Dominic had to do some research in Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP), and I was working for the Kasiisi Project, which is on the way from Kampala to QENP. We decided to meet in Fort Portal so that it was easy to take the tarmac road instead of the dirt road from my room at the station at Makerere Biological Field Station or MUBFS, as everyone refers to it. Dom rented a vehicle from a friend of a friend. It was a Nissan 4 door 4x4 pick up with an open back (I don’t know anything about trucks so this is the best I can describe it). There was a miscommunication about us needing a 4x4, so the transaction happened last minute and late at night. Dom left Kampala early the next morning and got to Fort Portal by noon. We were heading south about two hours to the beginning of QENP. Just past Kasese town and the equator there was the first information station for the Park up a big hill. Dom had to drop off a camera to a lady there at Conservation through Public Health, a local NGO focused on studying and helping with health at the human-domestic animal-wildlife inteface – human populated areas nest to national parks. They served us tea and we took some pictures of the wonderful scenery overlooking QENP from on top of the hill, and we paid for our entrance fees to the Park. Dom and I were happy to be traveling again together and ready for a mini-safari. Even after his 7 hour drive that day, he was ready for more. We decided to take the Crater Lake Drive into the Park headquarters and Mweya Peninsula. It was off the beaten track and most people don’t know or have time for this path. We had the narrow road all to ourselves from mid-afternoon to dusk and we took our time. It was so nice. On the way we weren’t sure what we would see but we had our eyes peeled. We couldn’t believe the stunning landscape, the geology is amazing and so different. Some looked like the Serengeti, another looked like an old crater lake that was filled in by earth, then a real crater lake, then a smelly (sulfer….or rotten eggs) drying up crater lake. We drove along the ridge for two hours and had great views everywhere we looked! The first large animal we saw was an old waterbuck with white on his face and long horns. We also saw a decent size monitor lizard, an owl, an eagle, many tweety birds (this is a major migratory route for E Africa with 619 spp. of birds reported – we learned about 20 of them!), and close to the end of the path two elephants of the exact same size playing around in an open field all to themselves with a sunset on one end and dark storm clouds and a fainting rainbow on the other. The rainbow didn’t come out in the pictures because we caught it too late unfortunately, but it was stunning just to be there!
We arrived late to Mweya Peninsula just on top of the Kazinga Channel, which connects Lake George and Edward, and signed into the small hostel located there where we made ourselves comfortable just in time for the electricity to go out for the entire rest of the night. It is much warmer in QENP than it had been in Kibale and Kampala, but we survived without a fan. After a simple meal and wanting a shower so bad, we went to bed dirty. In the night there was a lion, I repeat a lion who vocalized right outside our window. No I didn’t see it, but it was there, and I didn’t sleep much after that. Our plan for the morning was to get up really early for a game drive to find lions. On past safaris, which isn’t many, I never expect to find lions or other cats. This helps to not get disappointed, but also I am happy hanging out with herbivores. However, this trip was all about the lions. Dom and I were on our way to Ishasha (two hours south but still within QENP) – where the “tree climbing lions” are found, but I first wanted to stop at Kob Flats (across the main road from the Penninsula) where I was told by an avid safari guide and friend that an early drive to this area would give us a good chance at seeing a kill. Well, who knew luck was on our side! Literally on the side of the road were ten lionesses and 3 cubs with a buffalo kill not far from the gate! We arrived to the spot before all the safari tour vehicles, so we had a prime spot. As we were filming, a group of hyenas challenged the lions with yipping and laughing and other interesting vocalizations, but the hyenas had no chance. We don’t actually know who made the kill – it could have just as easily been the hyenas. There is a misconception that hyenas only scavenge; they also hunt for themselves. After hanging out with the pride for about 20 minutes and 200 pictures, Dom and I headed to the Salt Lake further into Kob flats where we saw, you guessed it, Ugandan kob, buffalo, many more tweety birds. It was a great beginning!
During this morning safari, Dom also taught me to drive stick shift. I know it is very sad that at the age of 30 I didn’t know how to drive a stick nor a 4x4, (not counting Erin Murphy’s mom’s red camero when I was 16) but it’s all good now. I can drive on unpredictable back roads, up hills, through narrow muddy and dangerous bridges, on the left side of the road, on the right side of the car with the shift in my left hand, (which I prefer anyway), with buffalo, elephants, goats and villagers crossing the road, and in 4 wheel drive. Phew…check that one off the list!
