Hix Does Uganda (Part I) - All But A Shoebill
and that sounds like New Zealand a few years ago....
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
zooboy28
Well-Known Member
Well, I didn't want to specify which third-world country.
I presume the irony of NZ looking set to have better internet than Australia in the near future isn't lost on you nanoboy?
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
I presume the irony of NZ looking set to have better internet than Australia in the near future isn't lost on you nanoboy?
I'll believe that when I see it!
I keep wondering what happened next! 
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
I keep wondering what happened next!
What do you mean?
Day 3, Day 4..... Day 16....
Yeah, I know, it's a long time coming. But we didn't have time when we were on safari, and now I'm home I'm trying to label my photos as quickly as I can. And I like to link photos into my thread too, so they need to be uploaded too. And then it takes a while to link in the pics.
Anyway, I happened to finish Day 5 a few hours ago. It was a really big day as you will see below.
A word of warning: it's a long post - bring a pillow.
Hix
Anyway, I happened to finish Day 5 a few hours ago. It was a really big day as you will see below.
A word of warning: it's a long post - bring a pillow.
Hix
Last edited:
Day 5
Before going to bed I put on my headlamp and did a little spotlighting, but the only things I found were three Oribi trying to get some sleep and a gecko in the top of a Borassis Palm. So I called it a night as we had to be up early the next morning.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/oribi-spotlighting-336547/
We had breakfast at 06:00 when it was still dark, and left for the game drive at 06:30. It was just getting light, but we couldn't see the sun just yet.
The vehicle we were in was a four wheel drive, with a pop-top roof and Joseph had put up the roof so we could stand up. As the grass was fairly high, this was important as it gave us the chance to see over the grass. To start with, I was the only one who stood up while Joseph was driving - a mistake as it was still dark enough for tiny flying insects to still be out in swarms, but they were so tiny (and it was so dark) that they couldn't be seen. But they could be felt slamming into my eyeballs. Now I know what it's like to be a windscreen.
The sun rose shortly, affording some nice photo opportunities, especially if there was an animal or ten in the shot, and the insects quickly disappeared. The grey storm clouds from the previous day had gone, but there were still a lot of clouds which affected photography.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/giraffe-sunrise-336529/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hartebeest-sunrise-336538/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/sunrise-336557/
After seeing some waterbuck, giraffes and hartebeest we came upon a herd of elephants in the road ahead of us. With our approach they left the road but didn't stray far, and we spent about ten minutes with them. There was about 20 in the herd, maybe more as others started to wander in from further afield, and there were a few babies as well.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephants-road-336523/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephants-336526/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephant-infant-336525/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephants-336524/
We continued on, seeing more antelope and some more elephants, and Cape Buffalo. No matter where we were, when you arrive near a herd of buffalo they stop and stare at you. And stare. And stare. Sometimes it seems like they're glaring at you. And after a few minutes they go back to eating. Other animals look up when you arrive and either ignore you and go back to what they were doing, or run away. But Buffalos stare at you. All of them. Having 50 big cows-on-steroids all staring at you at once can be a bit off-putting, and I'd hate to experience that on foot alone.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cape-buffalo-336519/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cape-buffalo-herd-336518/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cape-buffalo-mudpack-336517/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/waterbuck-buck-336555/
Much of the northern part of this National Park is Borassis Palm grasslands - that is, it's rolling grassland punctuated by Borassis Palms and the occasional acacia. We would often see new palms growing up, only one to two metres high, throughout the park. And apparently the elephants love the palms (for eating).
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/borassis-palm-336900/
Down around the shores of Lake Albert and the two rivers - the Victoria Nile and the Albert Nile - there were often open areas of very short grass and reeds, with marshy areas around the waters edge. And at one point on the circuit there's a dense acacia thorn scrub. And it was here that we found a pair of hippos that were a considerable distance from the water. They felt really uncomfortable when they saw the car and decided they would be better off in the water, so they turned and ran off.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hippo-run-336541/
But the thorn-scrub produced more than just hippos; there lots of birds. We had stopped at one point for something, and I was looking out the other side of the vehicle with my binoculars at a rather distinctive bird flying around.
"There's a bee-eater over there" I commented.
"Where?" asked Orangeperson "I love bee-eaters!"
I showed her and we spent a couple of minutes taking photos and watching it catching insects. Then Angela, looking through her binoculars, mentioned there were a couple of small blue birds in a bush nearby - they turned out to be Red-cheeked Cordons, a species I was happy to see (I've seen them in backyard aviaries in Australia, they are quite popular, and it was nice to see them in the wild). Then Linda saw something somewhere else, so we watched/photographed that. Then Janet found something else. Once we had all exhausted seeing everything Joseph would then drive on until we saw something else worth stopping for and we'd do it all again. I remember at one point looking above us and seeing at least half a dozen birds wheeling about far above the car. Through my binoculars I could just make out a bright red colour on them.
"Carmine Bee-eaters!"
I tried taking photos but they were very quick and against a white/grey cloudy sky, they mostly came out as blurry silhouettes. And then we saw our first Northern Red Bishop - brilliant red and black plumage, and often sitting in a bush right beside the road. I spent a lot of time trying to get a good photo of them.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/african-pygmy-kingfisher-336552/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/red-cheeked-cordon-bleu-336522/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cardinal-queleas-336520/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/northern-red-bishop-336515/
After a few hours we came to one of these open areas down by the lake shore and Joseph stopped the car, telling us we could get out and stretch our legs. And, if we wanted, we could "make bush toilet". There were a number of birds around, so I spent most of my time photographing them or the hippos nearby. Then Joseph informed us that we were only at the halfway mark on the circuit - it was now 10:20 and we had to be back at the lodge for lunch at 12:00. So we piled back into the car and took off again. Luckily, we had grown accustomed to kob and waterbuck, buffalos and warthogs, so we could ignore them and hurry back. But we still stopped for giraffes and elephants. And the Patas monkeys.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/orangeperson-hix-hippos-brand-new-l-336915/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/spurwinged-geese-egyptian-geese-336528/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/rothschilds-giraffe-336531/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/young-rothschilds-giraffe-336532/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/black-headed-lapwing-336516/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hamerkop-336537/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/patas-monkey-336550/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/warthogs-336554/
We arrived back at the lodge right on 12:00; we were soon to realise that Joseph had an excellent ability to accurately predict travel and arrival times. If he said it would take us 4 hours and 15 minutes to reach out destination then that's exactly how long it would take, even with us stopping to take photos periodically. It was pretty impressive. And scary when he said travel time was 13 hours.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/pakuba-lodge-336890/
One of the things we immediately notice when we returned to the lodge were the lizards. The place was literally crawling with an agamid with a pink head and tail, and deep blue/black body. Lots of them everywhere. I later learned that this is a recently described species (2005), and a very recently described subspecies (2013) with a very disjunct population; it is currently known from only three localities – The Lorionotom Range in Kenya, Murchison Falls in Uganda, and Gambela in Ethiopia.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/malabo-rock-agama-336878/
There was also a solitary skink in amongst them, but I haven't yet identified it.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/skink-336885/
We had an hour for lunch, to freshen up (and to photograph lizards) before we were off again on the hour long journey to the Victoria Nile crossing at Paraa. The Victoria Nile bisects the National Park into a northern and southern part before emptying in to Lake Albert, but there is no bridge across the river within the park. At a place called Paraa there is a car ferry that makes the ten minute crossing at set times during the day. Near to Paraa are a number of accommodation options, and the boat tours also leave from here to take you either upstream to the base of the falls that the park is named after, or down to the delta with Lake Albert.
