing right up on the hills on either side. There is a great vista to the west across to the plains of Queen Elizabeth park. We pass through a gate, and we’re back into rich forest. The parks ranger is very disappointed we aren’t going for a forest walk, I wonder how many people venture down this way who aren’t staying at the lodge. But we’ve done enough forest walks for a while, and there has to be a pretty good carrot involved to keep Sarah going. Instead we are on a tea and samoosa hunt, with pretty much a guarantee of catching our prey. At the end of the road we enter lodge land again – this time perched on the shore of a volcanic crater lake. The water is the strangest green with algae on the surface that make it look like a piece of malachite. Fisherman paddle their wooden boats in the water, fish eagles cry overhead, and there is a group of black and white colobus monkeys in the trees. A pretty special place. We settle into the comfy chairs overlooking the water and have our elevenses – tea, coffee, and vegetable pies.
Once restored we backtrack to the main road and make another detour to Fig Tree Camp at Kyamboura Gorge, one of the chimp trekking locations. It consists of a couple of huts for the ranger’s station, a rondavel for shade for waiting tourists, and a viewing platform that looks across the gorge running north and south. It is definitely a geographic anomaly - a huge steep sided ravine filled with riverine forest and greenery from which the sounds of birds emanates. A marked contrast to the incredibly dry and dusty country up where we are. Chimp trekking involves hiking down into the gorge to find them, and then hiking up again at the end. It may be lovely in the forest but I’m glad we didn’t opt for this location to trek. A great place for someone to build a lodge, and in fact we hear later that there is a plan for one.
Next stop is Ishasha – the campsite in the southern part of the park. It’s a long hot dusty drive of about 70 km. The road isn’t too bad, but there are big lorries coming the other way and they don’t seem to believe in giving way. Or maybe I’m just too chicken to test them. We pass from grasslands to forest to grasslands again, spotting colobus in the trees in the forest and long-crested eagles in the grasslands. Not much game again, we are a long way from the water here. Once we pass through the main gate to the southern part of the park we start seeing animals – topi, a big herd of buffalo, scattered Uganda kob. A bit more like a game park at least. Ishasha River Camp is pretty basic – perched up fairly high and a bit of a distance away from the river, there are two rondavels of ehich we have booked one, tents scattered about here and there, several fire pits, pit toilets, and the semi-walled showers with a large water tub up on top which we have seen in so many places. The rondavel has three beds with nets, big towels, and the totally essential rubber bath sandals. Plus a kerosene lantern for night time as there is definitely no electricity here. There is a canteen, but so rudimentary that we decide to break out the stove and become independent travelers again.
We settle down for the heat of the day reading in the shade, when a man comes by to ask us if we would like a fire that evening and if we want water put in the top tank for showers. He tells us he is very lucky as he was sitting at home in the village with nothing to do and UWA (the wildlife authority) offered him the opportunity to volunteer here to make fires and carry wood for the tourists, the assumption being that we tip him and thus he makes a living. Not sure if this is a clever ploy on the side of the paid camp attendants who don’t have to do the required work, or whether they don’t have people to do those jobs which seems a bit unlikely. Anyway, we book fire and water, and he suggests we go to the campsite by the river as it is cooler. We thought this was the campsite, but apparently a few km down the road there is a nicer one so we up chairs and head there. It is prettier, in an open treed area next to a stream, which seems to be one channel of the river. We can hear hippos on the other side of a small island. A bit of a breeze but tsetses, so I’m not sure it is a better bet for hanging out. But we do for a while, the go for a short game drive, and then head back for dinner. In the mean time a big overland truck has arrived and is setting up – turns out I met the leader Wayne in Jinja last fall and he is from Zimbabwe so we had a good chat then. As well there is a girl who is volunteering at Ziwa rhino ranch and recognizes us. Small world. Sarah gloms onto the girl from Ziwa and Wayne lends me his phone - I can put the sim card from my phone in it, get access to my address book, and text both Jan and Fred to make plans for our trip to Buhoma. Amazingly I get both of them – they are meeting at the Uganda border to necropsy a dead chimp, and then will meet us in Buhoma either tomorrow night or Saturday as originally planned. If they are not there Fred’s ‘boy” will sort us out.
In the mean time a group of Italians has come back from their game drive and are walking about in their bathrobes. The bathrobe seems to be an essential part of the Italian safari kit based on our observations in several locations. Our camp guide has a roaring fire going even though its an hour from sunset, but eventually we eat dinner, it gets dark, and we pick up warm beers and soda and settle into our chairs in front of the fire to listen to the hyena in the distance. We end up chatting with the Italians, several of whom are veterinarians and one of whom has worked with one of my colleagues at Guelph. Coincidences everywhere today! BY 9 o’clock the girls are done and head to bed by lantern light while I go and chat with the overland crew for a bit to get some hints on game drives. Also find out that the river campsites have been closed for the past few years as the river is actually the border with Congo (my map-reading skills didn’t quite take that in) and they were not considered secure. The overland group wanted to camp there but the recommendation was to have 4 armed guards and there weren’t enough around so they had to stay up with the bandas. Not sure whether our helpful guide should have been sending us down there to spend the afternoon I guess!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Wednesday August 18, 2010 – Twelve lions before lunch
Wednesday August 18, 2010 – Twelve lions before lunch
James picked us up at a very civilized 8:00 for a lion hunt. The Danes are having a sleep-in and Siefert has other business to attend to, so its just the 4 of us. James heard a signal up by Katwe, so off we go in that direction, stopping from time to time to double check the signal. And we hunt, and hunt, and hunt for the lions. The signal comes and goes as we do a major cross country run – through heavy brush, round mud wallows, through the acacia scrub, and along the edge of a crater. Very close to the edge of the crater. Eventually he says ‘ah ha” and he sees the lion, and then with a bit of prompting so do we. A young male sitting in the shade of a small patch of scrub, eyeing us. But that’s not all – James has another signal and it comes from a female who he things may have cubs. And she does. Just a hundred yards away. There are 4 tiny cubs that come walking out of the brush across a clearing, and then after them a group of 3 slightly bigger cubs. There are the two moms sitting in the bushes, one of whom is the daughter of the other. We sit and watch them, I sit on the edge of the open car window taking pictures when I hear a noise not far and turn around – and there is the male lion walking a bit of a distance, but not too far, along parallel to the car towards the females. I pull myself back into the car pretty smartly I can tell you. Turns out there are two other young males in the scrub nearby – the three males jointly stay with the females and presumably all of them think they are the dads, so everyone is apparently happy. So 12 lions all in one group, and before lunch even. We watch them for a while, until cubs wander off and the females start to get edgy, and then it’s time to go back. We stop for more elephants on the road, take a detour to view and listen to a pod of pretty contented hippo , pass a big heard of buffalo, and then it’s back to Mweya and the rest camp.
The rest of the day is less exciting – Sarah naps, Elizabeth and catch up on odds and ends, and in late afternoon we walk over to the fancy lodge for drinks and snacks to last us until dinner at 8:00. The lodge is up high and looks over the Kazinga Channel, which runs from Lake George into Lake Edward. It’s a marvelous site with a magnificent view. The bathroom even has individual terry towels to dry your hands on! The bar lounge has two sets of absolutely enormous elephant tusks as decoration, as well as a really big buffalo head. We order up samoosas for the girls and some cold drinks, attempt to get on the internet – such a great location – how can we not have signal?, and have a visit by a troop of mongoose who come up on the terrace, circle the tables, and then make a march right through the bar to the other terrace. Sarah is not keen on the mongoose, I think she thinks they are going to go for her ankles. I’m trying to convince her that they are like a herd of African pussy cats and not to be feared but I’m not sure she’s buying it.
