Wednesday Sept 1, 2010 – monkeys in the morning, adding up the species on our game drive.

Wednesday Sept 1, 2010 – monkeys in the morning, adding up the species on our game drive.


First stop at the park office to pick up an illustrated guide to the park’s mammals so Sarah can tick them off, second stop to check out another restaurant as a possible alternate to last night’s horrid meal, and then on to the Ruroko track to the Kazuma lookout. The first part of the track was pretty heaviy wooded, with acacia and bushes up close to the road, and then we moved into the more open grassland and up to the lookout, which is on top of a hill with views almost 360 degrees of several lakes in the park, as well as the extensive wetlands surrounding them. A magnificent view. We actually drove up past the parking lot to a picnic area – the benefits of 4-wheel drive and stopped for an early lunch. In Kabale we had bought “butter bread” which I was hopefully thinking meant it had an increased amount of fat in the recipe and might stay fresh a bit longer. But, it turns out butter bread means two loaves of bread with one side buttered and pressed together, like a huge butter sandwich. Whoops. But it turned into nutella and peanut butter sandwiches just fine. From the lookout we continued in a large loop back to ** camp. And we saw lots of game – impala, topi, a group of three bull eland, a bush duiker spending an awful lot of time eating and rubbing its nose on a particular spot of ground, lots and lots of wart hogs, including some tiny babies and a group we startled out of a mud bath where they were having a wallow. For a minute it looked like they were going to come back and wallow right next to the car, but caution won out and they trotted off in the opposite direction, tails held straight up in the air like warning flags. Elizabeth spotted a dwarf mongoose, she seems to have Brian’s ability to spot game, and even Sarah was picking up animals in the distance, although she seems to be mostly focused on the vervets and the baboons, which she is convinced are going to come and bite her. There are quite a few young antelope, quite tiny topi and impala, although there is little evidence of new grass growth as yet. The zebra seem to like to stand on the road and we come across several groups of them, which move off in no particular haste. We see several lone male buffalo grazing by the road, one of them quite bald and scruffy. And birds, including several eagles, bee-eaters, rollers, kingfishers, and a host of smaller passerines.
Resting is the name of the game next – we plant in the restaurant by the lake drinking fanta and African tea, and listening to the constant calling of the fish eagles, the intermittent snorts of the hippos, and the munching of the warthogs and they mow the lawn of the campground. The sky has been threatening rain all morning and has settled into a solid grey. The ground can certainly do with some rain, although I’m not sure it would improve our lives too much. Sarah has been reading the tourist magazine and has decided that she wants to go horseback riding after seeing all the ads for horseback safaris. There is a place close to here, in one of the fancy $300 a night lodges, and another in Jinja which might be a good distraction while Elizabeth is rafting.
An overland truck has moved in and set up camp so Sarah and I go to chat with the cook – the rest of them are out on a walking safari. The vervets are in full attendance – watching to see if their kitchen and its contents are left alone for a minute. One of the monkey has only half a tail – apparently amputated by a panga while raiding food from a campsite. There are about 20 people doing a loop from Nairobi through Uganda to Rwanda, and then back again. Not sure how many weeks but the group coming from South Africa up here takes 9 weeks. A long time to spend in a truck with 20 other people if you don’t all get along.
We watch the sun go down and then try the restaurant at Arcadia Cottages next door – there are a cluster of serious twitchers (aka birders) sitting with their guide and their bird lists and their beers – sounds like bird bingo – “does everyone have number 21?”. The scary thing is I would be right in there if I was on a birding trip. Supper is served by candlelight, with kerosene lanterns to get us to the bathrooms, and is far superior to last night’s disaster. The hostess walks us out to our car with a lantern and we drive the few km back to the tents – tonight spotting a herd of buffalo on the road along the way. Our lanterns are burning on our porches and we have a nightcap before tucking into our beds to listen to the clip clopping of the impala around us and the hippos off grazing further in the distance.