The delta is the best place in Murchison to find shoebills, but we would need to organise that and we didn’t have time for that. Most of the tourists want to see Murchison Falls, so each day the boat picks up passengers at Paraa and transports them the 14km up river to see the falls. The return journey takes three hours. Thankfully there is plenty of birdlife to see along the way.
The drive to Paraa took us a little under an hour but just before we got there Joseph slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a halt. Thisd normally meant he had seen something good – Joseph was an excellent wildlife spotter when the road was good, otherwise he was focused on avoiding potholes or oncoming traffic.
“What is it?” I asked
He looked around at me and said “Snake” and indicated it was on my side of the car. I looked out my window and saw a the snake on the side of the road, just behind the car, but in a really bad position for a photograph.
“Puff Adder” I exclaimed, then turned to Joseph and asked “Can I get out of the car?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but be careful”
The 4WD was designed to carry people and exiting the car was never easy – I think we all bashed our head on the roof getting in or out at least once – but I was keen to get a close-up, from a low angle. I opened the door and started to climb out but the snake, upon seeing me, turned and quickly disappeared back into the undergrowth before I could lift my camera for a photo. And nobody else had time to get a photo either. I felt crushed. But I wasn’t stupid enough to go poking around in the dense undergrowth without a snake hook looking for one of Africa's most dangerous snakes. So I got back in the car and we continued on to Paraa.
We arrived a little early and while waiting for the boat to come from the other side I photographed a few of the birds that were around. Swallows are everywhere in Africa, and Uganda has eighteen different species of swallow, martin and saw-wing; telling them apart on the wing is damn near impossible so I don’t even try. But I came across one sitting on a low branch of tree by the river, preening itself intently and quite unfazed by my proximity. I was able to get fairly close and get some good photos. I don’t carry around a field guide with me as I found it impractical, so I took plenty of photos and was later easily able to identify it as a Wire-tailed Swallow.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/wire-tailed-swallow-336879/
Nearby was a Sausage Tree, so named because the giant seed pods look like big sausages (however, as Linda pointed out, because the pods hang down from the branches it would be better named the Salami Tree). In it was another Red-throated Bee-eater, and foraging nearby on the ground was a pair of Pin-tailed Whydah - the gaudy male and a non-descript female; I spent my time photographing them until the boat arrived.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/sausage-tree-336903/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/sausage-tree-336904/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/red-throated-bee-eater-336884/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/pin-tailed-whydah-male-336882/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/pin-tailed-whydah-female-336883/
The boat started on the other bank, was half full with tourists when it came over, and a few others got on with the four of us. We sat on the lower deck looking for birds on the way up to the falls, and we didn’t have to wait long. Pied Kingfishers were very common, and there several jacanas at different points. There were marshy, reedy areas along the way, and these often had Whistle-ducks, darters, storks, geese, ibis, francolins, lapwings and herons, as well as hippos and crocodiles. One monster of a croc was sitting in a marshy island digesting some meal, and the boat pulled right alongside allowing some close-up shots. We also saw a sandcliff peppered with holes that were nesting holes for the bee-eaters and kingfishers, although they were empty now as it wasn’t breeding season yet.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/boarding-boat-336891/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nest-sites-bee-eaters-kingfishers-336863/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/bateleur-336862/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/goliath-heron-336870/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/yellow-billed-storks-336880/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/white-faced-whistle-ducks-darter-336888/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/orangperson-looking-shot-hippos-336874/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hippo-yawn-calf-336872/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hippo-erm-wagging-its-tail-336871/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nile-crocodile-336869/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nile-crocodile-dentition-336868/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nile-crocodile-eye-336865/
Eventually we reached the falls. All the brochures and advertising (and itineraries) I had seen said the boat went to the base of the falls, so I was surprised when it stopped almost a kilometre downstream. I asked our guide and he said they can’t go to the base because there were too many shallow rocks in that part of the river. So we stopped at a rock island, people got onto the island to have their photos taken with the Falls in the background (way back in the background), then stopped on the bank nearby to pick up some hikers who had been up to the top of the falls.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/victoria-nile-murchison-falls-336889/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-336861/
The return journey was pretty much the same as before, even stopping at the monster croc for the hikers, arriving at Paraa at around 5pm. As dinner was set for 6pm, we wasted no time heading back to the lodge. Along the way we saw the usual wildlife – hooded vultures, kob, oribi, buffalo etc. And then Joseph called out “Lion!”
Walking onto the road from the side just ahead of us was a single male. He ignored us and walked down the side of the road for a few metres before crossing to the other side and walking into the long grass. We spent a few minutes photographing it before it headed off into the long grass and disappeared from view. Needless to say, when we arrived at Pakuba Lodge we were all pretty elated!
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lion-336875/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lion-336877/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lion-336876/
But the day was not over. I had asked Joseph earlier about a night game drive, and he had organised something while we were on the boat. After dinner, when it was quite dark, we jumped into the 4WD along with Ranger Simon Peter and headed into the park to see what we could find. I had a headlamp which I was wearing while standing up (and avoiding the little flying insects that had returned). Sweeping my head from side-to-side I could easily pick up the eye-shine from kob, buffalos and oribi. Because the others hadn’t spotlighted before, I shared the headlamp with the girls so they all got a chance to see what fun it could be. There were a number of small rodents and three rabbits that were seen on the road in the headlights, but they all ran off very quickly and I never saw any of them. However, we did see a Spotted Hyena very briefly, crossing the road.
And then we saw two lions. When we came upon them they were walking down the road and I had enough time to get a couple of photos before they walked off the road and quickly disappeared. Photography at night was a bugger as the camera refused to focus in the dark, so I had to focus manually and I could only do that if someone held the torch on the animal. But I got a couple of photos, and it was very exciting to see them at night.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lions-night-336912/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lions-night-336913/
On the way back we again saw the antelope eyes in large numbers. I was looking for owls too, but the only birds I saw were a couple of plovers. The last animal we saw was in a small Borassis Palm only a metre high. I could tell by the eyeshine that it was something good, as the eyes weren’t positioned as far to the sides as the oribi and kob. We stopped as close as we could to the eyes but had a lot of trouble seeing any other part of the animal behind the palm fronds. Eventually I caught sight of what appeared to be grey fur with a dark blotch and what may have been a fluffy tail, and it looked little familiar.