We continued on to Ishasha, which is at the southern part of the park, just next to the DRC border. An understaement would be that Ishasha road is not very well kept. It is also the road one takes to get to the mountain gorillas in Bwindi, so we were very surprised at the condition and the huge trucks that used it. There was construction of 3 bridges that we needed to cross to get there. At the third bridge, we waited for 2.5 hours to cross. This was due to a semi truck that got stuck on the [narrow] bridge in the mud and couldn’t get out! Quite scary, and unpredictable. Hmmmm, what do you do when the only way to get where you are going is to pray that you can get there safely? I kept thinking, if this were Zambia we would be here for the rest of our life unless we turned back. But this is Uganda, so somehow things will be fixed. We both decided to wait because we were not ready to give up on getting to our destination. Another semi offered to pull the truck out, but the rope he was trying to use didn’t exactly work. Then he tried again and his grill popped off the truck! Then a rain storm came, but we were lucky it didn’t last long and none of us (the line of cars) got stuck in the mud where we were parked. After 1.5 hours, Dom finally got out of the car to help the truck driver and other men to organize a way for the driver to do that back and forth thing to get momentum. And wah-la, wouldn’t you know it, somehow the truck managed to get out of the mud! Great job Dom, and we were so happy to continue our trip and it was only 2pm because we had such an early start!
This was the point where Dom had to tell me his surprise for our housing that night…he was treating us to a river-side lodge in Africa (Ntungwe River Camp)! We headed towards Ntungwe but there had been so many rains recently that getting to the lodge off of the main road was a swampy mess. I mean literally the water splashed onto our windshield! We came up to 1-2 foot deep “puddles” on the path that we drove through with the car before coming to a “lake” that we decided we would definitely not risk driving in to. Dom talked to the manager for an hour before convincing him that the water was simply too high to cross “it’s higher than the knees of your employee who is standing in the middle of the 50m pond telling us its fine, the car can’t go through”. We were not in a Land Rover, we were in a Nissan and this was not worth the risk. In the meantime we had to back out of the muddy path we were on to turn around. The car was slipping in the mud and Dom backed onto a village family’s garden!! Rule number one: don’t piss off the villagers! They were upset until Dom handed the woman a bill (international symbol for Im sorry!) and she ran off giggling. I gave the kids some cookies from our car snacks, and Dom paid two other men something for helping get the car out of the mud (of course I helped too). Once again the muzungus were messing up, trying to save their reputation, and paying everyone off! The adventure continued. We came all the way to Ishasha to get less than 1 km to our destination and had to make up Plan B on the spot (tip for those traveling to Africa – you should always have a Plan B). Luckily, the lodge manager made a phone call to transfer us to a neighboring lodge outside of the park for about the same price, but we had to drive another 45 minutes to get there. So we did, we had no choice. All I kept saying was, “Thank goodness we saw those lions this morning!”
The alternate lodge, called Savannah Resort was nice. We had a cute banda with hot water mind you, and the best pork chops I’ve ever eaten, while the Liverpool game was on! Dom and I both love Liverpool and always try to plan on seeing the games on the weekends, but somehow it never usually works out. So of course when we didn’t plan it, there it was - a very nice surprise. So the night ended with a hot shower, a happy tummy and some entertainment. Needless to say, we slept very well.
The next day was planned for Ishasha ‘tree’ Lion stalking. We got 20 minutes into the park before we came upon mud, more ponds on the road and it was simply too wet too continue. After the scare we had the day before neither of us was in the mood to risk anything – not to mention, we were in a Nissan, not a what? A Land Rover To make a long story short, the Ishasha lion experience quickly went Ka-Put and we gave up trying. We ran into another couple on tour and they had checked on the trees with their guide and hadn’t found anything. It was just not in the stars. But the Kob Flats lions were, and I kept thanking those stars.
