Around the world

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.

Today we did our Gorilla Habituation. Boy were we not ready for that. We met our Ranger, porters, and trackers at dawn and took off hiking. One hour in we’re a little winded, it’s at 6000 feet, and then our tracking began. We dove off trail down an incredibly steep ravine, clinging to plants, roots, and our porters as we plunged down. The porters weren’t there so much to carry our stuff, rather to push and pull us up and down the mountains. Then finally at the bottom, we’re told we found their trail from two days ago, and the grueling hike continues. Three hours later of going up and down the ravine, covered in ant bites, mud, and plant bits, we’re told we’re there. No sign to any of us, seems like all the other jungle we scrambled through, then we see them. A family of Gorillas sitting in the shade eating leaves, the young playing in the branches. It was amazing. They were so calm if our presence, one of the little ones came crashing down by Matty, eyes so curious. We started with that part of the group for awhile, following them as they moved through the jungle grazing on plants. There ended it being 5 babies who would periodically get in giant wrestling matches. Then we encountered the silver back. Our Ranger and the beginning of the hike and periodically throughout kept saying “Don’t run”. Until that point there hadn’t seemed a reason for the advice. The silver back tore out of the brush with no warning, roaring and charging by. All of us, trackers, Rangers, and tourists flinched back, and then he was gone. We learned later that a day before he had grabbed and bitten someone. After awhile, he got more comfortable with us and walked through to go get one of the females, leading the family away. As we followed, he would occasionally roar but didn’t rush us again. Then we saw the alpha silverback. He was between 400 to 440 lbs and surprisingly shy. He neither roared or tried to keep the rest of the family away. He sat, relaxed, snacked, and in general ignored us. We got to see two of the babies one last time, playing on the bushes and our time was up. It was magical, hard to go. They are truly amazing creatures, we were in awe. Finally the long hike back out of the jungle without the goal of gorillas to sustain us. At the end of that slippery vertical trek, we had hiked 10 miles of dense jungle.

Today we woke up at 4:30 and caught a quick flight in a 12 seater to Kisoro. We then had an hour drive to our colorful Lodge, driving around lake Mutanda. Beautiful lake full of little islands and giant volcanos hidden behind the clouds. It’s about 6000 ft high here and cold like Montara! We’re about 15km from Rwanda and 5km from the DRC.

This afternoon we took a boat ride Lake Mutanda. Our guide told us the lake is 900m deep and in the distance we could see a chain of seven volcanos. In the lake there are many islands, one inhabited and farmed, the rest people free. We hiked up to the village on the inhabited island and saw the struggle to live there with a government not willing to help. We also visited the “Punishment Island” where Rwandan kings 150 years ago sent unwed mothers to their death. It was a truly harrowing spot. We visited a cave where the mothers were tied up and left to die. They had uncovered many skeletons which are still there.

Tomorrow we wake up at the same time and hike into the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park to do a Gorilla Habituation. What that basically entails is we get to spend 4 hours in a small group, only 4 permits allowed a day in all Uganda, with a family of gorillas that is being acclimated to having humans come and visit them. Should be exciting!