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Uganda has to be the most beautiful of any African country that we have visited – bar South Africa, of course. The scenery is breathtaking, especially when you venture on the back roads. Everything grows profusely, the tea plantations stretch as far as the eye can see, sugarcane, wheat, bananas, tomatoes, you name the crop, it flourishes in the fertile red and black soils.
Jinja was a treat, with all the facilities one could hope for at Nile Explorers River Camp, managed by South Africans Celia and Jacques Dippenaar. Good advice they gave us too, to avoid the congestion of Kampala and take a back country meander to get onto the ring road. On the outskirts of Kampala, a split second decision due to a deviation on the road network took us to Fort Portal instead of Murchison Falls. The latter is still on the itinerary…
The western highway to Fort Portal is a dream, the best road since SA, and no trucks, nor radar guns, and very decent speed humps – the “sleeping policemen” of Africa. We were in heaven and reached Kibale Forest National Park long before dark. Since we were the only campers in a site that is visited nightly by elephants, we did not linger once the campfire burnt out. A stack of papery logs, plus a packet of firelighters failed to get Jannie’s steak beyond rare. Nothing a minute in pepper sauce cannot finish off to perfection.
Today we were up early, hoping to get a last-minute permit for chimpanzee tracking ($150p/p). We were in luck and spent four glorious hours traipsing through the forest, enjoying several encounters with females and babies, as well as an alpha male, and another younger male. Tricky to get good shots of them, since the forest is so dense, and most of the time they are up in the canopy, feeding. The booming calls and hoots are beyond description, eerie and stirring at the same time.
Driving southward to Queen Elizabeth National Park we took a shortcut through remote and utterly rural countryside. This is truly exploring Africa off the beaten track, and we passed several of the incredulous volcanic crater lakes which pock-mark the landscape here. Even travelling at 20km/h was bliss and the GoPro worked overtime to record whatever our eyes saw.
On reaching Lake Edward we were welcomed by a breeding herd of ellies on the lakeshore, and a few lone buffaloes at the water’s edge. Large herds of Ankole cattle with their magnificent horns everywhere. Our camp at Hippo Hill has a lovely breeze, most welcome since the temperature is 33 degrees C.
Uganda is such a clean, decent country, everyone speaks English, “How are you” being the opening sentence regardless of the circumstances. The Prado is doing fine and our prep work is paying off. We are well equipped, we even relish in the luxury of ice cubes with sundowners. It is tough going nevertheless and the days are really long, each one with so much to see and do… talk of sensory overload.
Our biggest mistake has been overestimating average speed. The roads, even when they are good, hardly ever allow for more than 50km/h average. As a result, we have decided to leave Rwanda out of the itinerary.