Chimps!!!
Pamela and I traveled from Kampala to Fort Portal via matatu. It was a four hour drive on an excellent paved road through a beautiful section of Uganda (I have not seen any part of Uganda that is not beautiful) with green farms, forest and some rock outcroppings. We were packed into the back of the van with a total of 20 people during some of the trip although we were pretty comfortable on the back bench with just one other person. The woman next to us had some kind of health problem that caused a second chin to grow looking like a fleshy rhino horn protruding from her throat. I see a lot of these growths in Africa although this one was particularly pointy. They are not easy to look at. Halfway through the trip, we stopped at a village where people were prepared with food for sale. We had two skewers of meat (probably goat), two chipatis (fried flat bread) and sodas passed through the window costing about $3 total. This may have been the mzungu price, too! Ugandans think Pamela is Ugandan until she can’t speak Lugandan. I usually laugh by their confusion, but they are always glad to meet a Kenyan. We have seen that Pamela gets a better price although I really don’t mind paying the bumped charges especially in an impoverished country like Uganda. We hired a cab in Fort Portal to drive us the last 45 minutes up the mountain above the western Rift Valley’s crater lakes to Ndali Lodge. This is where we would enjoy the next three days and nights accessing Kibale NP and its primates.
The first day we did the Bigodi Swamp walk on the opposite side of the park. The drive takes about an hour even though it is a short distance by way the crow flies. The “roads” are challenging to say the least with large potholes (ones that can swallow a car whole) and people, donkeys and everything else around every corner. At least the scenery including villages, lakes, mountains, forest and large fields of tea made it nice. The swamp hike goes around a large portion of the swamp with a boardwalk partially sunken which cuts across the swamp. We were there mainly to see primates. Since the swamp is more open than the forest, the viewing was easier. We found grey-cheeked mangabeys, red colobus, red-tailed monkeys, olive baboons, black-and-white colobus plus a couple of other monkeys as well as humans for a very complete primate experience. We also saw lots of butterflies, wildflowers, other plants and a lot of birds. There had been a lot of rain lately and we were lucky to have a beautiful day although an afternoon hike on the property of the lodge (1000 acres of lakes, farms and natural forest) was interrupted by a prolonged downpour. It never seems to rain lightly in Uganda.
The second day was the one I have been waiting for since my friend, Rod, had told me that Kibale was the best chimpanzee experience in Africa some fifteen months prior. After seeing gorillas and having two very brief glimpses of chimps in the Congo, I really wanted to see our closest relative in the wild. The night before we were eating dinner with Aubrey (owner of Ndali Lodge), Claire and Pamela (from Uganda) and Aubrey told us how their last chimp trek went for hours and resulted in only seeing one chimp high in a tree. I told him that we would have a stellar experience and that I have great primate luck. I was surprised by how suredly I said it, but I really did feel confident. I had the same positive feeling going to see the highland gorillas and going into the Congo and those were all amazing experiences so it was still with me. Of course, nature is nature and Aubrey just wished us luck with it. Kibale has about 1450 chimps of which a community of about 110 have been habituated. “Habituated” as in they tolerate humans watching them and are not afraid of us. Non-habituated chimpanzees are rarely seen because they flee before you get to them.
As we approached the park I saw a L’Hoest monkey (a big monkey that is very good on the ground and has a long tail that forms a perfect curl) cross the road and it was beautiful. I was made even more confident about the day with this rare and excellent sighting. We went into the forest with a couple from Switzerland and a guide and another guide in training. As soon as we got out of the vehicle chimpanzees could be heard. They were close and they were sounding from all directions around us! I was beeming!!! Let the show begin!!! Our guide took us in the forest after listening for a bit and she had us within a few meters of a big male on the ground within ten minutes. I’ll just mention this once – I got amazing photos of chimpanzees including this one when he was in a nice beam of filtered sunlight, but very sadly all were lost on the disk drive that has failed 🙁 We watched him race around screaming and baring his big teeth. He was ferocious and I will tell you that I was nervous about him, but gave full trust to the guide’s experience and knowledge. He ran away after a few minutes and our guide took a different direction to see if we could find the main group that was still making noises periodically. She really had a sense of where the fruiting trees existed in this dense rainforest and after some difficult walking we hit paydirt finding ourselves surrounded my chimpanzees in a lot of trees.
We watched them for about an hour and we were especially entertained by a baby chimp that was very curious about us and would hang from a branch staring down at us. While looking up we could hear a lot of chimpanzees running on the ground around us. Their screams had me even more nervous and I commented about them hunting the hunters (US)! I have read plenty of stories about chimpanzees to be serious about who is the superior hunter. We got numerous looks at them after a while and then the males in the troop moved on. We followed, but could not see them. We were moving quickly when all of a sudden screams that would kill a heart patient came from behind us and they ran by us. It was quite obvious that the hid and watched us go by before their “ambush”. I also believe they were laughing at us all jump out of our skins. We were laughing, too, as soon as our hearts started to beat again. I was really laughing because although I jumped Pamela who was right in front of me really went bonkers being so scared. The buggers took off and we were in chase again.
We got back to the road near where we had started and the guide decided to wait there to see the females follow after climbing out of the trees. Sure enough, they did as she thought and we got some great looks at a few as they came out into the open. I was so ecstatic that I basically blew every photo even though the lighting and close proximity was way easier than in the forest. I was a bot pissed for missing the opportunities, but I also know that this can happen when the thrill of the moment is so great. It really takes experience and discipline to take fast-happening wildlife photos and I can only imagine how difficult it is for photojournalists in war situations. We followed the females back into the forest, but soon lost them.
Once again, our guide pulled us through and we found them. This time we discovered a few on the ground and we were very close and the rest were back in the trees eating. We got a bonus as well. We found two different monkey groups – mangabeys and red-tailed monkeys – in the trees. Since monkeys are chimpanzee food, this was really wonderful to see. They all seemed quite relaxed in proximity and I suppose that was because there was plenty of tree food to eat. We stayed another hour before calling it a day. We had three hours with the chimpanzees and the guide said that this was as good of an experience as they ever have at Kibale. A “normal” good day at Kibale has three groups of six visitors getting only one hour with the chimps and the hour is usually limited to tree sightings so getting all three hours for just four visitors and having so many close encounters on the ground plus the monkeys truly met all of my dreams. I loved going back to Ndali Lodge and showing Aubrey just how good it was for us. He shared in the excitement knowing how truly great is such an experience. All I can say is go to Kibale NP in Uganda if you want an experience that is right up there with any other primate trek. Add in Bigodi swamp, the local birds and butterflies, Ndali Lodge and the surrounding crater lakes and views of the Rwenzori Mountains, and, of course, the wonderful people of Uganda and you have one incredible location.
Tags: Africa, Travel, uganda
vagabondrick
Thanks rick , was more than glad to be out of my countrly kenya to uganda .OOH my GOD! was so shocked and scarced to seeing chimp .have never seen chimp before i liked them but dint want to be so CLOSE to them thought they will attack me but luckly they d dint .
baby chimp was my favarites. wish [ mum chimp gave me a small chance to hold her baby .i would be so happy.
we have a very nice photo of mum chimp and the baby in my sons bedroom [BECKHAM] in kenya, i love looking at it every mornnig.BECKHAM love it alot!
thankyou so much rick for the phito and conguraturations for youre good eyes and good focusing when taking photos.