Author: matt

The day after we saw the chimps, it was time to leave Uganda for Tanzania. We got up early, as usual, for our flight from Kasese aerodrome to Entebbe. The air service to these far flung airstrips we’ve been going to is sort of like a shared air taxi service. There’s not really a schedule or a route until the day before when they work out what bookings they have, so it’s all a bit haphazard, though it does sound like its actually reliable. They exclusively use Cessna Carravans in an 11 passenger + 2 pilot configuration. Today we found out that they would take us from Kasese to Kihihi (basically the opposite direction of Entebbe) where they’d drop us off for about an hour while they went to Kisoro and came back to get us. Then we flew from Kihihi to Entebbe.Once there we took a whirlwind tour of the airport guided along by an employee of our next airline, which was sort of a private charter airline using a similar ad-hoc route system. Out and back in again, through security and immigration and customs and such. Then we walked out across the tarmac to our next Cessna Carravan.This time we flew from Entebbe to Kibale, Rwanda. From there, we went to Mwanza, Tanzania for immigration and customs into Tanzania. This was a shocking amount of paperwork for Ebola checking and some additional paperwork for something even though we already had our visas filled out and paid for ahead of time. Though everyone was actually very friendly and chatty.After we were all cleared for immigration (there were just four of us on the plane) we went on the drop off the other two at Kogatende airstrip in the north part of Serengeti park, just this side of Kenya. Finally we were on our way to our airstrip, arriving about 5 pm. We were met by our ranger and taken to our rather amazing “tent” at “camp.” The safari vehicle even came equipped with beers. On our way we saw a small family of jackal cubs right by the road, and a lion!After a week without reliable power and internet, this place was a revelation.

Our day visiting the chimpanzees started very early in the morning. We had to be at Kibale park at 6:30 in the morning, so that meant waking up at 4:30.

Like the gorillas, we also setup a “habituation” trek for the chimps as well, which meant that we could spend much more time with them. After the gorilla habituation, we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but everyone assured us that this was on much easier terrain.

Indeed, we got incredibly lucky with the chimps and found a family within about 10 minutes after setting off. We hung out watching them snack and climb around in the trees for about an hour. There were babies swinging around and roughhousing and adults climbing around and snacking. Sadly it was impossible to get any pictures on Jack’s phone because the chimpanzees were too far away. If it wasn’t clear, these are all cell phone photos on the blog. The proper photos are too big to upload from here.

It started raining so we hung out for a bit longer, then moved on to find another group, which we did after about 15 minutes of hiking. Unfortunately chimps don’t really like the rain any more than people do, so they don’t move around as much or come near the ground in the rain. The rain continued for another couple hours and we observed a few different groups over that time, but mostly they weren’t too active. Given the conditions we did quite well though and saw around 25 individuals and observed lots of great chimp behavior.

Roughly all at the same time, the photographers in the group had our lenses all fog up, so we couldn’t really take any more photos. We had about an hour left of our time with the chimps, but given that it was still raining and our cameras were useless, everyone decided to call it good for the day. Naturally, the rain stopped by the time we got to the park entrance. The sun drew out hundreds of baboons to the road, so we got to watch a lot of babooning around on our drive back.

The chimp habituation trek can take the entire day, depending on how quickly you find them. Since we finished around noon, we actually had the rest of the day to relax. We had a couple of beers while admiring the view of a small crater lake from our lodge.

https://zarrf.smugmug.com/Travel/Uganda/i-HrB5HP7/A

Elephants swimming

After gorilla day, we left Chameleon Hill early to catch our puddle jumper to Mweya airstrip in Queen Elizabeth Park. We were both still quite sore (AKA, broken) from all the hiking yesterday so we were looking forward to a day without a lot of hiking around.

Our plane came in for a landing at the airstrip, only to pull up and abort a few hundred feet off the ground. Some water buffalo had wandered onto the runway. After buzzing the runway and taking a go around, they wandered off and we could land.

Then we did a short game drive through the park near the airstrip. It wasn’t really an ideal time of day since most of the critters were hiding from the sun, so we didn’t see much more than some warthogs, but it was a nice way to spend time before lunch.

We had lunch at a hotel by the park, and were surrounded by at least a hundred bright yellow little Weaver birds patiently waiting, and sometimes not so patiently waiting, for us to drop a crumb on the ground.

Afterwards we took a cruise on a channel between Lake Edward and Lake George. That was pretty terrific bang for the buck wildlife viewing. We saw lots of water birds, water buffalo, elephants, hippos, Nile crocodiles, monitor lizards, and various other wildlife coming down to the water. As a bonus, our phones briefly thought we were in the Democratic Republic of Congo as we must have picked up a cell tower from across the lake.

