One of the great things about living in Ghana is being on the continent of Africa and having the possibility of exploring 53 other countries without leaving the continent. During Christmas vacation the hubster and I traveled to Morocco (North Africa) and then at Easter we flew to Saõ Tomé (an island nation off the coast of Gabon) for a long weekend. In June, if you read my last blog, we went to South Africa for a great 10 day trip. I have been itching to get myself to East Africa as well as I really wanted to be able to get at least a glimpse of that side of this expansive continent. We had previously tried to organize a trip to Kenya in March or May with relatives living in Germany, but that did not work out so I tried talking several friends from the US to meet me somewhere, anywhere, in the eastern part of the continent. Luckily my friend, Ellen, with whom I hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc last summer, agreed and we planned a trip to Uganda.
Why Uganda? Well, they have mountain gorillas…and chimpanzees…and all sorts of other wildlife including elephants, TREE climbing lions, zebras, giraffes, monkeys, warthogs, lots of different type of antelope and over a thousand different bird species. Plus it is not as hot there as it is in Ghana Rwanda also has mountain gorillas but the permit for one day of tracking gorillas there is about three times the cost of the permit in Uganda and they have a little less wildlife to keep you occupied once you have had your day or two with the gorillas. Uganda seemed reasonably priced and not too far (this is all relative as it still was a 5 hour flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and then another 2 hours to Entebbe, Uganda by plane). Ellen could get a direct flight from SFO to Dubai and then direct flight from Dubai to Entebbe. We were even able to arrive within a few hours of each other at the airport.
I arrived first — at 4AM. There is literally nothing happening at the Entebbe airport at this hour. I wanted to walk around the four gate airport because first, it would keep me awake and second, I had been sitting on a plane for hours but I got so annoyed with cab drivers asking me if I needed a ride that I went back into the airport and walked around the very small area with the unopened shops there. Ellen’s flight got in on time around 6AM and I easily found her but we were not sure where our guide was meeting us, but the airport is small. While we are standing around searching for the guide a short, muscular man walks up to us and asks us if we are Ellen and Meredith. We have found our guide or I guess he has found us. His name is Nasser.
The first day is a 5 – 6 hour drive to our first lodge at Lake Mburo. We stop for a great breakfast and some of the best coffee I have the whole trip at a small restaurant right at the equator. We are both tired but it doesn’t take much to sit in a van. About an hour away from breakfast we get a flat tire — in the middle of nowhere. We get out of the car while Nasser attempts to change the tire which involves a jack and some rocks and a few panicky looks from Ellen and me while we worry about our guide being crushed by the van. Another safari vehicle stops to see if he needs help but drives on after about 5 minutes. Ellen and I do laps up and down the busy road with large trucks zipping by and motorbikes almost taking us out a few times. It is late morning and warm out, but not as hot as Ghana. Nasser finally gets the tire changed but tells us that he is going to have to stop at the next town to get the tire fixed. We drive for about another hour until we find a town and a gas station. At the first gas station there is no one to fix the tire but the second place we stop not only has a person to fix a tire there are several people in line to get tires fixed. Seems to be a big business in Uganda. We get out of the van and wait and there are a group of Muslim women dressed up taking pictures of each other. They are beautifully dressed with their ornamented dresses and matching headscarves and I offer to take a picture of all of them together. Soon we are joined by a very tall man who is also dressed up in a long white tunic, a white kufi (a short, brimless rounded cap) and a very western-looking sports jacket. Now he wants to take a picture of us and what turns out to be his wife and his sisters-in-law. I am embarrassed as I am sweaty and wearing the clothes I left Ghana in the day before (jeans and a tank top) but he insists and Ellen and I agree. We talk to him for quite awhile and learn that they are going to a wedding (reason for the lovely clothes) and they too have a little car trouble. Turns out this man used to be the manager of said gas station for about 10 years, also was a teacher and now is in the “tile” business. We exchange Whatsapp numbers and he sends me (he has me in his phone as Ghana White Lady) pictures.
