12/31/2013-1/1/2014 QUEEN ELIZABETH NATIONAL PARK

 12/31/2013-1/1/2014 QUEEN ELIZABETH NATIONAL PARK

This was pretty much a travel day. A bit of stress for Yehudah as we were running late and didn't know exactly where the bus was leaving from. We kept asking people as we rolled our bags along the rocky streets.  We barely made the bus as it was heading into the downtown area where it would pick up more passengers. It wound up staying quite awhile at the bus company shop, so we needn't have rushed.  But it was all good.  This was the largest and most comfortable of all the buses we have traveled on. Its destination was Kampala, the capital, 8 hours away. We were only going about 3 hrs. and meeting Fred in Mbarara. It all went very smoothly, 

folks trying to sell stuff at town bus stopped in to pick up more passengers

Two fancy young women waiting for a bus

Ugandan Farmland

Bus stops and everyone gets out to pee along the hedge.
Women pee to left in the bushes!

After we met Fred, Yehudah took out the maximum amount from an ATM ($270, $100 of which went right into the gas tank!), and we were soon on our way. We learned that Fred had never been to Queen Elizabeth National Park, so we provided him with the information we had gleaned. On the way there, the distant electrical storm suddenly hit with incredible force. The sun roof started leaking water down on Yehudah, so he held up his empty water bottle and filled up half of it before the storm finally relented.

We were almost there when the entire scenery changed and we were suddenly looking down on an African savannah. We thought we'd grab a place for the night and then do the channel boat ride, but the place Lonely Planet claimed was clean was unbelievably filthy and claustrophobic. A guide, who had an office there suggested we check out another place and it was like night and day.  The place was a bit off the beaten track and called Tembo Safari Lodge, which sounded expensive, but it was pretty new and not well established. Fred's instincts helped us find this delightful place.

Tembo Lodge is above this small fishing boat spot,
with the grass-roofed eating spots, with a lovely view of the lake

 Fred bargained for our room rate and then, while he was on a phone call, Yehudah bargained for his, which we were covering. Lo and behold, we got the same rate as the slum by the highway. The difference was that we were bargaining with the owner and agreed to stay 2 nights. I'm sure she saw that we would be eating there and only 1 of her 6 rooms were occupied. 

We decided to stay put and not try to do any other activities as all of us had been on the road all day, Fred driving for 8 hours! He went to pay for more time on his phone while we took a walk down to the shore of the Kagin Channel right below us. There were a dozen or so Pied Kingfishers on a high tension wire over the channel doing what they do best - fishing! One had caught a fish but was having difficulty positioning it so he could swallow it. There were Snowy Egrets, other waterfowl, including dozens that were flying in circles low over the water, as well as a dozen dugouts netting tilapia.

African Skimmers

Fishing boats lined up along shore below Lodge

Fishermen in a boat that's a step up from a Dugout Canoe

 When we reconnected with Fred, he announced that there was a troop of elephants nearby and we quickly drove there and watched a dozen or so headed toward the water including the largest bull elephant we've ever seen! 

Elephants close to Tembo Safari Lodge

Right now we are waiting for a fish dinner which we had ordered earlier so our hostess could get down and pick one up from the fishermen below us. Can't get much fresher! We had to retreat to a screen enclosure that is poorly lit and has several beer drinking guys in it. But, out at the table where we were sitting drinking our sodas, is now too chilly, with a stiff breeze blowing. We've been told that a lot of water bucks sleep in an adjoining field. It'll be dark so no photos, but we're in the first animal viewing period of our trip. We met the man who will be our guide for our early morning wildlife drive tomorrow, agreed on times and prices, and planned how the rest of the day will go. New Year's Day, here we come!

While waiting for dinner Fred told me about his dreams for the schools he has created.  His hope is to provide practical skills training for his students so they can develop livelihood post high school.  So he needs assistance with getting supplies to teach the skills and "to pay professionals to teach their skills plus more computers as Uganda enters the computer age."  He would like to provide more computers, sewing machines, plumbing, electrical and carpentry skills for the kids to learn.  His approach is similar to Emmanuel's in Huye.  He also needs better dormitories for the kids who board at the schools.  How to help these guys actualize their dreams?  I suggested he work up a 5 yr and 10 yr plan with a budget for the needs of the schools. Anyone out there interested in helping?  You can volunteer or provide money or supplies or contacts.  Fred's background story is that he wound up during his teens sleeping on the streets, begging for food and doing odd jobs to gather the funds to put himself through secondary and then college when his father was out of work and could no longer provide support.  He became a minister plus got a teaching certificate and then started all these programs himself.  He has tremendous persistence and has received support from a school in Australia, but his Ugandan source has dried up, so he is searching for how to proceed.

Dinner was a whole grilled tilapia each, quite large, with a large pile of yummy mashed Irish potatoes and some slightly steamed cabbage with a tomato sauce for the fish and a few pieces of unripe lemons. Fred had French fries.  Afterwards Yehudah and I sat around a small open fire watching the few stars shining in a pretty overcast night sky.  Hopefully those few stars mean good morning weather.

We just washed a few garments that were still stinky from the gorilla day and are going to sleep early to be up by 6 am.