It kind of falls apart after that- our late afternoon game drive and hyena call is cancelled due to lack of diesel in James’ vehicle and dinner is not until 8, so Sarah and I go for our own sunset drive and check out the campsites along the Kazinga channel. She’s happy in the front seat – holding the map and the birdbook. She is my little birding assistant – looking at birds and as I list off the major identifying characteristics saying “Oh, I see, I see”, Quite cute – she likes being the VIP in the car. We pick up Elizabeth and head to the Tembo canteen for dinner, but it turns out that the Danes ate early and Siefert doesn’t show so we dine alone and then head back to our accommodation for the night. The night drive may not have worked out but we sure got those lions!
James picked us up at a very civilized 8:00 for a lion hunt. The Danes are having a sleep-in and Siefert has other business to attend to, so its just the 4 of us. James heard a signal up by Katwe, so off we go in that direction, stopping from time to time to double check the signal. And we hunt, and hunt, and hunt for the lions. The signal comes and goes as we do a major cross country run – through heavy brush, round mud wallows, through the acacia scrub, and along the edge of a crater. Very close to the edge of the crater. Eventually he says ‘ah ha” and he sees the lion, and then with a bit of prompting so do we. A young male sitting in the shade of a small patch of scrub, eyeing us. But that’s not all – James has another signal and it comes from a female who he things may have cubs. And she does. Just a hundred yards away. There are 4 tiny cubs that come walking out of the brush across a clearing, and then after them a group of 3 slightly bigger cubs. There are the two moms sitting in the bushes, one of whom is the daughter of the other. We sit and watch them, I sit on the edge of the open car window taking pictures when I hear a noise not far and turn around – and there is the male lion walking a bit of a distance, but not too far, along parallel to the car towards the females. I pull myself back into the car pretty smartly I can tell you. Turns out there are two other young males in the scrub nearby – the three males jointly stay with the females and presumably all of them think they are the dads, so everyone is apparently happy. So 12 lions all in one group, and before lunch even. We watch them for a while, until cubs wander off and the females start to get edgy, and then it’s time to go back. We stop for more elephants on the road, take a detour to view and listen to a pod of pretty contented hippo , pass a big heard of buffalo, and then it’s back to Mweya and the rest camp.
The rest of the day is less exciting – Sarah naps, Elizabeth and catch up on odds and ends, and in late afternoon we walk over to the fancy lodge for drinks and snacks to last us until dinner at 8:00. The lodge is up high and looks over the Kazinga Channel, which runs from Lake George into Lake Edward. It’s a marvelous site with a magnificent view. The bathroom even has individual terry towels to dry your hands on! The bar lounge has two sets of absolutely enormous elephant tusks as decoration, as well as a really big buffalo head. We order up samoosas for the girls and some cold drinks, attempt to get on the internet – such a great location – how can we not have signal?, and have a visit by a troop of mongoose who come up on the terrace, circle the tables, and then make a march right through the bar to the other terrace. Sarah is not keen on the mongoose, I think she thinks they are going to go for her ankles. I’m trying to convince her that they are like a herd of African pussy cats and not to be feared but I’m not sure she’s buying it.
It kind of falls apart after that- our late afternoon game drive and hyena call is cancelled due to lack of diesel in James’ vehicle and dinner is not until 8, so Sarah and I go for our own sunset drive and check out the campsites along the Kazinga channel. She’s happy in the front seat – holding the map and the birdbook. She is my little birding assistant – looking at birds and as I list off the major identifying characteristics saying “Oh, I see, I see”, Quite cute – she likes being the VIP in the car. We pick up Elizabeth and head to the Tembo canteen for dinner, but it turns out that the Danes ate early and Siefert doesn’t show so we dine alone and then head back to our accommodation for the night. The night drive may not have worked out but we sure got those lions!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tuesday August 17, 2010 – Lions in the morning, running over my phone, and sunset at Pelican Point
Tuesday August 17, 2010 – Lions in the morning, running over my phone, and sunset at Pelican Point
And 6:45 it is – we load up on crackers and snacks to last us until breakfast, and pile into the back of Siefert’s landrover, with James and the three Danes. We game drive through the western region, spotting elephant and a number of antelope, and cross over to the flats on the east side of the main road through the park. We start where they saw lions yesterday, with James tapping on the roof when we need to stop for him to pick up signal, or when we have to change directions. It’s bundu bashing – cross country and around trees and thickets, finding the best track around the mudholes and through the gulleys. We get closer and closer and there should be a lion there – and then we see it – a lioness in a small thicket of trees having a nap. And then we suddenly notice another lion just on our other side, and a third close by. And then with the antennae we realize there is actually a group of about 5 lions here. It’s amazing how they camouflage – you can look all around and then suddenly realize you have been parked only 10’s of metres away from a lion which is watching you very intently. But these all have great big bellies and have obviously eaten. So we circle a few bushes to get a good look at each one – and identify them either by their collar frequency or by something distinctive in their appearance, such as their whisker pattern. Once that group is ticked off the list we go looking for the next one – a female they haven’t seen in a while. We track all over the place, searching for the signal, and then suddenly we see another lion in a bush – a large mature male with a huge mane and a scarred face. He’s hidden in thicket with the branches camouflaging him, but with the binoculars we can see him clearly, as he looks at us and then decides we aren’t of sufficient interest, closes his eyes, and goes back to sleep.
Lion tracking finished for the moment we continue on to a fishing village on Lake George. At least at one point it was a small fishing village on one of the most productive lakes in Africa. At present it is a desperately overpopulated dusty stretch of impoverished settlement on the shore of a lake that no longer has sufficient fish to support the families, let alone run a commercial enterprise. The remains of a fish processing plant sit on the outskirts of the village, a remnant of a thriving enterprise from a few decades ago. The government allowed the fishing villages to exist in the parks, with a boundary around them and the understanding that there would be a cap on population and they would not use the park. Well that hasn’t worked out too well. The population has exploded – we are surrounded by a huge group of very grubby children in pretty tattered clothing, the fishing doesn’t feed the population, they are acquiring cows and goats, which is against the rules, and because there is no grass in the designated communal area the stock are taken or allowed to wander into the park where they compete for the grass, degrade the environment, and get eaten by lions and leopards which results in retaliatory poisoning. Not to mention the constant need for wood for cooking fires, which can’t come from anywhere other than the park. What a mess! James, who is Ugandan, is absolutely disgusted with both the lack of foresight of the people living there, as well as the Ugandan parks Department for not dealing with the issue. Apparently there are strong wildlife and parks laws here, but a big problem with their enactment. At least the kids are more interested in interacting with us than hard core begging, which gets to be pretty draining. They have no idea what to make of Sarah, who pats the little kids and wants to hold their hands. Business finished we take a tour up the lake past another equally unsuccessful fishing village, a big luxury lodge under construction, and back to the main tar road for a quick soda stop and then return to Mweya.
Laundry and lunch, accompanied by the mongoose and the warthogs. While Elizabeth was scrubbing the office manager came up and watched her for a bit, asked her if she had ever done laundry by hand before, and then said she would have helped except she was working. I guess our ineptitude is pretty apparent. I, in the mean time, when on search for my phone at the visitor’s centre where it was last in my position. Good and bad luck: I dropped it, I ran over it, someone found it but there is a big gravel crush in the screen which means that nothing is readable. But, the sim card is still good so I can make and receive calls, just nothing that involves the screen – like texts. So kind of back in business for now.