Then it was off to our actual hotel a couple hours away.

For more photos of in and around Cape Town, here’s the smugmug gallery.

We arrived in Cape Town after flying out of Livingstone, spending some quality time in the Jo’burg airport again, in the late evening. We got a simple apartment in Camps Bay from airbnb, the hostess was very thoughtful and got us some cheese and wine on the correct assumption that we hadn’t really had a chance for anything other than airplane food. Jack had started his plant frenzy on the drive from the airport even though it was dark, spotting some Rush Bird of Paradise(Strelitzia juncea) on a hillside. This would continue.

In the morning, when we finally got to actually see Cape Town, it was simply beautiful. The thing about Cape Town is that any direction you look is postcard worthy. You can look out and see a great coastline, then if you get bored, just turn around and look at the mountains behind you.

First thing, we grabbed a taxi to go pick up our rental car in down town Cape Town. So my very first taste of driving on the other side of the road was in the middle of a city, though I have to say as city drivers anywhere in the world go, Cape Town’s are pretty good.

We found the hardest thing was keeping centered in the lane properly, and not going too far to the left. More than a few times we freaked each other out thinking we were going to sideswipe the cars parked on the road side. After we made it back to the apartment, we decided that we should go see the penguins at Boulder’s Beach, about an hour away and we decided we’d take the coast road to get there. It turns out this took us through Chapman’s Peak, which was a super narrow, twisty road with tons of blind corners. Another poor choice to start out driving on the other side with. But what an amazing drive, we pulled over every few minutes to get out and look at the views (with lots of photos of course.)

We made it to the penguins and went out to a board walk overlooking the beach where they hang out. There were tons of them just sitting out on the beach, or sunning themselves on rocks. A few were back a little ways in the trees nesting. Some were also taking trips out into the water to look for food. It was really amazing to see them in such an environment. For some reason the best part was watching them come out of the water as they crawled onto to beach, stood up and started walking up the sand. Naturally, we spent quite a while there taking pictures and watching them go about their business.

It was a lot of fun, and we made our way back the same way we came, apparently not learning from the terrifying road.

 

I finally got all of the smugmug uploads for Zambia and Botswana done, so if you want to see more photos, check those out.

The day after Victoria Falls, we had primarily scheduled an elephant backed safari. The manager at our hotel suggested that we also do a village walk, since we had a little bit of time in the morning for it. We took a boat ride (everything is a boat ride) a ways down the river to the village where some of the hotel staff live. It looked like a pretty typical village similar to what we’d seen driving by. Our guide for this was a older woman from the village. She showed off her gardens where they grow vegetables for themselves and to sell to the hotel among other places. 

After the village walk, we headed back onto the road for the elephant back safari.  Our driver there took his already beleaguered van and charged it up the hill on the dirt road, until the mirror on the passenger side door fell off. After stopping to collect this, he continued charging up the hill until the shocks fell off or at least were completely broken. We had a rather scary rest of the ride, with the suspension completely bottoming out any time we hit a bump, which was often. Luckily he realized that he needed to slow down when the van started bouncing uncontrollably.

Eventually we did arrive at our destination, and the driver went off to get another van while we were doing our safari. The elephant back safari wasn’t terribly interesting. It was cool to be able to interact with the elephants closely, but they didn’t seem terribly thrilled about trudging around with us on the same walk they probably do several times a day. There was a very adorable newborn elephant running around with its mother though that we got to interact with a little bit.

The next day we had our day trip to Botswana to see the Chobe River park. It turns out, this was a much shorter, though somewhat convoluted drive. We went through Zambian immigration to leave, then stopped at the river, our driver stayed behind and put us on a small boat. A minute or two later on the other shore, we met another driver, who took us through Botswana’s immigration, taking all of about three minutes, and then onto the lodge where we were doing the Chobe River safari from.

The first part of this was a cruise around a formerly, between Botswana and Namibia, island in the Chobe river that lots of wildlife like to spend the day on, since it’s largely free of predators. We mostly saw animals that we’d seen plenty of at Londolozi, but it was a very different setting so it was still exciting. There were plenty of elephants, hippos and crocodiles. As you’d imagine it was  a good spot for birds as well.

 

We also saw elephants crossing the river onto the island,

and Hippos grazing on land, instead of hanging out in the water. This is somewhat unusual, since it was well into the 90s that day.

The next part of the day was a more traditional jeep style safari. We got a lot of great giraffe sightings on this, and hundreds of elephants.

Apparently, at Chobe, they are on the verge of actually having too many elephants, and they’re not quite sure what to do about it.