We drove through Queen Elizabeth National Park on a transit road (so without any fee) and camped on the way for one night at the Engiri Game Lodge. The road crossed the Equator line, however, there wasn’t anything special to look at. The Chinese have built a new road (like on so many other places in Africa) and removed the old beautiful sign which was there (we have been told) due to the construction site and they never put anything back, so this wasn’t as spectacular as we thought it would be :(
We went to visit the Katwe Salt Lake, where locals are still mining salt. A guide walked us around and explained to us how they collect the salt which was quite intersting. On the way to and from the lake, we also saw many elephants, one of them was chosing the main road as his track, so all the cars had to wait until he was out of the street again :D
Our next stop was the Bwindi National Park, where we planned to go on a gorilla trekking, the main tourist attraction Uganda is famous for. Eventhough it costs a fortune (a permit is USD 700 per person), we decided to do it as a “once in a lifetime”-experience, and it was magical indeed. We were staying at the Ruhondeza Lodge which is run by a former gorilla guide named Gad, who had been working with the gorillas for over 24 years. He was very helpful and knew a lot about the gorillas and how they are habituated. The trekking started early in the morning because the guides never know how long the hike will take. Gorillas move every day and sleep at different spots every night. The gorilla trackers stay with them during the day so they know where the gorillas build their nest to sleep in, and early in the morning, they go to the sleeping spot and track them from there, so by the time the tourists arrive, the trackers can inform the guides where they have to bring the toruists in order to see them. Like this, it is always guaranteed that tourist can see the gorillas, however, the trekking might take anything from half an hour up to 8 hours, depending on where the gorillas are. We were lucky, after only 1,5 hours of hiking through the thick forest, we already reached the group we were aiming for. Once you reach the gorillas, you get exactly one hour to spend with them, after that, they are left alone again. We were very surprised of how close we got to the gorillas. Of course, the group the tourists can visit are all fully habituated, so they are very used to humans and their weird cameras. But still we didn’t expect to sit with them with only a few meters distance.
The gorilla babies were very playful and one of them was super curious. It came checking our camera gear, it smelled and touched Tom’s camera and even quickly touched his hand, but the rangers shooed them off again. They don’t want tourists and gorillas to get too close, because their is a risk for us and also for them of transmitting diseases, since our DNA is soo close and therefore, diseases can easily be passed on in both ways.
Once our 60 minutues with the gorillas were over, we hiked back to the gate of the forest national park. Our group was super nice, there were 6 more tourists and a part of them were on a wildlife photography safari. We agreed to meet later that night for some drinks at the Bwindi Bar, where they served delicious cocktails, one of them was called “Gorillini” :)
We stayed two more nights at the Ruhondeza Lodge, because the next day, we had to arrange for a package to be brought to us, we had ordered some more water filters for our water tank of the car. Unfortunately, due to the sometimes dirty water, they were used up quicker than we thought and the product could only be deliverd from Germany. We ordered them to Kampala but they were delayed, that’s why we arranged for someone to bring them to the lodge where we were staying. By now, we weren’t surprised anymore of how well and easy deliveries within Africa work with local buses and Boda Bodas. What did surprise us was the horendous tax we had to pay to receive the filters. Uganda charged more than 20% for VAT and additional taxes, so we’ll definitely will not order the filters another time…
Close to the Lodge we were staying, there was another small campsite which was located ina pangolin rescue center. They informed us that they had rescued a pangolin so we decided to go there to see this endangered animal and spend a night there at the very basic lodge before we would head on. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we were told that the pangolin escaped during the night. The people at the rescue center usually are informed when someone finds a pangolin (there are still a lot of poachers who try to get them) and release them into the Bwindi Forest National Park, where they are safe. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see this pangolin but we enjoyed a nice local dinner with the people working at the rescue center. The next morning, we drove on to Mount Sabyinyo in the very south of Uganda, where we intended to climb that vulcano. Our plans changed once more.
Mount Sabyinyo lies within Gahinga National Park, which has its name from the second vulcano, Mount Gahinga. There is a third volcano in the park, which you can climb as well but the hike starts from another place. There is a community campsite right next to the gate of the national park, where we wanted to stay. It is literally the very last house in Uganda, the road stops here and 2km further, you stand already at the foor of the mountain and to one side the is DR Congo and on the other side there is Rwanda. We stopped at the gate to inform them that we would come back the next day to climb Mount Sabyinyo, since you need to go with a guide and armed rangers because there are elephants and buffaloes in the park as well. The rangers informed us that it was not possible to climb Mount Sabyinyo because they were repairing the ladders on the trail. We were very disappointed about these news. They told us, that it would be possible to climb the other two vulcanoes, so since we were already here, we decided to climb Mount Gahinga. Only about 200 meters away from our camp, there was a very nice and fancy lodge and because we still had time, we figured we would go there for a drink before dinner. Volcano’s Mount Gahinga Lodge was breathtaking and soo cozy. It was getting fresh outside (we were at 2’400amsl) and in they lit a fire in the fireplace inside the lounge and we ordered a bottle of wine. We were the only guests, the staff was waiting for some tourists to still arrive. We started chatting to the staff and that’s how we found out that actually, the ladders were not defect, but that in the past couple of days, two of the rebel groups in DR Congo have been very active and fighting was ongoing just a few kilometers away from us. That’s why they did not want to let any tourists up Mount Sabyinyo, because that mountain lies partly in Congo and the rebel groups were hiding somewhere there. Just by that time, we received some updates in our Africa Overlanding Group Chat of someone warning people to go to close to the borders of Congo or even into Congo because of the fighting. We had a bit of a worried night, knowing that we weer very close to the rebel activities, but the next day we still went to the gate to go to the hike and there were some more tourists to join us, so we felt much better again. The hike unfortunately was not the best we have done, the trail was very muddy and eventhough there were some ladders, it was very slippery and you had to concentrate a lot on where you were stepping. Part of our group even returned halfway up. We continued and were rewarded with a nice view of a crater swamp on top, but other than that, the hike wasn’t too spectacular. The group however, was very nice and we met some of them later again for some drinks after taking a warm shower - we were super super dirty and for the last 500 meters of the trail we just got into heavy rainfall, luckily not earlier but we were still soaking wet when we arrived at the camp.
The next morning, we stopped on our way to the border to spend our last Ugandan Shillings on some nice coffee and of course one last Rolex, before we left this beautiful country after 5 weeks.