James and the Danes pick us up for a late afternoon drive down to Pelican Point, a view point onto Lake Edward. Elizabeth climbs up on the roof for her turn. We drive through Katwe, another on the edge of the park town. They are next to a salt lake, where salt is harvested using the old traditional way by evaporating small squared of salt water. In the 1970’s there was a German salt plant here, but it failed, according to some sources because they didn’t recognize how corrosive the salt water would be on their piping. Along the road we see several cow groups of elephant crossing the roads with lots of young calves – elephant populations are apparently doing well. We turn off towards the lake and drive through tall straw-coloured grasslands to the edge of an escarpment looking down on an expanse of riverine forest leading on to the lake. It’s a beautiful spot – and one that just begs for sundowners which unfortunately we haven’t brought. Apart from which we have to be back in the main park before 7:00, which is pretty much sunset. Elizabeth and Christine pile in the car for the drive back, apparently they were just about suffocated by the lake flies as we drove out. We pass a huge group of kob, who are all on high alert looking off to the west. James tells us there must be predators or poachers there – something getting the wind up the group. More elephant on the road, our timing seems to be dead on for them, and then back to the camp for dinner and an earlier night for all of us.
And 6:45 it is – we load up on crackers and snacks to last us until breakfast, and pile into the back of Siefert’s landrover, with James and the three Danes. We game drive through the western region, spotting elephant and a number of antelope, and cross over to the flats on the east side of the main road through the park. We start where they saw lions yesterday, with James tapping on the roof when we need to stop for him to pick up signal, or when we have to change directions. It’s bundu bashing – cross country and around trees and thickets, finding the best track around the mudholes and through the gulleys. We get closer and closer and there should be a lion there – and then we see it – a lioness in a small thicket of trees having a nap. And then we suddenly notice another lion just on our other side, and a third close by. And then with the antennae we realize there is actually a group of about 5 lions here. It’s amazing how they camouflage – you can look all around and then suddenly realize you have been parked only 10’s of metres away from a lion which is watching you very intently. But these all have great big bellies and have obviously eaten. So we circle a few bushes to get a good look at each one – and identify them either by their collar frequency or by something distinctive in their appearance, such as their whisker pattern. Once that group is ticked off the list we go looking for the next one – a female they haven’t seen in a while. We track all over the place, searching for the signal, and then suddenly we see another lion in a bush – a large mature male with a huge mane and a scarred face. He’s hidden in thicket with the branches camouflaging him, but with the binoculars we can see him clearly, as he looks at us and then decides we aren’t of sufficient interest, closes his eyes, and goes back to sleep.
Lion tracking finished for the moment we continue on to a fishing village on Lake George. At least at one point it was a small fishing village on one of the most productive lakes in Africa. At present it is a desperately overpopulated dusty stretch of impoverished settlement on the shore of a lake that no longer has sufficient fish to support the families, let alone run a commercial enterprise. The remains of a fish processing plant sit on the outskirts of the village, a remnant of a thriving enterprise from a few decades ago. The government allowed the fishing villages to exist in the parks, with a boundary around them and the understanding that there would be a cap on population and they would not use the park. Well that hasn’t worked out too well. The population has exploded – we are surrounded by a huge group of very grubby children in pretty tattered clothing, the fishing doesn’t feed the population, they are acquiring cows and goats, which is against the rules, and because there is no grass in the designated communal area the stock are taken or allowed to wander into the park where they compete for the grass, degrade the environment, and get eaten by lions and leopards which results in retaliatory poisoning. Not to mention the constant need for wood for cooking fires, which can’t come from anywhere other than the park. What a mess! James, who is Ugandan, is absolutely disgusted with both the lack of foresight of the people living there, as well as the Ugandan parks Department for not dealing with the issue. Apparently there are strong wildlife and parks laws here, but a big problem with their enactment. At least the kids are more interested in interacting with us than hard core begging, which gets to be pretty draining. They have no idea what to make of Sarah, who pats the little kids and wants to hold their hands. Business finished we take a tour up the lake past another equally unsuccessful fishing village, a big luxury lodge under construction, and back to the main tar road for a quick soda stop and then return to Mweya.
Laundry and lunch, accompanied by the mongoose and the warthogs. While Elizabeth was scrubbing the office manager came up and watched her for a bit, asked her if she had ever done laundry by hand before, and then said she would have helped except she was working. I guess our ineptitude is pretty apparent. I, in the mean time, when on search for my phone at the visitor’s centre where it was last in my position. Good and bad luck: I dropped it, I ran over it, someone found it but there is a big gravel crush in the screen which means that nothing is readable. But, the sim card is still good so I can make and receive calls, just nothing that involves the screen – like texts. So kind of back in business for now.
James and the Danes pick us up for a late afternoon drive down to Pelican Point, a view point onto Lake Edward. Elizabeth climbs up on the roof for her turn. We drive through Katwe, another on the edge of the park town. They are next to a salt lake, where salt is harvested using the old traditional way by evaporating small squared of salt water. In the 1970’s there was a German salt plant here, but it failed, according to some sources because they didn’t recognize how corrosive the salt water would be on their piping. Along the road we see several cow groups of elephant crossing the roads with lots of young calves – elephant populations are apparently doing well. We turn off towards the lake and drive through tall straw-coloured grasslands to the edge of an escarpment looking down on an expanse of riverine forest leading on to the lake. It’s a beautiful spot – and one that just begs for sundowners which unfortunately we haven’t brought. Apart from which we have to be back in the main park before 7:00, which is pretty much sunset. Elizabeth and Christine pile in the car for the drive back, apparently they were just about suffocated by the lake flies as we drove out. We pass a huge group of kob, who are all on high alert looking off to the west. James tells us there must be predators or poachers there – something getting the wind up the group. More elephant on the road, our timing seems to be dead on for them, and then back to the camp for dinner and an earlier night for all of us.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Monday August 16, 2010 – Queen Elizabeth National Parks – the explosion craters and a night drive
Monday August 16, 2010 – Queen Elizabeth National Parks – the explosion craters and a night drive
Last night we ordered breakfast to be served at 8:00 – 2 nutella pancakes and 1 banana pancake. A big treat. Unfortunately Uganda restaurant timing strikes again – at 8:45 when there is no activity in the kitchen we ask Kenneth, to whom we gave the order, where our food was. He gets in a flap and assumes we had already breakfasted. There is a lot of loud discussion and hand waving in the kitchen and he assures us it will be done. So over the next 20 minutes we receive the hot water and tea things, and then the pancakes – obviously made and delivered one serving at a time but still served stone cold. Just can’t figure out the whole logic. Eventually breakfast is done and we pack up and head back to Fort Portal for a bit of shopping, a diesel fill-up, and a trip to the main post office for the remainder of our stamps. Turns out we overpaid last time – the letter rate was used instead of the postcard rate. Oh well, won’t break the bank and maybe they will get there faster! While waiting at the filling station a small political parade passed by – a half dozen bodas with men standing up behind the drivers and wearing on their heads cardboard boxes covered with posters of their political party, accompanied by a lot of singing and horn blowing. According to someone we met a few days later, it turned a bit nasty with the local headline stating “mayor of Fort Portal barely escapes lynching”. Something to do with providing inappropriate support to one of the candidates, which I would have thought wasn’t that unusual an occurrence. Either way, glad all we had was the parade.
