What seemed like a lot of covid tests later and a very slow exit through customs at 2am in the morning and we finally arrived in Entebbe, the town next to the airport. A sleep in and then off to experience our very first Ugandan breakfast rolex. A rolex is a chapati with a fried egg inside, sometimes with tomato slices and red onion. Absolutely delicious. It was definitely one of those local food items that you leave the country feeling like you haven’t eaten enough of them.
We organised a week long guided tour which started from Entebbe and headed down to the south-western corner of the country to Bwindi National Park so we could hike into the rainforest to see mountain Gorillas. This was an unforgettable experience. We hiked around an hour into the mountains, being directed by trackers who had already located the group. We easily found the troop, which were the second largest in Bwindi with 19 members, including three silverbacks. We spent a good hour slowly following them through the rainforest, seeing the way they move, climb, walk, eat and interact. We were lucky enough to interact with the largest dominant silverback right at the start of finding the troop and its massive size and impressive stature did not disappoint. We also saw plenty of mothers with new babies which were clinging frantically to the mothers fur as they suckled and the mother ate and watched us. We split into two small groups unintentionally, trying to find the best approach into the thick jungle and follow the gorillas down the mountainside and during this, the second largest silverback wandered out of the dense jungle right above me and ponderously walked down beside me as I tried to get out of its way. We were easily within a meter of one another and it was a very humbling experience. He hardly gave me any notice as he paused right beside me to survey the jungle ahead and then continued on his way.
From Bwindi we made our way to Queen Elizabeth National Park, enjoying seeing the rural lifestyle of Ugandans on our way there. As soon as we entered Queen Elizabeth National Park, Blake and I popped the roof on our awesome little 4×4 van and rode with our heads out the top searching for animals as Addie our driver guided us further to into the park. We spotted plenty of interesting animals including lots of buffalo, elephants, monkeys and baboons. Even at our accommodation that afternoon, there we a family of mongoose running around in the grass and plenty of cheeky monkeys in the trees trying to get into our room. In Queen Elizabeth National Park we went for a safari tour with a paid tracker and a boat ride along the lake. The tracked safari guide had a park ranger with radar equipment to locate the lions and leopards with radar collars. We saw a large pride of lions with cubs and also found a leopard resting on the ground before it walked away and climbed a nearby tree. The afternoon boat ride saw us watch what felt like hundreds of elephants and hippos using the water in little bays along the lake.
The next stop was Chimpanzee tracking in Kibale National Park. Quite similar to tracking the mountain gorillas except, the landscape was flat. We came across a lone chimp quite early into our walk and followed it for half an hour hoping it would lead us to the larger group but it didn’t. We found some other chimps as we struck out through the forest in what was a very pleasant morning of walking.
A few days in Kampala, the capital city and a motorbike tour of the main sites including a rundown of the recent history which was fun. More rolexes and two very very good milkshakes in a local café before we had some flight debacles before finally managing to exit the country and get to Tanzania.
