Sunday August 8, 2010 – Budongo Forest Reserve, chimp trekking, and camping at the head of Murchison Falls

Sunday August 8, 2010 – Budongo Forest Reserve, chimp trekking, and camping at the head of Murchison Falls


This morning we woke to cloudy skies but the rain had stopped and the clouds cleared giving us another lovely day. After breakfast we set off to the gates of Murchison Park – about 200 m up the road. The park entry procedure was quite simple, with a 25$ discount for the girls with their student cards, and there was a nice little gift shop there where we picked up a few copper bracelets – one just cannot have too many of them! Just inside the park the landscape changed dramatically - high grass and forest on either side – green and cool in an instant. We came across a troop of baboons just inside the gate – including a female with a baby on her back. Made Sarah’s day! Budongo Forest Reserve site was just 8 km inside the park – a lovely oasis with dorm rooms and bandas, and a restaurant with a long shaded verandah on which we are drinking African tea (made with milk) for me, English tea (otherwise known as black tea) for Elizabeth, and mango juice for Sarah. Various groups of khaki clad tourist arrive and leave in minibuses with their guides, while we sit in rather colonial fashion working on our postcards and reading our books.
After a fairly substantial lunch our guide, Robert, comes by to introduce himself. It turns out our group consists of the three of us, so we are free to start trekking early instead of waiting for 2:00. So on go our boots and bush clothes, cameras at the ready, and we traipse off into the forest after Robert. For about 2 hours we walk through the forest, admiring the sounds of the birds, the black caterpillars speeding across the trail (actually speeding!), the wonderful big forest with mahogany and ironwood trees, but no chimpanzees. We cross several rickety log bridges over streams, we walk up and down small rises, we go in enough circles and backtracks that the girls and I would be totally lost. And no chimps, and not even the sound of the chimps. Sarah is a trooper, but Elizabeth and I are both losing faith in our guide, and in the chances of success for the day. We come across another tourist group and their guide, also chimpanzee-less, and there follows a very long and animated conversation between the two guides, involving a combination of dialect and English words describing the various transects through the park. We get the impression they are arguing, and Robert wants the other guide to go down a particular trail that she says is closed. He gives up in disgust and takes us off back the way we came, then onto some side-trail which involves going through water, over and under branches, and generally through the bush. Elizabeth and I are starting to give each other doubting glances, when all of a sudden we hear, very close by, the screeching of a group of chimpanzees. We come through to a clearing and there is a chimp, hanging from a tree in the direct sunlight. We watch for a while, some other chimps are in the adjacent trees, and there is a fair bit of hooting as apparently one of the “rebels” – a chimp from one of the non-habituated troops, is trying to edge into this group’s territory and they are not happy about it. When they move off so do we, in what seems to be totally the opposite direction from where the noises are coming from. After some fairly major bushwhacking we sure enough come right out to where the chimps are feeding in the trees –Robert’s standing is definitely skyrocketing. Again we watch for a while, and then as they move off we move on to a third site where there is a large group feeding on fruit and lying about in the uppermost branches napping. The ones feeding on the fruit drop the pits and husks when they are finished, so we are actually standing around in a hazard zone and Sarah gets bonked with one that fell right on her. We watch the chimps for a while, and then they all decide to come sliding and tumbling down the trees to land on the ground very close to us, and then head off into the dense underbrush. And we head off back to camp as well – about 1.5 km away. Sarah has been an absolute trooper, walking and climbing and ducking over some really quite rough terrain. She is starting to flag at this point, but takes Robert’s hand and then “leads” us back, setting the pace.
Back at the lodge we consider our options. It is 5:30. We are hot and sweaty. We want a cold beer. It looks like it is going to pour rain. It is 1.5 hours drive to the place we are planning to camp. So … we take a room in the dorm for the night, and have our beer with Robert, who turns out to have worked with the primates at UWEC, and with the chimps at Ngamba. Now he has his dream job working with chimps in the wild, both in the tourist program and also with the researchers.
We shower up and make pasta dinner on the verandah of the dorm before retiring for the night into our bunk-beds and mosquito nets. Unfortunately we have the loudest ever German family next to us, but even they go to sleep relatively early. We are all exhausted!