Uganda: Hippo-hippo-hooray!

February 17^th, 2015

Hello everyone!

Our goal over the next couple of days of our unforgettable Ugandan adventure was to find the Circle of Life.

Today we were travelling to a national park in the southwest of Uganda, near the Congolese border. For those of you who don’t know, Uganda is a landlocked country situated in what is often described as the East Africa region of the continent. It has many borders, all of which lead to exotic and exciting countries like Kenya, Tanzania and DR Congo.

It seems strange to describe a country as ‘exciting’ or ‘exotic’. All places are exotic and strange in their own way. Someone from Uganda may find Cardiff exciting! The justification I can think of for East Africa is that it is home to many of the world’s most interesting birds, reptiles and mammals.

 After bidding farewell to Rob and Sophie, we started our drive to the Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP). The park, named after the Queen’s visit in 1954, is one of the most popular in Uganda and home to many animals I've only previously seen in a zoo.

Visiting QENP requires doing something I’d never done before: crossing the Equator. Technically I crossed it on our flight to Uganda as we touched down in Rwanda, but I never left the plane. That’s my point of view on the matter and I'm sticking to it. The Equator is marked with two circular monuments on either side of the road.

We paid our fee to take Pumbaa into the park and then started to explore. We drove along a dirt track for an hour or so, scouring the landscape for animals of all shape, size and shade.

We bounced along, assuming that all of the animals would be down at Lake George, cooling off and having a drink. Bounce, bounce, bounce…skid to a halt. Why? Well, this…

An astonishing sight. More so that they kept on coming.

Soon after this wonderful interruption, we arrived at a jetty on the edge of Lake George to take a boat ride along the 40km Kazinga Channel; an estuary of sorts that links the national park’s two main bodies of water, Lakes George and Edward. If you’re thinking at this point that there is a particularly English feel to some of these names, you would be correct. They were named by Henry Morton Stanley, a British explorer, in 1889. Many other lakes, including Victoria and Albert in Uganda, were named by Stanley.

Within minutes of departing (once the driver had woken up), we were greeted by a herd of jet-black water buffalo, all guzzling water in the humid afternoon heat.

Alongside the mass of buffalo, minding their own business, were the first of many hippopotamuses that we saw. The hippo was the animal I was most excited about seeing and I wasn't to be disappointed, even though they didn't really do much.

More than anything, I think it is their sheer size. They are enormous units, often weighing in excess of 3500 kilograms. Their long yawn draws copious amounts of air into a huge mouth. Yet for their size, the hippo’s eyes and ears seem almost comically small.

I was amazed at how all of the animals we witnessed on this boat ride seem to accept the others and share territory. Water buffalo, waterbucks, hippos and elephants would all be within mere feet of one another, yet never feel threatened. The only skirmish I saw was two water buffalo locking horns. Their numbers are recovering after Uganda’s infamous dictator, Idi Amin, decimated their population through hunting and negligence.

Of course, this list of friendly and cooperative animals doesn't include the Nile crocodile, which is starting to recolonise in the region. At the very end of the trip we saw a croc, at least 8 feet in length, slink silently into the water. We didn't stick around to find out its target; after all, it was hungrily staring at our boat the whole time.

Plenty of birds joined us on our adventure, often swooping around the boat and hovering near both humans and native animals. I particularly enjoyed seeing the ibis taking a breather aboard a hippo. My favourite bird was the black-and-white kingfisher, which was able to hover gracefully in the sky before darting in any direction it fancied.

We found an unfortunate kingfisher trapped in a fishing rope (the park allow some local tribes to live in the park and fish). Our boat pulled alongside, the captain took the fish back to shore and released it, at which point the bird rediscovered its amazing ability to fly. This effort from the captain almost made up for him accidentally running over a hippo which tried to surface under our boat.

We also saw more elephants as the boat cruised along the channel. Their population is also recovering from the Idi Amin era, when their numbers fell from 4,000 to roughly 150.