But I got to practice driving stick shift all the way from Ishasha through the 3 sketchy bridges and bad roads to the main road near Mweya. I feel confident now, just need more practice, and in a city…
I forgot to mention, when Dom and I went to QENP on his first research scouting visit in September, we saw a leopard, my first leopard, and it wasn’t in a tree, it was 30 yards from the hostel! While we were grabbing beers from the restaurant with our new CDC friends, one of the UWA rangers spotted the leopard he “grew up with” in his backyard. So he invited us to pile into his car to get a glimpse before the leopard hid in his favorite place, an abandoned research house. Yup we saw it alright, absolutely spectacular, but strange to see it walking into a house. I felt like I was back at the zoo.
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| Kazinga Chammel |
“On the road again” we headed back to Mweya Peninsula and Lodge for lunch, and boat tour on Kazinga Channel between Lake Edward and Lake George – a spectacular site. We saw over 70 elephants on the water, countless buffalo, pelicans, storks and cormorants. Hippos, Egyptian geese, small crocs, pied kingfishers – common on every lake in Uganda, weaver birds, fish eagles and other birds, and few baboons and a bush buck. I took video while Dom photographed. The weather was perfect as usual. Dom decided that he would again treat ourselves to a lodge experience because the previous one was obviously not enough, so we were excited to stay at Mweya. Everything was awesome, I only have one complaint: since I’m not young anymore and I can’t sleep just anywhere, the bed mattress was so hard we might as well have been sleeping on the floor. But I awoke in the middle of the night to an adult hippo chomping on the grass 5 feet from our back door, which was a wall of windows. He or she let us know it known it was there and vocalized, yeesh. Another tip: Hippos are not cuddly like they are in cartoons and babies books. Working with exotics at a zoo will teach you that right away, but when there is hardly a barrier between you and the animal it hits closer to home. One common fact about African animals is that the hippo (the big one, not the pygmy) is the most dangerous, having killed the most humans of any other animal. This is because they are very territorial and may not want a boat getting their way. To change the subject, I never knew lodges had spa rooms. If we had time and money we would have gotten back massages for a good price, but Dom had business to do and I felt bad getting one without him. Oh shame, guess we’ll have to continue our awesome weekend adventure without. I had never been in a steam room before, that was interesting after having relaxed with 3 Savannah Dry’s watching the sun go down with a perfect view of both lakes on the top of the lodge.
Dom also had to meet with the Research Director of QENP, a wonderful lady named Margaret, who is considering a PhD program with UMN and Makerere Univeristy in Uganda. Lunch was quite nice at the gazebo watching elephants interact with hippos across the channel. Dom’s meeting went later than planned, but he still felt confident we could make it back to Fort Portal before it was pitch black. Driving in the dark on Ugandan roads (which are not too bad) without street lights and people and goats walking on the side of the road, with fire smoke and high beams in your eyes is really stressful, so we try not to do that. When we got to the car, we had a flat tire. This always happens to us. It happened on our way out from Budongo last December too. We were so lucky it happened at the lodge which has a full-time engineer/car mechanic and even their own petrol station to put air in the tires. Only 30 minutes wasted and $10 spent there. But the kicker was while driving. I started to smell something, and Dom doesn’t have a good sniffer so he was counting on me to be sure. I said, “Yuck, what’s that smell? It better be coming from the car in front of us!” We stopped the car and sure enough it was coming from under our car! I am not a mechanic and have been blessed without too many car troubles in my past, but it turns out that these big trucks need a lot of oil! Going back to the first paragraph of this blog when I said Dom received the car in a rush late at night… well he trusted that the guys gave him a car with full fluids, but this was a nice reminder to check things first! Luckily we were close to Kasese town where there was a petrol station with a great mechanic who not only had oil for us, but took the nail out of our tire, patched it, and changed it from the spare, for 90,000 shilling which was $35 at the previous exchange rate. Renting a car that you know no history of can be quite stressful, duh. Driving in the dark was challenging but fine, Dom did a great job and I was sorry he had to drive so much this weekend.
We arrived Fort Portal and crashed at a hotel in town with breakfast the next morning. Then, Se la vi, I had to go back to the forest while he had to drive another 4 hours to Kampala. This time he had no car troubles, phew! “Thanks for being a great sidekick!”