As we pull into Lake Mburo National Park, a beautiful savannah about 1500 meters above sea level, we begin to see zebras, giraffes, buffalo, baboons, warthogs and antelope. We arrive at our destination mid-afternoon just in time to get a very slow moving boat cruise in Lake Mburo and we spot some hippos and crocodiles and a lot of different birds. Both Ellen and I almost fall asleep on the boat as it has been a long day, or in Ellen’s case two or three days. Our accommodation at Mantana Safari Lodge was a fancy tent (we signed up for “luxury” accommodations and this might be a stretch) and we are the only visitors so we had very attentive staff. We had to tell them when we wanted to shower so they could bring the hot water to our tent and the shower was maybe the best one I had the whole trip despite or maybe because of the primitiveness.
The next morning coffee and biscuits are brought to our tent and after a large breakfast we journey out for a game drive through the park, which does not disappoint. No elephants or lions in this area but a plethora of zebras and eland (a type of antelope) and at the watering hole we witness zebra, baboons, buffalo, antelope and warthogs all sharing the water source. There are so many birds to see it is hard to keep track so I start making a list. By late morning we are off to our next destination — Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. This is where the famous Mountain Gorillas (Silverbacks) live and we are excited that the next day we will get to track the gorillas.
After about 4 hours we arrive at the Mahogany Springs Lodge in Bwindi and I am ecstatic that is indeed a “luxury” accommodation. The lodge has beautiful exotic gardens on the property and sits just above the Munyanga River and it is steps from the entrance to the Forest. Our room is almost the same size as my apartment in Ghana and there is running hot and cold water. We are told we can safely walk/run on the road outside since there are no predatory animals close by so before it gets dark we go out for a walk to the town center. We return for dinner and I am pleasantly surprised by the healthy and tasty food. The next morning we arise early as the “briefing” for the gorilla tracking is up the road at 8 AM and we eat another delicious meal and have some more great Ugandan coffee. We were told that there are only 24 permits a day but there seems to be close to 100 people at the briefing. I google this when I get home and see that actually there are 88 permits given each day and now this makes much more sense. A local Catholic school is performing some dances and singing for us which is fun and exuberant and on the last dance they pull all of us onto the dance floor and try to teach us their dance. We finally get divided into our groups of 8 and I am a bit disappointed that most of our group looks amazingly unfit and several have hired not one, but two porters to push them up the hill. In addition to the 4 out of shape people there are two German women and one is tall and athletic looking, Claudia, and I turn to Ellen and tell her I want to be her friend. Ellen laughs but in the end Claudia and I did hit it off and chatted most of the way up and down the mountain.
Although I am sure there are many areas of the “Impenetrable” forest that are exactly that, most of our walk was on pretty easy terrain until right before we got to the gorillas. We probably walked about and hour and half before we saw our first gorilla and there were some pretty nasty vines with thorns that kept snagging on my pants. If you plan to ever do this bring pants that do not snag. They tell you to stay 7 meters away from the gorillas but the guide, trackers and porters pushed all of us forward until we were only a few feet away from many of the gorillas. There were 15 gorillas in the family group (Habinyaja) that we tracked. I was never sure how many we saw but we definitely saw the big daddy, with the “silverback” that he acquired around age 12; several youngsters, including one who played on top of a tree right in front of us for quite awhile and then did a backward dive into the greenery below. They are habituated and so for the most part they were not fazed by us, but at one point I was in front with two trackers and one of the males came charging from up above us and scared the crap out of me (and the trackers looked alarmed as well). We were only allowed an hour with the gorillas but it was magical just being with these gentle giants in their world.
The next morning we get up early again and go for a short run. There are dozens of school children walking to school and one young girl runs along side us as she walked to school. We also see one of the waitresses at our hotel walking to work. People are friendly but just like in Ghana cars and motorbikes drive way too close to us when we are on a road with no sidewalks. I now blame the British for this behavior with my n of 2 former British colonies. We are off to Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) which turns out to be fairly close and the drive is amazing as we see lots of birds (the list is probably up to 40 or 50 now) and we even see the “tree climbing” lions perched in two trees along the way. When we turn on the final safari (meaning dirt) road to get to our hotel we are blessed with seeing a large herd of elephants — about 30 — cross right in front of us. We arrive at our hotel, the Mweya Safari Lodge, perched on a hill overlooking the Kazinga Channel which connects Lake George and Lake Edward (yep, definitely former British colony). The hotel is large and probably back in the day it was considered a “luxury” accommodation but it is a little tired and dated. It does have a workout room for which Ellen and I are grateful as running here with all the wild animals is not a good idea unless you want to be someone’s breakfast.
