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.