“Have you got linsangs in the park?” I asked Ranger Simon
“What is a linsang?” was the response, just as I was remembering linsangs are a forest animal.
“What about genets?”
“Yes” he said “we have genet cats”
So the last animal we saw was a genet. I tried to get a photo, but it also disappeared before I could get a shot of it. There are three species found in Uganda and I don't know which one we saw, but I'm satisfied that I saw a genet.
We arrived back at the lodge very late, thanked Simon for joining us, and went straight to bed as we were leaving early the next morning. Joseph told us it would take 13 or 14 hours to get to out next destination, the Kibale Primate Forest and we knew it would be a long day in the car.
New Birds seen: Northern Red Bishop, Dark Chanting Goshawk, Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleu, Spotted Morning Thrush, Cardinal Quelea, African Paradise-Flycatcher, Grey Kestrel, Red-billed Quelea, Little Bee-eater, Northern Carmine Bee-eater, Grey-headed Kingfisher, Red-throated Bee-eater, African Pygmy Kingfisher, Diederik Cuckoo, African Darter, African Wattled Lapwing, Saddlebill Stork, Yellowbill Oxpecker, Black-headed Lapwing, Spurwing Goose, KNob-billed Duck, Longtoed Lapwing, Wiretail Swallow, Yellowbill Storks, White-faced Whistle-Duck, African Pied Wagtail, Hooded Vulture, Bateleur, Crested Francolin.
New Mammals seen: Spotted Hyena, Lion, Genet spp.
New Reptiles seen: Malabo Rock Agama (Agama finchi leucerythrolaemus), skink spp., Puff Adder
Hix
Before going to bed I put on my headlamp and did a little spotlighting, but the only things I found were three Oribi trying to get some sleep and a gecko in the top of a Borassis Palm. So I called it a night as we had to be up early the next morning.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/oribi-spotlighting-336547/
We had breakfast at 06:00 when it was still dark, and left for the game drive at 06:30. It was just getting light, but we couldn't see the sun just yet.
The vehicle we were in was a four wheel drive, with a pop-top roof and Joseph had put up the roof so we could stand up. As the grass was fairly high, this was important as it gave us the chance to see over the grass. To start with, I was the only one who stood up while Joseph was driving - a mistake as it was still dark enough for tiny flying insects to still be out in swarms, but they were so tiny (and it was so dark) that they couldn't be seen. But they could be felt slamming into my eyeballs. Now I know what it's like to be a windscreen.
The sun rose shortly, affording some nice photo opportunities, especially if there was an animal or ten in the shot, and the insects quickly disappeared. The grey storm clouds from the previous day had gone, but there were still a lot of clouds which affected photography.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/giraffe-sunrise-336529/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hartebeest-sunrise-336538/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/sunrise-336557/
After seeing some waterbuck, giraffes and hartebeest we came upon a herd of elephants in the road ahead of us. With our approach they left the road but didn't stray far, and we spent about ten minutes with them. There was about 20 in the herd, maybe more as others started to wander in from further afield, and there were a few babies as well.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephants-road-336523/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephants-336526/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephant-infant-336525/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/elephants-336524/
We continued on, seeing more antelope and some more elephants, and Cape Buffalo. No matter where we were, when you arrive near a herd of buffalo they stop and stare at you. And stare. And stare. Sometimes it seems like they're glaring at you. And after a few minutes they go back to eating. Other animals look up when you arrive and either ignore you and go back to what they were doing, or run away. But Buffalos stare at you. All of them. Having 50 big cows-on-steroids all staring at you at once can be a bit off-putting, and I'd hate to experience that on foot alone.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cape-buffalo-336519/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cape-buffalo-herd-336518/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cape-buffalo-mudpack-336517/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/waterbuck-buck-336555/
Much of the northern part of this National Park is Borassis Palm grasslands - that is, it's rolling grassland punctuated by Borassis Palms and the occasional acacia. We would often see new palms growing up, only one to two metres high, throughout the park. And apparently the elephants love the palms (for eating).
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/borassis-palm-336900/
Down around the shores of Lake Albert and the two rivers - the Victoria Nile and the Albert Nile - there were often open areas of very short grass and reeds, with marshy areas around the waters edge. And at one point on the circuit there's a dense acacia thorn scrub. And it was here that we found a pair of hippos that were a considerable distance from the water. They felt really uncomfortable when they saw the car and decided they would be better off in the water, so they turned and ran off.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hippo-run-336541/
But the thorn-scrub produced more than just hippos; there lots of birds. We had stopped at one point for something, and I was looking out the other side of the vehicle with my binoculars at a rather distinctive bird flying around.
"There's a bee-eater over there" I commented.
"Where?" asked Orangeperson "I love bee-eaters!"
I showed her and we spent a couple of minutes taking photos and watching it catching insects. Then Angela, looking through her binoculars, mentioned there were a couple of small blue birds in a bush nearby - they turned out to be Red-cheeked Cordons, a species I was happy to see (I've seen them in backyard aviaries in Australia, they are quite popular, and it was nice to see them in the wild). Then Linda saw something somewhere else, so we watched/photographed that. Then Janet found something else. Once we had all exhausted seeing everything Joseph would then drive on until we saw something else worth stopping for and we'd do it all again. I remember at one point looking above us and seeing at least half a dozen birds wheeling about far above the car. Through my binoculars I could just make out a bright red colour on them.
"Carmine Bee-eaters!"