The hippos, however, stole my heart. Lazy, large and very proud of it. We saw an incredible amount of wildlife in a matter of hours which I've never seen before outside the confines of a zoo. It was an incredible experience to see the animals of Africa in their natural habitat. Well, almost all of them. Our next trip was to find the King of them all…

Love you all,

Matt 

Uganda: Day 2 – monkey madness

February 16^th, 2015

Hello everyone!

Enough of Ugandan cities, already. Time to explore the countryside and go where the wild things are.

Of course, leaving major towns means leaving major roads: i.e. ones with tarmac. Within minutes of driving on what locals call a marram road, which is essentially a dusty track, the complexion of your car’s bonnet and windshield change drastically to the colour of copper. Not as many sleeping policemen this time, though many natural and other barriers impede one’s speed.

The four of us were driving south from Fort Portal to a campsite in the Kasenda Great Crater Lakes region. We were greeted at the campsite by a new animal: the vervet monkey. Apparently these simians are aggressive by nature, so finding them jumping on our car was slightly disconcerting. However, the fact remains that we were standing mere feet from natural wildlife. Which happened to be bouncing on poor Pumbaa.

We left the mischievous monkeys to shake in the trees and on our car’s roof to hike around and through nearby Ugandan villages. The morning temperature was pleasant and allowed us to truly appreciate the lush greenery surrounding us. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Uganda’s countryside but these views did not come into my mind.

We had two main destinations on our hike. The first was a waterfall, situated to the northwest of a village called Kasenda. Our map was working brilliantly until the final turn, when the path we needed to take no longer seemed to exist. Either that or it never existed as a ‘path’ in the first place. A young lady called Rebecca offered to help us and showed us the way; a steep, slippery downward path to the sound of gushing water.

The slightly perilous walk was worth every Ugandan shilling. Cool, fresh water to jump into was exactly what we needed as the mercury was beginning to rise. The water either rushed over black rocks or congregated in small pools. Standing or sitting in some of those pockets with water bombarding against your body was like receiving a strong massage: quite an experience.

Once we’d trekked back up the steep hill and said our goodbyes to Rebecca, we continued our walk in the now stifling heat through a couple more villages on our way to a hotel called the Ndali Lodge. Aside from one person who almost poleaxed us with a rock hurled from behind some banana trees, the locals were very friendly and keen to say hello. The phrase, “Hello how are you!” was often screamed in our direction. As you can see below, some schoolchildren took it to extremes.

The Ndali Lodge is a luxurious hotel. Like the Kyaninga Lodge we visited the previous day, we took a tea break and admired the stunning vistas either side of its hilltop base. They also had homemade lemonade, which was a godsend to a person like me who wilts very easily under the scorching sun.

Fatigue had begun to set in so we decided that we wouldn’t walk the final few kilometres back to camp. The most common form of transport here is called a boda, which is essentially a person giving you a hair-raising ride on their moped for a very small fee. The ride back to camp was fun, though undoubtedly made smoother by the relatively wide road and lack of traffic. Taking one of those in Kampala is probably a death wish.

We were greeted by more monkeys on our return; however, the vervets of the morning had disappeared and in their place were at least a dozen colobus monkeys, which were the black-and-white bearded simians we had seen the day before. They were very playful with each other.

A 20km or so walk with only cake to keep us going had left us famished: time for Ugandan food! From this and future experiences, it seems that your plate gets piled up with a carbohydrate and then you have some sort of sauce or beans with it. Common carbs include matoke (similar in texture to mashed potato but made from plantains), millet (which tasted and felt like dough – not my favourite) and sweet potato (more green than orange).

It was lovely to walk through the stunning and vastly diverse Ugandan countryside. We had no idea what to expect when we arrived; what we’ve seen so far has massively exceeded expectations. Lovely country with lovely people. Of course, this was with two people who have lived in what Churchill dubbed ‘The Pearl of Africa’ for six months. Next we were going to part with them and see more of Uganda on our own…

Love you all

Matt

Uganda – Day 1: Arrival of the muzungus

February 14^th-15^th, 2015

Hello everyone!

