A Day with the Chimps!

On Friday morning, after a rather frantic rush to the bus park in Kampala to meet up with Pia and Mette with plenty of money and cell phone issues to boot, I was not prepared for the journey ahead of us. We boarded the Kalita bus (i.e. Greyhound) for Fort Portal, the largest town in proximity to Kibale National Forest where we were planning on going on a chimp trek the following morning at 8am. First of all, the bus waits until it fills up, so while in theory it leaves on the hour, it doesn’t really. So we waited while the 11am bus waited until nearly 12 to be full of passengers (some even squeezing on to stand) seated in narrow plastic covered seats, no seatbelts or reclining, mind you. We took off, or should I say, stalled in the heavy Kampala traffic (it is truly a sight to behold) and finally climbed out of the city on narrow dirt roads. About two hours later, we reached the halfway point. Little did I know what this held in store. Men and women came hurtling over with shallow women baskets filled with meat skewers, chipati, bottles of water and soda, fried bananas, and more, shoving them up literally in my face, at the windows were the sole source of “air conditioning.” Later along the journey, two men came running over at a short stop to trying and selling live chickens—I’m not even kidding. It was unreal.

We finally arrived around 5pm and hired a special hire in the pouring rain to take us to Primate Lodge, our accommodation in Kibale National Forest where we had made a reservation. Pia, Mette, and I shared a small banda hut with two single beds that we pushed together to from a luxurious sleeping arrangement ;) After a warm, well-deserved dinner, we played some Yahtzee (patiently taught to me by the Danes) and passed out before 10, exhausted from the journey and all of those meat skewer assaults.

We woke up at 6am the next day to a nice hot breakfast and walked down the visitors center that was just a few steps outside of our lodge, incredibly convenient! Luckily, they were not all booked for the morning chimp trek, so we signed up for one, coughed up the $95 fee each that included a guide and the park fee and went back to our lodge for a cup of tea. At 8am, we received a short briefing from the park guides and then set off with our guide into the dense forest. There was plenty of beautiful thick foliage, dank black mud, and paths of red ants which we were careful to avoid. After about 15 minutes of edging past muddy ruts and over mildewed wood slab bridges, our guide motioned for us to follow and pointed up and listen. First we heard the chimp calls, low shrieks, then loud rustling of trees. Then there was the sight of a large hairy black lump dangling in the tree. From then, three hours passed quickly with plenty of squeals (yes, I definitely squealed with glee a few times) as we watched the chimps swing, climb, and gorge on leaves. Then there were the chimp babies which were just adorable. I’ll let the pictures do the talking (when they’re all load that is—soon I hope!)

Later that afternoon, I hiked along the Crater Lakes with a couple locals. I met this guy Benjamin on the bus to Kibale (Pia and Mette were sitting behind me) and seeing as he was the only other muzungu on the bus, we struck up conversation. Turns out he was French, had come to Uganda about 5 years ago to do logistics (nice and vague) for Doctors Without Borders, and then bought land on one of the crater lakes in the west of the country and moved out there. So after our early morning chimp trek, we had bummed a ride out of the National Park with these two other tourists and stopped at place called Chimpanzee Lodge for lunch (Great avocado salads and chipatis! The avocados here are incredible—probably three times the size of the ones you can find in the States) when who should we run into: Benjamin! He was having coffee with his friend, Victor, whose family owns the lodge. Small western Uganda! Pia and Mette were in need of an afternoon siesta, so I took Ben and Victor up on their offer to give a local tour of the nearby crater lakes, all of which are incredibly beautiful. The walk was up some serious steep hills (boy am I out of shape!) and afforded some spectacular views over up to three crater lakes in a row, surrounded by lush green landscape, reminiscent to me of Tuscany—nothing wrong with that! At one point torrential rains arrived (it’s the rainy season) so we pulled over and stoped in this thatched roof hut to wait out the heaviest rain, and helped the women inside who were shucking beans.

Ben lives in this one room brick house, but owns a large plot of land that runs down to the edge of one of the lakes. But boy, I think I would just go crazy if I lived out there—it is really quite remote. ThenBen and Victor escorted me to my campsite, this one on Lake Nkurbura, where I joined Pia and Mette. After some dinner and Yahtzee crashed early so we could get up for an early morning walk and to see all the monkeys that were jumping and playing in the trees above our banda. We watched them over breakfast of Nutella pancakes. Sweet life :)

Then there was the long trip back via matatu. Um, this needs full explanation, but my internet café is closing for the evening, so I will be sure to fill in the gaps later. Goodnight!!