I tried taking photos but they were very quick and against a white/grey cloudy sky, they mostly came out as blurry silhouettes. And then we saw our first Northern Red Bishop - brilliant red and black plumage, and often sitting in a bush right beside the road. I spent a lot of time trying to get a good photo of them.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/african-pygmy-kingfisher-336552/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/red-cheeked-cordon-bleu-336522/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/cardinal-queleas-336520/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/northern-red-bishop-336515/
After a few hours we came to one of these open areas down by the lake shore and Joseph stopped the car, telling us we could get out and stretch our legs. And, if we wanted, we could "make bush toilet". There were a number of birds around, so I spent most of my time photographing them or the hippos nearby. Then Joseph informed us that we were only at the halfway mark on the circuit - it was now 10:20 and we had to be back at the lodge for lunch at 12:00. So we piled back into the car and took off again. Luckily, we had grown accustomed to kob and waterbuck, buffalos and warthogs, so we could ignore them and hurry back. But we still stopped for giraffes and elephants. And the Patas monkeys.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/orangeperson-hix-hippos-brand-new-l-336915/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/spurwinged-geese-egyptian-geese-336528/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/rothschilds-giraffe-336531/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/young-rothschilds-giraffe-336532/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/black-headed-lapwing-336516/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hamerkop-336537/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/patas-monkey-336550/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/warthogs-336554/
We arrived back at the lodge right on 12:00; we were soon to realise that Joseph had an excellent ability to accurately predict travel and arrival times. If he said it would take us 4 hours and 15 minutes to reach out destination then that's exactly how long it would take, even with us stopping to take photos periodically. It was pretty impressive. And scary when he said travel time was 13 hours.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/pakuba-lodge-336890/
One of the things we immediately notice when we returned to the lodge were the lizards. The place was literally crawling with an agamid with a pink head and tail, and deep blue/black body. Lots of them everywhere. I later learned that this is a recently described species (2005), and a very recently described subspecies (2013) with a very disjunct population; it is currently known from only three localities – The Lorionotom Range in Kenya, Murchison Falls in Uganda, and Gambela in Ethiopia.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/malabo-rock-agama-336878/
There was also a solitary skink in amongst them, but I haven't yet identified it.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/skink-336885/
We had an hour for lunch, to freshen up (and to photograph lizards) before we were off again on the hour long journey to the Victoria Nile crossing at Paraa. The Victoria Nile bisects the National Park into a northern and southern part before emptying in to Lake Albert, but there is no bridge across the river within the park. At a place called Paraa there is a car ferry that makes the ten minute crossing at set times during the day. Near to Paraa are a number of accommodation options, and the boat tours also leave from here to take you either upstream to the base of the falls that the park is named after, or down to the delta with Lake Albert.
The delta is the best place in Murchison to find shoebills, but we would need to organise that and we didn’t have time for that. Most of the tourists want to see Murchison Falls, so each day the boat picks up passengers at Paraa and transports them the 14km up river to see the falls. The return journey takes three hours. Thankfully there is plenty of birdlife to see along the way.
The drive to Paraa took us a little under an hour but just before we got there Joseph slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a halt. Thisd normally meant he had seen something good – Joseph was an excellent wildlife spotter when the road was good, otherwise he was focused on avoiding potholes or oncoming traffic.
“What is it?” I asked
He looked around at me and said “Snake” and indicated it was on my side of the car. I looked out my window and saw a the snake on the side of the road, just behind the car, but in a really bad position for a photograph.
“Puff Adder” I exclaimed, then turned to Joseph and asked “Can I get out of the car?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but be careful”
The 4WD was designed to carry people and exiting the car was never easy – I think we all bashed our head on the roof getting in or out at least once – but I was keen to get a close-up, from a low angle. I opened the door and started to climb out but the snake, upon seeing me, turned and quickly disappeared back into the undergrowth before I could lift my camera for a photo. And nobody else had time to get a photo either. I felt crushed. But I wasn’t stupid enough to go poking around in the dense undergrowth without a snake hook looking for one of Africa's most dangerous snakes. So I got back in the car and we continued on to Paraa.
We arrived a little early and while waiting for the boat to come from the other side I photographed a few of the birds that were around. Swallows are everywhere in Africa, and Uganda has eighteen different species of swallow, martin and saw-wing; telling them apart on the wing is damn near impossible so I don’t even try. But I came across one sitting on a low branch of tree by the river, preening itself intently and quite unfazed by my proximity. I was able to get fairly close and get some good photos. I don’t carry around a field guide with me as I found it impractical, so I took plenty of photos and was later easily able to identify it as a Wire-tailed Swallow.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/wire-tailed-swallow-336879/
Nearby was a Sausage Tree, so named because the giant seed pods look like big sausages (however, as Linda pointed out, because the pods hang down from the branches it would be better named the Salami Tree). In it was another Red-throated Bee-eater, and foraging nearby on the ground was a pair of Pin-tailed Whydah - the gaudy male and a non-descript female; I spent my time photographing them until the boat arrived.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/sausage-tree-336903/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/sausage-tree-336904/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/red-throated-bee-eater-336884/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/pin-tailed-whydah-male-336882/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/pin-tailed-whydah-female-336883/
The boat started on the other bank, was half full with tourists when it came over, and a few others got on with the four of us. We sat on the lower deck looking for birds on the way up to the falls, and we didn’t have to wait long. Pied Kingfishers were very common, and there several jacanas at different points. There were marshy, reedy areas along the way, and these often had Whistle-ducks, darters, storks, geese, ibis, francolins, lapwings and herons, as well as hippos and crocodiles. One monster of a croc was sitting in a marshy island digesting some meal, and the boat pulled right alongside allowing some close-up shots. We also saw a sandcliff peppered with holes that were nesting holes for the bee-eaters and kingfishers, although they were empty now as it wasn’t breeding season yet.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/boarding-boat-336891/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nest-sites-bee-eaters-kingfishers-336863/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/bateleur-336862/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/goliath-heron-336870/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/yellow-billed-storks-336880/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/white-faced-whistle-ducks-darter-336888/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/orangperson-looking-shot-hippos-336874/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hippo-yawn-calf-336872/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/hippo-erm-wagging-its-tail-336871/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nile-crocodile-336869/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nile-crocodile-dentition-336868/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/nile-crocodile-eye-336865/
Eventually we reached the falls. All the brochures and advertising (and itineraries) I had seen said the boat went to the base of the falls, so I was surprised when it stopped almost a kilometre downstream. I asked our guide and he said they can’t go to the base because there were too many shallow rocks in that part of the river. So we stopped at a rock island, people got onto the island to have their photos taken with the Falls in the background (way back in the background), then stopped on the bank nearby to pick up some hikers who had been up to the top of the falls.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/victoria-nile-murchison-falls-336889/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-336861/
The return journey was pretty much the same as before, even stopping at the monster croc for the hikers, arriving at Paraa at around 5pm. As dinner was set for 6pm, we wasted no time heading back to the lodge. Along the way we saw the usual wildlife – hooded vultures, kob, oribi, buffalo etc. And then Joseph called out “Lion!”
Walking onto the road from the side just ahead of us was a single male. He ignored us and walked down the side of the road for a few metres before crossing to the other side and walking into the long grass. We spent a few minutes photographing it before it headed off into the long grass and disappeared from view. Needless to say, when we arrived at Pakuba Lodge we were all pretty elated!
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lion-336875/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lion-336877/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lion-336876/
But the day was not over. I had asked Joseph earlier about a night game drive, and he had organised something while we were on the boat. After dinner, when it was quite dark, we jumped into the 4WD along with Ranger Simon Peter and headed into the park to see what we could find. I had a headlamp which I was wearing while standing up (and avoiding the little flying insects that had returned). Sweeping my head from side-to-side I could easily pick up the eye-shine from kob, buffalos and oribi. Because the others hadn’t spotlighted before, I shared the headlamp with the girls so they all got a chance to see what fun it could be. There were a number of small rodents and three rabbits that were seen on the road in the headlights, but they all ran off very quickly and I never saw any of them. However, we did see a Spotted Hyena very briefly, crossing the road.
