Uganda part two -Safaris

Previous posts are at https://lynntowin.ca/uganda/

Village walk

After the chimpanzee experience in Kibale, we went for a visit set up for us in a nearby village.

Our first stop was grounds of a guy known as the Banana Man, who made juice, beer, and gin from bananas. He was quite a character. Next was the coffee lady who ground her beans for us (a “coffee snob” in my group pronounced it excellent).

Then we went to the hut of the village medicine man, and last to a place where women were weaving colorful baskets, dyed with natural plants.

On the way back to camp, we passed a big black snake in the other lane of the highway. A motorcyclist on that side went past and the snake struck out at him, missed, then slithered off.

Queen Elizabeth National Park

After another night in the permanent tented camp, we set off into banana country. The small sweet plentiful bananas are known as apple bananas. Women and children tried to sell them to us in every town along the way.

We were headed way down in elevation to Queen Elizabeth National Park in the Great Rift Valley. There are 15 fishing villages inside the park, a salt water lake from ancient volcanoes, and a freshwater lake.

We arrived at Simba camp, on the equator and close to the park. Here we had a pool and lovely rooms. 15 minutes down the highway from us to mountains is the border to Congo.

We set off to see a monument for the equator, then a late afternoon safari in the park. It started with a torrential downpour that soon dissipated.

We saw a lot of Uganda kobe, african and forest buffalo, and elephants.

Elephant encounter

Right around dusk we found a large elephant family with babies, right by the road, happily wallowing in the new mud. We stopped to spend some time watching them. A big adolescent boy chased another big elephant, then turned to us, flapping his ears and trumpeting. The ear flapping means they are going to charge.

Jamil, our tour leader and experienced safari driver and guide, immediately revved the motor to produce smoke that scares elephants. The flapping elephant turned to a nearby cactus tree, ripped off a huge branch, and came running for us while brandishing the branch. Jamil hit the gas and we sped away. People in the other safari truck behind us told us that another elephant, likely the matriarch or leader of the herd, confronted the bad boy about his behavior and he backed off. Jamil swore that he was just playing with us. The video that one of our group got of this encounter does not look like playing!

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We had to turn around at the end of the road to go past the same place, and thankfully the elephants were gone. The other truck was carrying banana gin and soda, so we all had a drink, which we felt we deserved after that experience.

Jamil told us a story about a park doctor with a red jeep, who darted an elephant with tranquilizer to remove a wire snare from him. Years later, the red jeep was in the middle of a bunch of vehicles, and that elephant walked right to it and crushed it. They have impressive memories.

Game drive and channel cruise

In the morning, we encountered elephants trumpeting, hippos and buffalo wallowing, and lots of birds. Also kobe, waterbuck and pumbas. We saw no cats at all over two days.

We made a stop at the salt water volcanic lake, where villagers mine the salt.

After lunch, we cruised the channel between the salt water and freshwater lakes. Two older male elephants hang around the narrow shore, climbing up the steep banks covered in vegetation for their meals. We saw lots of hippos, tiny kingfishers, blue lizard, monitor lizard.