The next few days we explore QENP including a boat ride on the Kazinga Channel where we see so many hippos, crocodiles and water buffalo that I cannot count them all and more birds including several types of storks that clearly look prehistoric. One morning we travel to do some chimpanzee tracking. Our guide for the tracking was a bit lame and kept only finding the chimps after his colleague radioed their location. He seemed to like running towards the chimps, scaring them a bit so most of my photos were of chimp butts but as you can see I did get a few shots of them in the trees. Again, these chimps are habituated but they didn’t seem really happy to see us and a few times they all went a bit mad screeching and talking and swinging. Each time I got ready to try to video this amazing chatter they would all stop. I am definitely not going to get a job as a wildlife photographer or videographer.
After three lovely days and nights which included some pretty decent Indian food (the owner of our hotel was Indian), one trip to the gym to run on the treadmill, several safari rides, the boat ride and the chimp tracking we leave early in the morning to head to our final destination, Murchison Falls National Park (MFNP). Unfortunately this place is about a 9 hour, yes 9 hour, drive from QENP. The drive takes us through mostly rural Uganda with many small villages and a few good-sized towns. We see acres and acres of coffee and tea being cultivated. There is a ton of road construction and in comparison to Ghana (I am pretty sure Ellen and Nasser are sick of me comparing things to Ghana, oh well) the roads are magnificent We stop along the roadside to have lunch and a bunch of kids from the local village walk down the road to stare at us. We offer them all the food that we have not eaten and the happily take it and run back down the road. Ellen and I get in a few games of Scrabble on her kindle along the way. The time actually goes by pretty fast.
We have to take a “ferry” across the Nile to get to our lodge and we arrive about 45 minutes before the ferry is leaving. We kill time telling baboons to leave us alone and befriend a cute little 2 year old (human) who sees me and immediately runs and jumps into my arms. We wave goodbye to our young friend, and we take the 4 minute ride across the Nile and we arrive at the lodge at Murchison Falls, Paraa Lodge, late in the afternoon just in time to get in a short swim. The pool even has a swim up bar. I guess that is why this place is considered luxury accommodations. It also has AC. It is the first place we have stayed with AC. It is actually needed as this area of Uganda is much hotter than we were previously as the lowest elevation is not too far from here — 621 meters at Lake Albert. (Albert, Edward, George, Elizabeth….yes, British) Our last safari ride is the next morning and we leave early and catch a beautiful sunrise over the savannah. We see a few lions right off the bat — a lioness with her three cubs that are about 9 months old. Two of the cubs play with each other right in front of us. I am truly a sucker for young animals of all kinds and even though these guys could devour us I think they are as cute as can be. There are also a ton of giraffe here and we are even allowed to get out of the car and stand fairly close to them as they are not known for trampling humans. In the afternoon we take a boat ride up the Nile to Murchison Falls, the largest waterfall on the Nile. We see a few more species of bird not seen before and when we return I count up our bird list and we are at 90! Being competitive I want to make it 100 and tell Nasser that we have to get a few more birds on the list the next day which is the last day of our trip.
On the last day, while still in MFNP, we take a walk at the top of the falls along a nice easy nature trail. We add a few birds to our list. Our guide that day, George, is knowledgeable and funny. Because this “hike” is really just a 30 minute easy walk we leave our backpacks in the car and I slip my phone in my back pocket to take pictures, bring a small bottle of water (the Ugandans seem to think that us foreigners will die quickly without water here) and wrap my binoculars around my neck. Murchison Falls are impressive as the water has to compress into a 7 meter wide space at one point. Here is what the top of the falls look like:
We finish up our walk and there is a bathroom near the parking area with two squat toilets. As per usual Ellen and I figure best to use any toilet we come along as we have a long ride to our next stop (a rhino sanctuary). I pop into one of the stalls and begin to drop my drawers and my phone falls out of my pocket and straight into the pit. The pit of shit. I believe I also uttered that word. I look down the hole and there is my moto phone face up, about 3 feet down, lit up with the time and date in a neat circle staring at me. For some reason, I go ahead and pee anyway (Ellen finds this part of the story amusing). I walk out to George and Nasser and nonchalantly tell them my phone is now in the toilet pit. Nasser laughs. He thinks I am kidding. Nope, not kidding. I shrug my shoulders and figure my phone is a goner. But wait, George pipes up, “Let me go tell the guys who work here. I bet they have had this happen before and they can get it out.” Nasser looks skeptical. Ellen, a microbiologist, is thinking of all the diseases I am going to get if they recover my phone. She repeatedly asks me, “Are you sure you even want your phone after it has been, well, you know, there?”