So off to Queen Elizabeth park to meet up with Ludwig Siefert, a wildlife vet from Makerere who works on large predators in QENP and Lake Mburu. The road is delightful and paved all the way to the park, so we make excellent time. 80 km an hour feels like the speed of light. At the last small village before the park entrance I realize I should have topped up the diesel in Kasese, the previous town, but we pull into a conveniently placed filling station just before the entrance. After some time negotiating how much fuel I think the tank will hold (I keep saying fill it and they ask me how many litres) it dawns on me that the pumps are not actually operational and the guys are selling diesel out of 20 litre jerrycans, at a substantially higher price than in Kasese. So be it, They get out a 5 litre plastic container as a measure, put 10 litres into the tank, and then get me to move the vehicle to a slight decline whereupon 4 of the them rock it back and forth for a few minutes so more will fit. I really don’t think it works that way, but who am I to argue at this point. So we get another half of the 5 litre jug in the car, barter over how much is actually left in the jug, and come to an agreement on the final price and amount. We work it out by doing longhand multiplication on the dusty side of the vehicle. This is a kind of a joke as I am mathematically challenged to start with, so having to be the one who figures the correct price is a bit of a stretch. Then the issue of change comes up. Rarely does anyone have the correct “balance”, and various other vendors have to be brought in to make it work. The fuel transaction completed we then switch to the topic of whether either of my daughters would be interested in marrying one of them, and when I say they (meaning my daughters) are too young an older man is pulled over to see if he would be more suitable. When I say no they ask me if I want a Ugandan husband. I tell them I have a Canadian one and that’s all I need. The final conversation centres on whether I should just give some extra money to help people out, which I decline. All of this for 15 litres of diesel!
We stop at a pair of slightly tacky cement arches to take the requisite “we’re on the equator” picture, and then it’s into the park and up to the Queen’s pavilion, where we are looking forward to the snack bar. The small rondavel and viewpoint was built for Queen Elizabeth’s most recent visit to the park, and is really well sited although not much of an architectural marvel. Good news is that all our paperwork for the park is accepted, so I pay a one time fee as a researcher and the girls get the student discount. Bad news is all the snack bar has on offer is tea, sodas, and some unexciting cookies. Looks like we misjudged lunch a bit. Avocado on crackers it is. We are located up on a hill overlooking Lake George to the east, and a large volcanic crater, now completely vegetated to the west. Sarah spots a pair of elephants feeding in the bush down below. It’s quite a scenic spot, unfortunately with the dry (read dusty) season in full force one can’t see as far as one would normally be able to. The majestic and sometimes snowcapped Ruwenzori Mountains were just a blur in the distance on our drive down. Lunch and formalities completed we set of on the Explosion Craters route to the Myewa Peninsula, where we will be staying. The drive is quite spectacular – it travels along the ridges between volcanic craters. The bottoms of all of these are grassy, and the sides are heavily forested. Their circular outlines are totally clear, and it’s easy to see them for the volcanoes they were. The downside is that the roads are quite atrocious, so it’s really slow going, and hot, and we are in tsetse country which we didn’t discover until we stopped at a viewpoint and left the door open, and filled the car with flies. Which have bitten us in unfortunate location like my elbows and toes. We will all be scratching bites for days and days as they take ages to go away, especially in the heat. So we are now on tsetse watch and are squashing them (which takes quite a bit of force as they are resistant beggars) whenever they are spotted. Eventually we reach the major viewpoint – the Baboon Cliffs, which would be a magnificent place for a picnic – up high on a crater edge with a great view out over the crater centre, and with a cluster of large rocks to sit on next to the edge. And mercifully no tsetses here. We don’t have a picnic but eat an orange, manage to convince Sarah to get out of the car for a stretch – she is pretty settled in the back seat and doesn’t seem to think there is an advantage in getting out and moving about, and then pile back in for a rough ride the rest of the way along the route to the main entrance gate of the northern part of QENP.
From the gate its about ½ hour through scrub and burnt grassland to the narrow neck of the Mweya peninsula, where the tourist facilities are. There is a fancy lodge, a petrol station (!), and a visitor’s centre looking out over Lake Albert. We get in touch with James, Siefert’s research assistance, who meets us at the visitor’s centre and takes us a few 100 metres to the Mweya Hostel where he has reserved rooms for us. The hostel consists of two rectangular buildings with double rooms, and toilets/showers, and then an open restaurant/bar area. We get two rooms with single beds and nets, check out the showers – with in line electric heater that take the chill off the water and actually bring it up to warm with time, and the toilets – the one next to our rooms is a squat, but fortunately the other building has proper toilets, much to Sarah’s and my relief. Vastly overpriced for what is being provided, but really the only game in town and a minute’s walk from the research accommodation where Siefert and his groups are staying. There are resident warthogs, including a very small piglet, and all sorts of birds sitting in the trees and begging scraps in the restaurant. James is taking Siefert’s 3 Danish students out on a drive but we pass on joining them and prefer to shower and unpack, planning to meet for dinner at a canteen down the road at 8:00 before an evening drive to call hyenas on the airstrip. Not going to be early tonight!
Pre-warned that it’s a good idea to order up dinner an hour in advance, we turn up early at the canteen, whose water-front location isn’t really apparent at night, request our food, order our beers, and settle down to wait for the others. And discover that my phone is missing. Last seen when I met James at the visitor’s centre. Oops. So I backtrack here and there and find nothing, and end up hoping it is lost somewhere in the car (again) and will turn up. Eventually the Danes, and then Siefert show up, we get our dinners about 9:00 (they are busy with a large British school group and that seems to have thrown everything off). But we are entertained watching the bats fly into the restaurant to eat the lake flies that are gathering in clouds around the electric lights. Then the power goes off so we finish our dinner by candlelight before dropping our vehicle at the hostel and piling into Siefert’s 4x4. Two of the Danes are on the roof with James, the three of us pile in the back seat, and we head off with spotlights at the ready and a tape of upset lions and maniacal hyenas which we play periodically to see whether we get any visitors. I think they also have a bunch of fish up on the roof to use as extra bait. We don’t actually attract any hyenas, but we hear lions way off in the distance and it’s always nice to be out at night – one never knows what might be seen. Sarah does a magnificent job of making it way past her bedtime and behaving perfectly – it’s almost 11 when we are dropped off, with a 6:45 pickup time in the AM to go out and track some lions.
Last night we ordered breakfast to be served at 8:00 – 2 nutella pancakes and 1 banana pancake. A big treat. Unfortunately Uganda restaurant timing strikes again – at 8:45 when there is no activity in the kitchen we ask Kenneth, to whom we gave the order, where our food was. He gets in a flap and assumes we had already breakfasted. There is a lot of loud discussion and hand waving in the kitchen and he assures us it will be done. So over the next 20 minutes we receive the hot water and tea things, and then the pancakes – obviously made and delivered one serving at a time but still served stone cold. Just can’t figure out the whole logic. Eventually breakfast is done and we pack up and head back to Fort Portal for a bit of shopping, a diesel fill-up, and a trip to the main post office for the remainder of our stamps. Turns out we overpaid last time – the letter rate was used instead of the postcard rate. Oh well, won’t break the bank and maybe they will get there faster! While waiting at the filling station a small political parade passed by – a half dozen bodas with men standing up behind the drivers and wearing on their heads cardboard boxes covered with posters of their political party, accompanied by a lot of singing and horn blowing. According to someone we met a few days later, it turned a bit nasty with the local headline stating “mayor of Fort Portal barely escapes lynching”. Something to do with providing inappropriate support to one of the candidates, which I would have thought wasn’t that unusual an occurrence. Either way, glad all we had was the parade.
