Now don’t get me wrong… we love Kampala. But after weeks of black exhaust fumes, countless piles of trash, loud nights, we needed a little break. So after very little planning and a desperate need to see what else Uganda has to offer, we jumped in ‘Zuki (our semi-reliable Escudo) and headed west. The four-hour drive to Fort Portal took us through the rolling Ugandan countryside with equal doses of roaming cows in the road and waving children chasing the car. The drive proved to be far easier than anticipated thanks to huge investments in transportation from the Chinese resulting in new roads around the country. We had beautiful views of huge tea plantations, fields of papyrus, and the beautiful Rwenzori mountains in the distance.
We decided to stay at the beautiful Ndali Lodge, which lies on the rim of an extinct volcano. The lodge is owned by a British family who have owned the land for almost a hundred years. Staying here was a bit of an indulgence but we thought we had earned it. The lodge currently owns more than 1000 acres and produces many of their own fruit and vegetables, vanilla, and meat. It was so nice to be served fresh local produce that didn’t consist of sweet potatoes, plantain or stewed chicken (don’t get me wrong, I do LOVE this stuff though). The site itself was absolutely lovely. There is very little better than having sun-downer cocktails overlooking a beautiful valley with huge mountains in the background.
The real reason to head out to Fort Portal wasn’t just for a relaxing weekend away. What we really wanted to do was check out Kibale (pronounced chi-bal-eh) National Park. The park is renowned for their chimpanzees. It is estimated that there are about 750 chimps in the park, divided between several different communities. The park is also filled with many other monkeys (different from other primates as they have tails), forest elephants, small antelopes, and many many birds.
Upon entering the park, the roads were covered with baboons (it turns out that they are a bit of a pest here). The first thing I noticed was that they are far less mangy in real life. The distinctive calluses on the monkey’s bums were not nearly as large. That being said, for some reason, baboons seem so unappealing. Not soon after we arrived, we could hear the birds everywhere.
We quickly picked up a guide (with a gun to ‘protect’ us from the forest elephants) and jumped back into the car and drove to the area of the forest where the chimps were last seen. After only a five-minute walk, we could hear the chimps banging trees, calling to each other and playing around. Within ten minutes, we had our first sittings of our nearest relatives. These animals are truly astonishing in their human-like behaviour. I know that this should not be a surprise but when you see them communicating, playing and running around, you really can see where we all came from. It was a truly humbling experience. We got to stay with the chimps for about an hour and a half, observing many different family members from the newborns to the grandfathers. The young chimps are a bit freaky but older the chimps get, the more they look like humans. Deb swears that the silverback (alpha-male) looks exactly like her dad (this is a complement John!!!).
After our visit with the chimps, we thought we had earned ourselves a break so we headed back to the lodge to relax a little. Besides, the England – Germany World Cup game was on that night and Paul and I still needed to locate a place to watch the game. We got very lucky and the lovely owners of the lodge invited us to a BBQ at the ‘country club’ on the other side of Fort Portal. Deb and Melissa decided to stick around the lodge for some spa time and cocktails.
The country club was not anything what we were expecting. Instead, it was a bunker placed in a large field in the middle of a sprawling tea plantation. The club was owned by a Irish expat and the ‘bar’ was filled with a variety of international football fans. Unfortunately most were disappointed by the result. However, the BBQ was to die for, with beautiful ribs and many trimmings.
The next day we went for a lovely little walk around one of the crater lakes with a local guide. The lakes are actually the craters of volcanoes. The walk therefore took us around the volcanoes rim. Not remotely scary as the volcano is long extinct, but an interesting tidbit. The walk was very nice and the guide showed off many local birds and talked about rural life in this part of Uganda.
After a hearty lunch we were on our way back home, or so we thought….Our car decided that it did not want us to leave this beautiful area. About 6 ks down the dirt road, the car decided it no longer wanted to work. It quickly became clear that the alternator was not working and we would need some repairs. We slowly got the car into a garage only to learn that we would need a new alternator. As Deb, Paul and Melissa all had to get to work the next day, I was unanimously elected to stay the night in Fort Portal to wait for the car to be fixed. As well that ends well and I was back on the road by noon the next day after the right parts where shipped up from Kampala overnight.
This trip reminded us where we are living and showed us how much we have to see around Uganda. We can’t wait for the next adventure.
