Wednesday August 4, 2010. A night at the zoo, the botanic gardens, and pizza on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Wednesday August 4, 2010. A night at the zoo, the botanic gardens, and pizza on the shores of Lake Victoria.

They arrived last night as planned! Safe and sound and pretty exhausted after a total of about 2 hours sleep. With all their luggage, although apparently one of the bags was about the last one off the plane. But no problems through immigration and out came – pretty exciting for me, a relief for Elizabeth, and I think Sarah was just a bit confused. (“I in Ganda now?”). We loaded up the bags in the car, managed the parking exit, and found our way back to our banda in the dark with hardly a wrong turn. By 9:00 we were in our pyjamas drinking gin and tonic, and eating noodle soup and potato chips before folding into bed under our mosquito nets.

The night was orchestrated by the sound of lions, faint and in the distance, and chimps, less faint. After a so-so night for all (actually Sarah slept well but Elizabeth had to deal with the 2AM is it morning yet syndrome, and Sarah spent most of the night rolling on and off me in the double bed we shared) we breakfasted and then headed off to walk round the zoo. Uganda Wildlife Education Centre functions as a zoo, a wildlife rehabilitation centre, and runs a lot of community education programs in wildlife and conservation. We started at the Vet Clinic, where Barbara, the vet tech showed us the facilties and the resident animals, including a baby red-tailed monkey, some baby barn owls, a magnificent leopard, two caracals, a shoebill stork, a hermaphrodite chimp and a bunch of patas. We did the rounds of the administration building, shaking hands and exchanging business cards, and then wandered the zoo until lunchtime. The exhibits are primarily Ugandan species, with some riding dromedaries and donkeys thrown in as extras. We enjoyed the otters and the chimps, avoided the wart hog exhibit as the entry might have been better called the enormous spiders surrounding the viewing platform exhibit, and saw the rhino, the ungulates, the monkeys, as cage full of happy confiscated African grey parrots (one of which said hello and asked us how we were), and finally the tortoises. Hot and tired, we settled for a Ugandan lunch buffet on the terrace of the zoo’s restaurant overlooking Lake Victoria. Cool and breezy and a perfect place to regroup.

The girls were introduced to Ugandan food – posho, matoke, rice, sweet potato and Irish potato as carbs, chicken or beef in gravy, beans (not green), and some cooked spinach thing. Then lovely fresh fruit for dessert but we were all pretty stuffed. And of course, sodas to wash it down. Sarah is back in the land of Fanta orange and seems pretty happy about it.

After lunch we took a run by the Ngamba Island office to sort out and pay for our chimp walk permits, which took a long long long time, in at least quadruplicate. Glad we didn’t leave it until tomorrow morning. Bad news in that they don’t know how we will get back from the island on Friday, but we’ll see what happens. Then its tea-time/coffee-time at Anna’s place – a rather nice small restaurant with a pretty gift shop selling crafts from Uganda and Madagascar, of all places. Plus internet – 200 shillings for an hour. We sit on cushioned benched under a sunshade of many coloured cloths drinking our beverages and gaining momentum for our next event.

And then the botanic gardens – over a hundred years old with magnificent trees of all different sorts – with odd leaves and huge strangely shaped fruits. There are a huge number of birds here, as well as black and white colobus and vervet monkeys. There are park like areas, jungle like areas, a nd some stone paths leading amongst small streams on the side of a hill. It is pretty and cool in the shade, a good place to stretch our legs. We circle back along the water’s edge, looking at the shore birds and taking our shoes off and cooling our feet in the lake. A local has been “guarding” our car, so we make a donation and then load everyone up – time to look for our dinner – in a pizza restaurant on the shoreline.

The pizza place looks like a beach joint – small thatched kitchen and then tables and chairs on a terrace and down on the beach itself. We order cold beers (and fanta orange for Sarah of course) and enjoy them as the sun drops towards the water. We try and guestimate how long the pizzas will take as they have a reputation for SLOW service, but the waitress’ estimate of 20 minutes was pretty close on and we had excellent pizza (and French fries), accompanied by a couple of quite well fed and friendly dogs lying in the sand next to our table and happily eating the leftovers. On the way out Sarah makes friends with the main hostess, who confuses Sarah by asking her what colour her (Sarah’s) skin is – Sarah says “brown” and the woman says “no – white” and Sarah disagrees, saying “That not white!!!”. Then back to our banda in the zoo for an early night, lulled by the sounds of lions, chimps, and donkeys. OK, the donkeys weren’t actually very lulling!