So off to Queen Elizabeth park to meet up with Ludwig Siefert, a wildlife vet from Makerere who works on large predators in QENP and Lake Mburu. The road is delightful and paved all the way to the park, so we make excellent time. 80 km an hour feels like the speed of light. At the last small village before the park entrance I realize I should have topped up the diesel in Kasese, the previous town, but we pull into a conveniently placed filling station just before the entrance. After some time negotiating how much fuel I think the tank will hold (I keep saying fill it and they ask me how many litres) it dawns on me that the pumps are not actually operational and the guys are selling diesel out of 20 litre jerrycans, at a substantially higher price than in Kasese. So be it, They get out a 5 litre plastic container as a measure, put 10 litres into the tank, and then get me to move the vehicle to a slight decline whereupon 4 of the them rock it back and forth for a few minutes so more will fit. I really don’t think it works that way, but who am I to argue at this point. So we get another half of the 5 litre jug in the car, barter over how much is actually left in the jug, and come to an agreement on the final price and amount. We work it out by doing longhand multiplication on the dusty side of the vehicle. This is a kind of a joke as I am mathematically challenged to start with, so having to be the one who figures the correct price is a bit of a stretch. Then the issue of change comes up. Rarely does anyone have the correct “balance”, and various other vendors have to be brought in to make it work. The fuel transaction completed we then switch to the topic of whether either of my daughters would be interested in marrying one of them, and when I say they (meaning my daughters) are too young an older man is pulled over to see if he would be more suitable. When I say no they ask me if I want a Ugandan husband. I tell them I have a Canadian one and that’s all I need. The final conversation centres on whether I should just give some extra money to help people out, which I decline. All of this for 15 litres of diesel!
We stop at a pair of slightly tacky cement arches to take the requisite “we’re on the equator” picture, and then it’s into the park and up to the Queen’s pavilion, where we are looking forward to the snack bar. The small rondavel and viewpoint was built for Queen Elizabeth’s most recent visit to the park, and is really well sited although not much of an architectural marvel. Good news is that all our paperwork for the park is accepted, so I pay a one time fee as a researcher and the girls get the student discount. Bad news is all the snack bar has on offer is tea, sodas, and some unexciting cookies. Looks like we misjudged lunch a bit. Avocado on crackers it is. We are located up on a hill overlooking Lake George to the east, and a large volcanic crater, now completely vegetated to the west. Sarah spots a pair of elephants feeding in the bush down below. It’s quite a scenic spot, unfortunately with the dry (read dusty) season in full force one can’t see as far as one would normally be able to. The majestic and sometimes snowcapped Ruwenzori Mountains were just a blur in the distance on our drive down. Lunch and formalities completed we set of on the Explosion Craters route to the Myewa Peninsula, where we will be staying. The drive is quite spectacular – it travels along the ridges between volcanic craters. The bottoms of all of these are grassy, and the sides are heavily forested. Their circular outlines are totally clear, and it’s easy to see them for the volcanoes they were. The downside is that the roads are quite atrocious, so it’s really slow going, and hot, and we are in tsetse country which we didn’t discover until we stopped at a viewpoint and left the door open, and filled the car with flies. Which have bitten us in unfortunate location like my elbows and toes. We will all be scratching bites for days and days as they take ages to go away, especially in the heat. So we are now on tsetse watch and are squashing them (which takes quite a bit of force as they are resistant beggars) whenever they are spotted. Eventually we reach the major viewpoint – the Baboon Cliffs, which would be a magnificent place for a picnic – up high on a crater edge with a great view out over the crater centre, and with a cluster of large rocks to sit on next to the edge. And mercifully no tsetses here. We don’t have a picnic but eat an orange, manage to convince Sarah to get out of the car for a stretch – she is pretty settled in the back seat and doesn’t seem to think there is an advantage in getting out and moving about, and then pile back in for a rough ride the rest of the way along the route to the main entrance gate of the northern part of QENP.
From the gate its about ½ hour through scrub and burnt grassland to the narrow neck of the Mweya peninsula, where the tourist facilities are. There is a fancy lodge, a petrol station (!), and a visitor’s centre looking out over Lake Albert. We get in touch with James, Siefert’s research assistance, who meets us at the visitor’s centre and takes us a few 100 metres to the Mweya Hostel where he has reserved rooms for us. The hostel consists of two rectangular buildings with double rooms, and toilets/showers, and then an open restaurant/bar area. We get two rooms with single beds and nets, check out the showers – with in line electric heater that take the chill off the water and actually bring it up to warm with time, and the toilets – the one next to our rooms is a squat, but fortunately the other building has proper toilets, much to Sarah’s and my relief. Vastly overpriced for what is being provided, but really the only game in town and a minute’s walk from the research accommodation where Siefert and his groups are staying. There are resident warthogs, including a very small piglet, and all sorts of birds sitting in the trees and begging scraps in the restaurant. James is taking Siefert’s 3 Danish students out on a drive but we pass on joining them and prefer to shower and unpack, planning to meet for dinner at a canteen down the road at 8:00 before an evening drive to call hyenas on the airstrip. Not going to be early tonight!
Pre-warned that it’s a good idea to order up dinner an hour in advance, we turn up early at the canteen, whose water-front location isn’t really apparent at night, request our food, order our beers, and settle down to wait for the others. And discover that my phone is missing. Last seen when I met James at the visitor’s centre. Oops. So I backtrack here and there and find nothing, and end up hoping it is lost somewhere in the car (again) and will turn up. Eventually the Danes, and then Siefert show up, we get our dinners about 9:00 (they are busy with a large British school group and that seems to have thrown everything off). But we are entertained watching the bats fly into the restaurant to eat the lake flies that are gathering in clouds around the electric lights. Then the power goes off so we finish our dinner by candlelight before dropping our vehicle at the hostel and piling into Siefert’s 4x4. Two of the Danes are on the roof with James, the three of us pile in the back seat, and we head off with spotlights at the ready and a tape of upset lions and maniacal hyenas which we play periodically to see whether we get any visitors. I think they also have a bunch of fish up on the roof to use as extra bait. We don’t actually attract any hyenas, but we hear lions way off in the distance and it’s always nice to be out at night – one never knows what might be seen. Sarah does a magnificent job of making it way past her bedtime and behaving perfectly – it’s almost 11 when we are dropped off, with a 6:45 pickup time in the AM to go out and track some lions.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Sunday August 15, 2010 – Bigodi Swamp, colobus in the campsite, and the Top of the World
Sunday August 15, 2010 – Bigodi Swamp, colobus in the campsite, and the Top of the World
Up close to sunrise at 7:00 we have our breakfast and then set out for the day’s outing – a walk at Bigodi Swamp. We take one of my short-cuts as read about in the guidebook – it turns out actually to be a short cut but it the road is definitely used more for cows and bicycles than it is for vehicles. Fortunately we didn’t meet anyone coming in the opposite direction until we get back on the “main”road. We pass through Kibale National park – they have camping and chimpanzee trekking in the forest here, but we’ve seen chimps and at 30$ per person + camp fees to stay here for 24 hours we decided to stay elsewhere. But the forest is lovely and rich and tall, and the public road passing through it is practically lined by baboons sitting on logs grooming themselves and each other. Bigodi Swamp is just the other side of the park, adjoining it in several areas, and is a community run conservation area. The entrance has several gifts shops and guides sitting around waiting for the tourists. Our guide Kenneth is not the most charismatic person of all time, but he’s sincere and prepares to lead us off on a walk through the swamps. Actually it turns out to be a 2.5 hour walk around the edge of the swamp, which certainly gives an excellent view of the difference between community and forest land, and of the encroachment of the former onto the latter. We circle a large papyrus swamp, which does actually have a boardwalk cutting through a portion of it. And we see primates, which was one of the main points of the walk. First are the olive baboons, which were off in the community land raiding crops or doing something they shouldn’t as we passed by. The sentinel gave an alarm bark and they all raced back into the swamp/forest area. Just a bit further long the way we saw grey-cheeked mangabeys, a new species for me, up in the tree tops. The guide also points out the coffee trees in the community lands, and seems able to recognize a number of birds by sight and sound. A bit further crossing a roadway we see a troop of red colobus feeding and playing about up high in the trees. The rest of the walk is along the cultivated edge, where we spend way too long conferring with another group about the identity of a large raptor sitting up in a tree in full sight (never resolved to everyone’s satisfaction), cut through the papyrus on a long and slightly rickety boardwalk, climb a tower (Sarah with assistance up and down) for a view over the swamp, past an area where they are cutting out the introduced eucalyptus to replace them with indigenous trees, and then just as we are about back to the start point we see primates species number 4 – black and white colobus. It was a hot walk, Sarah took some urging along, and I definitely bored Elizabeth with the birding, but hopefully it was worth while.
