18th – 19th – Sad endings with a twist

As mentioned previously this Uganda trip was part of a larger trip which meant that only 8 of us were leaving the group and returning to Kampala. The rest – including the truck – had a long drive to Nairobi ahead of them. This meant an early start with breakfast at 0600. The 8 of us decided to skip the truck breakfast and instead having breakfast in the bar when they opened at 0800 and then getting on buses back to Kampala around 0900.

Had the morning schedule started an hour later we would have completely missed the rain, but instead we woke up to rain just as relentless as last night. Everything was wet but not much you could do about that.

With the truck leaving before us we said our sad goodbyes before returning to the bar and waited and had breakfast. From there we got on our buses and drove back to Kampala and the camp site we had stayed at twice already. Relaxed for a bit before I and another had to start heading towards the airport. Kampala airport isn’t the most interesting airport I’ve been at but it helped being there with company and their café was acceptable.

Just before boarding we met a third from the group getting a later flight but it didn’t take long before we had to say our final goodbyes and leave. The flight was on time, the 7½ hour layover in Doha was long but planned (finding a silent room with loungers and getting a few hours of sleep was priceless) and arriving home all luggage made it with no fuss.

This was a fun trip. Out of the 9 days travelling very few of them was spent on actual wildlife watching, but looking back it didn’t really matter; it was a fun group full of amazing people so on the days where we were just driving or having down time you were still fully entertained (or you just spent your time sleeping which, let’s be honest, was a pretty popular activity). Big thanks to Ellen, Mike, Nicole, Aurélie, Silja, Victoria, Paige, Daniel, Joel, Tanja, Laura, Katy, Alex, Lisa, Lauren, Hannah, Kyle, Jamie, Daniel, Dan and Dongmin and our guide and driver Caroline and Anto for making this trip as memorable as it has become. I miss you all already and hope I get to meet you all again some time!

Group photo in the truck.

“But Jakob! What about the twist?” I hear you say (or maybe it’s just the voices again). Ah, yes.

When boarding in Doha on the last leg of the flight home the attendant scanned my boarding card and… got an error. She tried again and got another error. Starting typing in the system, scanned again, typed some more, scanned again but still got an error. She called over a colleague/supervisor and they did some more typing and grumbling until they printed out a new boarding card. When flying my priority is to get an aisle seat so that I am able to stretch my legs so I was a bit protective of my H seat. So when I got the new boarding card my line of thought was pretty much “E? Motherf… They removed me from my aisle se… Row 6? What the…. Why does it say Business ClOooooooh….”. Yeah. I just got upgraded to Business Class without doing anything at all. Unfortunately the flight was only 6 hours so it was limited how long I got to enjoy it. But the enjoyment was real. While still at the gate I was given an a la carte menu from which I was able to order whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. And I went against my principles and starting photographing my food. With my phone. Apologies for the quality (or lack thereof).

I am tempted to do something silly like framing this ticket.

The legroom! Look at the legroom!

I estimate the monitor was 15"-17".

Yup. That's a tablecloth. An equally fancy cloth napkin was nicely put in your lap before the food arrived. The bread bowl contains a bun, muffin and croissant. Next to it is a strawberry jam and I had 4 options - 3 jams and honey.

The orange juice seen to the right was freshly pressed. Not something from a box, but freshly pressed. I regret I only had one glass.

Breakfast starter; smoked ham and beef with feta, olives and dried tomatos.

Breakfast main course; potatoes, scrambled eggs, beef filet with mushroom sauce and cherry tomatoes.

I was presented with a plate of various condiments, took the ketchup and tabasco but there were also at least 2 different kinds of mustard.

When looking at the menu I assumed it was a couple of strips of a filet, but no, it was a chunk of meat. Might not have been as tender as I could have hope but it was delicious!

Breakfast dessert; cheese with crackers, plum chutney and a small assortment of nuts and dried fruit. And a glass of port. Because.

1½ hours before arrival I was asked if I wanted anything before we landed. Sigh - ok.

Lunch main course; linguine with beef, tomato sauce, mini tomatoes and cream cheese.

Lunch dessert; a chocolate cake and lemon pie. In the dark background (lights were out in the cabin so I only had my personal light) a second glass of port is hiding. 

2 glasses of port before noon. No shame. It was delicious.

What a great end to a trip. I could definitely get used to this.

Full album can be found here.