We look excited because it’s February. These days that means another new, wacky and culturally different destination.

2010 – Thailand

2011 – Sri Lanka

2012 – U.A.E.

2013 – Oman

2014 – Morocco

2015 is again Africa’s turn but this time we are dipping below the vast expanse of the Sahara. Doesn't make it any cooler, though. Not when your destination straddles the Equator.

Uganda isn't a common destination from Prague. Indeed, many people have been asking ask why we've chosen to travel such a long way for a week to…Uganda. Hannah and I are here for a variety of reasons, many of which start with S: sun, Sophie, safari, seeing something strange and new. Fifteen hours and three flights, via Brussels and Kigali, Rwanda (the latter stop we learnt about two days before travelling), led us to the Ugandan town of Entebbe. I knew of Entebbe as being the location of an Israeli-Palestinian hostage flashpoint in 1976; thankfully, our arrival was stress-free, constant hand-spraying for Ebola notwithstanding.

We were collected by Sophie (Hannah’s cousin) and Rob, who live in Uganda’s capital and largest city: Kampala. We will return to Kampala later in the week and I'm sure I’ll have much to say about a place which immediately struck me as being loud, busy and ever-so-slightly chaotic. After a night’s sleep, however, we were heading west for just over four hours to the town of Fort Portal.

Sophie and Rob have a second-hand 4x4, which we have christened as Pumbaa for this trip. Its strength and acceleration definitely resembles Pumbaa more than Timon, which we discovered after escaping the Indianesque capital traffic. After Rob had led us out of Kampala, Hannah and I took turns to drive Pumbaa as we would be borrowing him later in the week.

Driving in Uganda is quite an experience. It can be exhilarating, particularly as overtaking on the other side of the road is often a necessity. Think of all of those tractors you may get stuck behind on a country lane, then reduce their speed significantly and add beds/plantains/any item you can think of on the rear of the vehicle. You don’t want to be stuck behind these behemoths. Avoid the animals too, if you can.

Driving can also be immensely frustrating, mainly owing to the sheer number and size of the speed bumps: the ‘sleeping policemen’. At times it felt as if poor Pumbaa was going to disassemble himself with us inside, such was the level of vibration from bumbling and bopping over these sheer humps.

If you didn't have people with local knowledge by your side, driving here could also be intimidating. About fifteen minutes after I started driving, an official-looking man dressed resplendently in white on the side of the tarmac road (the adjective here may not seem so but is important) motioned for me to pull over. A member of the traffic police. Gulp?

Not so. Turns out the policeman was bored and fancied a chat, and hit the jackpot by pulling over a car of ‘muzungu’: white folk. We talked politely and in a jovial manner about fruit, the weather and England. He then waved us away. It pays to be polite here.

Before arriving at the hillside town of Fort Portal we decided to take a ‘small’ detour to Kyaninga Lodge, a luxurious resort, for a well-deserved cup of tea and a stunning view.

What we didn't expect were colobus monkeys leaping around from tree to tree, their bizarrely long black-and-white tails flicking in all directions through branches and thin air.

We also didn't expect to be able to swim in the gorgeous lake situated hundreds of metres below the resort in an ancient crater. The water was very refreshing; the thought of catching bilharzia negligible. The fact that we could watch colobus monkeys bouncing around whilst swimming in a crater lake was the icing on a magnificent cake.

Speaking of cake, our first full day was Rob’s birthday. This generally means drinks, which means I can report back on Ugandan beer already. It is sometimes delivered in a plastic shopping basket and comes in three main brands: Club, Bell and Nile. The latter is certainly the most drinkable, though that isn't saying much. I guess the Czech Republic has spoilt me.

I'm not going to apologise for the lengths of the blogs that will be unleashed regarding Uganda. There is so much to talk about and show that I'm restricting myself to doing one day at a time, yet there is much I have missed out about our very first day. What I will say is that I have never been anywhere like Uganda before in my life and that I am very, very happy to be here now.

Love you all

Matt