And back we go, through the park and making a stop at Chimpanzee Forest Guesthouse, where we were going to stay until we heard about the lake at Nkuruba. It is a lovely spot – a European style house perched up on a hill overlooking a large grassy campsite and then the tea plantations. They also have very pretty bandas looking over the forest. We order tea and coffee and sit on the verandah sorting through our maps and permits for Queen Elizabeth National Park, tomorrow’s destination, and enjoying the company of a large, hairy, and grubby golden retriever cross dog who apparently adores European visitors. Our caffeine levels more than topped up, we make our way back to Lake Nkuruba. There seems to be quite a brick industry along the way – several houses have mudpits on their front yards where men are trampling mud, and there are many towers of bricks, some of them with fires in their centres to cure the bricks.
Back at Nkuringo we put on our bathing suits and traipsed down the hill to swim. At least Elizabeth and I did, Sarah refused to go anywhere near the water and kept an anxious eye on us from the shore. But it was great to immerse ourselves and wash away the sweat and the dust. The water was pleasant and still, and as long as we didn’t think about how deep it is we were good. A groups of local children were also swimming on the opposite side of the crater – splashing and leaping about enjoying the water as well. The lake small, one could easily swim across it in a few minutes, but picturesque with its steep sides heavily forested in mature forest trees. Walking back up we stopped to watch a troop of red colobus feeding in the trees along the path, and then to our surprise we discovered a group of black and whiter colobus sitting in the trees right up above the campsite. They are probably my favourite primate – I like the way their long tasseled tails hang down from the branches. A troop of mongoose appeared on the lawn and went through what was obviously their standard routine – checking on all the garbage cans and searching for interesting edibles left behind by tourists. The garbage situation is an issue. It is an odd quirk that the people managing campsites just don’t have the same sensitivity about garbage as we do – a pile of empty water bottles and Pringles cans was under a tree when we arrived, and is still there today. But the hardpacked dirt areas have all been swept and a number of household chores done first thing. I overheard someone explaining the garbage disposal method – there is a big sinkhole next to the campsite into which the rubbish is pitched. According the explanation – “it is so large it can never be filled”. About 5:30 I had the idea of going to the “top of the world” viewpoint on one of the craters. Apparently one needs a guide (or at least no one was telling us how to get there for free) so we loaded up Kenneth and ourselves in the car and drove about 10 minutes round the lake to a quite spectacular hill where the owner had cleverly created a parking and a banda on top of a mowed area with 360degree views of three crater lakes and the surrounding countryside. Lovely and breezy as well. It would be a great place to watch the sun go down with a drink in one’s hand, but we settled for just appreciating the view before heading back for dinner. Tonight we ate in the restaurant – it’s a challenge figuring out how much Sarah will eat – some days she eats almost nothing, others she is looking for food every half an hour. We’ve decided that snacking her about 5:00 and then sharing a dinner with me at 7 or 8 seems to work best – we have to work on keeping her going this late though – she’s set for bed pretty early, as are Elizabeth and I actually.
Up close to sunrise at 7:00 we have our breakfast and then set out for the day’s outing – a walk at Bigodi Swamp. We take one of my short-cuts as read about in the guidebook – it turns out actually to be a short cut but it the road is definitely used more for cows and bicycles than it is for vehicles. Fortunately we didn’t meet anyone coming in the opposite direction until we get back on the “main”road. We pass through Kibale National park – they have camping and chimpanzee trekking in the forest here, but we’ve seen chimps and at 30$ per person + camp fees to stay here for 24 hours we decided to stay elsewhere. But the forest is lovely and rich and tall, and the public road passing through it is practically lined by baboons sitting on logs grooming themselves and each other. Bigodi Swamp is just the other side of the park, adjoining it in several areas, and is a community run conservation area. The entrance has several gifts shops and guides sitting around waiting for the tourists. Our guide Kenneth is not the most charismatic person of all time, but he’s sincere and prepares to lead us off on a walk through the swamps. Actually it turns out to be a 2.5 hour walk around the edge of the swamp, which certainly gives an excellent view of the difference between community and forest land, and of the encroachment of the former onto the latter. We circle a large papyrus swamp, which does actually have a boardwalk cutting through a portion of it. And we see primates, which was one of the main points of the walk. First are the olive baboons, which were off in the community land raiding crops or doing something they shouldn’t as we passed by. The sentinel gave an alarm bark and they all raced back into the swamp/forest area. Just a bit further long the way we saw grey-cheeked mangabeys, a new species for me, up in the tree tops. The guide also points out the coffee trees in the community lands, and seems able to recognize a number of birds by sight and sound. A bit further crossing a roadway we see a troop of red colobus feeding and playing about up high in the trees. The rest of the walk is along the cultivated edge, where we spend way too long conferring with another group about the identity of a large raptor sitting up in a tree in full sight (never resolved to everyone’s satisfaction), cut through the papyrus on a long and slightly rickety boardwalk, climb a tower (Sarah with assistance up and down) for a view over the swamp, past an area where they are cutting out the introduced eucalyptus to replace them with indigenous trees, and then just as we are about back to the start point we see primates species number 4 – black and white colobus. It was a hot walk, Sarah took some urging along, and I definitely bored Elizabeth with the birding, but hopefully it was worth while.
And back we go, through the park and making a stop at Chimpanzee Forest Guesthouse, where we were going to stay until we heard about the lake at Nkuruba. It is a lovely spot – a European style house perched up on a hill overlooking a large grassy campsite and then the tea plantations. They also have very pretty bandas looking over the forest. We order tea and coffee and sit on the verandah sorting through our maps and permits for Queen Elizabeth National Park, tomorrow’s destination, and enjoying the company of a large, hairy, and grubby golden retriever cross dog who apparently adores European visitors. Our caffeine levels more than topped up, we make our way back to Lake Nkuruba. There seems to be quite a brick industry along the way – several houses have mudpits on their front yards where men are trampling mud, and there are many towers of bricks, some of them with fires in their centres to cure the bricks.