And then we saw two lions. When we came upon them they were walking down the road and I had enough time to get a couple of photos before they walked off the road and quickly disappeared. Photography at night was a bugger as the camera refused to focus in the dark, so I had to focus manually and I could only do that if someone held the torch on the animal. But I got a couple of photos, and it was very exciting to see them at night.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lions-night-336912/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/lions-night-336913/
On the way back we again saw the antelope eyes in large numbers. I was looking for owls too, but the only birds I saw were a couple of plovers. The last animal we saw was in a small Borassis Palm only a metre high. I could tell by the eyeshine that it was something good, as the eyes weren’t positioned as far to the sides as the oribi and kob. We stopped as close as we could to the eyes but had a lot of trouble seeing any other part of the animal behind the palm fronds. Eventually I caught sight of what appeared to be grey fur with a dark blotch and what may have been a fluffy tail, and it looked little familiar.
“Have you got linsangs in the park?” I asked Ranger Simon
“What is a linsang?” was the response, just as I was remembering linsangs are a forest animal.
“What about genets?”
“Yes” he said “we have genet cats”
So the last animal we saw was a genet. I tried to get a photo, but it also disappeared before I could get a shot of it. There are three species found in Uganda and I don't know which one we saw, but I'm satisfied that I saw a genet.
We arrived back at the lodge very late, thanked Simon for joining us, and went straight to bed as we were leaving early the next morning. Joseph told us it would take 13 or 14 hours to get to out next destination, the Kibale Primate Forest and we knew it would be a long day in the car.
New Birds seen: Northern Red Bishop, Dark Chanting Goshawk, Red-cheeked Cordon-Bleu, Spotted Morning Thrush, Cardinal Quelea, African Paradise-Flycatcher, Grey Kestrel, Red-billed Quelea, Little Bee-eater, Northern Carmine Bee-eater, Grey-headed Kingfisher, Red-throated Bee-eater, African Pygmy Kingfisher, Diederik Cuckoo, African Darter, African Wattled Lapwing, Saddlebill Stork, Yellowbill Oxpecker, Black-headed Lapwing, Spurwing Goose, KNob-billed Duck, Longtoed Lapwing, Wiretail Swallow, Yellowbill Storks, White-faced Whistle-Duck, African Pied Wagtail, Hooded Vulture, Bateleur, Crested Francolin.
New Mammals seen: Spotted Hyena, Lion, Genet spp.
New Reptiles seen: Malabo Rock Agama (Agama finchi leucerythrolaemus), skink spp., Puff Adder
Hix
We never went near a mall in Uganda let alone Kenya! Flying via Nairobi was an option, glad we didn't as the fire at the airport was shortly before we went.
nanoboy
Well-Known Member
Horrible news. May he rest in peace
~Thylo
Yes, it makes you even more cynical about volunteering to do charity work in third world countries.
Day 6 – Monday, September 2
Breakfast was at 5:30am. We presented ourselves at the restaurant/dining room and were met by the staff with breakfast all ready for us. We were to discover later that this degree of service was not commonplace – but the staff were very attentive at Pakuba. It was a little over an hour before sunrise and it was pitch dark outside but the night sky was full of bright little stars.
Dark outside, and not much better inside. Much of Uganda – even large towns – have no electricity. And a lodge in the middle of a National Park has only two choices for power – generator or solar. Pakuba uses solar, so all of their lights are very low wattage. They cast a dim light which is bright enough for you to see what you are doing, but not bright enough to read a book by.
So we sat in the dimly-lit room consuming cereal, a hot breakfast, some fruit, and malaria tablets. Angela commented that breakfast was getting earlier each day – Saturday’s had been at 6:30, yesterday was 6:00. But Joseph said that tomorrow’s would be at a more respectable hour.
The reason we were up so early was because we had a long way to go today, and we were going south. This meant crossing the Victoria Nile on the car ferry, and it made the short crossing only a few times a day. The first was at 7:00am, the next was at 9:00. And it was about an hour’s drive away, so Joseph wanted to leave the Lodge by 6:00 at the latest. So after breakfast we grabbed our luggage, paid the bill and set off for Paraa.
The drive was uneventful, and we arrived at Paraa a little before 7:00, just as the sun was coming up. The clear skies had suggested a clear and cloudless day, but with the sun I could see a thin layer of clouds covering much of the sky. I hoped they would dissipate, because all my photos of birds in flight had come out as black silhouettes against the white (or grey) clouds. Even birds and monkeys in the tops of trees appear all black against the clouds.
Waiting for the ferry we saw several flocks of cattle egrets flying up the river, a sandpiper poking around the jetty, and a Goliath Heron looking for prey on a nearby riverbank. It only took a few minutes to cross the river and, after we stopped to watch a baboon licking the interior of an empty pizza box, we took off again for Murchison Falls. But this time we were going to the top of the falls.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/goliath-heron-dawn-336911/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/crossing-victoria-nile-paraa-336902/
I was not too excited about the Falls – we’d seen it the day before from the boat, and I’d seen other falls up close before (Niagara and Victoria Falls), so if we hadn’t have gone I wouldn’t have minded. However, I certainly wasn’t going to deprive the others in the group from seeing the falls. But no matter where we went, I was going to keep my eyes peeled for wildlife. And we saw a few birds – Wattled Lapwings, Long Crested Eagles, Speckled Mousebirds, Helmeted Guineafowl etc. - along the way. At one point Joseph stopped and pointed at a black bird with a white bar on its wing.
“Tchudichat” he said firmly, a species I hadn’t heard of before.
“A what?” I asked.
“Tchudichat” he repeated.
“Tchudi Chat” I said.
“Yes.”
My field guide was packed, and I decided to look it up that night, and made a mental note of how I thought ‘tchudi’ might be spelt.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/long-crested-eagle-336914/
Eventually we came to the falls. The parking area is a couple of hundred feet up from the falls, but you could see the river, the Victoria Nile, from there. It was around 60 – 80 metres wide, I guess, and flowing quite fast; you could tell by the way the water flowed that there were rocks and obstacles just below the surface. Following a little path over a bridge took you to the Falls itself, and I was suddenly very glad I came.