17th – Birds and relaxation

We were 4 who had signed up for a birding cruise starting at 0700 so I had set the alarm for 0630. Luckily I managed to wake up before the alarm going off so I avoided waking those who didn’t have the same plans. Despite last night in clear (well, fuzzy) memory it was surprisingly easy getting up and out. It was pouring down so the chances of getting many – or any – good views seemed slim. Until 0655, that is, when it stopped as on cue.

We sailed around for 2½ hours and got some pretty good views and closeups of some beautiful – and some less so – birds. We also saw a few monitor lizards, bats, vervet monkeys but no otters, unfortunately.

African darter. 

Monitor lizard.

Yellow weaver.

Black-headed gonoleks.

Vervet monkey.

White wagtail.

Malachite kingfisher.

Great kingfisher.

Bats.

White-backed night heron.

African fish-eagle.

Most people had gone rafting in the morning, the remaining 7 of us met up for a late-ish breakfast when we got back from the cruise.

A couple of magpies were harassing a fish-eagle, not caring at all about the significant size difference.

The view from the bar. 

We encountered a few drops here and there during the day but nothing really threatening and nothing near what we had gotten during the night. I hadn’t planned much for the rest of the day so most of the time was spent on me kicking back and relaxing. The rafting people came back in the late afternoon having had a blast of a day, and after dinner a few of us ended up in the bar.

Around 2200 it started raining, though. Really raining. And it didn’t stop. Considering we are in Uganda in the raining season it was a bit of a surprise it took this long before the rain got in our way. At least it’s the last night here.

16th – Jinja

We broke down camp and left around 0830 to go further east to Jinja where we will be spending the next two nights with various (optional) activities.

The drive was short and we arrived around 1130 at the campsite, located near the start of the Nile. Lunch was had and the guides working at the campsite briefed us on our options for while we are staying here. When it was clear there would be (near) endless alcohol of in the open bar on the sunset cruise almost everyone signed up for it (it also helped that it would be free if you signed up for rafting tomorrow).

The afternoon was spent on relaxing, biking, coordinating tomorrow’s activities or whatever one fancied until we’d depart on the cruise.

The cruise was (almost) as expected; we saw a lot of wildlife while getting (somewhat) hammered in the open bar and snacks. Open bar was lacking, though; G&T with no tonic, rum & coke with no rum and some were disappointed they didn’t have cider. But no one left the boat sober so in all fairness it could be considered a success despite the setbacks.

Pied kingfishers.

Who doesn't want a house on their own island?

Coming back on land we had dinner and after cleanup some of us took two matatus (local minibuses) to a disco. While I’m not a big fan of such it was mentioned that one of the buses would return after an hour or so so I thought it would be nice getting out, having a few drinks, and get back to camp. Unfortunately that never really happened so we all got back to camp around 0130 which was tough and not quite what I had hoped for.

15th – Return to Kampala

Just like when going west from Kampala the drive back was unremarkable. We left at 0530 as we were potentially looking forward to a trip of 12 hours.

Quite a bit of napping was done and lunch was had at the equator before continuing and arriving at the camp 1730.

Crossing the equator again.

We relaxed, had dinner and a few drinks before getting ready for a late start tomorrow.

14th – Rwanda

For those of us wanting to go to Rwanda (17 out of the total of 22) we were to get ready for breakfast at 0530 and leave soon after which in this case, due to a minor delay, resulted in a departure of 0620.

The theme of the day might have been depressing but Rwanda is stunningly beautiful. 

We went south, crossed the border to Rwanda without any issues and continued onward to Kigali and started the tour at Nyamata Church, a church that during the genocide in 1994 had seen the killing of up to 10000, with 5 times that number been buried here, mostly in mass graves. The remains are still being recovered and set aside and cleaned before given proper burials. That meant when touring through the church we were faced with piles of skulls, bones and clothes, none of it cleaned. The light mood from yesterday’s gorillas was pretty much instantly killed and set the mood for next few hours.

An hour at the church later we continued to the Genocide Memorial Museum which had a thorough walk through of the genocide and what happened, both domestically but also the international reaction on the lead up to and after. If was very informative but also soul crushing, especially when reading survivors’ statements. Overall, though, the museum as a whole was very good and highly recommended if you’d ever find yourself in the area.