Back at Nkuringo we put on our bathing suits and traipsed down the hill to swim. At least Elizabeth and I did, Sarah refused to go anywhere near the water and kept an anxious eye on us from the shore. But it was great to immerse ourselves and wash away the sweat and the dust. The water was pleasant and still, and as long as we didn’t think about how deep it is we were good. A groups of local children were also swimming on the opposite side of the crater – splashing and leaping about enjoying the water as well. The lake small, one could easily swim across it in a few minutes, but picturesque with its steep sides heavily forested in mature forest trees. Walking back up we stopped to watch a troop of red colobus feeding in the trees along the path, and then to our surprise we discovered a group of black and whiter colobus sitting in the trees right up above the campsite. They are probably my favourite primate – I like the way their long tasseled tails hang down from the branches. A troop of mongoose appeared on the lawn and went through what was obviously their standard routine – checking on all the garbage cans and searching for interesting edibles left behind by tourists. The garbage situation is an issue. It is an odd quirk that the people managing campsites just don’t have the same sensitivity about garbage as we do – a pile of empty water bottles and Pringles cans was under a tree when we arrived, and is still there today. But the hardpacked dirt areas have all been swept and a number of household chores done first thing. I overheard someone explaining the garbage disposal method – there is a big sinkhole next to the campsite into which the rubbish is pitched. According the explanation – “it is so large it can never be filled”. About 5:30 I had the idea of going to the “top of the world” viewpoint on one of the craters. Apparently one needs a guide (or at least no one was telling us how to get there for free) so we loaded up Kenneth and ourselves in the car and drove about 10 minutes round the lake to a quite spectacular hill where the owner had cleverly created a parking and a banda on top of a mowed area with 360degree views of three crater lakes and the surrounding countryside. Lovely and breezy as well. It would be a great place to watch the sun go down with a drink in one’s hand, but we settled for just appreciating the view before heading back for dinner. Tonight we ate in the restaurant – it’s a challenge figuring out how much Sarah will eat – some days she eats almost nothing, others she is looking for food every half an hour. We’ve decided that snacking her about 5:00 and then sharing a dinner with me at 7 or 8 seems to work best – we have to work on keeping her going this late though – she’s set for bed pretty early, as are Elizabeth and I actually.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Saturday August 14, 2010 – The long road to Fort Portal and the Crater Lakes
Saturday August 14, 2010 – The long road to Fort Portal and the Crater Lakes
Driving day again today. After breakfast we said our goodbyes and set off for our next journey – the Ndali crater lakes. Back across the Kabwoyo grasslands, then up the escarpment, and then a new route that takes us through the dense Bugoma Forest on a rather rough, one lane track. Along the way we pass a WCS truck – turns out they are doing a chimpanzee survey in the forest – there seem to be pockets of chimps tucked all over the place. Once out of the forest we find ourselves in tea estates – green rows of tea bushes off to the horizon, and back into the inhabited world with huts and shops along the road, and groups of children shouting muzungu and putting their hands out for pens and money as we go by. Eventually we stop for lunch (a lot of time later, not too many km) for lunch at the Hilton hotel – which has a nice patio. Alas, just after our orders go in there is a power cut which means lunch has to be cooked over charcoal. They estimate 20 minutes for preparation, which turns into about 1.5 hours but by that point we are committed to lunch as moving on to somewhere else will just take as long again. I have no idea why it always takes so long to get food, even when it is things that are already prepared and just need to be heated up.
We drive and drive, it starts off green and lush with banana, sugar cane, and papaya. We cross several streams where people are washing themselves, their vehicles, and their clothing. There isn’t much traffic but what there is travels at high speed in a cloud of dust. I’m the wimp on the road, slowing down and pulling over everytime someone comes from the other way. I just don’t trust their driving or my ability to stay stable half on the verge of a bumpy dirt road. As we continue the land gets drier and dustier, definitely another ecosystem, and eventually we come out to the main tar road heading into Fort Portal. Kyenjojo, at junction, is a major metropolis with multiple story buildings, and lots of shops along the main drag and in a meshwork of small streets. We find a post office and mail half of our 6 postcards – turns out they don’t have enough stamps, and then up we get onto the unbelievably smooth paved road for the 50 km run into Fort Portal. Fort Portal is a real town – multiple filling stations, a high street with two traffic circles, a big building that might be a hindu temple, and several mosques. There is a large market selling everything under the sun, hotels for locals and for tourists, and basically everything else one could want. First stop is groceries, check out a tourist shop with nice crafts, and try to get on the internet but the power is out, and then on the Lake Nkuruba resort where we will be camping for the next two nights. Unfortunately we have to leave the tar road behind.
The area south of Fort Portal is made of a series of volcanic craters with lakes in their bases. The place we are staying is right next to one of them – there are bandas, a restaurant, a camping area, and a path down to the water where one can swim – crocodile free but the jury seems to be out on whether there is bilharzia there. Hard to think why there wouldn’t be. We set up our tent in the shade of a large tree on a nice grassy stretch, and then sit ourselves in line of white plastic lawn chairs along with the other visitors - there is to be a show. A local dance group, with several drummers and 6 young boys and girls, puts of a demonstration of traditional Ugandan dancing – a reasonable bit of talent and a lot of enthusiasm. Please put money in the hat afterwards. We cook our own dinner, apparently if you don’t order food in advance you may not get any, and then sit for a while in the restaurant chatting with other people. Sarah fades early, happy to go to sleep in the tent, and Elizabeth isn’t long after. I sit up for a while listening to an Israeli family who borrow a guitar off another traveler and turn out to be very musical. But even I don’t make it past 9:30 – sleep comes early to us these days.
Driving day again today. After breakfast we said our goodbyes and set off for our next journey – the Ndali crater lakes. Back across the Kabwoyo grasslands, then up the escarpment, and then a new route that takes us through the dense Bugoma Forest on a rather rough, one lane track. Along the way we pass a WCS truck – turns out they are doing a chimpanzee survey in the forest – there seem to be pockets of chimps tucked all over the place. Once out of the forest we find ourselves in tea estates – green rows of tea bushes off to the horizon, and back into the inhabited world with huts and shops along the road, and groups of children shouting muzungu and putting their hands out for pens and money as we go by. Eventually we stop for lunch (a lot of time later, not too many km) for lunch at the Hilton hotel – which has a nice patio. Alas, just after our orders go in there is a power cut which means lunch has to be cooked over charcoal. They estimate 20 minutes for preparation, which turns into about 1.5 hours but by that point we are committed to lunch as moving on to somewhere else will just take as long again. I have no idea why it always takes so long to get food, even when it is things that are already prepared and just need to be heated up.
We drive and drive, it starts off green and lush with banana, sugar cane, and papaya. We cross several streams where people are washing themselves, their vehicles, and their clothing. There isn’t much traffic but what there is travels at high speed in a cloud of dust. I’m the wimp on the road, slowing down and pulling over everytime someone comes from the other way. I just don’t trust their driving or my ability to stay stable half on the verge of a bumpy dirt road. As we continue the land gets drier and dustier, definitely another ecosystem, and eventually we come out to the main tar road heading into Fort Portal. Kyenjojo, at junction, is a major metropolis with multiple story buildings, and lots of shops along the main drag and in a meshwork of small streets. We find a post office and mail half of our 6 postcards – turns out they don’t have enough stamps, and then up we get onto the unbelievably smooth paved road for the 50 km run into Fort Portal. Fort Portal is a real town – multiple filling stations, a high street with two traffic circles, a big building that might be a hindu temple, and several mosques. There is a large market selling everything under the sun, hotels for locals and for tourists, and basically everything else one could want. First stop is groceries, check out a tourist shop with nice crafts, and try to get on the internet but the power is out, and then on the Lake Nkuruba resort where we will be camping for the next two nights. Unfortunately we have to leave the tar road behind.