After about 10 minutes George returns with three guys. George tells me, “They have done this before. They think they can get it out but it will take awhile.” Apparently they had already gone to the stall and seen my phone, still flashing the time and date. They assure me that they now have blocked off that stall so, “No one else can make anything on top of it.” This is good especially since a large busload of school children just pulled into the parking lot. Nasser, Ellen and I sit on a bench (not in sight of the toilets) and wait. Nasser remains skeptical. Ellen remains disgusted by the thought of what the phone is in contact with. Weirdly, and maybe this is because I have lived in Africa for almost a year, I am just calm, slightly amused and fascinated that someone is actually trying to retrieve my phone out of a pile of shit.
Twenty more minutes go by. I grow impatient and want to check their progress plus I really, really want to see how the heck they are getting the phone out. I walk up to the outhouse and there are my three guys (all with gloves on) smiling. As I walk up they announce, “We just got it out!” There is a long stick on the ground with a plastic box with a corner cut out and there lying next to it is my phone. I think, “No f**in’ way.” They bring my phone closer to me and lay it on the ground. Time and date flashing still. It is remarkably clean yet there are some small “things” crawling on it. Maggots perhaps. I try not to think about these things too long and one of the guys takes a cloth and brushes them off quickly. They have a bottle of rubbing alcohol and clean cotton swabs. Quickly they take the cover off my phone and start scrubbing my phone and the cover with alcohol. It doesn’t take long for the phone to look clean. Maybe not sterile, but clean. They work on it awhile more while I negotiate a price for their hard work. I end up giving them $70 US. One of the guys emphasizes that this was “dangerous” work. Yes, he is right. I walk back to the bench where Nasser and Ellen are and proudly hold up my phone. They are amazed and maybe slightly disgusted.
With cell phone in hand we hop back into the van and head to the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. I wash my cell phone with Purell about 10 times on the way. Ellen keeps telling me I should not use it but it works perfectly fine and looks clean to me. Due to the unexpected delay at MFNP we don’t have a lot of time at the Rhino Sanctuary but we find three rhinos right away and follow them for about 30 minutes. The baby rhino wants to nurse so he follows the mom for 15 minutes whining like a puppy. She ignores him and even the guide is laughing at them because it really is too funny. Finally mom gives in and all three rhinos lie down so the little guy can finally get to nurse. Both the southern white rhino and black rhino were wiped out in Uganda as of 1982 due to the prolonged armed human conflict (think Idi Amin) especially in the northern area, poaching and mismanagement of the habitat. The Sanctuary currently has 20 something rhino and the plan is once they have 50 they will start to re-introduce them into MFNP. It is great to see this country doing so much to now protect the many wonderful species that exist there.
A few hours later we arrive back to Entebbe. Ellen is staying for an extra day and my flight leaves around 2:45AM so we have a hotel room. I don’t really understand why all the flights have to go in and out in the middle of the night but I am able to take a short nap before I get a ride to the airport just after midnight. Check-in at the airport is uneventful and I head to the airport lounge and get served the best of cup of tea I have ever had in my life — some mixture of Ugandan black tea and ginger and milk. My flight leaves on time and I get to Addis Ababa around 5 AM. I have a few hours and wander the airport and hang out in the lounge for a bit. When we board the plane to Accra I get upgraded to Business Class — what a nice ending to a great trip to a wonderful country. I am grateful for my traveling companion Ellen (I am pretty sure we never got on each other’s nerves) and our guide Nasser and special thanks to the three guys who fished my phone out of the s***hole. All’s well that ends well.
Aptos To Accra 
Goodness, and won’t you/don’t you have a head full of memories 😎
jh
Jim Hume
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What a wonderful trip. You two are very adventurous women. Loved all the pics and especially the shitty phone story. 😂
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