Most waterfalls – like Niagara and Victoria Falls – are rivers flowing over the edge of a cliff. Usually a high cliff. However at Murchison the river flows into a chasm in the rock and drops only a short distance, about 40 metres. The chasm is only about 7 metres wide (although some of the blurb I read says it varies from 3 to 7 metres wide). In the chasm you can see massive waves of water bouncing up the walls before falling further down, and then finally exploding out through the rocks at the bottom. The path we were on leads right up to the rocks at the side of the river where the angry water disappears down the cleft, and another path takes you alongside the chasm and then up to a vantage point. Up here you could get some great photos, but you also got soaked in spray.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-above-336892/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-above-336897/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-above-336898/
One thing that surprised me was this: while there was a fence along the side of the chasm and up to the clifftop viewing area, at the start of the falls there was no fence, just a sign saying “Don’t come any closer” and the word “Slippery” painted on the rocks. There was nothing to stop you from walking straight up to the beginning of the chasm where the water plummets inside. And anybody that fell in would have absolutely no hope of surviving.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-entering-gorge-336895/
After spending about 15-20 minutes here it was time to go. Nearby was a wooden toilet block, consisting of two rooms side-by-side, and as we had a long drive ahead of us it seemed sensible to avail ourselves of the facilities. The ladies went first and while waiting my turn I searched the undergrowth nearby for birdlife.
The toilet was a typical bush long-drop toilet. Small room over a deep and smelly hole, and a funnel over the hole with a seat on it doing an impression of a toilet. The roll of toilet paper was on a hook hanging from the roof – had I needed it I could have reached it when standing, but anyone shorter than 5-and-a-half feet wouldn’t be able to reach it at all. There were lizards (geckos) on the roof in the corners, and little insects flying out of the hole in the ground. The seat was broken, dirty and stained, and only about a quarter of it remained. I was very glad I'm a bloke.
Our destination for the day was Kibale National Park, and it was an all day drive. The roads were dirt and none were signposted, but Joseph knew which track led where and again I was glad I had not chosen a self-drive holiday. He would often point at a road we were driving past and say “That leads to ...” and he would then say something that was probably a town, but none of us knew the towns and villages so it didn’t mean much to us. Out of politeness I would often go “Ohhh, ...” and repeat phonetically whatever he had said.
The first hour or so we travelled through the southern part of Murchison Falls National Park – it’s more of a forest here than north of the river, so we didn’t see as much game, but we did see a few birds. We stopped for five minutes when we came across a family of Colobus monkeys in a tree beside the road – although I’d seen colobus in the Botanic Gardens, these were the first the girls had seen and they were enamoured by them, particularly the babies.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336909/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336910/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336907/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336908/
Once we left the National Park we were driving through a lot of farmland, saw a lot of cattle on the side of the road (including the Ankole Cattle with their impressive horns) and passed many villages consisting mostly of bandas. Some would have a shop or two which would be a brick building about three metres square, with no windows and a single wooden or metal door in the front. The door would be open to let in the light, because this part of Uganda has no mains electricity. The shop might be selling food or clothing, or a hundred other things, and I often wondered how well they functioned considering most of the people out here were farmers and probably had a very, very low income.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/ankole-cattle-336905/
The shops were made of bricks (and I suspect most of the bandas were too, but then rendered with mud) and it seems like everyone makes their own. I’m not sure how they shape them into little rectangles, but they make them out of mud and then dry them out on racks. They then stack them in a ziggurat with a hole in the centre into which they put firewood. There are a couple of holes in the bottom to push in more firewood. Then they set fire to it, cover the outside of the pile with mud, and let it burn for three days. This cooks the bricks to make them hard, and then they can build with them. Everywhere we went in the country there were piles of bricks, either already fired or awaiting it.
Running from Murchison Falls in the north, south through Uganda and into Rwanda and finally Tanzania, is the Albertine Rift Valley, a similar geological formation to the Great Rift Valley several hundred kilometres to the east. We were driving south and eastwards through the valley, and after a few hours we ascended the escarpment that formed the eastern edge of the valley. The floor of the rift was very flat here and rather picturesque, so we took some photos on the floor, and again on top of the escarpment where the views went across Lake Albert to the DRC on the other side. Janet and I saw a bird soaring high above and off in the distance, and black against the sky. Through binoculars I thought it was a marabou because I could see legs trailing behind. I took a couple of photos of it anyway because on the computer I can zoom in and might see identifiable features, and as I photograph in RAW I can sometimes tweak the exposure to bring out colours. (And this is what I did later – it turned out to be Saddlebill Stork).
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/floor-albertine-rift-valley-ugandan-kob-336901/
Travelling around Uganda there were two introduced plants I saw growing everywhere: Lantana and Eucalypts. Lantana is a South American shrub that has been introduced into many countries of the world, including Australia where it is a noxious pest. It forms dense impenetrable tangles of undergrowth with hard woody stems that are covered in small spikes. Cutting off the stems only slows the plant as it regrows vigorously from any part of the plant that is still in the ground. And where-ever a stem touches the ground, it puts down roots. Pulling out established roots is a nightmare, but the only way to get rid of the damn thing is to completely remove it and burn it. It was a shame to see Lantana growing in dense stands over so much of the Ugandan countryside, mainly along roadsides although I’m sure it was elsewhere as well. I saw it in the grounds of some of the places we stayed (where it appeared to be pruned and managed) and also in the grounds of the zoo in Entebbe. Even elephants won’t eat it – I saw some beside Lantana thickets ignoring them for some other leafy shrubs. The only animal I saw that appeared to seek out Lantana was Sunbirds who fed on the nectar from the flowers.
I don’t know what species of Eucalypt is grown in Uganda, but they are a very straight growing species. There were lots of plantations – and I mean LOTS – all over the country. They use the wood for burning and construction. So I suppose it’s better that they use plantations now and stop destroying the native areas for firewood, especially when the Eucalypt is a better source and relatively fast growing (but they’re still destroying the wilds for farming). As well as using the logs to build small wooden buildings shacks, they longer pieces are used in construction in the big cities: in Kampala we often saw the exterior of a multi-storey building covered with a rickety-looking scaffolding of Eucalypt logs lashed together.
The next town we visited was Hoima, a reasonably large town with tarred roads (and many buildings under construction, all with eucalypt scaffolding). Joseph needed to get fuel so we all got out to stretch our legs and buy a cold soft drink. It was now the afternoon and despite the thin cloud layer that had covered part of the sky, the sun had been shining through strongly for most of the day and it was fairly hot in Hoima, but the petrol station didn’t sell any drinks so I had to go over the road to a small shop. A 600ml bottle of Coke is 2,000 shillings – which is 80cents. Returning to the station I couldn’t see the girls; Joseph said they were visiting the restroom around the back. I headed around to do the same and found two of them waiting outside, so I waited patiently for my turn. I can’t remember who it was, but one of them came out and said “That’s worse than the bush toilet at Murchison Falls!”
And it was.
The room was the size of a broom cupboard, and there were brooms and rags in a back corner. It was only a metre wide with barely enough room to sit down, but that wasn’t a problem as there was nothing to sit on. In the concrete floor a hole had been made and a pipe inserted that led to the outside world.
