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!