New Year's Day dawned and we heard a knock on the door and immediately the alarm went off. Fred and Pascal, our guide, were waiting for us, engine running. There had been a time change that no one told us about.

We went on a "wildlife drive" which is basically driving around looking for animals not unlike what you do at Yellowstone and other American national parks. The guides stay in touch with each other to alert others where the animals are. Before we even got into the park we saw herds of African kob and water bucks, as well as small families of wart hogs.

Waterbuck

  

 On entering the park and paying our fees (the price had gone up for 2014 to $35 for each of us, $8 for Ugandans), we immediately came upon a pride of lions and about 6 other vehicles full of tourists. There were kob (antelope-like mammals) standing nervously around in the background. The female lions looked quite uninterested, but you never can tell. The male didn't have the traditional mane, but he was the head of the pack no doubt! He laid down not even looking in any particular direction. We spent quite a bit of time watching through binoculars and taking photos as the 5 females changed position. 

the male lion was mostly hidden in the tall grass

 

the Kobs nearby were oblivious of the ever watchful lionesses
they must have known that they weren't hungry

We moseyed along, coming upon many herds of kob, buffalo, and water buck, lots of birds, a few flowers, and eventually a few groups of elephants. All in all, we're sure to see more varied and abundant wildlife in the Kenyan and Tanzanian parks.

this is the furthest east to sight African Kob
they are primarily a West African species

males were constantly rehearsing for a fight for dominance
and access to the females 

 

  

 

at the present time there is no lodging facility in this part of the park
this will soon change with this complex of luxury spaces

Waterbuck does

Marabou storks hangout near village dumps
we also saw them scavenging right alongside vultures

most isolated animals, like this lone elephant, have been
excluded from the herd for one reason or another
they are doomed to be alone & are often aggressive

our first major group of hippos 

We returned for a late breakfast and started to drive into a different area of the park to take the boat on the Kazinga Channel, which connects Lake George with Lake Albert. (It is only 25 feet deep but is 40 km long (25 miles). The Democratic Republic of Congo is 65 km away but the border is 25 km away running through Lake Albert.)That's when we discovered our time was an hour off and we had only 40" to get 24 km. which, on these roads, can take an hour or two. Fred took off like a proverbial bat out of hell and fortunately this road was smoother than average and we met no oncoming traffic. The one obstacle was a herd of elephants which, as luck would have it, good luck that is, had just gotten over the road, so we sped on making it to the launch with a few minutes to spare. 

The tour was slightly under 2 hours and we saw the largest assemblage of animals we have ever seen. Hippos, buffalo, and elephants in great abundance, dozens of varieties of birds, two crocodiles, a monitor lizard (highly poisonous),  There were two UWA (Ugandan Wildlife Agency) people identifying them for us and telling us lots about many of them. The price had gone up $5 for 2014 to $30 and it was so worth every cent. 

Kazinga Channel Tour Boat

Simba (lion in Kiswahili

Crocodile

Cape Buffalo with calf

African Spoonbill

Great White Egret picking insects off the hippos 

 

 

 

Two Pied Kingfishers

Monitor Lizard - highly poisonous

Heron

Egyptian Goose

African Fish Eagles were numerous & often poses close to the water

 

           crocodile

  

could be a Eurasian Marsh Harrier or a Brown Snake Eagle
both were sighted and identified as well as a bataleur which
can carry an antelope away

trees overhung the channel decorated with a dozen birds

  

spotted a yellow-billed oxpecker on the back of some buffalo

 

 

 

didn't see a lot of hippos out of the water 

 

 

fishing village near the mouth of the channel

 

  

 

 

 

unbelievable numbers and varieties of water fowl including: pink backed & great white pelican, sacred & hadada ibis, yellow-billed stork, great & little egret, squacco and corrion heron, black crake, gull-billed & white-winged black tern, Senegal plover, red-billed quelea, grey- & black-headed gulls as well as helmeted guineafowl, &narrow-tailed starling

We stopped into the museum for a short look:

(Yehudah): To finish out the day, I asked Fred to drive through the "Explosion Crater" area, not realizing how rough the road was, but the views were spectacular. It took us 2 1/2 hours to go less than 30 km.   The craters were deep hollows several km. across and each one contained a different eco system - savannah, forest, and some even containing lakes. Along the spine of most of the ridges was solid, exposed stone, rough as all get out, and with a white mineral covering much of it. We were very thankful to find the road ended at the solid surface highway. The fellow who opened the gate probably hadn't seen another soul in a week! One not so nice thing was that we were driving so slowly that tsetse flies kept coming into the car and I got bitten 3 times! Glad sleeping sickness isn't prevalent any more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

warthogs

 

 

 

 

We were glad to get back and take a shower, but Fred headed over to watch the local football (soccer) game. Dinner was the goat stew we had ordered this afternoon along with all the traditional condiments: mashed banana, sweet potato, millet, and peanut sauce, none of which taste anything like you would expect except the peanut sauce. Now we're cozying up around the bonfire, yakking with a Ugandan young man and a couple from Amsterdam who have started a clothing business in Rwanda. Winds up she is Jewish.  They had similar feelings about the exorbitant tourist prices and that the countries would attract more tourists and make more money if it was more reasonable.  However, here we all are!