A few hours later Joseph turned off the road onto a lane that led to a pretty little clearing with a picnic bench we he thought we could have our packed lunch. The sun had vanished behind the clouds which had become thicker and greyer, and it started to spit as we started to eat. At least it was cooler. Lunch didn’t take too long, and with the drizzle we quickly got back on the road. Some time later we arrived at the major centre of Fort Portal, but our passage through was very slow as there was a soccer game about to start and the road we needed went right past the football ground. Eventually we made it through and continued on for a further 40 or 50kms until we reached our accommodation – the Chimpanzee Guesthouse – at around 6:30pm.
The Chimpanzee Guesthouse is a beautiful place to stay. It’s on a hillside a short distance outside Kibale National Park, but you can see the forest from your cottages. The gardens are well planted and even though the light was fading fast, I could see and hear birds in the trees and shrubs, and in the tea plantation next door.
We quickly freshened up and then headed to the restaurant for dinner. The food here was really good, and the staff were very friendly. Like many places we stayed at, bats would fly through the restaurant looking for insects attracted by the lights. One followed me back through the grounds to my cottage, occasionally flying through the beam of my headlamp.
It had been a long day in the car, and we all wanted some sleep. But before turning in I pulled out my field guide and turned to pages illustrating Chats, and I found the bird Joseph had pointed out that morning – all black with a white bar on the wing. With his accent I had heard the word “Tchudi”, when what he was actually saying was “Sooty”.
New Birds: Sooty Chat
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/sooty-chat-male-336906/
Hix
Breakfast was at 5:30am. We presented ourselves at the restaurant/dining room and were met by the staff with breakfast all ready for us. We were to discover later that this degree of service was not commonplace – but the staff were very attentive at Pakuba. It was a little over an hour before sunrise and it was pitch dark outside but the night sky was full of bright little stars.
Dark outside, and not much better inside. Much of Uganda – even large towns – have no electricity. And a lodge in the middle of a National Park has only two choices for power – generator or solar. Pakuba uses solar, so all of their lights are very low wattage. They cast a dim light which is bright enough for you to see what you are doing, but not bright enough to read a book by.
So we sat in the dimly-lit room consuming cereal, a hot breakfast, some fruit, and malaria tablets. Angela commented that breakfast was getting earlier each day – Saturday’s had been at 6:30, yesterday was 6:00. But Joseph said that tomorrow’s would be at a more respectable hour.
The reason we were up so early was because we had a long way to go today, and we were going south. This meant crossing the Victoria Nile on the car ferry, and it made the short crossing only a few times a day. The first was at 7:00am, the next was at 9:00. And it was about an hour’s drive away, so Joseph wanted to leave the Lodge by 6:00 at the latest. So after breakfast we grabbed our luggage, paid the bill and set off for Paraa.
The drive was uneventful, and we arrived at Paraa a little before 7:00, just as the sun was coming up. The clear skies had suggested a clear and cloudless day, but with the sun I could see a thin layer of clouds covering much of the sky. I hoped they would dissipate, because all my photos of birds in flight had come out as black silhouettes against the white (or grey) clouds. Even birds and monkeys in the tops of trees appear all black against the clouds.
Waiting for the ferry we saw several flocks of cattle egrets flying up the river, a sandpiper poking around the jetty, and a Goliath Heron looking for prey on a nearby riverbank. It only took a few minutes to cross the river and, after we stopped to watch a baboon licking the interior of an empty pizza box, we took off again for Murchison Falls. But this time we were going to the top of the falls.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/goliath-heron-dawn-336911/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/crossing-victoria-nile-paraa-336902/
I was not too excited about the Falls – we’d seen it the day before from the boat, and I’d seen other falls up close before (Niagara and Victoria Falls), so if we hadn’t have gone I wouldn’t have minded. However, I certainly wasn’t going to deprive the others in the group from seeing the falls. But no matter where we went, I was going to keep my eyes peeled for wildlife. And we saw a few birds – Wattled Lapwings, Long Crested Eagles, Speckled Mousebirds, Helmeted Guineafowl etc. - along the way. At one point Joseph stopped and pointed at a black bird with a white bar on its wing.
“Tchudichat” he said firmly, a species I hadn’t heard of before.
“A what?” I asked.
“Tchudichat” he repeated.
“Tchudi Chat” I said.
“Yes.”
My field guide was packed, and I decided to look it up that night, and made a mental note of how I thought ‘tchudi’ might be spelt.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/long-crested-eagle-336914/
Eventually we came to the falls. The parking area is a couple of hundred feet up from the falls, but you could see the river, the Victoria Nile, from there. It was around 60 – 80 metres wide, I guess, and flowing quite fast; you could tell by the way the water flowed that there were rocks and obstacles just below the surface. Following a little path over a bridge took you to the Falls itself, and I was suddenly very glad I came.
Most waterfalls – like Niagara and Victoria Falls – are rivers flowing over the edge of a cliff. Usually a high cliff. However at Murchison the river flows into a chasm in the rock and drops only a short distance, about 40 metres. The chasm is only about 7 metres wide (although some of the blurb I read says it varies from 3 to 7 metres wide). In the chasm you can see massive waves of water bouncing up the walls before falling further down, and then finally exploding out through the rocks at the bottom. The path we were on leads right up to the rocks at the side of the river where the angry water disappears down the cleft, and another path takes you alongside the chasm and then up to a vantage point. Up here you could get some great photos, but you also got soaked in spray.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-above-336892/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-above-336897/
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-above-336898/
One thing that surprised me was this: while there was a fence along the side of the chasm and up to the clifftop viewing area, at the start of the falls there was no fence, just a sign saying “Don’t come any closer” and the word “Slippery” painted on the rocks. There was nothing to stop you from walking straight up to the beginning of the chasm where the water plummets inside. And anybody that fell in would have absolutely no hope of surviving.
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/murchison-falls-entering-gorge-336895/
After spending about 15-20 minutes here it was time to go. Nearby was a wooden toilet block, consisting of two rooms side-by-side, and as we had a long drive ahead of us it seemed sensible to avail ourselves of the facilities. The ladies went first and while waiting my turn I searched the undergrowth nearby for birdlife.
The toilet was a typical bush long-drop toilet. Small room over a deep and smelly hole, and a funnel over the hole with a seat on it doing an impression of a toilet. The roll of toilet paper was on a hook hanging from the roof – had I needed it I could have reached it when standing, but anyone shorter than 5-and-a-half feet wouldn’t be able to reach it at all. There were lizards (geckos) on the roof in the corners, and little insects flying out of the hole in the ground. The seat was broken, dirty and stained, and only about a quarter of it remained. I was very glad I'm a bloke.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our destination for the day was Kibale National Park, and it was an all day drive. The roads were dirt and none were signposted, but Joseph knew which track led where and again I was glad I had not chosen a self-drive holiday. He would often point at a road we were driving past and say “That leads to ...” and he would then say something that was probably a town, but none of us knew the towns and villages so it didn’t mean much to us. Out of politeness I would often go “Ohhh, ...” and repeat phonetically whatever he had said.