From there we had a late lunch at the hotel known from the movie Hotel Rwanda. When arriving in our daily tour clothes it made me feel horrible underdressed considering the standard of the place, but that was quickly forgotten due to the delicious buffet. The plate dispenser did give us a bit of entertainment; the spring under one of the piles of app. 10 plates backfired so suddenly the plates flew out and high enough to hit the ceiling before coming crashing down. Luckily no one were near enough to get hit but the noise was absolutely fantastic.

The memorial outside the hotel.

From there we went back north back into Uganda and our camp. As the museum visit seemed to have taken a bit longer than planned we weren’t back until around 2100.

13th – Gorillas

Breakfast and packing lunch was planned for 0415 and despite the early start we all departed in three separate minibuses as planned at 0530. The drive of two hours to the reserve was quiet; people realized it was easy to fall asleep at this time of day despite the condition of the roads.

The view during a short break in the drive going to see the gorillas.

We arrived on time and around 0800 we were briefed on today’s activities. The 22 of us were split into three groups going to separate gorilla families. Our group returned to our minibus and drove another 30-40 minutes followed by another 10-ish minutes by pickup that brought us up a steep part of the road. From there we started the actual walk trying to locate our gorillas.

They have started making sure they know where the families are before taking the tourists out (as opposed to when I did it back in 2010 where it seemed as if we left and were updated on the location on the way) which potentially would make the walks easier. We followed established paths for maybe an hour before we switched to off track. Luckily we were (partially) in the open regularly so despite the temperature and humidity we got a comfortable breeze now and then which helped cool us down. After app. 2 hours of walking we were presented to our first gorilla, this one sitting in a tree eating.

Gorilla in tree.

A few minutes’ walk later we were in the middle of the rest of the 18-individual family. The vegetation was denser than last but the location of the gorillas and the fact that we kept moving around a lot meant more (potential) good shots and more flexibility with viewing points. Also, the silverback seemed to be posing for us in clear sight which just made things better.

The family had all age groups from very young to the old silverback.

The alpha male relaxing keeping an eye on some young ones playing around in the bush.

The alpha male.

Towards the end of our hour with the family another member of the group was standing with a tracker maybe 5-7 meters from the alpha silverback, me a few meters behind, when the silverback went from relaxing to standing up, slamming his fists into the ground with a massive whomp which could be easily felt through the ground before calmly walking off into the bush. Obviously just to let us know that we were only there because he allowed it. As it was so sudden and over so quickly I didn’t get a chance to photograph an otherwise fantastically photogenic situation.

The alpha keeping an eye with the youngest being carried by.

The view from the return walk.

On the way back we stopped by and were picked up at a souvenir and café place. While sitting and relaxing a dancing group showed us a few dances and sang a few songs. The main entertainment, though, turned out to be a 2-3-year-old girl with such frown on her face she was from then on referred to as the Devil Reincarnated.

The dance troupe.

The very memorable girl. This was her looking increasingly friendly.

The drive back to camp was 3-ish hours and on arrival at 1830 we realized we were the last group to return. Apparently we had had the longest walk but to be honest though I didn’t mind at all. It wasn’t bad and the forest was beautiful to walk in.

Dinner at 1930 and a quick visit to the bar later it was time to prepare for visiting Rwanda tomorrow.

12th – Chimping

We started with breakfast at 0600 before we got picked up by 3 guides who took us out for the day’s chimp walk. As the camp was located where it was we just stepped out of the camp into the surrounding forest and started looking for animals.

We didn’t have to walk far before we spotted some red-tailed monkeys, and while we couldn’t see them we could easily hear the chimpanzees. It didn’t take long and much walking, though, before the first was located, high up in the trees, eating. And not long after that we saw two more, grooming each other, not far from there.

Red-tailed monkey.

Chimpanzee.

The alpha male being groomed.

Having been enjoying the view we continued and around 1030 we exited the forest and entered a tea plantation. We didn’t get to see the actual buildings and processing plants but the guides explained the process and brought us through the fields while returning to camp. We were lucky enough to also see a few baboons roaming the area.

Having had lunch at camp, packed and taken down the tents we departed at 1230. We had a 5-ish hour drive to our next camp at lake Bunyonyi. The drive was without issues and the landscape we went though was beautifully green, hilly and with plenty of small villages spread throughout.

Tomorrow is an early start at 0530 when going to the reserve to (hopefully) see gorillas. Looking forward to it!

Our camp site at lake Bunyonyi.