The area south of Fort Portal is made of a series of volcanic craters with lakes in their bases. The place we are staying is right next to one of them – there are bandas, a restaurant, a camping area, and a path down to the water where one can swim – crocodile free but the jury seems to be out on whether there is bilharzia there. Hard to think why there wouldn’t be. We set up our tent in the shade of a large tree on a nice grassy stretch, and then sit ourselves in line of white plastic lawn chairs along with the other visitors - there is to be a show. A local dance group, with several drummers and 6 young boys and girls, puts of a demonstration of traditional Ugandan dancing – a reasonable bit of talent and a lot of enthusiasm. Please put money in the hat afterwards. We cook our own dinner, apparently if you don’t order food in advance you may not get any, and then sit for a while in the restaurant chatting with other people. Sarah fades early, happy to go to sleep in the tent, and Elizabeth isn’t long after. I sit up for a while listening to an Israeli family who borrow a guitar off another traveler and turn out to be very musical. But even I don’t make it past 9:30 – sleep comes early to us these days.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Friday August 13, 2010 – Uganda Kob & Warthog at Lake Albert
Friday August 13, 2010 – Uganda Kob & Warthog at Lake Albert
We started the day in style – fresh fruit and cereal, tea and coffee, Spanish omelet’s and toast. It’s tough here on Lake Albert! After breakfast Bruce was going out to “inspect the game” so we tagged along for an impromptu game drive. When he took over the concession there were a lot of cattle and very little game. He has excluded the cattle – any intruders are put in ‘cattle jail” and their owners have to pay a fine, and the game, especially the Uganda kob, have multiplied dramatically. We drove for several hours through tall grass with the escarpment off on the horizon. There were many kob, warthog families – generally running through the grass with their tails held stiff in the air like pennants, and some other game including oribi and a few bushbuck. There are Jackson’s hartebeest here as well, and we went on a bit of a tour looking for them along the edge of the property, where there is a huge deep valley following a river, but no such luck. We did see a number of bird species, including francolin trying to commit suicide by running on the track in front of the car, eagles, and many startlingly obvious red bishops. There are buffalo and some other smaller antelope, whose numbers still have to increase, and he has brought in a pair of giant forest hogs but they have pretty much disappeared into the forest where they are hopefully making little giant forest hogs. Bruce also has a concession up in west Madi, which is well off the beaten track in a tsetse zone, but apparently good for hunting, and is setting up another one on the Sessee Islands where there are sitatunga. He flies back and forth in his small plane. Must be nice! We get the feeling casual tourists are much less important than the hunting clients. It is a really pretty property, and a great place to see the few common species but I don’t think one could spend several days here game driving.
After another lovely meal we spent the afternoon lizard watching – there are many different and often brightly coloured species that laze around on the patios near the lodge, bird watching, more laundry (the amount of filthy sweaty laundry we produce is rather staggering), watching the horses graze in the grassy area out front (Sarah’s most popular pastime), and reading by the pool. Sarah and I take a walk down to the camping ground, which is a nice grassed area with an open picnic shelter for cooking and sitting and a nice viewpoint over the lake. The pool is quite tiny but refreshing, and Jade and Robin have a selection of swim fins and flutter boards which they use for very splashy and noisy games. Sarah and I join in, at least for some of the less splashy stuff.
In the afternoon several vehicles arrive with proper tourists – a South African couple doing a 5 month overland trip up here and back to South Africa to celebrate turning 50, and 2 German tourists with their German guide and a driver. So we have company to sit and drink our sundowners with – especially the South Africans with whom we can compare travel tales. Sarah is fixated on when we are going to see gorillas, and keeps talking about the names of the small ones in the orphanage, to the point where they actually give her a small carved wooden gorilla keychain (they bought a pile to give as gifts) which makes her day. Three course dinner again, and then they have set up a fire outside by the pool where we retire to enjoy the stars and a bag of marshmallows Bruce and Justin have for the kids. Elizabeth and I introduced to a whole new marshmallow experience – dipped in brandy before being flambee’d. We’ll definitely be adding that to the camping repertoire. Sarah caves early but is happy to go to bed on her own, I think she feels pretty secure in a bed tucked under the net, so Elizabeth and I get a bit of grown up time, although it isn’t long before we can’t keep our eyes open either.
We started the day in style – fresh fruit and cereal, tea and coffee, Spanish omelet’s and toast. It’s tough here on Lake Albert! After breakfast Bruce was going out to “inspect the game” so we tagged along for an impromptu game drive. When he took over the concession there were a lot of cattle and very little game. He has excluded the cattle – any intruders are put in ‘cattle jail” and their owners have to pay a fine, and the game, especially the Uganda kob, have multiplied dramatically. We drove for several hours through tall grass with the escarpment off on the horizon. There were many kob, warthog families – generally running through the grass with their tails held stiff in the air like pennants, and some other game including oribi and a few bushbuck. There are Jackson’s hartebeest here as well, and we went on a bit of a tour looking for them along the edge of the property, where there is a huge deep valley following a river, but no such luck. We did see a number of bird species, including francolin trying to commit suicide by running on the track in front of the car, eagles, and many startlingly obvious red bishops. There are buffalo and some other smaller antelope, whose numbers still have to increase, and he has brought in a pair of giant forest hogs but they have pretty much disappeared into the forest where they are hopefully making little giant forest hogs. Bruce also has a concession up in west Madi, which is well off the beaten track in a tsetse zone, but apparently good for hunting, and is setting up another one on the Sessee Islands where there are sitatunga. He flies back and forth in his small plane. Must be nice! We get the feeling casual tourists are much less important than the hunting clients. It is a really pretty property, and a great place to see the few common species but I don’t think one could spend several days here game driving.
After another lovely meal we spent the afternoon lizard watching – there are many different and often brightly coloured species that laze around on the patios near the lodge, bird watching, more laundry (the amount of filthy sweaty laundry we produce is rather staggering), watching the horses graze in the grassy area out front (Sarah’s most popular pastime), and reading by the pool. Sarah and I take a walk down to the camping ground, which is a nice grassed area with an open picnic shelter for cooking and sitting and a nice viewpoint over the lake. The pool is quite tiny but refreshing, and Jade and Robin have a selection of swim fins and flutter boards which they use for very splashy and noisy games. Sarah and I join in, at least for some of the less splashy stuff.
In the afternoon several vehicles arrive with proper tourists – a South African couple doing a 5 month overland trip up here and back to South Africa to celebrate turning 50, and 2 German tourists with their German guide and a driver. So we have company to sit and drink our sundowners with – especially the South Africans with whom we can compare travel tales. Sarah is fixated on when we are going to see gorillas, and keeps talking about the names of the small ones in the orphanage, to the point where they actually give her a small carved wooden gorilla keychain (they bought a pile to give as gifts) which makes her day. Three course dinner again, and then they have set up a fire outside by the pool where we retire to enjoy the stars and a bag of marshmallows Bruce and Justin have for the kids. Elizabeth and I introduced to a whole new marshmallow experience – dipped in brandy before being flambee’d. We’ll definitely be adding that to the camping repertoire. Sarah caves early but is happy to go to bed on her own, I think she feels pretty secure in a bed tucked under the net, so Elizabeth and I get a bit of grown up time, although it isn’t long before we can’t keep our eyes open either.
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