The first hour or so we travelled through the southern part of Murchison Falls National Park – it’s more of a forest here than north of the river, so we didn’t see as much game, but we did see a few birds. We stopped for five minutes when we came across a family of Colobus monkeys in a tree beside the road – although I’d seen colobus in the Botanic Gardens, these were the first the girls had seen and they were enamoured by them, particularly the babies.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336909/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336910/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336907/
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/guereza-colobus-336908/
Once we left the National Park we were driving through a lot of farmland, saw a lot of cattle on the side of the road (including the Ankole Cattle with their impressive horns) and passed many villages consisting mostly of bandas. Some would have a shop or two which would be a brick building about three metres square, with no windows and a single wooden or metal door in the front. The door would be open to let in the light, because this part of Uganda has no mains electricity. The shop might be selling food or clothing, or a hundred other things, and I often wondered how well they functioned considering most of the people out here were farmers and probably had a very, very low income.
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/ankole-cattle-336905/
The shops were made of bricks (and I suspect most of the bandas were too, but then rendered with mud) and it seems like everyone makes their own. I’m not sure how they shape them into little rectangles, but they make them out of mud and then dry them out on racks. They then stack them in a ziggurat with a hole in the centre into which they put firewood. There are a couple of holes in the bottom to push in more firewood. Then they set fire to it, cover the outside of the pile with mud, and let it burn for three days. This cooks the bricks to make them hard, and then they can build with them. Everywhere we went in the country there were piles of bricks, either already fired or awaiting it.
Running from Murchison Falls in the north, south through Uganda and into Rwanda and finally Tanzania, is the Albertine Rift Valley, a similar geological formation to the Great Rift Valley several hundred kilometres to the east. We were driving south and eastwards through the valley, and after a few hours we ascended the escarpment that formed the eastern edge of the valley. The floor of the rift was very flat here and rather picturesque, so we took some photos on the floor, and again on top of the escarpment where the views went across Lake Albert to the DRC on the other side. Janet and I saw a bird soaring high above and off in the distance, and black against the sky. Through binoculars I thought it was a marabou because I could see legs trailing behind. I took a couple of photos of it anyway because on the computer I can zoom in and might see identifiable features, and as I photograph in RAW I can sometimes tweak the exposure to bring out colours. (And this is what I did later – it turned out to be Saddlebill Stork).
http://www.zoochat.com/1681/floor-albertine-rift-valley-ugandan-kob-336901/
Travelling around Uganda there were two introduced plants I saw growing everywhere: Lantana and Eucalypts. Lantana is a South American shrub that has been introduced into many countries of the world, including Australia where it is a noxious pest. It forms dense impenetrable tangles of undergrowth with hard woody stems that are covered in small spikes. Cutting off the stems only slows the plant as it regrows vigorously from any part of the plant that is still in the ground. And where-ever a stem touches the ground, it puts down roots. Pulling out established roots is a nightmare, but the only way to get rid of the damn thing is to completely remove it and burn it. It was a shame to see Lantana growing in dense stands over so much of the Ugandan countryside, mainly along roadsides although I’m sure it was elsewhere as well. I saw it in the grounds of some of the places we stayed (where it appeared to be pruned and managed) and also in the grounds of the zoo in Entebbe. Even elephants won’t eat it – I saw some beside Lantana thickets ignoring them for some other leafy shrubs. The only animal I saw that appeared to seek out Lantana was Sunbirds who fed on the nectar from the flowers.
I don’t know what species of Eucalypt is grown in Uganda, but they are a very straight growing species. There were lots of plantations – and I mean LOTS – all over the country. They use the wood for burning and construction. So I suppose it’s better that they use plantations now and stop destroying the native areas for firewood, especially when the Eucalypt is a better source and relatively fast growing (but they’re still destroying the wilds for farming). As well as using the logs to build small wooden buildings shacks, they longer pieces are used in construction in the big cities: in Kampala we often saw the exterior of a multi-storey building covered with a rickety-looking scaffolding of Eucalypt logs lashed together.
The next town we visited was Hoima, a reasonably large town with tarred roads (and many buildings under construction, all with eucalypt scaffolding). Joseph needed to get fuel so we all got out to stretch our legs and buy a cold soft drink. It was now the afternoon and despite the thin cloud layer that had covered part of the sky, the sun had been shining through strongly for most of the day and it was fairly hot in Hoima, but the petrol station didn’t sell any drinks so I had to go over the road to a small shop. A 600ml bottle of Coke is 2,000 shillings – which is 80cents. Returning to the station I couldn’t see the girls; Joseph said they were visiting the restroom around the back. I headed around to do the same and found two of them waiting outside, so I waited patiently for my turn. I can’t remember who it was, but one of them came out and said “That’s worse than the bush toilet at Murchison Falls!”
And it was.
The room was the size of a broom cupboard, and there were brooms and rags in a back corner. It was only a metre wide with barely enough room to sit down, but that wasn’t a problem as there was nothing to sit on. In the concrete floor a hole had been made and a pipe inserted that led to the outside world.
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A few hours later Joseph turned off the road onto a lane that led to a pretty little clearing with a picnic bench we he thought we could have our packed lunch. The sun had vanished behind the clouds which had become thicker and greyer, and it started to spit as we started to eat. At least it was cooler. Lunch didn’t take too long, and with the drizzle we quickly got back on the road. Some time later we arrived at the major centre of Fort Portal, but our passage through was very slow as there was a soccer game about to start and the road we needed went right past the football ground. Eventually we made it through and continued on for a further 40 or 50kms until we reached our accommodation – the Chimpanzee Guesthouse – at around 6:30pm.
The Chimpanzee Guesthouse is a beautiful place to stay. It’s on a hillside a short distance outside Kibale National Park, but you can see the forest from your cottages. The gardens are well planted and even though the light was fading fast, I could see and hear birds in the trees and shrubs, and in the tea plantation next door.
We quickly freshened up and then headed to the restaurant for dinner. The food here was really good, and the staff were very friendly. Like many places we stayed at, bats would fly through the restaurant looking for insects attracted by the lights. One followed me back through the grounds to my cottage, occasionally flying through the beam of my headlamp.
It had been a long day in the car, and we all wanted some sleep. But before turning in I pulled out my field guide and turned to pages illustrating Chats, and I found the bird Joseph had pointed out that morning – all black with a white bar on the wing. With his accent I had heard the word “Tchudi”, when what he was actually saying was “Sooty”.
New Birds: Sooty Chat
http://www.zoochat.com/1682/sooty-chat-male-336906/
Hix
IanRRobinson
Well-Known Member
Beautifully written. Thank you, Hix!
I can imagine the ladies sitting there thinking "wow that Hix sure does know his Ugandan geography well!!"Hix said: