Gorillas – or not!
Thursday, August 9th, 2007So, at the start of our trip, we wanted to go see the rare Mountain Gorilla. Then we found out the price in Uganda to see them went from $360 to $500. For 1 hour. And other people that went have said they could have left it off and been very happy. So that’s why we went and saw the chimps instead. Because $1,000 USD doesn’t grow on trees. Apparently we aren’t alone because we’ve met a bunch of people that decided to skip it when the price went up.
But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t go to one of the parks where they hang out! We decided to go to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park to climb a volcano. Luckily, these aren’t active. So, in order to get there we went to Kabale from Fort Portal (where we barely slept after the toilet at the hotel went haywire in the middle of the night and it was going to flood the room so we had to change) – we caught the 6 am bus and got there in the afternoon. John was not feeling very good for the first few hours because we decided wine the night before was a good idea. We stayed the night at Edisira where we met this cool woman from Denmark who gave us an awesome recommendation on a place to stay in Kampala (where we’re staying!) – then went on the worst matatu ride of our Africa journey.
4 1/2 hours on a minibus with 25 adults/kids stuck in it is not pleasant. Especially when the kids are young and the bus doesn’t stop. So let’s see – pee/B.O. – oh and the seats – not very comfortable. I still haven’t recovered. Oh and I have a bruise where I was shoved up against the window. I have never wanted to get off a minibus so much and not even care how I was going to get the rest of the way there. Oh and the road was terrible.
Anyway, we finally got to Kisoro – the gateway to the park. We stayed at the Hotel Virunga and arranged the 12 km transport to the park through them and arranged a hike in the park the next day with the UWA. We decided on the smaller of the 3 – Mt Gahinga because Sabinyo had 101 ladders going up it. And Muhavura was pretty much straight up. We had already done one of these African straight ups and 101 ladders sounded like just a pain so we decided on the “big pile of stones”. It was in the middle so we were hopeful we would be able to see the other 2 if it was clear.
We decided to have lunch at Travellers Rest and ran into the 2 Germans from the CVK we had met previously. The had a harrowing experience getting to Kabale as well. They got on a minibus and they had to change 2 times into 2 different minibuses just to go what took us 2 hours the day before. I guess nothing is ever easy. They had a long walk ahead of them so we bid them on their way. They walked 12 km with their big backpacks to a campsite – we found out the next day that it took them 3 1/2 hours! Yikes – glad we arranged transport!
JohnCin